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Chintan Ghate

Origin - Typewriter styled, minimalistic writing app for Mac

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Origin is an app for writers & content creators. Its a write only app, editing is constrained. Its designed to work exactly like a typewriter to improve focus, & avoid getting stuck / overthink on mistakes. Its main purpose is to get you from an idea to the rough draft as fast as possible

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Danny Feinberg
Hey Chintan, thought this was a cool idea and gave it a shot. Love the super simple approach, but was disappointed to find that the writing I had just done was locked (essentially held hostage) after 250 characters unless I bought the app :( This created a frustrating user experience and wasn't nearly enough time to gauge whether it would be valuable or not. I'd recommend a set free trial period, such as a week, to give people a chance to use it in full a couple times.
Chintan Ghate
Maker
@dfeinberg5 250 characters? The app gives you freedom to write upto 250 words of content, & highlights the lock once you reach the limit. The lock only signifes that you can't add content. But you can still save everything you have written. The app will not hold you from saving what you have already written.
Danny Feinberg
@chintanghate hmm, that's odd. Perhaps it was just user error 😃 but regardless I think it's worth considering a slightly different approach. Thanks for your swift reply!
Chintan Ghate
Maker
@dfeinberg5 I considered the free-trial model as you suggested. But that is allowed only in the new subscription model introduced by Apple, which would need users paying some amount each year to continue using the app. That seemed like a bad business model for such a minimal app, so had to let that go. But to make the presence of inApp purchase for removing word limit clearer, I have snapshot of it on the appStore page. Whenever you start the app, and you haven't purchased the inApp product to remove word limit, you'll see a lock on the bottom-left corner of the app, & it gets highlighted when the user reaches the word limit. I hope there is no issue with the autolayout that is preventing the lock from displaying. Can you please check & let me know? Thanks!
Chintan Ghate
Maker
@dfeinberg5 Forgot to mention this. The 250 words limit is a limit PER DOCUMENT. You can try out the app with as many documents as you like, as far as they are less than 250 words long.
Hardik Sojitra
Just tried the app. Finally, i can feel, how it was like to live in the type writer era. Loved the minimalism of app. :)
Sebastiaan de With
Seems very much based on iA writer, down to the very similar icon?
Chintan Ghate
Maker
@sdw It might seem so from screenshots, but I can assure you functionally it is nothing similar to iA writer. :) And the icon contains a cursor similar to iA writer, but you can see its zoomed in version, & the idea behind the icon on the app site - http://origin.star-lord.me. Let me know what you think.
Chintan Ghate
Maker
Hi Product Hunters, Origin is an app for writers & content creators. Its strictly a write only app, no editing allowed. Its designed to work exactly like a typewriter to improve focus, & avoid getting stuck / overthink on mistakes. Its main purpose is to get you from an idea to the rough draft as fast as possible. Looking forward to hear your thoughts on Origin.