Broken under Lion, flashes screen white when activating or deactivating Dock Gone. No response from developer in two weeks after repeated attempts. Avoid until developer responds here with a fix for Lion users.

Just got back a curt response from the developer after making a reasonable feature request: "I will not be adding this to Scrawl.
Thank You, The PAD Software Team." No explanation, nothing human. Further, both the "Stop Following" and "View this Feedback" links in the auto-generated email were dead. For these reasons and in response to some of the developer's unsympathetic and poorly reasoned responses in this forum, it's back to Scribblet for me.

Thanks for bailing on your loyal Snow Leopard users. Save the rhetoric about "getting rid of the past" and "aiming for the future." May you enjoy the same loyalty from your customers that you've shown them in this move. A lousy thing to do.

Can't support using this forum for feuding (Evan/developer vs. Steven P. Jobs/disgruntled user), but it does seem as good a time as any to submit a protest to this mass exodus of apps from independent developers to the new App Store. I ran into an out-of-nowhere bug with MenuWeather 3.1.2 as a result of which the app keeps prompting for confirmation of location on relaunch. Reported this to the developer along with my need to have access outside the App Store (10.6.6 introduces API conflicts with essential software I use), and was basically stiff-armed with, "Version 3.1.2 is no longer supported, and the App Store is the only way to get the program now." Apple has a long history of abandoning loyal users in its blithe pursuit of new (if not better) ways to do things with the OS, its own apps, etc., obviously caring little for "the rest of us" who have learned the wisdom of waiting before jumping on board Apple's latest and invariably buggy "advances," but it's disappointing to see indie developers adopting the same cavalier stance. Ergo, one star.

A lean, minimalist alternative to WriteRoom at a far better price, and its only real competition. Problems: Developer responds to suggestions for improvement with the explanation that he wrote this primarily for his own use, I suppose the logic being that requests for features he himself wouldn't use are not really worth considering, and one gets the sense that the app won't be developed further. For example, I alerted him that, upon loading a file, FocusWrite momentarily "loses" the desktop curtain, which has the effect of "flashing" the desktop for a fraction of a second before the file loads. Not a big deal, but a distraction, and not a problem one finds in WriteRoom. I also suggested that the app's prefs include a way to load the last file worked on upon relaunch. Developer dismissed both ideas out of hand, the first with the comment "this is not a bug, but just how FocusWrite works," the second on the grounds that it isn't a feature he would use himself. I have no problem with a developer who writes a program for his own use putting it out there for others who may want to use it as is, but this is $9.95 shareware, and it seems inconsistent to sell the app without any real receptivity either to feature requests or ongoing development and improvement. For this reason, I'm giving the app only three stars. With a little more enthusiasm and commitment from the developer, this easily could be a five-star app, and IMO, with even just a few more of the sort of features included in WriteRoom (including better masking of the desktop and the option to reload the file that was open when the app was closed last), this would be a five-star app that would pull ahead of WriteRoom as the full-screen text editor of choice.

The app runs in DEMO mode, and is limited to syncing 10 contacts. Furthermore, after syncing, I saw no difference in either NC or Address Book. In any case, this is the second app I've seen today on MacUpdate listed as free that's actually shareware. Someone's asleep at the wheel or worse, since in this case (and the other, and who knows how many more), "free" is flatly misleading.

Can't purchase or use contact link on developer's site. 404s all over the place. App seems solid, but geesh. . .

"Run at startup" menu option doesn't work for me (10.6.3 on a Macbook Pro Intel Core i5); have to add the app manually under Accounts in System Prefs. Menu bar icon should be larger and less generic. Could stand a Preferences option. Still, a clean, minimalist look and well thought out workflow make for good potential here.

Updated to v. 5.0 under 10.6. Widget now shows a white background (rather than transparent) some of which clears upon clicking the "i" (info) button, but long (screen-wide) sections of it remain making the widget unusable. This is a worthy widget, but has become problematic for me in Snow Leopard. Trashing prefs has no effect.

Still broken as of today, won't update. Developer: If not a fix, how about a status update here?