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I dunno dude, I bought it, tried to use it, and quickly discovered that it's a pretty poor product. I won't go into it here, because it's off-topic and I left a

I dunno dude, I bought it, tried to use it, and quickly discovered that it's a pretty poor product. I won't go into it here, because it's off-topic and I left a two-star review in the App Store anyway. But my impression of the app is that its success is mainly due to marketing savvy and the current infatuation with "minimalist" writing apps that use Markdown. So I would say yes, DF advertising clearly worked here, and props to the author for also getting extra mileage out of it with this post + HN hit. Not only is his promotion on DF and followup blog post a model of How It's Done, but his entire blog is really well-done from a marketing and SEO standpoint. Lots of relevant internal links, good photography, great design, and posts that are devoid of keyword spam and are just the right length and reading level. Anyway, great design, very savvy marketing and SEO, wrapped around a buggy app that ticks a lot of the currently trendy boxes and contains some shocking deficiencies. And if I sound irritated for being taken, it's because it cost me $30, which is what a mature, quality, premium app like Pixelmator costs.

syllogism 12y ago
And now this post makes Gruber excellent cash, so maybe Gruber thanks Desk again. Definitely excellent strategy. (Not that the post is insincere of course.)
saddington 12y ago
You can always get a refund for the app... and I'm really sorry it didn't work for you. It's honestly really tough being an indie developer... I have to do EVERYTHING related to not just building the DAMN THING but all of the business, marketing, Q/A, financials/accounting, blogging... the list is eternally-long. v1.0 was lucky... in a lot of ways. v1.1 addressed a shit-ton of issues... v1.2, out in a week (hopefully) will add a major user-requested feature... it... just... takes... time... when... doing... it... alone... thanks Jon for the comments. I'm doing my best.
- jonstokes 12y ago
  Believe me, I understand how hard it is. I've been working alone on a project for the past 2.5 years now (not quite ready for prime-time, but soon), so I know exactly what you mean. However, two things are just inexcusable to me: 1) this is a writing app /with no support for paragraph breaks/. That is unbelievable to me. Nobody who writes for a living can use an app that shows all of your text to you as a really large single block with no horizontal breaks between paragraphs. How? Why? Not only am I stupified by this, but I also am dumbfounded at all of these 5-star reviews that don't mention it or any of the other show-stoppper flaws I pointed out within the first 20 mins of use. Are people reviewing an app that they've not actually used? 2) The price. $30 is a lot of money, and yeah you can try to convince Apple's customer support to give you a refund, but we both know nobody does that. The combo of high price, glaring product problems, and a masterful marketing effort just doesn't sit well with me. I'm not saying you're a scam artist -- the site and even the app reflect a lot of passion and creativity. But I do question your priorities. More coding and user testing, and less SEO and blogging and convincing everyone in your network to give the app 5 stars, maybe.
  - saddington 12y ago
    I won't win this argument (and I won't try), but, I appreciate the time you took to write me a response! 1. I'm working on this and the feature was an attempt to combine both WYSIWYG and Markdown into one formatting experience. This ended up being a gamble and one that I lost and the newest updates will address this. It sucks, i failed, i got it wrong. 2. A lot? sure. i guess. there are tons of great alternatives, for sure! "More coding"...? #facepalm ... really?
    - je42 12y ago
      Re.: 2. Don't worry about the price point atm. He might be right that it is not worth currently for him, but it looks like that a lot of other people value it. If you continue adding features and continue making the product as a whole better and more valuable for a larger and larger audience. So eventually he should be happy as well. That requires obviously, that you mostly add features. i.e. you don't re-invent features or redesign features without adding value (just to make prettier), I have seen a lot of teams/people doing that kind of mistake.
      - saddington 12y ago
        a great reminder. i'm keen on keeping it simple... and focused. i don't need to be the next microsoft word... i'd rather not actually. i think one of the most important things any developer or business does is decide who their customer is... and who their customer isn't.
  - nicky0 12y ago
    Actually it is pretty easy to get Apple's customer service to refund an app. Just say it didn't behave as expected and you would like a refund.
  - jsankey 12y ago
    $30 is most certainly not "a lot of money", and it is this attitude that makes indie development so hard these days. This app is meant for serious bloggers (i.e. those that spend many hours writing each week), so if it works for them $30 is a steal. Remember that out of the $30 John gets just $20 from Apple, and if you take another third out for other expenses you're looking at less than $14. Needless to say you need to sell a lot of copies at that price to break even on your development time, on the order of 10,000/year, which is more than 27 copies/day! Then take into account that the App Store makes it difficult to get repeat revenue out of customers even if they use your app for several years...
- lhl 12y ago
  Hey John, I ran into some similar issues as the parent w/ line breaks (and w/ the local/remote publishing stuff in general). I posted a couple of comments on the Desk.pm feedback forum and am compiling some notes as I poke around. I have maximal sympathy for the challenges you face and I think that the concept of focused-editing with seamless publishing is fantastic, especially since no one else has done it, and I'm willing to wait for some updates to see where it goes, but I wonder if there should be some better visibility on the apps current caveats.
  - saddington 12y ago
    this is great and you're right, software is never done, only abandoned ( http://john.do/software/ http://john.do/software/ )... the challenge is that i wasn't aware of many of the issues until we had a plethora of users (which is great). i can only catch so many via testing and alpha-users! thanks for your patience, that means a ton. it really does as an indie developer. finally, i try to point a lot of people to our community forum, which has grown quite nicely over the last 3 months. there's a lot of help there and said caveats. i can always do a better job in this department though, so, thanks for the kind reminder!
puranjay 12y ago
As a writer, I like the idea of a minimalist writing app. I really do. It feels natural. Just you and a blank screen so you can tap away and kill whatever demons are haunting you. Except there is a problem: serious writers need more than 'minimalism'. All the authors and novelists and long-form fiction writers I know have reams upon reams of notes, plot information, and character data cluttering up their MS Word (argh) and Scrivener screens. I even know some to use spreadsheets to keep track of complicated family trees and plots in long fantasy novels. This is why I use Scrivener. It's bulky and far from minimalist, but it has the tools I need. Minimalist apps are for people who want to play 'pretend' at writing. Or write a blog post a day and call that 'substantial writing'. But if you really, really need to put together a story, you will need to do your research. And minimalist apps are of no use to you then.
- saddington 12y ago
  i've been really "nice" about every single comment here on HN... but i can't help but let you know that this comment is single-handedly the most pompous one of all. "substantial writing"...? really? "serious" writers? I could list 10,000 pieces of GLORIOUS work that was crafted on nothing more than "pen" and "paper" ... or perhaps just "paper" and "ink" and "typewriter"... PEN + PAPER == Maximally-minimal "app"... and in that way, with Desk, I was attempting to create an homage, of sorts, to the "old way" of creating great writing work. keeping it simple, effective, useful. minimalist apps are for the serious and the playful, for those that are writing epic novels (one user of Desk is a multi-New York Times winning author) and those that are, as you say, "pretending" to write (like my 8-year old daughter, perhaps: http://john.do/gift-writing/ http://john.do/gift-writing/). but, it all, at the end of the day, is still writing... "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." ~~~ Ernest Hemingway http://john.do/writer/ http://john.do/writer/
  - SafariDevelop 12y ago
    >> Minimalist apps are for people who want to play 'pretend' at writing. > this comment is single-handedly the most pompous one of all. It is interesting to note that HN's commenting guideline is to "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation." yet, the folks here are downvoting puranjay's neutral 'pretend' comment (not targeted at anyone in particular) while upholding yours (you don't tell someone to their face that they made a pompous remark). What hypocrisy.

syllogism 12y ago

And now this post makes Gruber excellent cash, so maybe Gruber thanks Desk again. Definitely excellent strategy. (Not that the post is insincere of course.)

saddington 12y ago

You can always get a refund for the app... and I'm really sorry it didn't work for you. It's honestly really tough being an indie developer... I have to do EVERYTHING related to not just building the DAMN THING but all of the business, marketing, Q/A, financials/accounting, blogging... the list is eternally-long. v1.0 was lucky... in a lot of ways. v1.1 addressed a shit-ton of issues... v1.2, out in a week (hopefully) will add a major user-requested feature... it... just... takes... time... when... doing... it... alone... thanks Jon for the comments. I'm doing my best.

jonstokes 12y ago
Believe me, I understand how hard it is. I've been working alone on a project for the past 2.5 years now (not quite ready for prime-time, but soon), so I know exactly what you mean. However, two things are just inexcusable to me: 1) this is a writing app /with no support for paragraph breaks/. That is unbelievable to me. Nobody who writes for a living can use an app that shows all of your text to you as a really large single block with no horizontal breaks between paragraphs. How? Why? Not only am I stupified by this, but I also am dumbfounded at all of these 5-star reviews that don't mention it or any of the other show-stoppper flaws I pointed out within the first 20 mins of use. Are people reviewing an app that they've not actually used? 2) The price. $30 is a lot of money, and yeah you can try to convince Apple's customer support to give you a refund, but we both know nobody does that. The combo of high price, glaring product problems, and a masterful marketing effort just doesn't sit well with me. I'm not saying you're a scam artist -- the site and even the app reflect a lot of passion and creativity. But I do question your priorities. More coding and user testing, and less SEO and blogging and convincing everyone in your network to give the app 5 stars, maybe.
- saddington 12y ago
  I won't win this argument (and I won't try), but, I appreciate the time you took to write me a response! 1. I'm working on this and the feature was an attempt to combine both WYSIWYG and Markdown into one formatting experience. This ended up being a gamble and one that I lost and the newest updates will address this. It sucks, i failed, i got it wrong. 2. A lot? sure. i guess. there are tons of great alternatives, for sure! "More coding"...? #facepalm ... really?
  - je42 12y ago
    Re.: 2. Don't worry about the price point atm. He might be right that it is not worth currently for him, but it looks like that a lot of other people value it. If you continue adding features and continue making the product as a whole better and more valuable for a larger and larger audience. So eventually he should be happy as well. That requires obviously, that you mostly add features. i.e. you don't re-invent features or redesign features without adding value (just to make prettier), I have seen a lot of teams/people doing that kind of mistake.
    - saddington 12y ago
      a great reminder. i'm keen on keeping it simple... and focused. i don't need to be the next microsoft word... i'd rather not actually. i think one of the most important things any developer or business does is decide who their customer is... and who their customer isn't.
- nicky0 12y ago
  Actually it is pretty easy to get Apple's customer service to refund an app. Just say it didn't behave as expected and you would like a refund.
- jsankey 12y ago
  $30 is most certainly not "a lot of money", and it is this attitude that makes indie development so hard these days. This app is meant for serious bloggers (i.e. those that spend many hours writing each week), so if it works for them $30 is a steal. Remember that out of the $30 John gets just $20 from Apple, and if you take another third out for other expenses you're looking at less than $14. Needless to say you need to sell a lot of copies at that price to break even on your development time, on the order of 10,000/year, which is more than 27 copies/day! Then take into account that the App Store makes it difficult to get repeat revenue out of customers even if they use your app for several years...
lhl 12y ago
Hey John, I ran into some similar issues as the parent w/ line breaks (and w/ the local/remote publishing stuff in general). I posted a couple of comments on the Desk.pm feedback forum and am compiling some notes as I poke around. I have maximal sympathy for the challenges you face and I think that the concept of focused-editing with seamless publishing is fantastic, especially since no one else has done it, and I'm willing to wait for some updates to see where it goes, but I wonder if there should be some better visibility on the apps current caveats.
- saddington 12y ago
  this is great and you're right, software is never done, only abandoned ( http://john.do/software/ http://john.do/software/ )... the challenge is that i wasn't aware of many of the issues until we had a plethora of users (which is great). i can only catch so many via testing and alpha-users! thanks for your patience, that means a ton. it really does as an indie developer. finally, i try to point a lot of people to our community forum, which has grown quite nicely over the last 3 months. there's a lot of help there and said caveats. i can always do a better job in this department though, so, thanks for the kind reminder!

puranjay 12y ago

As a writer, I like the idea of a minimalist writing app. I really do. It feels natural. Just you and a blank screen so you can tap away and kill whatever demons are haunting you. Except there is a problem: serious writers need more than 'minimalism'. All the authors and novelists and long-form fiction writers I know have reams upon reams of notes, plot information, and character data cluttering up their MS Word (argh) and Scrivener screens. I even know some to use spreadsheets to keep track of complicated family trees and plots in long fantasy novels. This is why I use Scrivener. It's bulky and far from minimalist, but it has the tools I need. Minimalist apps are for people who want to play 'pretend' at writing. Or write a blog post a day and call that 'substantial writing'. But if you really, really need to put together a story, you will need to do your research. And minimalist apps are of no use to you then.

saddington 12y ago
i've been really "nice" about every single comment here on HN... but i can't help but let you know that this comment is single-handedly the most pompous one of all. "substantial writing"...? really? "serious" writers? I could list 10,000 pieces of GLORIOUS work that was crafted on nothing more than "pen" and "paper" ... or perhaps just "paper" and "ink" and "typewriter"... PEN + PAPER == Maximally-minimal "app"... and in that way, with Desk, I was attempting to create an homage, of sorts, to the "old way" of creating great writing work. keeping it simple, effective, useful. minimalist apps are for the serious and the playful, for those that are writing epic novels (one user of Desk is a multi-New York Times winning author) and those that are, as you say, "pretending" to write (like my 8-year old daughter, perhaps: http://john.do/gift-writing/ http://john.do/gift-writing/). but, it all, at the end of the day, is still writing... "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." ~~~ Ernest Hemingway http://john.do/writer/ http://john.do/writer/
- SafariDevelop 12y ago
  >> Minimalist apps are for people who want to play 'pretend' at writing. > this comment is single-handedly the most pompous one of all. It is interesting to note that HN's commenting guideline is to "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation." yet, the folks here are downvoting puranjay's neutral 'pretend' comment (not targeted at anyone in particular) while upholding yours (you don't tell someone to their face that they made a pompous remark). What hypocrisy.