Movie Draft Development Update

Hi guys. Well, as you know I'm a one-man band at the moment and trying to get Movie Draft off the ground is proving to be a lot harder than I thought, time-wise.

There are so many great features and subtle improvements that I want / need to make - some fantastic suggestions from some of you too - but I also have a website to create, marketing to erm, market, screen casts to record and bills to pay, and there are only so many hours in the day.

So, in light of burning the candle at both ends I have thought long and hard and decided that my top priority for the time being needs to be:

Complete my website and stop coding

"WHAT?!" I hear you say. "We need those features - NOW!"

Well, whilst what I *really* want to do is just code Movie Draft and respond to the great feedback you have all provided, I think that for me to be able to respond productively and efficiently (and to take Movie Draft to the heights that I want to take it) I need to complete my website first. [This is something Frail has already commented on in some of my posts]

Why? Well it's simple. At the moment any updates I want to release to you, my customers, have to go through the Mac App Store review process. Typically this takes anything between a week to a month. This means that if I have a critical update available to Movie Draft - no matter how quickly I code it, we both have to play the waiting game for Apple to release the update on the Mac App Store and then (as more than likely I won't have your email address) I can't even contact you to tell you that the update is even available. Sure, I'll post it on Twitter but there's only a small percentage of users that follow me on Twitter so not everyone will be aware of that update.

On the other hand, when the website's finished I'll be able to release updates immediately and I'd even be able to provide "nightly builds" for those interested in getting beta releases. Additionally I will also be able to email you (if you choose that) when updates become available, so the whole process would run far smoother.

Finally, if you're using a Mac that is running an older OS X than 10.6.6, (you need 10.6.6 or above to use the Mac App Store) you'll be able to download a version of Movie Draft that will work on your older machine. In fact, you'll be able to download a version that will run on 10.4.11(!), so it means more people can use Movie Draft, and that can only be a good thing.

But what if I bought from the Mac App Store? Can I download from the website too, or do I have to wait until it's on the Mac App Store?

It won't matter whether you purchased from the Mac App Store or from the yet-to-be-finished website, you'll still be able to download the latest build from the website and be notified of any new releases. That's the key thing here. For example, if you found a bug which caused Movie Draft to crash when you typed "CRASH! DO IT, DO IT NOW!" I could potentially have a fix verified, out and available to download the same day.

So if that's ok with everyone I'll put coding of Movie Draft on hold for a couple of weeks whilst I turn my hand to the website, and thus creating a more efficient way of providing you, the end user, with a better product.

Drop me a note on here if you think I'm heading in the right direction with this and as always, thank you for your continued support.

You stay classy, San Diego.

Mark.
www.moviedraft.com

The Mac App Store - Review Problems

If you own Movie Draft SE and you like it, please read this...

Well, it's been a few weeks now since I released Movie Draft SE on the Mac App Store and I've had two blatant low-rating competitor reviews. These are manufactured reviews put there by competitors to try and tarnish Movie Draft SE's rating and credibility.

How do I know that they're competitor reviews? Simple:

1. They never contacted me for support.
2. They make false allegations about Movie Draft SE. None of which is true.
3. There's a free demo of Movie Draft SE available from my website for the user to try out before purchasing.

For the last "review" on the US Mac App Store (you'd have to click on the flag at the bottom of the screen to change countries), the user "Goldentype" accused Movie Draft SE for converting all of his/her Final Draft files into Movie Draft SE files. Movie Draft SE does no such thing, and anyone who has ever used Movie Draft SE will know this.

The trouble is, Movie Draft SE is brand-new software and I'm trying my hardest to make a living from it and any negative manufactured reviews can do nothing but damage my business, which in turn means I'll have less sales, which in turn means I'll have less money to support myself with, which in turn means that eventually I'd have to give up Movie Draft development and find a job and eat from the streets. Ok, maybe not, but you get the picture...

I certainly don't want that to happen as I want to make Movie Draft the best possible tool out there for writing screenplays, but I'm not Apple or any other large company that can take competitor reviews on the chin. I just don't have that following yet.

Sigh...

But you can help!

If you have bought Movie Draft SE - and you really like it - then would you be so kind as to leave a fair and favourable written review? I know that's probably a lot to ask of your time but as there is NO WAY of contacting customers on the Mac App Store, or even to respond to a review, the only thing that will help at this time is if more people leave honest, positive reviews to counter the manufactured ones.

You never know, it may just work.

Thanks in advance for your help, guys. I appreciate it.

Mark.
www.moviedraft.com

Goodbye SceneWriter, hello Movie Draft...

Many moons ago, I wrote a simple but effective PC-only program for writing screenplays called SceneWriter Pro. At its heart was the notion that it would be far better to write a screenplay on a scene-by-scene basis as opposed to a page-by-page basis. This was the beginnings of things for me and became an obsession to create the perfect screenwriting application from its inception.

Unfortunately, I took SceneWriter Pro as far as I could take it because of the way I had written it. I had to start again from scratch if I wanted to implement all the ideas I had floating around in my head to make the software even better, and Movie Draft was born.

So why the name change?

Well, SceneWriter Pro doesn't sell a lot of copies. It was never anything that was going to earn me a living, but for all of its failings it does have a lot of die-hard followers, so I decided to keep SceneWriter Pro available for download for my existing users for the time being and strike out with a new name and a new start with Movie Draft, and this time I'd try and earn a living from it. (There were other possible names, but Movie Draft just kinda sounded right)

But Movie Draft is Mac-only, and SceneWriter Pro is PC-only...

Ah yes, that's very true. I guess you'll have to watch this space... ;-) But in the meantime, if you need a PC-version you can buy SceneWriter Pro and upgrade to Movie Draft when (hush, hush) the Windows version is released.

Movie Draft can open SceneWriter Pro documents so you won't lose any work.

Here's to a new era, a new beginning, and a new name. Movie Draft.

Mark.
www.moviedraft.com