>>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.
Nice subtle "Professional" marketing with the Quip Business screenshot for the desktop NOT being on a Macbook. :)
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.
One of the best word processing docs I have ever used was Page Maker 5.0... Everything you put into it was treated as an object. Tec: Object box. And they were extremely precisely controllable. None of the god-damned app trying to auto snap/move your stuff around.
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.
Then you might like Office Publisher. But this seems like an entirely different use case. In this case, writing/editing/collaborating is the primary purpose, and formatting and style is only there for those purposes. This is not a design tool - this is a writing tool. When I'm writing, all I want to have to do is write (I might want to do some basic formatting, but that's still within that purview). I don't want to design the document; I want to write it. It seems that this is the main purpose of Quip, as it is the main purpose of Word (despite that application being bloated and horrifically misused by many).
We support external keyboards and keyboard covers for tablets, both of which are a big step up over screen keyboards. Works really well - I actually have grown to really love it.
Perhaps not for everyday use, but I have been in situations when I am away from my PC and don't have my macbook near me that I got inspiration for a blog post or something.
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.
No rep needed if all they want is coverage. If they want to craft the message, they still need PR. The job just changes from selling the story to getting the right people to cover it in the right way.
That's why Apple still takes PR very seriously even though the media are going to cover all of their product launches anyway.
Is it just me, or are a lot of startups borrowing each other's value props? It's like a Mad Lib that everyone just fills in:
"[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.
Well, it's pretty well known that using "beautiful" in your headline makes for a weak value prop, but it's also a hard concept to argue with. No one wants to make an ugly anything.
It helps to be the ex-CTO of FB when raising $15M for an app with not that many users. But best of luck to these guys if the product is good (haven't tried it yet, not much of an iPad typist)
> Today, we are extremely excited to launch Quip. Quip is a modern word processor that enables you to create beautiful documents on any device — phones, tablets and the desktop. If you haven't already, download Quip to try it out.
Interesting though this sounds, I get irritated whenever I read about someone changing the existing paradigms of [insert topic here], and then continuing to use all the existing metaphors from the existing paradigms, e.g.; 'desktop', 'inbox', etc.
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.
Honestly, this wont change until we drop the skeuomorphing of paper...
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....
It's not a skeuomorphism. Some people actually print out these word processing documents onto actual paper, so they need to be able to see what the document will look like on paper before they print it.
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".
Nice. Seems very similar in focus to other document based collaboration services, perhaps most notably these folks: http://www.collaborate.com/
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?
The messaging challenge Quip is going to have is that they have to call themselves a "modern word processor" so we have context to understand what it is.
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.
The danger in building a product like this is that you can try to be everything to everyone and end up being nothing to anyone. They've combatted this by positioning it as a simple word processor.
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.
This looks great and I'm hopeful that it will do well.
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.
It's a novel way of implementing a word processor and from the screenshots looks like a good start.
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?
Good because I'm not trying to convince you of that. If you only want to read about novel research, please go read computer science journals instead of complaining on Hacker News when new startup launches get coverage.
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.
Totally agreed -- I'm skipping it for now. "View my contacts" would have been one thing, but "manage"? Be nice if one could try the tool and invite friends later.
Why not offer a $1.99 version without having to create an account. Everything these days is "create an account", "allow access to contacts", "sync with FB" - gets annoying.
Okay, I tried it based on this. Ideally one could opt into this step, but I think if it either said 1) "view your contacts" or 2) you simply wrote "We never change your contacts or save them on our servers" or similar -- that'd do it, I think.
BTW, once in, I really like it! Simple, elegant, but not too simple (e.g., it supports basic tables).
I don't get why a word-processing app (which is mainly what Quip wants to do, if I got that right) would need my email address as a _base_ feature. If collaboration and sharing and social and the like (the last one of which is a huge red flag for me) are an _optional_ feature of a word processor, thats fine. But as a basic requirement for usage? I'd rather not have that.
Sadly, I think this suffers from one of Facebooks greatest and worst issues: "WHO WOULDN'T WANT TO SHARE THIS, NOW!!!"
>"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.
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!!
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.
Sadly, I think this suffers from one of Facebooks greatest and worst issues: "WHO WOULDN'T WANT TO SHARE THIS, NOW!!!"
>"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.
Definitely "not for my mom" product, at least not yet. I logged on using my Google account and it needed permission to manage my contacts and among other things! Why a word processor needs to manage my contacts? Interface on desktop Chrome is filled with undiscoverability issues like Windows 8 UX. For example, it took me forever to figure out that there was a "+" sign on the bottom right to start creating new doc. That was in fact only way to create new doc. I still can't figure out where is the button for making text bold or italics. After few minutes I gave up trying to figuring out how to change font.
Criticizes word processors as being from another era with old concepts. Then goes on to show a skeuomorphic interface based on even more elderly analogies, such as "desktop" and "folders."
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.
>> Criticizes word processors as being from another era with old concepts. Then goes on to show a skeuomorphic interface based on even more elderly analogies, such as "desktop" and "folders."
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.
Great tool which solves several practical problems. Especially I like the ability to edit documents offline.
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
Maybe I should expand about why LaTeX is so important to me. I use it as my main text processor, not only because it produces nice maths. It allows to abstractly structure a document (e.g. by defining environments that give meaning to a paragraph, like summary, conclusion, proposal etc), it allows you to define new commands (like functions), variables, conditionals and much more. For me, LaTeX is something in between writing and programming, where content is strictly separated from the layout. That's why I especially like to use it for any creative activity, where a lot of ideas are floating around, which can not (yet) be forced into a consistent document. And alone the possibility to add comments in the source is indispensable.
Meh, MS Word is a horrible piece of software, but it does its job, how is this different? Collaboration? Good luck convincing the business world only with that, they have been emailing files for 20 years and they have been reading paper for over a century. Really, good luck.
Then, format? Open, closed? Are we again proposing creating documents on proprietary formats after all the issues we saw with .doc and friends?
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.
how is this wildly different than evernote? is it support of multiple types of documents (spreadsheets etc)? i was looking at the bullets under "what quip does differently", and i feel like evernote addresses all of those things. what am i missing?
I don't understand why do all (and I mean ALL) screenshots have to be on an Apple device? Are you selling iPads or iPhones? Shouldn't your focus be on your product and not on Apple's product?
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).
That's just what I thought, looks more like an Apple product page. I'm also surprised that there is no single desktop screenshot. Maybe I'm getting old, but that's where all my word processing happens, not on tiny touch screens.
163 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 254 ms ] threadBret 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.
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.
Basically, google doc for mobile. That's not a bad idea seeing how google are closing products that people love.
That's why Apple still takes PR very seriously even though the media are going to cover all of their product launches anyway.
"[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.
Literally the first paragraph on the linked page.
Congratulations Bret and team!
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".
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?
[1] http://asana.com/product
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 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.
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.
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.
>"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.
There's absolutely no need for it in a word processor, this social stuff can't die fast enough imho.
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.
I think writing documents, or doing any kind of work for that matter, on an iPad with external keyboard looks ridiculous.
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
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.
Screenshot of the Introduction to Quip PDF: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14308170/quip.png
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?