John August

Apps

Highland for all

Apps

After hundreds of scripts and tremendous feedback from our early testers, we’re making our new app Highland available as a public beta. Anyone who wants to try it out is [welcome to download](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland).

You’ll see that a lot has changed since I last [blogged about it](http://johnaugust.com/2012/say-hello-to-highland).

For starters, there are now two views: Edit and Preview.

Highland is still at heart a conversion utility, letting you move between Fountain, PDF and FDX files. But we realized in testing that users often need to make minor changes, and having to round-trip through another text editor was too much hassle. So we added a basic editor. It’s not nearly as feature-rich as true screenwriting apps, but it’s surprisingly capable.

You could write a whole screenplay in Highland. I wouldn’t recommend it, but you could.

In addition to dragging in files, you can now create a new file and paste in text — perfect if you’re bringing in material from Google Docs or Mail.

The biggest change took the most time to implement: a robust report card system for tracking how well Highland is importing and exporting scripts. Because screenplays come with so many variations, we’re never going to convert every script perfectly. But with built-in feedback, we hope to keep improving with each update.

Highland is pretty stable, but this **really is a beta**, folks. It can crash. I say this not to scare you away, but to set proper expectations.

We’re not sure how long this public beta will last. Each build is designed to expire after 30 days, but with built-in updating, we’ll be able to send out new beta versions easily. Our goal is to have it available on the Mac App Store once it feels solid and ready.

Thanks again to our first-round beta testers for all their feedback. Now it’s time for the wider world to kick the tires, and let us know how it can get even better.

If you want to join in, you can [download Highland today](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland).

FDX Reader turns one

FDX Reader, Follow Up

fdx reader iconFDX Reader, our app for reading Final Draft scripts on the iPad and iPhone, came out a [year ago today](http://johnaugust.com/2011/we-made-an-app).

Usually, when people say, “I can’t believe it’s been a year!” they mean something like *look how time flies* or *it seems like only yesterday.*  

But when I say I can’t believe it’s been a year, I mean that I can’t believe it’s been *only* a year.  FDX Reader feels like something we did a very, very long time ago.

Why is my internal calendar so wrong in this case?

I have a few theories:

1. Digital things move faster.
—-

We’ve become accustomed to shorter and shorter attention cycles for digital goods. Consider [Draw Something](http://www.nowgamer.com/columns/nowgamer-team-blog/1388920/draw_something_a_licence_to_draw_money.html):

* Draw Something is a hit!
* Zynga buys Draw Something for $180 million!
* Draw Something is tanking!

The rise and fall of MySpace took years. The cycle for Draw Something has run about eight weeks.

Even though the time span has been incredibly compressed, our brains still try to ascribe a certain amount of time for a rise-and-fall cycle, so we subconsciously back-date events.

It’s not just apps that move faster. Many memes are essentially digital, and experience the same time-shift phenomenon.

Quick: When did [KONY2012 happen](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/kony-2012)? Was it before or after the [Mel Gibson/Joe Ezsterhas fracas](http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/joe-eszterhas-explodes-mel-gibson-you-hate-jews-36957)? And what about the [Sandra Fluke/Rush Limbaugh controversy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh–Sandra_Fluke_controversy)?

All of these memes burned bright and died out quick, leaving the embers to float in a sea of the recent past. ((Kony: February 20, 2012. Gibson: April 11, 2012. Fluke: February 29, 2012.))

2. My clock started when we began working on the app.
—-

Here’s what I wrote to Nima Yousefi on December 10, 2010:

> I think there’s an opening for an FDX Reader (called, perhaps, FDX Reader) that would simply register itself to iOS as able to open .fdx extension files. Then, when someone taps a file with that extension in Dropbox or Mail (or whatever) it can launch. That way, you don’t really have to worry about getting files to into it.

> What matters is the reading experience. Make it look nice, like the Instapaper app. Perhaps give the ability to add notes, but don’t try to become a screenwriting app.

> If that’s interesting to you, happy to go halfsies with you. Lemme know.

FDX Reader was our very first app. Not only did we need to figure out how to build it — the design, the coding, the testing — we had to learn how to get an app approved and released in Apple’s odd ecosystem. (Just getting an account set up is surprisingly convoluted.)

That process took a little over six months, so it’s reasonable that the app feels older to me.

3. So much has come after it.
—

In the past year, we’ve released the iPhone version of FDX Reader, several installments of [Bronson Watermarker](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/bronson) for the Mac, the spec for the [Fountain](http://fountain.io) markup language, and successive betas of [Highland](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland). (Come back tomorrow for major news on that one.)

All that activity seems like too much to have occurred in just a year, so I’m mentally stretching the time period.

4. The less attention you pay to something, the further back in time you push it.
—-

We don’t really do much with FDX Reader now. Our last update simply upgraded the graphics for the new iPad. If as rumored the new iPhone has a larger screen, we’ll make whatever changes we need to make. But the app itself is basically done.

We built the app because Final Draft hadn’t come out with its own reader. Now they have. Ours still sells remarkably well — probably because we’re the only one that works on the iPhone.

You never forget your first time, and FDX Reader really has been a remarkable experience bringing an idea to life. In celebrating FDX Reader’s first birthday, I’ll invite you to [try it out](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fdx-reader/id437362569?mt=8&ls=1) if you haven’t.

(Or leave us a nice review if you’re so inclined.)

Bronson Watermarker 1.5 adds image support and new styles

Apps, Bronson, Software

bronson iconWe launched [Bronson Watermarker](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/bronson) in January with a straightforward message: Bronson makes it easy to create personalized PDFs.

We’ve sold well, in no small part because the Mac App Store featured us on the front page for much of that time. (Thanks, Apple!)

Potential buyers often email us. By far the most common question we get is, “Can your app watermark photos?”

The answer: no.

But shouldn’t the answer be yes? Now it is.

Bronson Watermarker 1.5 — new in the Mac App Store today — adds support for photos and images, including JPEGs, PNGs, GIFs, BMPs and TIFFs. Not only can you watermark these files, you can resize them at the same time.

bronson photo

Whether you’re sending out one file or 100, each will be labelled with the recipient’s name.

We’ve also added two new watermark styles: Lower Right and Header. Lower Right is especially handy for blog images, while Header works well for individualizing handouts when you don’t necessarily need the protection of a full-on watermark.

PDFs and images come in all different shapes, so we re-did our math to make diagonal watermarks feel right no matter what the aspect ratio.

While we were at it, we freshened up the UI. (Try us in full-screen mode on Lion.)

Bronson Watermarker 1.5 is a free update, [available now](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bronson-watermarker/id481867513?mt=12) through the Mac App Store.

Pricing FDX Reader

FDX Reader

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/).

fdx reader iconTheir 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.