We’ve just started the Public Beta for Ulysses 2.0. If you’re interested, head over to the blue-tec forum, grab a copy, and let us know what you think.

I was born by the river…

When we started The Blue Technologies Group back in 2003 (yup), we were pretty naive. We looked at what other companies were doing, at the state of the Mac software market. The downfall of classic Shareware, the rise of official “beta”-releases, the trend of constant updates through .dmg-downloads or of half-baked full version cycles.

Lots of low-priced products that you ended up buying but not using, lots of feature add-ons that completely changed the UI and even some core functionality — to us, it all looked pretty messed up for the end-user, and we wanted to take an alternate route.

So we set out to do it all in the “right” way. Old-school, conservative, so to say.

Full-scale internal beta-testing. Don’t release until it’s ready. Don’t update unless it’s essential. Don’t go for a mass of price-happy users, but instead go for those who really want your product.

Concentrate support on your users, and not on those who want a totally different application. Make it a worthwhile purchase by releasing free updates, even years after the original shipped. Don’t fall for he who screams “feature request” the loudest, but instead double-check every feature addition every time for compliance with the app’s goals and intentions.

Yeah, we know.

(more…)

Hello everybody!

This “Interface Gem” is even more “hidden” than the two first ones:

Multiple Document Word Count

This is for everyone who likes statistics (or needs them because the paper has to have a certain number of words)! Ulysses allows you to keep updated on all sorts of stats: character, word, paragraph, line and page counts. You can always find these counts for the current document in the Control Panel. The numbers on the left correspond to the whole document, the ones on the right to the currently selected text.

What if your paper consists of multiple documents and you need the counts for some or all of them? Fear not, Ulysses has a solution for that too. Simply select the Documents you need the word count for in the Browser and have a look at the line below the previews. All the information you need are displayed there.

Have fun with Ulysses!

Götz

Hey,
did you notice that we had a promo running on MacUpdate on April 1st? Ulysses was discounted to $50, which is about 60%. If you missed just this date or wanted an extended trial before buying. Here you go:

mupromo

It’s a coupon that runs until Sunday night and gives you an extended rebate on the full retail version of Ulysses. It’s 42,10 € which is a bit more than the promo pricing, but I bet it still a fair deal!

Have fun,
Max

With a new release just around the corner, we still need some translators for Ulysses. It’s mainly French and Portuguese that need someone to care for.

If you miss Ulysses in your native tongue, you can also help us to add your language.

So if you’re willing and able to help, please drop Dirk a line, and tell him which translation you could provide.