Z-Write

I've really enjoyed using this program. I've been using it for almost a year, and have found it a great way to organize my thoughts and do some writing. I highly recommend it!

With so many REAL writing enablers on the market why isn't the developer of this silly application aware of them? Try here before you even waste the download bandwidth on this. http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/22995/scrivener

We are already flying in 747's and this guy wants to introduce us to balsa wood and calico. z-Write in its present incarnation is just silly. Consider the free, Scrivener Gold, http://www.rumramruf.com/ScrivenerBeta/dlbeta/ScrivenerGold.dmg; MacJournal, and any other note taking software. If you want to pay, go for WriteItNow or StoryLines/WritersCafe. You'll find a description of them here: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/ They are listed under 'Software by other folk'

wow, back from the dead and umm still the same.

WOW! I though Z-Write was dead. That said, it's showing is age and there are now better apps compared with this once unique writing tool.

Back in the days of OS 9, Z-Write was the first program to implement the idea of non-linear writing, so credit where credit is due. However, you would be out of your mind to pay $30 for it in this day and age. It just isn't worth the price, and maybe it wouldn't even be worth using it if it was free. Being written in RealBasic, it doesn't take advantage of any of OS X's underlying technologies (services, automatic spell-check, etc). There are dozens of programs for composing text and taking notes that are infintely more powerful. Some of them are free, and almost all shareware programs cost less than Z-Write. Have a look at Hog Bay Notebook or MacJournal and compare their features and interfaces to Z-Write - it's not the same league, it's not even the same sport. Since the dev seems to know that his lack of vision and Cocoa programming skills won't enable him to come out with a competitive product, he obviously took his ball and went home. His website looks like it was abandoned around 2001, and the lack of progress he made with Z-Write makes paying for it a very risky investment. You will most likely buy an unsupported program.

One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was shelling out $30 for Z-Write. Slow, buggy, doesn't work well in OS X, and doesn't do anything that MacJournal doesn't do...and MacJournal is free, written in Cocoa, and just plain works. Save your money and download MacJournal instead.

Sad to say Z-write seems to have entered the Shadowlands of software maintained by one person too busy/ill/dead to finish the upgrade. The software's great, and I was looking forward to the 1.5 update- I even paid for it-- but the beta's expired and even appears to have disappeared from the stonetablesoftware.com webpage. Emails are not answered. If the author's got enough time to delete the beta from the webpage, he should put a message about the beta's status.

This is really a great program, but it's falling behind on the technical front. It doesn't support OS X features like system services, OS X Spell Checking, or Font Families, but perhaps more importantly is that it hasn't been particularly well debugged in OS X -- It produces (non-fatal) "Runtime Failures", and key features from the OS 9 version (From hyperlinks to Print Preview) don't work properly. Stone Table Software claims to be working on a more OS X-native version 1.4 with an October 2002 release date, but 10 months later we haven't seen it yet. I'm afraid this program is dead :(

I love this program. It makes it easy for me to organize my thoughts & writing ANY time during the writing process. I've emailed the programmer to ask when a windows version will be available. Doesn't sound like it will be soon so I'll keep at it with my iBook and Zwrite.

I've really enjoyed using this program. I've been using it for almost a year, and have found it a great way to organize my thoughts and do some writing. I highly recommend it!