Today’s the day! We’re announcing a new project: Daedalus touch — a cutting-edge writing environment for the iPad.

“Woah”, you say, “wait wait!!!”

Will it sync to Ulysses? No.
Will it have any desktop counterpart? No.
Will it, like… compete with Pages? We hope so, yes.
Will it allow embedding of photos? No.
Will it at least allow RTF? Hahaha, no, hehe.
Will it have semantic editing? No.
Will it have a fullscreen view? Uhm… sort of, yes. Or rather… no.
So it’s just a basic text editor, right? Right. But.
Will it have notepads and metadata? No.
Will it have folders, and collections and filters? Not… really.
Will it be a Wiki of some sorts, linking pages? No.
Then how will it be different from Notes? For starters: a legible font, no leather case.
And how will it compete with Pages? It’ll be for writers, not for designers.
And how will it be different from other text apps in the AppStore? A beautiful, clean and simple interface, specifically designed for the iPad.
That’s about it? No.
What’s that cutting-edge bit? You’ll see.
Anything else you want to share? Yeah.

After the AppStore/API desaster that was Ulysses mobile, we were close to giving up on iOS development, at least as far as text editors were concerned. That was until we got our hands on the iPad.

Skeptical at first, it quickly became clear that this is not just a “touchscreen-laptop without a keyboard”, but a true next-gen device, a class of its own. Not only in terms of tech specs, but more so in terms of philosophy and interaction — the whole experience.

For example, on the iPad we’re not watching movies on an LCD; we’re holding the movies in our hands. We’re no longer surfing the web; we’re touching it. It’s about direct manipulation and the removal of abstraction layers. And, of course, it’s about being permanetly connected, always online.

The iPad is a next-gen device, and Daedalus touch will be a true next-gen app. This is neither a port of existing Mac OS X software, nor are we shoehorning current desktop metaphors onto a touch-enabled interface.

From our perspective, “built from the ground up for iPad” should not mean “we used Xcode, Interface Builder, and targeted 1024×786″. Instead, it should mean we leveraged the iPad’s new and ground-breaking ways of interaction to create a product that would, or rather *could* not work on a different device.

And that it should rock.

And so we’re leveraging ALL of the iPad’s special features. And by “all” we do mean all. See, the gyrometer will control the insertion point and selection. GPS-enabled devices (iPad G3) will offer social network interaction with other Daedalus users in the vicinity.

Just joking.

But it will rock.
And we just can’t wait til you guys get your hands on this thing.

Any ETA? No. But it’s close.
Beta? Calm down, willya…

Hey everyone,

in addition to our new Teaser, we also completely re-recorded the introductory screencast for Ulysses. Instead of using Ulysses 1.6, Ulysses 2 was used this time. We also added two short sections on Semantic Text Editing and Exporting. And all of that in HD!

Happy watching!
Götz

recently it has been hard to miss that we are developing Ulysses Mobile. There have been some pictures and videos around. This might have wetted your teeth… But now we want you to get your hands on the nearly finished version — as an exclusive beta tester!

So what do you need?

• An iPhone or an iPod touch with at least OS 3.0
• Some good use for an semantic text editor on the go
• A little tolerance to bugs and quirks.
• Warmheartedness and stuff …

Wanna participate? Just send your application to ulysses@the-soulmen.com, and make sure to include some information about the type of device (iPhone/iPod) and the installed system. We have not yet decided how many people will participate, nor do we know when we’ll start exactly, but it might still happen this week :)

Update: Wow, the response was overwhelming! We do now have enough beta testers for Ulysses Mobile. Thank you to everyone who applied!

Have fun,

Max

this is just a quick notifier that we just released Ulysses 2.0.1 into the wild. This is a bug fix version only and resolved some childhood illnesses of both Ulysses applications. It’s available through the internal updater.

New with this update is also our new versioning schema: From now on we will release 0.0.x releases only for bug fixes and minor stuff. All new features that are bigger than “small” will come along 0.x releases. This basically is to signalize the progression of features and not getting stuck in inappropriate numbers :)

Happy updating!
Max