Introducing Quip
quip.com
quip.com
Just to clarify a couple of points I have read:
1. We do support desktops. We have a really nice web app. It is Chrome/Firefox only right now.
2. We have an Android app. It is a "preview release" because it is not feature complete. We released it because it is pretty close, and you can download it at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quip.quip. It is early, but it exists.
2. Works offline. Whether spotty 3G connection or completely offline, our mobile apps work and sync whenever you come back online, even when multiple people are collaborating on the same document. The tech behind this is really cool. And everything is available offline automatically, not just stuff you "mark for offline"
3. Diffs, presence, notifications
More details at https://quip.com/about/features
Abstracting Document types and building tools to make the creation of each type more rich.
See more details in my other comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6132528
Commercially, you must take defensive measures since Google acquired QuickOffice in 2012 and surely will attack this market space more aggresively.
Another question I'd have is what your long term plan is. The last thing I need for my business (of any size) is to select a vendor for a productivity tool and have it disappear due to acquisition, pivot, or bankruptcy in a couple/few years. (Coincidentally, I just saw the HN post announcing this: https://catch.com/)
Speaking of diffs, here's a FR that would probably be easy for you to implement, and one that a lot of Google Enterprise customers have been complaining about for years. It's possible to view and revert to previous revisions of Google Docs no problem (although the UI isn't particularly nice), but it's not possible to freeze versions of a doc. The method most people seem to go about this currently is to save a copy of the frozen version to docx/pdf and place it in the same folder as the working copy, but this is incredibly annoying.
Regarding commenting and collaborating on docs, one of the really nice features Drive has that you might consider adopting is their method of handling comment threads, and the integration with email (they all @mentions, too, using the +username syntax, btw).
This kind of dishonesty and bullshit will stain your image. Please don't treat us like morons.
Note: It's difficult to see from your site that you also have a desktop version (support). This might be as important as the mobile version for those of us who don't create on our iPads and would rather review on tablet.
What types of feedback are you most interested in receiving?
Also, I'd second the recommendation to allow normal signup and put off decisions about trusting the website with contacts. I wanted to sign up while not giving the app access, but was not allowed to go ahead and do that because any emails associated with gmail etc tried to harvest contacts, and the cancel button on the google permissions page doesn't work. Doesn't seem to be a way to register a gmail address without going through the permissions step.
If I want to expose my contacts, I'd rather the app allowed me to choose when and who to do that with, rather than trying to force the choice at signup. I'm happy to give you my email, but not those of all my contacts.
Back in the iPhone 2g era I was developing a personal wiki with a WYSIWYG UI but I stopped because I needed to use a lot of hidden UITextView/WebView object methods that were not approved by Apple policies or write my own editor engine. Many years later I don't see this kind of wiki in the App Store (no, it's not EverNote).
Amen! I've run desktop wikis, Evernote, OneNote, plain text files, Markdown files, Workflowy, Delicious, Diigo and more, and not fit exactly. Evernote is so easy to dump things into (esp web page clippings) and oh-so-hard to find/retrieve information. I've come to the conclusion tags don't cut it, as vocab I used 4+ years ago may have changed by now - heck even terms I used 3 weeks ago change as my knowledge improves.
A wiki with structure, like the Leo Literate Programming Editor used IIRC has come closest. But the space of PIM is ripe for a killer product that takes semi-structured data and allows us to run with it.
Filemaker for the web, with a bit more flexibility.
http://snag.gy/SzUHK.jpg http://snag.gy/cTUOA.jpg
(Tested on IE11 preview on win7. I dont have earlier versions.)
For now I only have one question——does Quip have any plan to support Markdown?
1. There are links in "Introduction to Quip", but I can't see how I would insert a link myself. Not being able to do that would be kind of a deal breaker.
2. I also can't see how to revert a document to an earlier state, which given Quips wiki-like features is pretty crucial.
Yeah yeah I know, obscure device and all that. :P
By doing that, they can prevent you and everyone else from using any competing product, including this one.
I will say it again: if your document breaks it is not the fault of Quip or whatever, it is a feature of using Microsoft formats, and Microsoft revenue comes from that feature.
You not distributing closed formats (that's why i don't use M$ office, apple products or buy sony weird media that came out every now and then) is the right thing
You preventing yourself from accessing those formats are not harming them, just yourself.
If you want to compete with Word, make it righteous and compatible, and I will purchase a copy immediately.
However, given the choice between the moral high ground or a text editor that does what I need it to do (including compatibility), I will choose the latter every last time.
A couple of things:
1. I really want an "export to HTML" option. As it is, I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to turn my blog entry in to HTML I can publish some where - I guess I'll have to copy and paste the whole thing out again and re-apply the formatting.
2. There's no way to send you feedback through the app! I replied here because at least then it will show up in your Hacker News threads.
The Quip blog goes to great lengths to explain why the PC is going away, and phones/tablets are the future. I agree.
Why put support into a web app vs. native apps? I get the platform argument, but that also comes at the "general" expense of user experience. Given the early stage, that seems like a division of resources.
Curious how you came to the decision to support broadly vs. platform focused.
Tried to opt out of the contacts sharing, but I got stuck in an infinite loop and couldn't find a signup option without the Google oAuth.
The product itself looks awesome, but I can't try it out because I don't want to give away access to my entire Google account.
When I installed it, the first thing I am greeted with is a screen asking me to enter my email address. Given that my email is a Gmail address, it notifies me about wanting to manage my contacts and something else (that was the first off-putting step in my experience). I just met you, and your hands are already going down my pants.
Then once I got in, the 1st or 2nd screen inside is about adding friends because it is better when you collaborate.
The only reason I saw the 'Skip' in the top right is because I was really looking for a way not to do this.
So I think the issue I have with this workflow is that the expectations that the landing page set are one thing (i.e. awesome document creation on mobile devices) and then the experience is pushing me into a "hand-over-your-address-book-and-get-to-sharing" experience right off the bat.
I get the whole "viral loop" thingy, and baking it into the product experience, but I feel like it would leave a better taste in my mouth if I was nudged into it - rather than broadsided.
That being said, I am likely to continue using it and playing with it (because of the potential value that a word processor made for an iPad can have).
I was just put off by that digging into my address book experience...that's all.
-- Bret
BTW, once in, I really like it! Simple, elegant, but not too simple (e.g., it supports basic tables).
>"Uhm... because; Fuck You, that's why"
I would suggest a much more clever way to virility; Help me actually MAKE something I WANT to share...
How about a tutorial on how to build an utterly awesome [document] thaat I just must share!
An invite, a how-to, op-ed...something!!
Here is an app that is looking to re-define how word processing is done, with a social context built-in - yet fails to provide a compelling reason, way, example, on how that should be done.
If word procs are so broken, give me an exciting example of how you fix it.
This is actually pretty clever.
Bret and Team...not to be presumptuous to offer you guys advice, but I think this could be very useful.
Picture this....the way make/consume documents has changed drastically since Word was initially created.
There could be a VERY powerful viral loop in here somewhere, but I don't think it is on the surface.
If you guys built it into the document type being created, e.g. you made some nifty tools that allow me to make 'wedding/party invites' from scratch (with some sexy templates or features that add significant value to the creation of an invite) - then you add the address book/viral element built into that process, once it is done - it makes total sense.
Once they create an invite, they want to share it.
The same is likely true for other document types - e.g. Resumes, Basic Flyers (say for Yard Sales, etc.), article that needs to be proof-read before submitting (like an op-ed), a school paper, certain legal documents, etc.
So, I guess what I am saying is....if you take a step back and think about different document types that people might want to create. Then you build tools to make the creation of each of those documents easier, than say using Photoshop, Word or Google Docs - then you build in the viral loop into the appropriate document types that make sense for you to share it.
I think THAT would be revolutionary.
There's absolutely no need for it in a word processor, this social stuff can't die fast enough imho.
I have a few suggestions though as someone that not only actively uses Google Docs but practically forces people I work with to do so too.
1. How do I make this appear in my existin Google Docs folder? I really do not want to have another place for my documents.
2. The pricing of Google Docs makes it really hard to beat. How does quip plan to fight that?
3. Still early days but people create different types of docs e.g Spreadsheets and slides for the same projects. How does it work with them without putting one type of doc in a differnt location from another? Especially when they are fr the same project?
4. My biggest issue when using Google Docs is that of formatting. The format does not play well with Word (we have to accept Word I'd boss for now and a monster number of people still use it ). Does the formatting work well with Word?
From my very limited knowledge, I have a few suggestions
1. Be the best at something and come inthrough the flanks. E.g the best way to edit your DropBox documents (I actually thought Dropbox would have launched a document processor by now). Coming through the flanks will remove the weight of expextation and at the same time allow people to
2. integrate you into an existing workflow for a large number of people. Eg. Sync with Google Doc.
3. Understandably, 17million is not a lot these days so you need to start earning money. But consider almost everyone will already have away of processing docs. I would find it hard to pay for something I have already paid to do. And does far much more work for me. You need people to start geting used to you and your pricing will limit adoption
The above is my feedback. I am sure you must have thought of it and more. I wish you all the best.
What's a DropBox document? I have Word documents in my Dropbox, PDFS, photos, spreadsheets. I don't have Dropbox documents.
Sorry for the confusion and the one billion typos. I was typing on a mobile first thing this morning.
RE: your second point #1: Box is doing exactly what you suggested. they hired the creator of Google doc (Sam Schillace) and created a lightweight box document editor.
Bret founded Google Maps and FriendFeed. Then he was CTO of Facebook for 3 years.
So this should be interesting.
>>Ryan's resume intimidates small children and household pets. After co-founding Google App Engine with Kevin, Jon, and Bret, Ryan boarded his hot air balloon and ascended to low earth orbit. He then won a Nobel peace prize, seven Olympic medals (all bronze), three Oscars, and the jackpot at Caesar's Palace. Since landing, he's cured cancer, penned the sequel to Ulysses, and achieved nirvana. That was on Tuesday.
They've evidently already raised $15 million as well. This should be really interesting.
However, this says nothing of compatibility with existing docs. What if I have a ton of content trapped in .docx? What about Tables in docs? Are they supported?
How do you send a document to a non-Quipper? Does it PDF? Export to ODF? DOCX?
Or are we to expect an email "Hey, I sent you this awesome document! All you need to do to open it is install this app and reate an account!" type of spreading?
Finally, while the UI is definitely beautiful, the collaboration part looks like it suffers from Facebook's one-scrollable-column...
Ill definitely give it a try - but if the app is just a vertical data-silo into which my content is trapped... then I don't see it being very useful for me. Looks nice - lets hope its useful.
EDIT: I am really interested in the UX of creating a nice looking document without a mouse! The speed with which I can type and navigate on any phone or tablet is fractions of that of my desktop... I guess some people like producing on a phone/tablet - I personally HATE it - so I'd love to hear how people deal with it on this...
For example, there is no Search function for text on my iOS devices. They'd better implement search and replace. Highlighting SUCKS on any touch based device as well...
I am wondering if these UX issues are overcome by well built software?
Basically I see phones and tablets as almost exclusively data/content CONSUMPTION devices - not because of size or form - but of the HID/Input.
We also support "high fidelity" copy and paste, i.e., if you paste a doc from Quip into Word or similar products, it preserves all the formatting correctly. Not awesome and we will improve in subsequent updates, but it actually does most of what you'd need in the meantime.
You had a "page" which was actually just a backdrop on top of which your content object hovered - and you had very very fine control.
If you have the ability to treat each piece of content as a discrete object - and move, size and shape them precisely - that would be fantastic.
"[Product] is a [app category] that enables you to create beautiful [output]."
Everything's about "enabling the creation of beautiful" XYZ. Nothing against these guys in particular, I just happened to notice it while reading the site, and am thinking back to the N other new product announcements I've seen here recently.
Then, format? Open, closed? Are we again proposing creating documents on proprietary formats after all the issues we saw with .doc and friends?
An word processor that is more rooted in the digital age have a fair shot if executed correctly.
On top of that, I am doing my case here for "business use". If you are targeting business, you have to look at Power Point, not MS Word. Most of the business rules, presentations, information, are in a .ppt. Guess why. People like graphs and images to convey information, they prefer 1 line of text and 1 image instead than a dense paragraph.
And the good thing is that there is something super tested that is already great at that... the browser! Also, html, css and friends are a good open, tested, vetted, format! Why do we keep reinventing the wheel? Why don't look at making great use of web technologies?
What you want is a good alternative to Power Point, with presentations that run into a browser and that can be easily saved as a .pdf. That's it. That's a great product.
I signup: email, name, password. Sends me a confirmation email. I click on confirmation link. Sends me again to the same signup page, only this time the fields are completed. The only available next step is to click on "Next" again, and the email verification is sent again, sending me to the same completed fields page...
It happens on both web and iOS. I guess I'll have to stick with Google Docs and Pages.
With my iPad handy, if I have a robust word processor I would write it down.
Plus, it's much more convenient to walk around (even the house) with your iPad vs your laptop - well, for me anyway.
Having said that I can't help but think how strange it is that the launch of another word processor is novel enough to reach the front page of HN.
I understand that the co-founders are big names in the valley but a word processor? Perhaps I'm missing something but the technology here seems anything but front page worthy.
I'm getting pretty tired of these "how does this belong on HN" posts. Face it, most things in computer science have been invented before. The interesting thing is how well a product has been executed. Should we not have linked to the announcement of Facebook or Dropbox when they were announced, just because social networks and file syncing products were around before them?
It'll be hard to convince me that in only 400 years of its existence we've managed to exhaust the majority of our capacity to expand computer science.
Minor nit aside, the diffs do seem very helpful to the folks who pass around Word docs and such. I guess either technology or the tech world has only now caught up to this need with things like this and Draft.
Without dropping the notion of a 'document' altogether I can't really think of a better way to convey a 'group of documents' than a folder. I feel like these metaphors aren't going away anytime soon. What would be better, do they need to be more abstract so as to not be skeuomorphic? A 'group', a 'set'? Having a single long list of documents and tagging them could work, but I've always felt a large proportion of users prefer actual 'folders' to tags, (probably why Gmail offers both).
I was really impressed with the UI. And it synced between my iPad and Chrome desktop very nicely. Look forward to playing with this more.
If someone were to have a mightier-than-thou attitude when giving the feedback, then maybe that would throw me, but I would more likely get annoyed because feedback from people like that tend to be redundant or just complete shit.
Congratulations Bret and team!
When I read about 'tablets' and 'interaction' and saw the screenshot of how interfaces haven't changed much, I got rather excited about the idea of a word processor that truly tried to change the way we 'process words' on touch devices.
Instead, it seems you've mostly focused on the stuff surrounding word processing. Which is a noble goal, but not what I was hoping/wishing for.
I'd like to see someone reinvent the word processor, or update it for touch interfaces. In the same way that the mouse greatly changed the way we work on 'normal' computers, surely touch should give us similar new advantages.
I've been following a number of projects that try to do this, but they are hyper-focused on just that text-input part. I'd love to see the best ideas from those experiments find their way into Quip.
(This is just a general observation, not an attack on Quip. I can understand that you have chosen a specific focus that doesn't happen to be what I care about.)
Having offline mobile is "nice" but not totally necessary for my use case, mostly because the number of people I know who car write decent sentences on their mobile devices are few.
Perhaps in the beginning somebody could be fooled that if you like awesome Apple products your product will be awesome as well. Or that because iThingies near perfection your service is also going to be highly polished. Obviously, that is more often false than true - you're a damn startup and the products on the screenshots are sometimes little more than MVPs (not in this case, I guess).
What is wrong with just a screenshot?
And despite my rant, I'm not sure if there's a solution to this. You need customers to understand how you're asking them to change, and without reference to the old terminology this is damn near impossible.
Someday, someone will build something where "documents" may look like little blocks, with little indicators on them as to which data-streams they connect to live and how much social activity is happening about them - their popularity, their rated completeness, how many links to that info, security level, capabilities etc.
Take the whole idea of an entire stack and call it a "document" when you open it - it may contain whole DBs, connect to N other things and be able to produce X based on Y input from you or others. They may be intelligent enough to know to ask you to input a certain set of content before they can move onto the next phase of becoming complete, even with training information inside telling you how to enter into them the info they need to realize completeness.
Compressed abstraction and virtualization into a single finite functional datablock that can be moved sent secured monitored etc... just as much as any other stack/cluster....
/daydream...
As an aside, I typically use word processors in "Web Layout" (as MS Word calls it) mode until I get to the point where I'm starting to think about print layout. Only then do I switch to "Print Layout".
Maybe quip works out, maybe it doesn't, maybe it's just giving these guys and gals something to do for the next year or two... and that's just fine. Not every product has to shake the foundations of society and life as we know it.
"Information that we collect from our users, including PII, is considered to be a business asset. As a result, if we go out of business or enter bankruptcy or if we are acquired as a result of a transaction such as a merger, acquisition or asset sale, your PII may be disclosed or transferred to the third-party acquirer in connection with the transaction."
Honest.
My workflow is almost always, open the app, start typing, then ask myself "i'd like to add a picture here". Now, on desktop that's simply a matter of clicking "import image" and browse my hard drive to find the picture. It's a pull workflow.
What's the worflow for that on an iPad ? Android has file managers, but iOS definitely needs something more convenient than "export this image to".
EDIT : and that could be really easy to do from an API / UI perspective : just create a system UIViewController like mail composer, that present the list of apps (or app groups), and let me pick files that the apps put in their "shared" folder (read only).
Just a couple of feedback and a suggestion for a feature
1. when editing a document, the left arrow works as opposite as one would expect: instead of sending the editing fullscreen, it brings the toolbar in foreground. In this case I would put a right arrow.
2. I would put the graphics/table menu together with the paragraph/heading/list
As a LaTeX user (and as a editor of many BS/MS thesis of non-technical friends) I have always thought that defining the structure of a long document before starting to write was fundamental. Therefore I would love a WYSIWYG editor that forces (or at least guides) users to define the structure of the document before and in a different place than where they write the content.
Quip seems closed, no links to Google Drive or Box that I could see, but they include private links to hosted document storage and PDF export. It's like the Asana[1] in that way, but Quip has a solid focus on documents not tasks.
Some strange UI artifacts on my iPhone 4s iOS7b4, text insertion didn't work; wonder if this is due to a proprietary attributed uitextview?
Annoyingly, all your images are loaded first (and judging from the load times, they're not that small).
I'm personally not a tablet-typer and connecting a BT keyboard to an iPad with a case is basically a laptop, so I'd rather just use an Air (wouldn't you?)
Quip looks nice, but from reading this thread, their and playing with the app myself I have a few observations. After all, this is a thread where we come to comment, so why not throw five minutes of my life into some writing, using my BT keyboard, on a big heavy iMac.
First, saying that there is "barely a laptop in sight [in the Bay Area]" is just rubbish - there are _plenty_ of laptops in and around the Bay Area, the Valley, Southern California, California, the United States, the world. Startups - your users are not all in San Francisco. It's like Tim Cook saying "there are no Android phones at BJ's Grill."
I appreciate the forward thinking of this app in a very "post-PC" era kind of way, but showing a screen of MacWrite from 1984 in the app page is just ridiculous - there have been _plenty_ of great mobile-based word processing applications in the past few years, in case you have not noticed. From Pages to IAWriter to Textilus to Evernote, the list goes one. Saying the "software that we use to get work done has not evolved over the past thirty years" is just utter nonsense. It has evolved, quite a bit. As much as I don't want to praise Microsoft, they've been improving Word (sure, Office for iOS is terrible) slowly but surely over the years. It's a solid WP and you give credit where credit is due.
With regards to this application, the "thread approach" to document sharing and collaboration is an interesting notion. That is if you share a lot of documents with other social-based users a la FB style, but I highly doubt you're going to see attorneys redlining agreements in a feed - although it would be nice to see people chatting regarding a document, pitch, brief, agreement in real-time - but hey, world doesn't work that way (especially at $500 an hour). I don't think a lot of users "enjoy" word processing. We do it do get work done!
Editing document also appears to be a little strange (although I don't have anyone to collaborate with yet) but the concept of including "documents edits" in the activity feed makes no sense really. WP's such as Word (and WordPerfect in the past) have always been known for a rich set of features, tools for various professionals, the people who use WP's all the time. Formatting options, graphics, tables, charts, margins, etc. These are all very important features for the bulk of users. So while I understand the product and the "modern word processor" buzzword, it's important to define what a "modern word processor" is/should be and how you're going to get the majority of the world (95%) or a small chunk (<10%) to shift away from Word and to this modern design.
I get it - it's a social thing, the buzzwords are there, the skeuomorphism is flowing with the manila folders, but Word Processors have in inherent attribute that is tough to rewrite with graphics and sharing and @mentions: it's functionality. And that's all the matters.
Best of luck to you guys.
Edit: I wanted to add that it's important to test, use, and discuss [new] applications with an open mind. This is their first release, so things will undoubtedly improve, user feedback is so important to a new startup/product. Your users are everything - and certainly those outside of SFO (sorry had to). I think Quip can learn a lot from comments here on HN, no matter how long you work on a product and polishes the edges, it takes someone from the outside looking in to really give you some great direction at times.
Yeup, exactly. And now that 10 Hour 11" Airs will be coming....
But from the landing page this looks / feels drastically different from any word processing / document creation tool I've used in the past.
It might be interesting to test a variant that starts with a screenshot that centers visitors around what this has in common with today's word processor, and then hammers home the "awesome" part after that.
After looking at it briefly I came up with these points:
- I'd like to have an easy integration of multiple accounts, like a 'combined inbox', so that I can use quip for private and professional purposes at the same time
- For the desktop I'd like to have an app instead of editing text in the browser.
EDIT:
- In order to make a really great product, add LaTeX support, esp. for maths
Confluence has seemlessly replaced Word in the company.
The "share" workflow is pervasive in a corporate communication tool, and the rich text editor makes it possible to build bigger, richer documents. The reason word processors per se are being side kicked is they're only useful to layout a letter.
After playing with it, the product is much more than just a simple word processor. It's really well designed, especially considering how complex some of the ideas it tackles are.
Excited to see how things play out.
I wonder, though, whether it is a good idea to sell the product as this completely disruptive rethink of word processing as we know it. The "What Quip does differently" section certainly doesn't make it clear to me what that revolutionary difference is suppsed to be.
Literally the first paragraph on the linked page.
EDIT: I figured it out. I had to paste a URL in and then type over the hyperlink. That's far from intuitive. It's too bad, because it mars what appears to be an interesting product.
Screenshot of the Introduction to Quip PDF: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14308170/quip.png
Also, every time I open the app (on the web), I am asked to link facebook or twitter for a profile picture. I'm happy to upload a profile picture, but I'm very upset about being constantly pestered to link social accounts!
Basically, google doc for mobile. That's not a bad idea seeing how google are closing products that people love.
I think writing documents, or doing any kind of work for that matter, on an iPad with external keyboard looks ridiculous.
That's why Apple still takes PR very seriously even though the media are going to cover all of their product launches anyway.
1) Enter foobar@hotmail.com and try to sign up.
2) The form will now ask you for your name and password. Fix your email address and sign up.
(edit: first impression = google docs for mac users)
I'm amazing that anyone would enter the word processing space when we already have dominant players with years of experience doing the same.
I'm sticking to Google Drive. I don't see any advantage of Quip and like that google drive has many other features beyond Quip.
Are you using any open frameworks/tools to emulate the iOS interface & animations, or is it all homegrown? Will you be updating the UI when Apple releases iOS 7 (and your UI suddenly looks out of place)?