So I bought Ulysses 0
When I first saw the price tag on Ulysses, I was like, “Screw it. There’s no way it’s worth paying that much.”
After all, the minimal Office can be bought for about the same amount.
I read it’s features, and thought it was useless compared to it’s cheaper competitors. I kept using other software, like Scrivener or Storyist.
Scrivener is planning on releasing 2.0 sometime later this year (Fall I think?). Storyist is supposed to be releasing 2.0 really soon. In my search of other writing software, Ulysses 2.0 is due out this month le gasp.
I never tried Ulysses, but I’ve heard about their user-base. People either love it or hate it. I was looking for something to manage my poetic writing. I currently use Scrivener, but I found that it’s work-flow doesn’t work for my poetic work-flow. Storyist doesn’t fit my poetic work-flow either.
So I was like, I’ll hate the app, so why don’t I try Ulysses anyways. So I download it, launch it, play around for it for 30 minutes… That 30 minutes grew into a few hours. Next thing I knew, I was in love.
When I write poetry, I need a blank canvass, no distractions, no pretty eye candy, just a place to write. Ulysses provides that. The environment is set just for writing. There’s also no formatting on the text, which prevents me from being distracted by the text.
My mom was kindof upset when she saw how much I spent, and that I already own Scrivener and Storyist.
But those fit my work-flows for other writing. When writing short stories or screenplays, Scrivener and Storyist provide the features I need there. So each program provides a different interface and work-flow for different types of writing. Also, each application has it’s own focus.
In Ulysses, it’s all about the text. There’s no rich formatting, and not a lot of features for you to play around with. Just sit down and write.
In Storyist, it’s about planning and plotting your writing, and then composing. There’s character notes, plot notes, setting notes, and notes for everything else. You plan out the novel or screenplay, and then piece it all together.
Scrivener is about writing and research. You can make it do a lot more for you too. It sets it up for you to focus on your writing, but it also allows you to have different view modes in order to see what you’ve written, your research, and whatever else you need.
Storyist 2.0 is supposed to bring in a bunch of features that people want to see. It’ll add different view modes, full-screen, and much more.
Scrivener 2.0 is supposed to bring in a new interface and new features. The developer feels that the interface could be better designed to focus on writing. The menus seem cluttered, and some of the dialog boxes seem cluttered as well. 2.0 is supposed to make Scrivener more refreshing.
Ulysses 2.0 highlights a change from the Blue-Technologies Group to The Soulmen. It’s supposed to bring in some new features, a new way of upgrades, and a new licensing/registration version. It’s also supposed to bring a new pricing scheme.
I installed a podCasting plug-in. I’ll start posting some video coverage of the different programs. General introductions, cool features, thoughts and reviews, and etc. I’ll still blog about my writings.
This blog will remain as a general writing blog. As for poetry, it’s moved over to a new blog under it’s own domain at emoPoet.com.