Marvin 3.0

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by sydmalicious

Like I said on another thread, you have no competition.

Definitely. Perhaps Moon+ Reader Pro on the Android side comes somewhat close.

However, it should not be enough to be "the one-eyed king among the blind", right? Let's be the two-eyed king! There's always lots of room for improvement. Most of the competition is so outrageously bad that simply to be the clearly best among them cannot be viewed as the ultimate achievement.

[Clark G. Flipper]

Originally Posted by sydmalicious

Definitely what Vega said @kguil. I don't own an app that is as buttery smooth and feature rich as this. Like I said on another thread, you have no competition.

Absolutely!

[kguil]

@ParadiseLost: M3 is a new app with a free tier that is substantially more complete than M2's free version. Then there's a small upgrade price for who's feeling generous.

[kguil]

@Faterson: I'm not sure which part of @ChristopherTD's comment you take exception with. Is it the "feature rich" bit, or the "no serious bugs" part? Every single bug report that came from more than 80 people was fixed in two days, including those reported by yourself which I fixed in a couple of hours (I also entertained and implemented new features). I'd hardly call that serious. As a matter of fact, I'm rather patting myself on the back given that M3 is written from scratch and is about three times bigger in scope.*

Nonetheless, could we keep discussion about the beta in the mailing list as agreed? Any prerelease bugs will be fixed and reasonable feature requests will be dealt with later.

[Faterson]

Exactly, Kris, let's keep the Beta stuff outta here. I merely wanted to convey that everything is not as rosy as it might appear from some of the posts here, which seemed to suggest as if the entire work was completed, Marvin was 99.99% finished as of right now, with only a few insignificant bits separating us from utter perfection. We're very, very far away from that blissful state, and as you know, the perceptions of what is or isn't a "serious bug" or "missing (crucial) feature" vary from user to user – and from user to developer.

In any case, I can confirm you're doing fantastic work in this Beta cycle, just like during Marvin 1's and Marvin 2's development, and I trust that everything still missing or not working at this point will be resolved in future.

[ParadiseLost]

I don't mind a small fee; after all I've been a supporter since it's one of its earliest versions. Bought all the colors etc. I was just hoping it wasn't going to become another ludacris fee as some other apps have moved to. I wanted to beta it but in reading your comments I really felt other use cases would be more helpful to you as a developer. I look forward to your newest incarnation with eager anticipation.

[Faterson]

I for one intend to buy the full version of both Marvin 3 and Marvin SxS, although I'm entitled to an upgrade discount. It's the smallest symbolic token of gratitude I can offer, really, for years of service provided by Marvin since 2012.

[kguil]

@Faterson: Apple don't allow upgrade pricing. The best I can (and will) do is offer special launch prices. I'll post announcements all over the place to make sure everyone gets the heads up.

[odamizu]

Any hints when Marvin 3 might make its official non-beta debut? It's okay if you can't say. I just have to ask because the suspense is killing me

Also, I'm happy to pay full price for apps I appreciate. I don't really understand why some people balk at paying for apps, but willingly fork over money for movies, beer, coffee, cookies — all things that can only be enjoyed a few minutes or a couple hours, compared to years of enjoyment from a good app.

[kguil]

@Odamizu: here's where we're at... The beta is doing very well and there aren't any show stopping issues. There's one bug that's driving me nuts but I'm confident I'll fix within the next two days. After that, I'll let the testers play around with it for about a week, and if there aren't any problems, I'll ship to Apple for review and release. Thankfully it seems that they're reviewing apps much faster than usual.

I'm hoping late next week or the following one but (disclaimer) please understand that everything hinges on not discovering problems before then. Many readers have been waiting for this for a long time and I don't want to disappoint them.

[svenlind]

One of the features of Marvin (and Gerty) that I am really pleased with is the possibility of selecting a word and do a user defined browser call with that word.

I use it for translation and also to look up places using Google maps.

I really hope that this feature is in Marvin 3. And I will gladly pay an upgrade fee.

[kguil]

@svenlind You can certainly do that. Also, the dictionary is very much improved (e.g. it dims in dark mode) plus you can add an unlimited number of "word" commands.

[MSWallack]

Will M3 automatically import my existing M2 library (including metadata) & settings?

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by kguil

@svenlind You can certainly do that. Also, the dictionary is very much improved (e.g. it dims in dark mode) plus you can add an unlimited number of "word" commands.

Does the dictionary function support multiple languages or is it only English?

Twitter is to communications as haiku is to literature.

[kguil]

There are two setups. (a) The system dictionary in which case you have access to all the dictionaries (there are many) natively supported by iOS, or (b) you can set up your own web-based dictionary that can point to whatever you like.