I posted a few days ago about Scrivener. After a little research this weekend, I discovered it’s only available for Mac, and after some more digging, I came across a blog by a writer wishing that Scrivener was available for PC, and wringing his hands over the fact its creator has no plans to make it available for PC. The comments that followed include a little puzzlement over leaving out a huge portion of the market and some nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyahing from Mac users. Um. No.
Let’s move past the fact that these particular Mac posters were stupidly juvenile. There’s something else going on here that makes me ill. A couple of months ago when Lola was on her way out, and before I bought Zooey, some of my Mac-using friends tried to get me to switch from being a PC to being a Mac. “Come over to our side,” they coaxed. Your side? Is there a wall? Guess what, folks, it’s a machine, not a doctrine.
Look, I’ll give Macs the beauty prize but as far as I can tell, the company operates under an exclusionary and paranoid business model. If you’re not one of us, you’re some kind of idiot. Exhibit A: the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ads. I’ve come across enough angry Mac-users blogs to know that the company’s childish mindset has trickled down to its consumers. I thought the two main parties in American government had cornered the market on stomping off to separate corners and shouting with their fingers in their ears. This kind of I’m-better-than-you thinking is bad when it comes up as a natural part of human nature. Do we really need it to be manufactured by a company whose goal is to make money off our dissent?
Anyway, I digress. Scrivener. Not for PC users. Fortunately there are other programs for us PC-users (you know, the other 95% of us).
YWriter is supposed to be excellent and is available for FREE! I watched the online tutorial and this is the one I plan on using. Then there’s Celtex, SuperNotecard, Zoot, MyBase, Keeper, Liquid Story Binder XE which one reviewer says is the best for Windows users, Mendely, Page Four which costs $34.95 and I hear isn’t as good as YWriter, and finally, Writer’s Cafe.
After completing eight books on evil, conspiring, trying-to-take-over-the-world, monopolizing Microsoft’s MS Word, I’m happy to find some new tools. Can’t wait to see how they pan out.
Tracey Baptiste 
Does this mean you won’t be buying the iPhone 3GI?
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/apple_claims_new_iphone_only
That article is fantastic. Look! It’s the Emperor’s New Phone!
Hi, sorry to read of your annoyance that there is no Windows version of Scrivener. I’m the developer of Scrivener, and just for the record, not all of us Mac users are elitist nyah-nyahs, honest guv’. 🙂 (The whole platform war thing drives me crazy too; there are childish mindsets on both sides. I absolutely agree that making the machine you use part of some personal doctrine is very silly.)
Scrivener being Mac-only was never based on a choice to be exclusive or elitist; it just came down to the practicalities of the person developing it (me). The only reason Scrivener is currently Mac-only is that I switched to a Mac myself several years ago, preferred the platform over my Windows machines (just a personal preference), and found programming on it much, much easier. As a one-man development team creating the program to help me with my own writing, my only aim was to create a program for myself on the platform I used. (Yes, later I became a capitalist pig and decided to start selling it. 🙂 ) Along with the many very nice e-mails I get from Windows users asking me to make a Windows version, I have had one or two angry, shouty e-mails calling me a hippy (not that I considered that an insult…) or idiot for leaving out a huge section of the market and denying myself of the money, but this was never a conscious choice I made, just a side-effect of the platform I used myself and was able to create Scrivener on, if that makes sense. The programming books I bought for Windows years ago were doorstoppers I just couldn’t get through; the ones I bought for OS X made sense to me and allowed me to develop Scriv. So it has nothing to do with Mac-snobbery, I promise!
Oh, and I’m not ruling out a Windows version either. I would *love* to get a Windows version out there, and we are seriously looking into ways of trying to create a Windows version. We are not Microsoft or Apple, though – we’re just a tiny company (a two-man team that was until recently only me) – so we can’t just go out and buy ourselves a Windows team. Still – watch this space…
We do have a links page on our website with the main Windows apps too, by the way, but it looks as though you have them all covered. There are a couple you mention that I haven’t heard of before, too, so I’ll make a note to add them to our links list when I get chance.
Hope you don’t mind a lowly Mac dev justifying his Mac-ness here!
All the best,
Keith
(Scrivener developer)
Hi Keith!
Thanks so much for taking the time to respond to this. Believe me, I have no beef with you. I’m thrilled that you’re looking into making Scrivener available for Windows, but even if you weren’t, I’d still have no beef with you.
Yes, there is a lot of bashing on both sides which I’m sure both Mac and Microsoft love because it’s free marketing. I honestly don’t get becoming so passionate over a tool, even one that’s so integral to my daily life. I mean technology is awesome and all, but it doesn’t love you back. (Hmm, idea for another book? Nah! Done to death.)
Anyway, kudos on creating a great program with such a loyal following and a long line of wanna-be loyal followers. I hope you find a way to make it available to us monopoly-lovin’ PC users soon.
Thanks again for commenting. Stop by anytime.