Nine years ago, early 2003, I posted on the macnn forums, asking for beta testers for a new kind of writing application for Mac OS X. On June 1st of that year, we released Ulysses 1.0.

Let’s try and put that in context, shall we? :)

In 2003 the G4 was all the rage. Every Apple product sported that processor, from the white iBooks to the “Quicksilver” PowerMacs. Intel was a sticker on other people’s notebooks, and was supposed to *never* be inside a machine from Cupertino. iMacs looked like perverted versions of the Pixar lamp, and the PowerBooks just went to 17″ within an aluminum body.

People were still using clamshell iBooks – a mere 800×600 px of screen real estate, which is less than what run-off-the-mill telephones offer today.

The Safari web browser had just entered public beta (Internet Explorer X, yay), and Apple had just opened the doors to its iTunes Music Store. iPods were operated via click-wheels, and Mac OS X was at version 10.2, Jaguar; users were supposed to reserve theater tickets online via an app named “Sherlock”.

There was no Exposé, no Xcode, no Spotlight, no Dashboard. There was no built-in, system-wide dictionary, no iCal, no QuickLook. There was no unified sidebar, let alone any sort of broad unification regarding the UI, with brushed metal all over the place and a vibrant theming community trying to win a resource-war.

There was no Facebook, let alone Twitter, and there was no WordPress either. Google Docs? John Gruber’s Markdown? Nope. Dropbox? Nooooooo…

The developer community we encountered was largely one of old school Mac programmers, who had already gone from 68xxx to PowerPC and just now came to grips with ditching OS 9. It was a nice bunch, a bit family-like, and I fondly remember subscribing to Apple’s official mailing lists and discussing the pros and cons of localized forums for non-english devs.

It’s been nine years.
Everything has changed.

My current iMac is powered by a multi-core Intel i7 running at 2.9 GHz. It boots in a little under 10 seconds, and that’s last years’ model. The current version of OS X (Lion) looks, feels and behaves so differently from 10.2, 10.4 even, that it’s like a different system altogether.

The least common denominator capable of running the beast is a MacBook with a screen of 1280×800 px — that’s twice the amount of that clamshell iBook.

The web is everywhere now, and we store huge chunks of our data online. Cloud-aware apps automatically sync our various devices, with so-called “smart” phones being no less than hyper-mobile supercomputers which also happen to allow voice chat.

Apps have somehow managed to transform from (however slick) data-manipulation programs to aesthetically pleasing design objects. Some of the best graphic designers now work on interfaces, and there’s a whole generation of young, talented artists and coders willing to embrace and push forward the status quo.

Users’ expectations also have dramatically changed. From prices to feature set to interoperability, connectivity and “post-processing” of any given output. It’s almost been a 180 degrees turn from the beginning of this century: Music, photos, videos and texts (games even) are all being distributed digitally now, and everybody can publish everything, at any time, anywhere… and does so.

And who but the nerdiest of nerds would have thought that today we all pretty much run a Unix-based system that *completely* hides its underlying complexity. No visible file system, no documents, no extensions to worry about, just tasks at hand – literally, with touch becoming the predominant input method. Of course, I’m talking iPad here, but we all know where this is going…

Last not least, developing for Apple’s platforms has turned from nice, friendly niche to a multi-million dollar opportunity for venture capitalists and indie devs alike. The App Store shook up the industry, and we dare only imagine what the landscape will be like in another nine years’ time.

Yeah, it has been *nine* years.
And everything has changed.

Ulysses? Not so much.
To be continued…

Ha, can you believe this? We totally missed to announce the immediate availability of Ulysses 2.1 on the App Store.

We were so excited and thrilled and everything – appearing in New & Noteworthy, getting an App Store feature and great reviews, dancing, partying –, we just didn’t… manage.

And once the initial dust settled, we dove head-in to create Daedalus 1.2, which is in final stages of development right now, with some great enhancements and additions, which is lots of… work, actually.

So: We missed the announcement!

Good thing these are the interwebs, and we can fix this terrible slip-up in no time and real time. Yeah! Just imagine this being a print publication, and we had forgotten to announce the October release back in July (’cause that’s how this works in print, you know), and we just *now* realized and… HOW COULD PEOPLE EVEN LIVE BACK THEN?!?

Pfhew. And whatever.

Ulysses 2.1, available now at the Mac App Store, for the insanely low price of only $19.99 or whatever that translates to in your local currency. Wobster’s dictionary lists it under “a steal, really”.

Have fun.
We do.

Cheers,
Marcus

One thing worth noting: We’ve merged Ulysses core and Ulysses standard with this version. So all core users who install the update, will have the full version afterwards. No extra cost, of course.

Oh, and Ulysses 2.1 requires an Intel Mac running at least OS X 10.6. So if you happen to run PPC/10.5 or such, you might not see the update. Just so you know.

Have fun everybody, and thanks a lot for your patience.
Cheers,
Marcus

PS: Our website still features 2.0, since that’s what’s currently available on the Mac App Store. We will update the site as soon as we get approved…

Hi there,

this has been sitting in one of my folders for some time, and I simply forgot to upload it. Bummer. But hey, no deadlines on the interwebs, right? So here it is: The first ever officially licensed Soulmen Wallpaper Desktop Picture, loosely based on the in-app backdrop of Daedalus Touch.

Only in 1600×900, sorry, but it’s ad-free, unlabeled, and it makes a great impression on a second monitor running Ulysses 2.1.

Cheers,
Marcus

Update: 2560×1440 by popular demand. :)

Alright, so here’s the version we’d love to submit to Apple. Which is also the version all our non-MAS customers will get via Sparkle. So please have a go, give it a shot, we’ve changed quite some bits from the last beta.

Download Ulysses 2.1rc

Changelog 2.1b
Changelog 2.1b › 2.1b2
Changelog 2.1b2 › 2.1rc

As a reminder: We’ll submit to Apple and push the update via Sparkle simultaneously. This means that non-MAS users will get their hands on 2.1 a bit earlier than MAS customers. It also means that in case of App Store rejection (you never know, you know), MAS users will have to wait even longer and we’ll have to add another .1 in order to keep both versions in sync.

So, please, if you’ve purchased Ulysses on the App Sore, don’t go out and rate us down (or whatever) just because your version is not the same as what might turn up on MacUpdate or some other site we can’t influence. Ok? Deal?

Nice, thanks. :)

Oh, and before we forget: We need some really tough guys and gals to help test with some really cutting edge stuff regarding the Mac App Store version and some super-secret NDA-features. You don’t even need to have bought it on the MAS to help, you just need Mac OS X Lion. Anybody?

Cheers,
Marcus

Long version: There is no long version. Just some release notes.

Release: If all goes as planned, we’ll push Ulysses 2.1 early next week through Sparkle and also submit it to the Mac App Store for review. It’s a free update, of course.

Hey,

in case you haven’t been following our Twitter account, we hereby announce Ulysses 2.1 for Mac OS X and Daedalus Touch 1.1 for iPad. While the latter should be ready for App Store submission sometime this week, the former won’t see the light of day until mid-August. Fingers crossed.

So… what will be in?

Ulysses 2.1: First off, this will be a unified, simultaneous release via both Mac App Store and Sparkle. There has been some confusion recently, as to whether we’re still committed to pre-App Store customers, and of course we are, and this release should squash all quibbles. Or whatever.

2.1 will primarily see fixes, new localizations (e.g. Japanese) and some stuff for Mac OS X 10.7 aka Lion. Feature-wise, you won’t see anything substantially new except for the final version of our HTML/ePub exporter. This alone will propel Ulysses to a whole new level, and we thus advance its version number on a .x-level.

Continuing the myth busting, work is already well underway for the next version of Ulysses. In fact, work started about half a year ago. We are not (NO!!) abandoning Ulysses for Daedalus Touch, even if you’ve heard or suspected otherwise.

Speaking of Daedalus Touch: We’re currently beta testing Version 1.1 and are confident to make an App Store submission later this week. We’ve incorporated lots of user feedback, as well as stuff that didn’t make it into the initial release. For example, you’ll have access to an additional keyboard row, which lets you enter hard to reach special characters. This is optional, of course, but we believe to “have nailed it” here, with a wonderful blend of flexibility and functionality and generally just great awesomeness. Yeah.

We’ve also added a “Large Type” setting for those who didn’t like the standard font size, and we added a fourth color scheme to please those of you who like their editor funky.

Then there’s a whole slew of new and improved import/export/sync stuff. First, you can now print from within Daedalus. Second, you can now output PDF. You can now also send TXT, PDF and ZIP files to installed apps that support said file types. Last not least, we’ll now treat sheets which have empty titles as appendices to previous sheets. So yup, you can now have a single article spread across several sheets and still mail/export it as a single, continuous file. Small stuff, huge impact.

Syncing has been rewritten in part, allowing arbitrary sync folders (per stack) as well as automatic checking of sync status upon app activation. Meaning that we now check Dropbox/MobileMe for changes whenever you switch to Daedalus. We’ve also added icon badge notifications for dirty stacks.

Once 1.1 is released, we’ll up its price to $5.99 — so if you’re hunting for bargains, now’s the time to set your aim and push that button.

Have fun,
Marcus

Our series of Screencasts on Ulysses is now also available in French and German. Head over to theScreencasts page to watch them in their full beauty.
In addition, we also uploaded 720p versions to our Youtube channel (French, German).

Enjoy!
Götz

English versions are online *now*, with German and French to follow during the next few weeks. Recordings for these are already done, but we still need to localize the slides and such, so bear with us if you’re a native speaker… (we hand picked nice voices for you, too)

Now… originally I had planned to do a serious rant against anonymous forum commenters and the like, who attacked us for having a German accent in our old videos. But there are more important things to write about, and these folks are not worth spending time on anyway.

Just one thing, though: We ship with a dozen or so FULL localizations of Ulysses. We’ll be adding Japanese to the mix with 2.1, along with one or two more languages that I can’t even remember. We’re trying to make sure that native speakers have a fully integrated experience with Ulysses on their system, because we believe that a truly “distraction free writing environment” is impossible to achieve with a language barrier in place.

And these guys bitch about some accent in an explanatory video.

Ts, the internets.

PS: 720p Youtube versions available also.

Italy showed some serious Ulysses love this weekend, even pushing Apple’s iWork suite off the top spot in the Productivity charts. Yay!

We’ve reset Ulysses’ price on the Mac App Store to $29.99, so AppDate is officially over now. We’re glad so many people took the chance to grab our little app this weekend, be it old users, new customers or just deal hunters.

In turn, Ulysses managed to grab top-10 spots all over the world, which is even more remarkable given the fact that we had close to zero press coverage… for whatever reason. Twitter proved to be a great source for mouth-to-mouth recommendation, so thanks everybody who retweeted and spread the word.

We now hope everybody has a version they feel comfortable with, so that we can focus on more important things than App Store yes/no/why/etc.; from now on, we’ll just assume the switch complete and move on. :)

There’s lots of upcoming news — Ulysses 2.1, Daedalus, HouseParty, Kids’Player+ –, so wheather you’ve been following us for the past couple of years or only just arrived at our playground: Hi there! These are exiting times.

Have fun!