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Daedalus Touch 1.2: Markdown, ePub and iOS5

October 26th, 2011

Daedalus Touch iPad ePub Export iBooks

So, there it is: Daedalus Touch 1.2 — available now at every iTunes App Store known to man. Only on iPad. Only on iOS5.

This is the second feature-update we’ve put out since the original release. We’ve added lots of stuff, but the two most prominent new features are Markdown support and ePub export. So allow me to elaborate on these a bit.

First off, we’ve added Markdown as an export option, available if you export to PDF or ePub. You can choose it by switching the “style” setting from “none” to, well… Markdown. We support most of Markdown’s syntax: Six levels of headers, ordered and unordered lists, links, emphasis, code, block quotes, line breaks, you name it.

There’s no support for images, as Daedalus can’t handle images and iOS won’t let you access anything outside of an app’s own space. There’s also neither support for tables nor for nested lists or nested block quotes within nested lists of block quotes. More on that in another post.

Then again, you’ll be pleased to know that we now *do* support all kinds of special file.extensions. So if you’re in the camp of .mdown or .md, we got you covered — during import, synching and export.

Which brings me to… ePub. ePub is the HTML-based, open standard in electronic books. It’s what Apple chose for iBooks and what Amazon refuses to acknowledge, but I’ll get to that later. The important part is, that you can now export single or multiple sheets as well as single or multiple stacks to ePub and have them open as a *book* in iBooks.

The exporter will transform stack titles to chapters and sheet titles to sections, will generate a table of contents and also apply a nice layout/theme. You can of course both add some author information and choose any photo from your library as cover image. iBooks then is smart enough to recognize image dimensions, so there’s no stopping you from creating a square-looking book on that digital wooden shelf.

As for Amazon and its new KF8: We’re as baffled as everybody that they went with their own format instead of ePub. However, our exporter is more than capable to output KF8, so we will add support for the new Kindles with the next update.

That, I guess, means future-proof. :)

And that’s… a wrap.

Have fun,
Marcus

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Posted in iPad, News, Projects | 9 Comments »

Kids’Player gone free

October 26th, 2011

We’ve decided to offer Kids’Player free of charge. Probably was a bad idea to try and grab a couple of cents in the first place, but we wanted to experiment and see how something like this would fare.

Anyway, we haven’t updated the app since its release, even though we got some ideas we’ll be implementing once we find the time. But it’s still a nice little player for kids, especially for audio books and the like, or really anything where skipping sucks. Which of course means that it’s just as great for these famous concept albums you used to enjoy when you were a kid. ;)

Feel free to leave a review if you download and like it.

Thanks,
Marcus

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Posted in iPhone, News, Projects | No Comments »

Ulysses 2.1 App Store version released almost two weeks ago!

October 12th, 2011

Ulysses 2.1 Mac App Store

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

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Posted in Chatter, Mac OS X, News, Projects | No Comments »

Ulysses 2.1 released via Sparkle (aka non-App Store)

September 20th, 2011

Title says it all. :)
App Store version is waiting for review; fingers crossed that it will see release within the week.

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…

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Posted in Mac OS X, News, Projects | 4 Comments »

For the brave: Ulysses 2.1 Beta (enhanced for Lion)

September 2nd, 2011

Short version: Download Ulysses 2.1 beta. Unpack the archive, launch the app. Enter your registration data or leave everything blank and just run it in trial mode. Test. Give feedback, if you happen to stumble across bugs. (No feature requests please.)

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.

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Posted in Mac OS X, News, Projects | 23 Comments »

Daedalus Touch 1.1 released on App Store, iPads across the world cheer in joyful anticipation

August 12th, 2011

Just a quick heads up regarding Daedalus Touch 1.1: It’s live now, you can go and grab it via the usual channels. We’re extremely proud of some of the stuff we packed into this update, even though most of it was user feedback anyway. ;)

So, thanks for your ongoing support, and happy writing.
Next up: “Back to the Mac…”
Marcus

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Posted in iPad, News, Projects | 3 Comments »

Officially announcing Ulysses 2.1 and Daedalus Touch 1.1

July 25th, 2011

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.

(more…)

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Posted in iPad, Mac OS X, News, Projects | 3 Comments »

Kids’Player on iTunes App Store

February 9th, 2011

kids'player app store

As recently announced, we now also have our first iOS app in the wild.

It’s called “Kids’Player“, and I’d like to take a moment and explain the reasoning behind this app. Because I’ve already gotten a phone call in which the caller accused our app of being unusable… well, whaddayaknow?

Kids’Player has been in private beta testing for the last couple of months, with the test subjects being 2- to 4-year olds. It’s all good, these were private tests and no kids were harmed during the making of this app.

(more…)

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Posted in iPhone, News, Projects | No Comments »

Some more in-depth info about Ulysses and the Mac App Store

January 28th, 2011

Yesterday, Ulysses was released to the Mac App Store. We’ve set up a quick Q&A over here, which should address the most basic questions and concerns regarding this event.

In *this* post, I’ll go a bit more in-depth on some of our decisions.

1) App Store Exclusive? Really?
Yeah. We thought long and hard about this, and decided to commit ourselves fully to the App Store. There are some rough edges here and there, but we see this move as highly beneficial for both us and our users.

For one, we can close our own shop and cut all connections with third-party payment services. Everything will be handled in one place, so there’s a whole lot less to worry about, a lot less maintenance.

We won’t need to worry about distribution, installing, licensing, copy protection anymore. We can now send users to the App Store, and it’s all handled from there, so there’re less chances of messing things up on our side, and less hassle on the user’s side.

The App Store review process, painful and slow as it may be, actually injects another layer of quality management to our already rather high standard. It’s not that we won’t beta-test anymore, but it’s nice to have an independent entity (*g*) double-check for us.

In the future (long-term, really) we can fully focus on one version — the App Store version. We have not announced nor are we planning to release it anytime soon, but IF Ulysses 3.0 sees the light of day, we won’t keep two seperate builds alive. This mostly concerns update- and licensing-systems, but still.

Also, we can’t shake the feeling that the App Store will be the only way to distribute apps on Mac OS X in the long run. This has been on the horizon for some time, and whether you or we like it or not, it’s going to happen. So we might as well jump on the bandwaggon early, roll with it, and gain experience in the process.

(more…)

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Posted in Chatter, Mac OS X, News | 15 Comments »

Ulysses on the Mac App Store (now live and in living color)

January 27th, 2011

Ulysses Mac App Store

Ok, it’s gone live about an hour ago. HURRAH! :)

Here’s a quick Q&A session which should cover all the basics; questions, fears, dunno. It will be updated once we get more feedback. A more thorough post regarding overall direction (with strong focus on all things Ulysses) will be up sometime tomorrow.

Will the Mac App Store be the only way to purchase Ulysses from now on? Yes, we’re going App Store exclusive.

Woah! Yeah.

I see Ulysses Core is gone. What gives? Will you put this on the App Store also? No. Starting today, Ulysses Core is no longer available for purchase, nor will it be made available on the App Store. The main reason Core existed was to offer a cheaper alternative for those who wouldn’t use some of Ulysses’ advanced features. However, we’ve now priced Ulysses so that this reason has become obsolete.

Darn, i just wanted to upgrade my license form Ulysses 1.x/Core/Edu to Ulysses 2.0 Standard!!! We’ve set the pricing of Ulysses on the Mac App Store to allow just that. In fact, it’s pretty much the same price you would’ve paid for an update before. And it’s the full version now. So… go grab it, already!

If I purchased Ulysses pre-App Store… will I still get updates? Yes. Auto-update will take care of any installed version 2.x, be it Standard, Edu or Core. (And no, that’s not a hint at 3.0 coming anytime soon, please don’t worry.)

Do I need to switch to the App Store version? Am I missing out on something if I don’t, will I be 2nd class citizen, help… No, no, no and no. No need to switch to the App Store version, especially if you’re fine with your current install (and who isn’t, he).

Let’s say I own a standard licence of Ulysses 2.0 and just want to switch to the App Store version. Do you offer any cross-grade pricing options, promotional rebates, anything? Not yet.

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Posted in Mac OS X, News | 21 Comments »

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