We were honored to see Penultimate called out as a suggested app in the Apple marketing email that turned up in our inboxes over the weekend:

Thanks to the thoughtful folks down in Cupertino for another shout out. And hey, if you do know a new grad with a ‘pad, you can gift them a copy of the app. :) Meanwhile, this email has been printed out and posted on our refrigerator (really).

As promised in my post last week, a new point release of Penultimate (v3.0.1) is now live on the app store. The most visible change is that the “writing” paper collection in the paper shop is now free. Other price reductions went into effect several days ago.

For users who are interested in the convenience of the add on papers, I hope the new pricing structure is more palatable than the previous one. For those who weren’t interested in the first place, no need to dig further, and the paper community is being created.

I am juggling several very important, very cool feature updates to Penultimate, all coming soon. I’m really excited to get those done and out the door. Stay tuned for great new stuff!

As always, positive reviews and ratings on the app store make a big difference to potential new customers, and are always appreciated as a way to show your affinity for Penultimate.

Ben

P.S. Today’s tiny update also includes a couple significant bug fixes: one for paper import of certain images, and one for some eraser size problems. 

Hi everyone,

There’s been some confusion, causing unhappiness, since the release of Penultimate 3.0 and its inclusion of an in-app Paper Shop. I don’t like seeing that, because it means that I haven’t done a very good job of something along the way. Many users perceive that I am strong-arming them into buying virtual paper from the Paper Shop, or suckering them out of their money for something they believe should be free. None of this is true, but I take responsibility for the confusion, and will make some changes moving forward.

The 3.0 release significantly expands what you can do with Penultimate by adding an ability to import any image as a paper texture. This originated with reams of user feedback. Some requests were for simple additional papers (new graph papers, music staff paper), but the majority of the paper-style requests were all over the map, and were often domain-specific to whatever the user’s workflow is (film storyboarding, landscape architecture, web design mockups, etc). It is so cool to see what people do with the app, but there was no way that I could fulfill all of those needs by just adding dozens of best-guess styles into Penultimate. (To say nothing of how cluttered that would have made the app feel.) The best way of allowing any user to reach their full creative goals was to allow them to bring into the app whatever template they needed. It was then my job to make sure that it looked great, and integrated into the experience in the high-quality way you’ve come to expect from Penultimate. I’m proud of the simplicity and quality of this function. I also built in a capability of sharing the papers, to encourage a community to form around user-created papers.

The Paper Shop component was intended primarily as a convenience for a minority of users. There were some specific paper requests that were common enough to design in-house and offer to users directly, should they prefer a simple install to hunting around for an exactly matched guitar chord chart (say). Many of these papers add significant extra value to the app— transforming it into a music composition tool, in one case. Charging a small amount for these very optional add-ons didn’t seem unreasonable, and they’re targeted at a self-selecting set of users, ones who are usually quite dedicated to the tasks they need the papers for. 

Unfortunately, the release was not perceived universally as a great paper import and management feature with an adjunct shop for convenience. And that failing is mine: as much sense as this made to me, it was not explained clearly enough and did not reflect the marketplace.

It actually turns out that lots of people are interested in the Paper Shop paper collections— more so than the fraction that I imagined. These users have broader use cases for the app, and don’t want to feel overcharged for specialty house-built papers that they’d like easier access to.

I think The Paper Shop is a great way of providing specific, well-designed papers that not everyone will need. But I am going to take three steps here to address concerns:

1. I will provide at least one free add-on collection of papers. This will allow all users to see how it works, and get value out of it, without any extra outlay. This will require an app update because the technical infrastructure to support it isn’t completely finished in the current version. This update will appear as soon as possible


2. In the meanwhile, to make them more accessible to more users, I’ll be lowering the price on some of the existing collections, effective tonight. If you’ve already bought one of these paper collections this week I will refund the difference to you directly via PayPal. I don’t get a record of who purchased things, so forward your iTunes receipt within the next 30 days to paperrefund@cocoabox.com along with your PayPal address. If the paper collection(s) you’ve purchased is made free with the next update, I’ll refund you the full price at that time. It might take me a few weeks to get through them, but I don’t want anyone feeling like they got a raw deal. 


3. Most importantly, I’m going to move more quickly on something I was intending to do anyways: provide a centralized location for user-created paper files that all Penultimate users can browse and download from. Lots of users have already taken up the task of building great templates for the app. If you will have some you’d like to share, let me know by sending me an email at papersubmission@cocoabox.com (don’t send papers yet). No announcement yet on the form this will take, but stay tuned for something soon.

I hope this explains the intention behind Penultimate 3.0— an update I believe opens up a lot of new applications for the app—and allays what may have been some of your concerns. If you have others, please send me a note directly at ben@cocoabox.com.

Thanks for reading and, as always, for your support.

Ben

Ahoy Penultimate users! Today is a huge day, because I get to share Penultimate version 3.0 with you. This update has been in progress for a long time, and I think you’re going to like it— a whole new dimension of uses has opened up for the app.

You can now import any image to use as a template in creating a paper to use in your notebooks.  Practicing your Chinese characters? Composing new percussion riffs? Creating user interface mockups? You can just pull in your template image from your iPad Photos library.

Your papers will look classy, like they’re really part of the notebook. To create your own, tap the “+” icon in the paper menu.

You can import any paper you like, but for convenient to-do lists, day planners, or music staff paper, or primary school writing paper, check out The Paper Shop, a brand new little shop inside the app. You’ll find a number of useful (and fun) paper collections for quick purchase and download. 

Here’s a short video showing off the new features of Penultimate 3.0.

(Want to use that film storyboard paper I created in the video? If you’re using your iPad, just tap here to download and import it into Penultimate.)

I’m very excited about this release. The ability to bring in custom paper is going to make Penultimate a whole lot more useful for many users. I’m also hoping that the ability to share any paper you’ve created will enable a community to grow around papers for the app. 

UPDATE: If you do create papers and would like to share with the community, we’re cooking up a centralized place for people to go do that. It’s still under development, but send me an email (papersubmission@cocoabox.com) if you have papers you’d like to share.

UPDATE 2: We’re making some changes to The Paper Shop based on user feedback. Please read the additional info here.

Enjoy!

(Hint: when building your own templates, try 718x865 as the image resolution.)

The folks over at Griffin have started a great promotion where they’re giving away one of their snazzy new colored styluses (along with a free copy of Penultimate) every day for 10 days. Don’t have a stylus yet? You should, and now you might get one gratis. It’s cool that Griffin has picked a ballsy bunch of colors that don’t look like the Apple standard palette.

Head over there and enter right quick.

Found these lower-school exercise books from the Czech Republic in a little shop stateside. Lots of pages of blue-lined graph paper inside. 

I’ve always had a hard time with the original Moleskines and their knockoffs. They’re alluring, but in practice nothing I write or sketch feels important enough for a hardbound notebook. That’s why I always preferred softcover notebooks that feel like they’re made for everyday work. The wonderful Field Notes are like this, as are the Clairefontaine notebooks of my own school days. I know that people use Penultimate the same way— durably capturing everything from critical ideas to idle scribbles— which is exactly the idea.

P.S. All “credit” for the title of this post goes to my colleague Angela. :-) 

This may be the most lyrical slogan ever printed on a lowly pencil. In this case, it graces the side of the legendary Blackwing 602, a pencil beloved by artists and writers for its beautiful line, but discontinued and unavailable since 1998. 

I love both the act and the tools of handwriting, so I was honored recently to meet Charles Berolzheimer of the California Cedar Company. They’re one of the largest producers in the world of the wood “slats” used to make pencils, and it was from Berolzheimer that I learned about the Blackwing. The model was manufactured by Eberhard-Faber for somewhere over a half century, and used by writer John Steinbeck and animator Chuck Jones, among many others. It has a great smoothness to it, and a unique ferrule. (“What is a ‘ferrule’,” you might ask, as I did of Berolzheimer. It’s the metal bit on top that holds the eraser on.) The Blackwing’s eraser isn’t cylindrical, but rectangular, with a metal clip to hold it in the ferrule. So these pencils are unusually good and pretty cool looking, too. But waning demand, combined with 1990s corporate takeovers and (amazingly) an unrepairable breakdown of the special-ferrule-making machine meant the end of the Blackwing.

Want to see what all the fuss is about? So do lots of people: die-hards who refuse to abandon the Blackwing will pay $20-40 for a single unsharpened pencil on eBay. Like a foolish moth to a hipster flame, I found one selling at the low end of that scale—Only $18! Not collector quality!—and grabbed it. It is definitely a thing of weirdo beauty, and it does make a lovely line. The slogan is my favorite part, though: “Half the pressure, twice the speed” would sound vaguely dirty out of context, but stamped on this writing instrument it recalls an earnest industriousness of the early twentieth century.

Berolzheimer brought good news with him. Although his company mainly provides the wood for other manufacturers, he has started overseeing small production runs of high-quality finished pencils. And they’ve created a tribute to the Blackwing. It’s part of their Palomino line, and although the Palomino Blackwing has a softer lead and different styling than the original 602, it’s got the cool eraser, it is a great pencil, and it’s more affordable. More recently, they’ve announced that they’re working on an even more faithful recreation, with more similar lead and the famous slogan stamped on the side. I’m looking forward to trying one of those out.

Meanwhile, if you’re intrigued, there are people out on the internet who take Blackwings and their history very seriously. Some even think they’re better than iPads (!). I’d just say it’s important to have the right tool for the job, and it’s a bonus if that tool has a great story behind it.

When I was a kid, I didn’t want to be an astronaut or a fireman. The first place I remember wanting to work was a software company called Sierra On-Line. I was a young programmer, writing in BASIC on my Apple II. I also played games: Space Quest and King’s Quest were some early ones, and both were made by Sierra. The adventures were great, crafted with care and depth. But there was more that came with the game: inside the box would be one of those business reply postcards that you could fill out and send back for a newsletter subscription. (Remember, this was way back before the dawning of the web. People still used the mail.) So I started getting quarterly newsletters from Sierra’s headquarters. They were filled with in-jokes, interviews with the developers, and serious articles about the state of the industry and technology. They revealed the collection of passionate people who worked at Sierra and got to spend their time making awesome software with other like-minded folks. 

Unfortunately for me, by the time I was old enough and educated enough to go start working, the golden age of Sierra was over; the founders had sold the company, and not much of the original team or personality remained. But I remember the spirit.

Cocoa Box is my software venture, and it’s time to grow it from where it is, to something more. I’d like to introduce myself, talk about where we are now, and think about how the “I” in this story can become “we.” 

I’m Ben. I’m now a software veteran, with tours of duty ranging from the deep reaches of the Xbox’s operating system to the front end of Yahoo Mail on the web. I’ve done product management and strategy as well as pure engineering. My experiences came together in the iPad app Penultimate, which has been a best-selling app for nearly a year on the best-selling tablet device. 

Penultimate for iPad was the evolution of an idea I’d been excited by: touchscreen devices could finally deliver the personal touch of handwriting that was lost with the advent of electronic communications. I developed Penultimate as a “serious hobby project” last spring believing that a high-design, “Apple-like” handwriting solution could fill a gap in the iPad’s usefulness. Within a few days of launching Penultimate, it was the #1 selling app on iPad. It got a lot of attention early on for being an eye-catching, easy to use app that focused specifically on handwriting use cases. That attention has held: over a half-million copies of the app have been sold, and an update with new functionality goes out about monthly. I like making software that people find really useful in addition to making them happy. We hear all the time from passionate users, which is a great motivator.

Behind the scenes, Cocoa Box is still quite small. I happily do all of the product management, the planning, most of the UX design, the development, QA, and release. (This isn’t unusual for small app companies.) The lovely Angela works with me on community management, support, and projects like the contest we’ve done recently. We have some help for design and other small projects, but that’s about it right now.

Penultimate is stretching the boundaries of what Cocoa Box can accomplish as a tiny shop, though, and it’s time to grow. There is more work to do on Penultimate, and other projects and platforms to tackle. 

Here’s my goal: I’d like to create a high-quality, high-design mobile software “atelier”. Picture a small number of great developers, designers and others working together to create software on the platforms that are on the verge of taking over the world. Smart, interesting people who appreciate design and craftsmanship in software (and probably outside software as well), and who demand to work with others who value that. 

I use the word atelier because it calls to mind an artist’s loft— a space where creativity happens. I’m abusing the French somewhat but I hope you’ll forgive me. Cocoa Box already has a successful product, a product roadmap, and some clear next steps; we will be more unified in purpose than a loose collective of artists. But the creativity should come from everyone

The Sierra of the 80s and 90s is a memory now, but there are companies that continue that tradition. Panic Inc. up in Oregon makes beautiful Mac software, and it looks like they have a lot of fun doing it. Sofa over in Amsterdam also makes excruciatingly lovely software, and the photos of their office space are appealing. Beyond the lofty Mac world, I really admire Balsamiq, a small company in Milan that grew from one man’s UI mockup tool into a tight-knit business. Peldi from Balsamiq writes often on their blog about his company and how they’re growing it. All of these companies are self-sustaining small businesses. They grow as they need and as they can, and the people who work there choose these small families because that reflects what they are looking for from a life and career.

I’d like to build a company that takes cues from all of these places, and develops its own culture, too. The vision for the company with a handful of people might look like: a great space somewhere in San Francisco. Collaboration on projects that users will value and enjoy, multiple of which are ongoing at any given time. Probably some sort of hipster coffee machine in there, maybe prints by Saul Bass hanging on the walls. Some large plants and a lot of light. Bikes against the wall. 

Getting there still needs a little figuring out. We’ll move a little slowly to stay on smart footing, and also to make sure it goes the right way. Even though we’re here in San Francisco, Cocoa Box is not a traditional Silicon Valley startup. We’re cash-flow positive with no external investors, and I’d like to keep it that way. (“Bootstrapped,” in the parlance.) I’d like to build the company that I want to work at, and that may mean being in it for the long haul. But I do want people to be invested in the success of the team, so that if the software does well, the whole company will do well. 

I’m excited to start building a shop like the ones I have admired. Now I’m looking for the people to help me do it. 

You’ve read this far— how does this sound? Are you a top-notch developer saying to yourself “Yes! This is what I want to be part of!”? Maybe you’re a detail-obsessed designer thinking the same thing. If so, get in touch. In any case, stay tuned for more about the company and what we’re looking for.

Thanks.
Ben Zotto
@bzotto
ben@cocoabox.com

Our 5-week contest has come to a spectacular conclusion. We’ve received TONS of awesome entries showing how people use the app at work, at play, and more. Lots of people have won Pogo Sketch styluses, and we’ve announced Grand Prize and Runner-Up winners on our Facebook page.

Check out the winning entries here.

Congratulations to Belkiss, Jean-Pierre, Kati, and Alex, and Joshua! Your prizes are en route.

(When we have a chance, we might post up some more of the entries we received over the weeks.) Thanks again, everyone. And thanks to our lovely Angela for coordinating the contest!

Welcome back to the Cocoa Box Genius Bar! Brand new in Penultimate 2.3 is the ability to take action on multiple pages within a notebook. You can choose any set of pages to email, print, or delete all at once. Here’s how you do it:

1. Go into the page browser screen by tapping or dragging the small “grip” to the left of the “previous page” touch area:

2. Tap the new “multiple action” icon button in the top-right of the screen. It looks like this:

3. Now, just tap all the pages you want to email or print (or delete). Selected pages become lighter with a checkmark icon on them. When you’re ready, just press the action button you want in the top left. 

“Email” will package up all the pages you tapped and put them into a single PDF attachment.