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…

There you go.

“Sepia” will just change the background color to a bit of, well, sepia tone, while the “dark” setting will actually get you a light grey on almost-black, which is perfect for writing really long sentences in the, uhm, dark, yeah.

Some may wonder why we haven’t updated the blog with info about Daedalus touch, or why we stil haven’t announced a release date yet.

The reason is simple: We’re aiming for very high ground. And we’re not just creating another Mail.app for writers here. There are no blueprints for what we do, no interface samples to draw from, no similar apps already in the AppStore.

A lot of what we’re doing involves lots and lots of research, user testing, trial and error. We’re charting new ground — which sometimes means leaving it again.

During the last couple of weeks we worked harder than we ever had to, all in order to implement concepts that didn’t work out, or stuff you won’t even notice was hard to pull off. iOS development is fun, but the restrictions are immense, especially when chosing to leave the throtten paths.

As an example, we wanted to go for the “less-buttoned interface”. We wanted to hide buttons as much as possible, creating an always-fullscreen writing experience. We had four buttons, one in each corner of the screen, and they would fade in and out based on certain actions of the user.

We implemented it, ran with it for some time.
Then we ditched it.

It just didn’t work, as we couldn’t create a consistent experience, and the usability troubles weren’t worth the benefits. So as much as we had loved to go for that ideal of a pure, blank, all-text interface — we’ll just use a standard top-of-the-screen button bar now.

Or Daedalus’ search system. You’ll just use it and take it for granted, and the countless hours that went into it, the cursing, the sweat, the sheer anger at that stubborn touchscreen device that wouldn’t do as we told it, the rewrites, the now-useless first, second, third version of code — you won’t see that.

That’s good and all, ’cause if you don’t notice that work, it means we managed to get it right. Just know that we’re working our asses off here to produce a great user experience, and to ensure the kind of quality you’ve come to expect from us and from iPad apps in general.

Bottom line: If you hoped for a November release, just in time for NaNoWriMo or such, you already know you’ve been out of luck. We’re done with the editor and basic file mangement/organization. We’re also done with search and settings. We’re missing sync, folder mangement, export and some bonus stuff I can’t talk abnout.

We hope to have a beta ready by year’s end.

Thought I’d share some stuff.
List style.
Hope it answers a few pending questions.
I’ll start with creative direction:

• We will target the iPad as a fully fledged platform. This is not a mobile Mac, nor is it a mere extension of a desktop computer. It’s a device that holds its own. We will therefore treat Daedalus touch as a fully fledged, standalone app. This will go full circle: write – revise – submit. You’ll be able to create long (and longer) texts as well as snippets, so you might very well create your next novel with this, but you might also just use it as a notebook.
• Some limitations apply. One: Daedalus will not feature any kind of style engine. No RTF, no semantic/syntax coloring, nothing. So there’s no highlights, no italics, no headlines, no lists, no quotes, no annotations, nothing. Blame Apple.
• Two: For the time being, there will only be a single layer of content. No comments, no attachments, no footnotes, so this will not be Ulysses mobile HD. And there won’t be a scribbling/drawing or hand writing layer either. So if you’re looking for a rich environment with embedded/attached media or extensive support for metadata, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
• Three: There will be no such thing as folders. No folders, no nested folders, no smart folders. There will be something akin to projects, and each such “project” may hold an infinite amount of what you could call documents. Initially, these “documents” will be sorted by creation date, though users may freely rearrange their documents. Version 1.0 will not allow for the movement of documents between projects (other than copy and paste).
• In part, these limitations will be compensated by the way you’ll interact with content. Example: Instead of using dedicated notepads, you might just create a “note” document and (sort of) attach it to a “main” document. You may then easily switch between these two documents.
• We will incorporate several means to export your writings. Email is an obvious candidate, Dropbox (etc.) is another, but we’re also looking into more advanced options, such as PDF and ePub. These might not make it into 1.0, though, and don’t expect complex conversion options; there’s no style engine, remember?
• We will offer syncing (e.g. Dropbox), but this will not be our main concern. Yes, it syncs, and yes, you can continue writing in and from another app, mobile or desktop, but we will not do much in terms of integrity checks, merging, versions, or anything remotely advanced. We will update files and create new ones, and that’s about it. This is in part due to our fully fledged app approach: We see folks using the iPad as their main writing machine, with syncing being a means of backing up. Mostly.
• Speaking of main writing machine: We initially intended to offer advanced support for the keyboard dock. Think shortcuts. However, there’s no public API for that, and as long as that doesn’t change, such keyboard controls are out. What you can expect, though, is an interface that works equally well in all four of the iPad’s screen modes (landscape, portrait, on-screen-, dock-, bluetooth keys).
• We will have a strong focus on design. We’re not talking about pretty purdy eye candy, though, but design. E.g. in landscape, you won’t have to type with your head constantly turned right.
• We will also have a strong focus on speed. As noted elsewhere, Daedalus won’t break if you’re doing edits in the middle of a 16.000 word document.
• Tidbit: One of our very first UI concepts included a button-less interface. The intention was to go all-out gesture based. Granted, this didn’t work too well, but Daedalus will still feature what we call the less-buttoned interface: I.e. while editing, there will be no buttons whatsoever. Also, there won’t be any sort of constantly visible documents list, no menu or back button, nor will there be a fullscreen switch. As a matter of fact, Daedalus will always run in what you could call fullscreen.

And that’s it for now. More to come, but I need to go watch the football match.
Have fun. We do.

Ok, ok, it’s only a portion of a screenshot, but you get the picture. This is what text editing will look like, and apart from feeling awfully funny, hehe, we’ll use this as a starting point for upcoming screens. We’ll build from here, so to say. It’s a conceptual… thing, you know; fits with the underlying philosophy of the app. Can’t say more, don’t want to spoil too much.

Insider: Form follows forums from froums.
Thanks for watching.

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…

Today I was skimming through a bunch of iPhone mockups on my desktop and rediscovered some old app concepts. They’re mostly minimal in nature, and if we had the time and resources we would just code them up and try to release them on the App Store for free.

Well, we have neither, so I decided to share some of these ideas on this blog rather than trying to catch a new coder and convince him to create non-profit two-minute distractions. ;)

So here I go, first up: The Good Vibe.

Concept:
The main idea is an app that you launch when in a hotel room or before going to bed or during an expo in a strange town in the middle of nowhere. You launch the app and can sort of “see” the current vibe of the city you’re in, or check the current vibe of your hometown.
You can also leave a message right where you are, such as “feeling lonely” or “love you all”, effectively tuning the vibe of your location.
It’s a bit like walking the streets at night. Cars passing by, people rushing to get home. A small nod or a smile from a passer-by can make all the difference; about the way you feel — about the city, about your current situation, any situation.
That’s what the app is meant to do: Make you feel good, sort of. Connected. Not alone. At least put a smile on your face. If only for a second.

Operation:
The app collects your geo location and presents you with a view of anonymous short text messages written by users in your vicinity. At a timed interval, one of the messages gets highlighted and enlarged, then another one, and another one and so on.
There’s not much interaction here — you just see a bunch of messages and a single one highlighted. You just watch as messages fly by.
You won’t be able to swipe over the view and activate other messages or such. But you will be able to send your own messages. These will be added to the stream of your current loc, so other users can read them.

Ratings:
There’s a “negative” rating option when sending messages.
There’s also a “negative” rating option somehow attached to each highlighted message. This might be a simple “-” button or a top-to-bottom swipe gesture (especially if we want to fine grain the rating).
The ratings have no effect on the messages’ display or such, but rather on the city the rated messages were sent from.

Effects of Rating (1):
Ratings are sent to the server and collected in order to define the “vibe” a city is in. Unrated messages are counted as “positive”, while negative ratings are counted as such. The +/- ratio defines the city’s current vibe.

Effects of Rating (2):
The background color of the messages view changes depending on the city’s vibe. A positive city might be vibrantly colored and even have a slightly pulsating background, while a more negative city displays a darker message view.
A double-tap or such will open a world map which somehow shows the current vibe of select cities. You’ll be able to check out the vibe of all cities, but you can only activate the message view in two core locations: Your current loc, and your hometown.
The idea is to create a somewhat strong connection between you, your current location, and other users in that location. Every message you send has an effect on the vibe of your location. So even more than just checking out the “vibe”, it’s about creating a vibe. You’re part of the city, so to say.

Features:
Send short messages to a server.
Receive short messages based on geo location.
Option to rate single messages as “negative”.
Map of world with select cities showing “vibe” (based on negative ratings).

How to:
When the user connects to the server, we check the geo loc. We then simply use a very fuzzy method of finding messages in the vacinity. If he’s the only user within reach, we simply use a wider radius or the first larger user base.
We then push a fixed amount of messages to the device, let’s say 30 to 50. These messages contain the amount of positive/negative messages based on the loc’s computed vibe.
The messages get displayed in a very minimal style to create some sort of zen-effect.

Message selection:
Depending on how active the user’s area is, we might have trouble finding enough messages to display. So we’ll need methods to compensate for inactive areas. These methods may include a smaller selection of messages (only show 10 if the area is very inactive) and/or a wide scan radius in both geo loc and timeline. E.g., we could simply check if it’s the user’s first time around and then push the first 20 messages instead of the latest, then simply include 10 arbitrary NEW messages from all over the world.
So even if the user checks the app in a location where nobody has ever left a message, he will get 30 messages, most likely in the correct language, and in the current vibe, which will always be “good” since there’s no negative input from there and so we only push good (or rather: neutral) ones.

Infrastructure:
I don’t know nothing about server load, latency, geo location troubles and the like. I don’t even know how to get the data into a database, let alone how to structure it in order to efficiently push 30 short messages to what might be 10.000 simultaneous connection attempts.
I simply don’t know how to pull this off. :)

Closing comment:
I think this might be fun, if only for a few months or so. I think that the social aspect might take off, especially with cities being labeld as having a good/bad vibe. Just imagine having Rome displayed in devilish red while London gets the love…
However, this might be a complete failure, with only 10 users active and all of them posting links to illegal downloads.
Given our current size an structure, we can’t even give this thing a shot, so we’ll leave it as is and probably just bury it.

And that’s it. :)

I’d still love to see this materialized somehow, so if anybody is reading this and wants to pick it up — feel free to do so.

Today I’m sharing with you the very first in-game screenshots of our upcoming puzzle game. The above screen shows the level select on a stage currently called “Plong”.

It is, quite obviously, an hommage to what many consider the first real video game, though our rendition has very little in common with the legendary tennis sim.

The image below shows the level select on a stage currently called “ABZen”:

The game will initially feature about 10 stages, each seperated into 2 to 12 levels. Stages will feature goals you need to beat in order to unlock additional stages, and each beaten level will let you advance to the next. You can replay levels for a better score, of course, and we’re currently looking into incorporating some sort of global achievement system, though that’s undecided as of today.

No highscores, though. It’s a single-player puzzle game, silly.

However, once we release 1.0, players will scratch their head at round about 80 levels, maybe more.

An by the way: The first screen was taken on an iPod touch, so it really is “gameplay”, so to say. The second one is a grab from our level editor, which we’ll ship alongside the game as a free download from our website.

Yup. Free. Level. Editor.

I’ll talk more about the game later this week.

Dunno about any of you, but there’s not much that beats the excitement of finally seeing a project come to life. Be it the mixdown of some music, starting the photocopier on some written work or sending graphics to the printer… it always (and still) gives me the chills.

Same with software. After weeks of pushing around concepts and scribbles, code and assets, screenshot dummys and animation prototypes, when you finally get to hit that build-button in Xcode and get to lay your hands on a “real, running” application — weeeeeh!

Of course, the excitement never lasts that long, hehe, as you immediately run into lots of bugs and problems and slowdowns and crashes and not-as-intended behaviors.

Like, say, X should open if Y was clicked, no?

Whatever, though, we’re making progress. Huge progress. Last week saw the first alpha version of a puzzler we’re developing, and it’s getting better and better with each day that passes. What was a simple level-select at first has evolved into a playable game, and seeing other people actually play that thing is truly amazing.

There are still lots of things to work out before we can even consider this “beta”, of course, but we’re getting there. And if anything, showing off the current version to (at least mildly impressed) friends and family adds to our morale.

Beginning to roll, that’s for sure…

I know that the image doesn’t show much, but then again there’s not much to show at the moment anyway. However, it’s what I’m looking at right now — a test render for an iPhone game we’re working on.

Yup, that’s a level editor there.