Good Concept, Inspired Design, Awful Execution

Every once in a while you come across an app that hits every note a proper app should—great concept, UI, UX, etc—but which has one or two serious flaws that manage to muck everything up. Rough Draft, disappointingly, is one of those apps… at least for me.

The good:
- The concept is solid. A drafting application which encourages writers to strike out rather than delete their mistakes? Brilliant. It serves a purpose.
- It has a personality all its own, not just another genetic OS X “transparent sidebars here, square buttons there” deal. It stands out.
- Informative beginners tutorial which teaches users how everything works. I wish more apps did this, honestly.
- Isn’t just another “distraction-free + markdown” writing app. It has functionality that’s useful for writers and manages not to be overly pretentious about its purpose.

The bad:
- Expensive (yes, expensive) in-app purchase for export. Such an integral feature is not worth $14.99, and frankly neither is this app; Rough Draft is worth a fair $9.99 in its entirety, including the ability to export. I’d gladly pay a little extra for EXTRA features, but that isn’t what this is. This is a backhanded scheme to make it seem like you are getting a free app when in actuality, for that price, you are not. It’s a bit scummy.
- Animation lag is an issue. The in-app settings take a good 2 seconds to show up after clicking the icon, and even when they do eventually show it’s really, really rough. Other animations like entering/leaving the folder view are smooth, but still see a slight delay. Entering fullscreen mode is an exercise in frustration. I’m not a developer so I can’t say what’s causing these things to happen (pretty sure it’s not my $1,700 computer), but they need to be addressed as soon as possible.

Though the good points technically outnumber the bad, the few it has are hard to ignore. Rough Draft is yet another potentially great app mired by poor business decisions and I won’t be keeping it installed for very long. Export is a must-have feature for any serious writing program, and while it is possible to copy/paste your words out of it (albeit with all the strikethroughs and grey coloring intact), it just isn’t an equivalent. The developer obviously only made this app free just to get more people to download it (not inherently bad…), with the hopes that they would actually be desperate enough to pay for exporting capability at a premium price (definitely bad). That’s a cheat if I’ve ever seen one.

Download it if you don’t care about export or not owning the app entirely, otherwise look elsewhere until the developer comes to their senses. Might happen, might not.

Jon David Tucker about Rough Draft