This is Marcus from the Soulmen,
and I welcome you to the Ulysses 3 devblog. That’s right: Ulysses 3. Let me tell you a bit about it.
It was late 2010, when I drew the first sketch of what I then dubbed “Ulysses X”. Lion had just been announced, and we were busy with Daedalus Touch and getting Ulysses 2.0 ready for the Mac App Store.
I thought of “X” as being our iMovie 8 — a completely new version, that would ditch any sort of legacy in favor of a future-proof concept and foundation. It should feel right at home with modern iterations of the OS, and it should aim to leave its self-imposed niche and go after the mass market.
It would need to be rewritten from scratch, of course, with every current feature up for grabs. Then again, it should still be Ulysses, and unmistakably so, with complex projects, sophisticated output, and a kick-ass plain text editor.
It should be a modern take on our classic theme; it should look georgeous, it should rock hard, and it should innovate in areas and ways only we dared to touch.
I wanted us to once again aim sky-high: Building the best text editor the world has ever seen. The text editor to end all text editors.
I proposed the idea of a Ulysses reboot to Max in February of last year. He wasn’t too enthusiastic at first, but soon agreed that we hit a road block with the current version. There was so much that we wanted to change, improve on, add to or get rid of, that we might as well start anew.
And so we did.
The initial idea was to launch within the year, but then Lion released early, iCloud came to life, and we had a little iPad app to take of. Plus, we wanted to keep our current users happy, so we took the time to build 2.1, which we think is the best version we ever shipped.
Still, during the course of the last 12 months, we’ve been on and off working on Ulysses 3, finalizing concepts and UI, constantly throwing out the old, even some new, and continuously keeping on innovating.
We had several moments of doubt, sure, but these quickly vanished with every new build, with every sketch being brought to interactive life.
So today, we’re at a point of development, where we can not only see a product emerge, but where we already got a product in our hands. There’s no beta or such (so don’t ask), but it’s no longer just sketches, ideas or proofs-of-concept. It’s working code, we got ourselves a deadline (which we won’t disclose, so don’t even try), and we’re right on track to ensure timely shipment instead of pulling YATM2.
We’re also very excited to finally share our vision with you. Come back often, as there will be screenshots, videos, interviews, insights and all sorts of stuff we find fitting. Or simply subscribe to the feed or whatever, like… join us on twitter, send us some mail. Or just wait and see what happens.
Either way, have fun!
Cheers,
Marcus