Apps

After a long gestation, Final Draft has announced that their official iPad app, Final Draft Reader, will be available for sale [next week](http://www.finaldraft.com/products/mobile/reader/).

Their app is a lot like our app, [FDX Reader](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/fdxreader).

In fact, the only reason we made our app is because we needed to read Final Draft files and their app didn’t exist. So the question now is how to position our app vis-à-vis the official one.

At least on paper, their app does more than ours:

* Production drafts (colored pages, locked pages)
* ScriptNotes
* Searching
* Multi-page title pages
* Printing with AirPrint

All of these things are useful. The question will be whether the official app does enough things *better.*

One advantage: Final Draft Reader should be able to exactly match page breaks (and page numbers) with the desktop version. We come very close with FDX Reader, but we’ll never hit them exactly. Page breaks aren’t part of the file, but rather an internal calculation. We don’t know Final Draft’s math. They do.

I suspect many users will be disappointed that Final Draft Reader apparently only supports .fdx files, and not the older .fdr files.

That surprised me. We don’t support .fdr either — and at least half of our support emails come from users confused why we don’t. In our case, it’s because we can’t decipher Final Draft’s old, proprietary binary format. Final Draft can, but has chosen not to.

They’re going to be answering a lot of emails on this topic. ((I’ve encouraged Final Draft to come out with a free conversion utility. I’ve offered to make one — and that offer still stands. (Same with Screenwriter’s .mmsw format.) It’s difficult to build a converter for these binary formats, but to me that makes it even more essential. In 20 years, nothing will open these files.))

Perhaps the biggest difference between our app and the official one: Final Draft’s Reader *only* works on the iPad. Our FDX Reader is universal and works on the iPhone (and iPod Touch) as well.

What to charge
—-

Final Draft hasn’t announced their price yet, which has led to speculation on Twitter about how much they’ll charge, with guesses ranging from $19.99 to $49.99.

Meanwhile, we’re currently priced at $4.99. As I [wrote in December](http://johnaugust.com/2011/fdx-reader-updated-on-sale), I suspect we’ll raise our price once their app comes out.

That seems counter-intuitive. Wouldn’t staying at our current price — or going even lower — pull more sales away from the official Final Draft app?

Probably, but I don’t think that’s a worthy goal. If Final Draft Reader is good, I want it to succeed.

In general, I think prices for good software — particularly specialty software like screenplay readers — should be high enough that companies can earn money developing and supporting these apps. That shouldn’t be a radical idea, but the race-to-bottom pricing of the App Store has conditioned buyers to think that anything more than 99 cents is too much.

Honestly, the only reason we can make and support FDX Reader is that I make a good living as a screenwriter. That’s what keeps the bills paid. We’re not bringing in enough money to pay Ryan what he’s worth, let alone Nima.

Psychologically, whatever price Final Draft chooses for their app will become the new baseline. If their app costs $20, ours looks like a bargain at $10. No doubt we would lose some sales, but I suspect we would earn just as much or more.

At a certain price point, ((What is that magic price point? If you have an opinion, let me know on Twitter: @johnaugust)) FDX Reader becomes expensive enough that a buyer comparing the two apps might decide, “Screw it. I’ll just buy the official one.” That’s okay. I want people to choose the app that best serves their needs.

We consider FDX Reader done. We’ll continue to sell it and support it with bug fixes, but most of our energy is going towards [Fountain](http://fountain.io), [Bronson Watermarker](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/bronson), and soon-to-be-announced magic.

[FDX Reader](http://fdxreader.com), our app for reading Final Draft files on the iPad, is now a universal app with support for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

It’s [available on the App Store](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fdx-reader/id437362569?mt=8) today. It’s a free upgrade.

We developed the iPad version of FDX Reader first because the larger screen is such a natural fit for reading screenplays. We took inspiration from readers like iBooks and Kindle, flipping virtual pages. It’s been great to see it get such a positive response, both among screenwriters and the tech press.

But in some ways, I think the iPhone version serves a more crucial need.

Up until now, reading screenplays on the iPhone has been terrible, even with PDFs. The small screen simply isn’t friendly to 8.5 x 11 sheets of 12-pt Courier. You end up pinching and zooming and straining your eyes to see anything.

While it was technically possible to read a full script on the iPhone, you’d never want to.

Now, you just might.

Our design choices were driven by the smaller screen. The iPhone is nothing like a printed script, so we felt free to break from screenplay conventions. We sliced margins. We stopped flipping pages. We picked a font that worked great at smaller sizes.

The iPhone version of FDX Reader takes its inspiration from non-book apps like [Instapaper](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/instapaper/id288545208?mt=8) and [Reeder](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reeder/id325502379?mt=8). We focused on the text, not the area around it.

We kept two of the best features of the iPad version. The page popover lets you skip right to a given page, scrolling the text as you go. The type button gives you five choices of size — since people hold iPhones closer, you may find yourself going much smaller than you think.

And to maximize screen real estate, we dismiss the header with a center tap.

FDX Reader was made by the same team of Nima Yousefi, Ryan Nelson and me. Many thanks to all our beta testers for their suggestions and bug reports.

As with the initial FDX Reader launch, I’m sure we’ll find some unexpected situations as we expand support to additional devices. ((Previous issues that have come up: A4 paper, locations files, TV act breaks, non-Final Draft .fdx files.)) If something’s not working, [tell us](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/support/fdxreader). We’ve been able to iterate so quickly — five releases in seven weeks — because our users help us.

If you’re new to FDX Reader, check out the [demos and videos](http://fdxreader.com) on the site. If you’re already a user, the new version should show up in your Updates immediately.

Apple just approved an update for [FDX Reader](http://fdxreader.com). If you’ve installed the app, it should show up in your App Store updates soon.

Version 1.0.2 addresses two issues:

* A4-sized paper.
* Final Draft’s “Dual Dialogue” option.

Our trouble handling A4 paper reveals our provincialism; all of our beta testers were North American. A4 paper is common everywhere else in the world, and should be celebrated by geeks for its [mathematical purity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size).

For this build, we focused on making sure A4 paper wouldn’t cause the formatting to go completely bonkers. We’re not yet paginating for the extra lines on A4, so page counts will be off for longer scripts.

(My A4 story: While in London prepping for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I had a minor battle with the Warner Bros. script department in Burbank. They reformatted our A4 script to 8.5×11, and claimed it was 10 pages too long. Ultimately, we threw their script in the trash — which we called the bin, being British and all.)

Final Draft’s dual dialogue option displays two characters’ dialogue side-by-side. While it’s often and easily abused, it is useful in the right situations.

Because we allow the user to increase the font size, trying to keep the dialogue side-by-side proved ungainly. So we’re unwrapping it, displaying the right-side character after the left-side character.

We have some ideas for indicating this dialogue is simultaneous, but your suggestions are of course invited.

Each time we update the app, our user reviews disappear from the [main screen](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fdx-reader/id437362569?mt=8). If you’ve left a comment about a previous version and want to leave another, by all means do. They help users see how the app is evolving.