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

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

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…

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.

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

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

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.

So why make an MP3 player for kids? Simply put, kids love music, they love touch devices, and they love to listen to music on touch devices. However, standard MP3 players are built for people who can read and — more importantly — can keep their hands off the screen for a couple of minutes.

If you ever watched toddlers “using” the Music app on an iPhone or iPod touch, you’ll have noticed how they never listen to one song for very long, and how they constantly manage to wind up in the stranges possible playlist regions you could imagine.

The same kids are perfectly capable of listening to a full album in a CD player, of course.

Now say hello to Kids’Player! It’s a stripped down MP3 player, bare-bones to the fullest, right down to being unforgivingly strict and modal. You can change albums, press play, skip songs, that’s it.

You have to stop a song playing in order to switch albums, and you’re only shown the albums of one particular, pre-defined playlist. There’s no sorting, no search, nothing.

Also, every tap on the screen has a direct audible result — songs play, skip, stop. Compare this to any other player which lets you navigate playlists and whatnot while listening to music. Again, this is for small kids, 3-year olds or so, who can’t even read. They can’t differentiate between playlists and songs, folders and playlists, artists’ names and album titles. It’s no wonder they can’t keep a songs playing: how would they know which tap just moves the screen around and which tap would change the music?

So… Kids’Player.

We had a first, very rough prototype ready late last year and refined it ever since. Most kids just need 30 seconds of instruction, one minute of tinkering around, and if the music’s right, they’ll keep it playing.

It’s nothing spectacular, nothing earth-shattering, just a small app to help kids listen to their favorite tunes. It works great in hand, mobile, and it works great in docking stations.

You can grab it on the iTunes App Store.
Have fun.

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.

2) Pricing aka IS THIS A PROMO OR WHAT?!?!
You may have noticed that we have opted for a rather moderate price for Ulysses on the Mac App Store. It’s $29.99, in case you did *not* notice, he.

That’s more or less what we charged for updates in the past. And it’s permanent. This is *not* promo-pricing or “first-day app store hurrah” — it’s permanent. It’s Ulysses’ new price point, and we think it’s a steal.

The reasoning for this move is simple: There are no upgrade paths on the App Store or *to* the App Store. Current users of 1.x (or Core/Edu) who would like to upgrade to 2.0 should still be able to do so without paying a “full version” price. More importantly, though: New versions will either have to be free updates or completely new, stand-alone apps. Again, we’re not announcing 3.0 here, but IF and WHEN we’ll release a full version jump in the future, you’re going to just buy that new app. And you’ll pay again.

It’s just like what Apple did all along with iLife/iWork, and just like they’re doing now with Aperture, iPhoto etc. on the App Store. The idea being that every version’s price is an upgrade-price — with 1.0 being an upgrade from nothing at all, so to say. Initial pricing for new apps is a thing of the past now, 20th century, as are upgrade paths and cross-grade promotions.

It’s all good, because it’s clear, simple, and much more consistent than any current system.

On a side-note: The App Store’s tier system makes away with currency exchange rates, which for us is a big plus. Prices in each country/currency will stay persistent now, which is in stark contrast to our ever-changing dollar-prices of the past.

3) For something that hasn’t been announced yet, you’re mentioning Ulysses 3.0 a lot.
He. It will happen one day, we all know that.

4) How will your move to the App Store influence Ulysses’ development? E.g., will you start releasing point updates every two weeks now?
Nah, but the App Store does have an effect, no doubt. We’ve already rerstructured our development process to some degree, in that we’ve begun to work in tighter segments and do more planning ahead, road-mapping. And we’re taking dedicated breaks to work on other projects. And I think we might very well go for a true dev-cycle-system in the near future, releasing full versions every 18 months or so, and focusing solely on bug-fixing in-between. But we’re not there yet. ;)

5) Will your other projects (Daedalus, HouseParty etc.) set back Ulysses’ development?
Depends on one’s point of view. We don’t think our other projects set back Ulysses, because of the aforementioned tighter development segments or phases. We prepared Ulysses for the App Store in four weeks (or so), because we had just begun kicking Daedalus development into high gear. I believe that without Daedalus on our backs, we would’ve taken twice the time — not just due to less pressure, but due to us trying to integrate additional features or such, making the App Store launch “big”, “worthy”, whatever.

So in terms of time spent on Ulysses — yeah, we spend less time on Ulysses. But the time is better spent now, as we’re much more focussed.

6) How will your move to the App Store effect previously purchased versions of Ulysses? Think updates…
The auto-update server will continue to serve updates for as long as 2.x is in development. These updates will coincide with updates served through the App Store, so both versions should always be in sync. Once we are no longer selling 2.x, updates will cease, as did updates for 1.x in the past. There’s nothing to worry about, really, we won’t forget nor abandon our current user-base.

7) How will your move to the App Store effect 1.x versions of Ulysses? Think registration system…
Right now, nothing has changed. We’re still running the registration server, as we are running the auto-update server. At some point in the future, we will offer a free patch to users of Ulysses 1.x to remove the registration check. It’s not high priority, so don’t expect this to happen very soon, but it will happen eventually.

8) Misc.
Stapler is freeware for the time being; partly due to our closure of the shop. We want to extend a very warm “thank you” to everybody who paid the old shareware fee. We’ve not yet decided if we bring Stapler to the Mac App Store.

And that’s it for now.
Any more questions, feel free to ask.

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.