37signals Draft for iPad: Simple sketching and sharing

by javery • 16 years ago

36 29 16 years ago

faramarz• 16 years ago

I love the simplicity of this. A breath of fresh air!

I don't have an iPad, but I would buy it. Though, for $9.99 I wonder how many people would still purchase this app if it wasn't by 37signals.

mattmillr• 16 years ago

Considering a primary feature is uploading to 37signals' Campfire, not many?

joubert• 16 years ago

$10?

Adobe Ideas is free. http://blogs.adobe.com/designandweb/2010/04/adobe_ideas.html

joshkaufman2• 16 years ago

I really don't get the backlash about the price. If a customer uses 37signals services and gets a ton of value from the app, how is $9.99 unreasonable?

qwzybug3• 16 years ago

Sure, that's true as far as it goes, but it gets a little strained when you see the similarly-priced competition. Pricing isn't a function of absolute utility and value, it's also a function of economic environment.

Take Apple display adapter dongles. Do I get a ton of use out of them? Do they make my MacBook better? Sure, but $30 is still a cruel fucking joke.

My wine key feels great in my hand, never breaks, and has given me loads of value and joy over the last decade but I would still be a fool to pay more than $5 for it.

I've carried a plastic Japanese fan in my bag for more than ten years that has saved my sweaty ass in many social circumstances, and is indispensable for my personal well-being between July and September; it's covered in ads and I got it for zero yen and I wouldn't have paid much more than that for it.

All that said, the correct price of a thing is whatever people will pay for it, and 37signals has certainly demonstrated an uncanny ability to find their market.

jsankey• 16 years ago

It seems like it's just the culture that has been established around iPhone, and now iPad apps. There are so many $2 apps out there it's no wonder you need a big hit to make decent money from a single app (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1451496).

I'm generally neutral on 37signals, but I actually think the $10 price point is a great choice in this case. It's almost deliberately against the grain, which makes sense if you don't think the current pricing of apps is sustainable.

dpatru• 16 years ago

Adobe's Ideas has an 8 minute "user guide" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nILS13_b2p8&feature=playe...). 37Signals's Draft presumably doesn't require a user guide.

If all you want to do is what Draft offers, then the extra "features" of Ideas just get in the way. It's worthwhile for some people to pay $10 for a tool that works very well rather than make do with a free, but less-than-ideal alternative.

The two products are a great example of how one can profit by selling a product with fewer features.

The key is to understand the product from the user's point of view. Draft was meant to replace a sharpie and a paper notebook. Ideas is MS Paint for the iPhone. Although the two apps have an overlapping feature set, they don't present the same value to the user.

qwzybug3• 16 years ago

Have you used Adobe Ideas? Its featureset is much closer to Draft than MSPaint. Your "features" scarequotes make it sound like you have no idea what you're talking about.

It has two more colors and you can change the marker size. Oh, and you can pinch-zoom, which really shouldn't need a user guide on the iPad. Some of the buttons on the drawing screen in Draft are on the documents screen in Ideas.

Ideas' simplicity rocks, and Draft looks good too, though I'm not in love with the white-on-black scheme.

One thing I would like to know: if 37 signals only makes apps they use to get their work done, and the only work they get done is to make their apps... have we discovered a perpetual motion machine?

LargeWu• 16 years ago

$10? Big deal, I spent that on lunch today and I didn't think twice about it.

One of the main features is that Draft is integrated with Campfire, which indicates that it's probably targeted at businesses and other organizations who pay to use Campfire. Does Ideas do that? If you're a Campfire user, that feature alone is probably worth $10.

furthermore, 37 signals always talks about selling your byproducts. If this is something they were using anyway, why not polish it up a bit and make a bit of money? And what would they gain by giving this away for free?

runjake• 16 years ago

I'll just stick with the free Adobe Ideas for the iPad. It has some sharing functionality (email), and you can pinch to zoom & draw, different brush sizes, different brush colors, different opacities, etc.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-ideas-1-0-for-ipad/id36...

PS: It's _free_

rbreve• 16 years ago

according to 37signals less is more, but that doesn't apply to the price

aymeric• 16 years ago

It serves a very small niche: Designers / who have an ipad / who do drafting on a iPad / who use CampFire.

I don't understand why 37Signals would release such an application except for riding the iPad frenzy and testing the water.

Something I would have been impressed with is if they added the possibility to add user interactions in the draft. When I click on this drawn red button, it goes on the next screen, etc...

(Sometimes, 37Signals is a bit too extreme with Simplicity (Draft / TadaList))

dhh• 16 years ago

Here's why: We needed it for ourselves and we thought others might find it useful.

That, btw, is the same motivation we've had to release every single piece of software we've ever done.

Also, tadalist is the #1 google result for "todo list". It's an incredibly loved product that has a huge user base. For tons of people that's exactly what they need. Just like Draft was exactly what we needed.

marknutter• 16 years ago

But tadalist is free. I know that draft wouldn't give you any seo benefit, but it would still promote the 37signals brand. At $9.99 its reach will be limited.

BrandonWatson• 16 years ago

I'm confused...people here are hating on the price? If you don't like the price, don't buy it.

Free markets are pretty efficient, and pricing anamolies have a tough time persisting. DHH and crew are not perpetrating a crime on society with this price. They are not withholding a public good which cannot be obtained from anyone but them. They built something, and want to try and sell it for a price they set to customers they hope to win. Welcome to capitalism.

The point is - and this is especially true with software these days - there's always an option priced above free which causes someone to say "really?" But if you derive value from it, then you will pay. If not, you won't.

There's likely better ways to spend our IQ units than hating on the price of an app.

ezmobius• 16 years ago

$9.99 is an order of magnitude too much for this app period

naner• 16 years ago

I'm not going to buy this thing but I don't get why people are so upset over the price. They can charge $100 if they want, you are owed nothing.

And they'll sell a bunch at $10 anyways.

mchristoff• 16 years ago

2 colors... Are you kidding me? Are more than 2 colors really too complex for our small brains? This app is lazy passed off as "simple".

blizkreeg• 16 years ago

Price and all the issues aside, these guys are simply amazing. They've tied it in with their Campfire product which is kind of a double whammy now. If you like Draft, you might actually end up becoming a paying customer for Campfire, whether you truly need it or not!

albemuth• 16 years ago

Sometimes they really go out of their way to actually emphasize the lack of features, as in "It only comes in black", sort of like giving you the finger. Then there will be a a blog post or two about how it helped them focus on the experience and integration and what not and how Apple like they are. Then another one on how creative users had to be to work around the limitations. Fast forward a couple months and then:"Draft! Now with colors!"

johns• 16 years ago

Campfire has an API, why not build Draft with Colors that still integrates with Campfire (and other services)?

davidw• 16 years ago

I should add this to http://www.73primenumbers.com somehow...

Oh wait, the Trailer Park already has this functionality! http://73primenumbers.com/trailerpark.html

douglasputnam• 16 years ago

More power to 37Signals for having the good sense to set their own price and value for their own product. There's nothing controversial about asking $9.99 for a simple app that you can master in 5 minutes and use to sync your ideas with your team. Pricing Draft at $9.99 is no more controversial than charging $4.25 for a soy grean tea latte (a one-time use product, at that), $829 for a 64GB iPad, $2,200 for a 2-year Verizon Android contract, $51k for a Porsche Cayman, or $450 million to launch the Space Shuttle...

"There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price alone are that person's lawful prey." -- John Ruskin (found on a poster in my local Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop)

37signals Draft for iPad: Simple sketching and sharing

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