If you have an iPad, Apple’s excellent tablet version of its word processor costs just £6.99. And Byword, a seductively beautiful word program for Apple Macs, is the same price.
Byword’s boon is that it strips out the bells and whistles, keeping the work space uncluttered to make it easy for writers to put words down even when using an iPad or an iPhone.
An ideal authoring app for those that need both plain text writing functionality and markdown facilities.
I prefer Byword by far. It handles Markdown editing and previewing very well, and the experience is so good that I've used it for all of my work today. I can write in Byword, and thanks to the Markdown support in the Squarespace iOS app, I can publish right from my iPad. It feels like the future, and I love it when the future happens.
I've supported Byword for a long time now. I feel it is the best Markdown editing application out there. I write all of my posts in it and some of my short- to medium-form writing (long form is still Scrivener). When I saw that they released an iOS version yesterday, I posted it about it here, then downloaded it and started messing around.
Either way, it’s great to know that when I’m away from my Mac, my preferred writing environment is right in my pocket, if and when I need it. With Byword, I can definitely see myself starting articles on the go, when the mood strikes
at its heart Byword is just a very good and very easy to use text editor. Right now you can get it for $3, rising to $5 in the near future. I would use this all the time if somebody, please, anybody would turn on Markdown support at Cult of Mac.
✭ 50% OFF FOR A LIMITED TIME — ENHANCED FOR THE NEW IPAD ✭Byword provides an amazing environment to write Markdown on your iPhone and iPad, and have your documents seamlessly synced between all your iPhone, iPad and Mac devices using iCloud or Dropbox.
✔ iCloud and Dropbox syncing
Byword brings safe and seamless document syncing across all your Mac and iOS devices using the best technologies available: iCloud and Dropbox. Using iCloud, all your document are instantly available in other devices. With Dropbox, choose a new or an existing folder you want to begin and your documents will be there safe and available seamlessy on multiple platforms.
✔ Markdown smart editing
Most Markdown editing features you love on the Mac are now available on Byword iOS: List continuations, easy conversion between bullet and numbered lists, selection auto-wrapping for parenthesis, brackets, quotes and asterisks.
✔ Keyboard accessories
A swipable row above the keyboard, includes selective word and character counters, a tab key, smart pairing characters, an undo key, all-directions text navigation and Markdown helpers for creating headings, links, images and lists.
Includes TextExpander integration.
✔ Exporting and printing directly from Byword
With Byword for iOS you can export Markdown documents to HTML and save them to iCloud, Dropbox or to iTunes documents. Using AirPrint, printing beautiful rich documents is a breeze.
✔ Composing a blog post
If you have a blog that accepts HTML input, Byword has a Copy HTML feature that is perfect for you. You can now draft an entire blog post in Byword using plain text and Markdown syntax, then copy the HTML and paste into your blog platform. Say goodbye to your clunky web-based composer interface.
✔ Composing an email
Byword works great as an email composer. Using Markdown you can compose an entire email then send it in rich text format or as an attachment to anyone.
⚠ Important note
Byword for iOS only works with plain text formats. Supported file extensions are: txt, text, md, mmd, markdown, markdn, mdown, mkdn, markd and fountain.
✔ Great Support
We are proud to provide a super friendly personal customer support. If you need help and/or have suggestions, please contact us using the mediums below.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/bywordapp
Email: byword@metaclassy.com
Web: http://bywordapp.com
Review
Byword for iPhone and iPadBy Kirk McElhearn
April 19, 2012 09:34 AM ET
Macworld - I recently reviewed the Mac OS X version of Byword, and developer Metaclassy has since released an iOS counterpart. With the same basic concept-providing a simple, minimal text and Markdown editor-the iOS version of Byword offers some unique features.
The iOS and Mac OS X versions work together via iCloud document syncing, and the iOS iteration of Byword also supports Dropbox. So even if you don't use Byword on your Mac, you can access documents with the iOS app on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
Byword for iOS cannot replicate the quick formatting "popover" that the desktop application has, using an interesting approach on iOS: The developer calls this "a swipeable row above the keyboard." This three-section row of buttons lets you quickly apply Markdown formatting and paired characters (such as pairs of quotes or brackets), and it even has arrow keys, something the iOS keyboard desperately needs, so you can navigate in your text documents. (On the iPhone, there's also an undo key in this bar.) One section of this row displays word and character counts; you tap to change from words to characters to words/characters; it would make more sense to just display both, rather than having to tap to change.
The app offers a number of ways to export text. You can export to HTML, converting Markdown formatting to the appropriate HTML. You can export via e-mail, sending your text as rich text, plain text or as an attachment. And you can copy the HTML converted from your Markdown formatting to paste into, say, a blog posting interface. You can also print if you have a printer that supports AirPrint.
Byword for iOS is limited in the fonts available, offering only four choices. In addition, you can't change the font size at all; this is a big limitation for me, as none of the fonts suit me, and I would like to be able to choose a different size. Many iOS text editors offer these choices, and Byword's approach seems a bit limiting.
It's important to note that Byword for iOS cannot open RTF files you create with the desktop version of the program, so if you do use Byword on Mac OS X and create RTF files, you'll need to either convert them to plain text or choose another iOS text editor.
Byword for iOS offers some very useful features, notably the quick formatting options and arrow keys on its "swipeable row." Its font limitations may be problematic to some, but the ability to sync with both iCloud and Dropbox makes it a versatile iOS text editor for anyone who works with text or Markdown files.
Senior contributor Kirk McElhearn writes about more than just Macs on his blog Kirkville. Kirk is the author of Take Control of Scrivener 2.
por Pedro Tez em 19/04/2012
O iPhone não é, de longe, o melhor dispositivo para escrever por longos períodos de tempo. Nenhum telemóvel é.
Já no caso do iPad a coisa muda de figura.Para muita gente – escritores, bloggers, estudantes – o iPad tornou-se a principal plataforma de escrita mas o bloco de notas não é a melhor coisa para escrever. Afinal, é um equipamento bem mais portátil, com melhor autonomia e de mais fácil utilização do que a maioria dos netbooks.
Então, o que vamos utilizar para substituir o bloco de notas, tanto virtual como no velhinho papel?A melhor solução estava mesmo ao virar da esquina, em Coimbra, e chega-nos pela mão da rapaziada da Metaclassy e chama-se Byword.
Trata-se de uma aplicação Universal de texto simples com suporte Markup, sem distrações, permitindo que o utilizador se concentre no que está a escrever e apenas no que está a escrever. Claro que o utilizador, quando está a utilizar o seu iDispositivo, já está apenas concentrado no que está a fazer no momento mas, note-se, esta aplicação também está disponível para Mac.Interface
Existem outras aplicações para Mac que fazem o mesmo mas faltam-lhes sempre algo ou, pior, têm algo a mais.
Byword está, basicamente, no ponto de equilíbrio. Não tem grandes configurações como imagens de fundo, esquemas de cor, etc., mas também não lhe falta nada, permitindo que o utilizador configure o seu ambiente de trabalho o mais possível sem que se torne numa distração.
Fundo escuro ou claro, tipo de letra, largura de texto e estamos prontos a trabalhar.Funcionalidade e Integração
Com a integração dos serviços iCloud e Dropbox, a mobilidade dos nossos trabalhos está, basicamente, assegurada sem problemas e por todas as plataformas que possamos imaginar.
Assim, terá o seu trabalho à mão a toda a hora e poderá retomá-lo em qualquer altura. Isto é ótimo para quem perde muito tempo em transportes públicos.Na versão iOS temos ainda uma grande vantagem em comparação com os outros processadores de texto: teclado adicional.
Uma pequena barra de atalhos com alguns caracteres adicionais e atalhos bem como um cursor para melhor se movimentar entre palavras.Valor
Existem, como já disse, outras opções para a mesma funcionalidade mas nenhuma é tão completa ou, quando é, teremos que gastar muito mais dinheiro.
Byword é, sem dúvida, a melhor app para escrita, a mais versátil e a mais barata tendo em conta o que oferece.
Por apenas 10,38€ (2,39€ para iOS e 7,99€ para OS X) estará pronto para trabalhar. A versão iOS poderia ser um pouco mais barata mas é perfeitamente aceitável.E quase me esquecia: quando contactados, demoraram 2h30m a responder (obrigado, Jorge Pedroso). Um fantástico tempo para os seus compradores. Já a concorrência nipónica, demorou 14 dias a responder.
Revisão
Interface:
★★★★★
Funcionalidade e Integração:
★★★★★
Valor:
★★★★½
Geral:
★★★★★
comprar via App Store para iOS
comprar via Mac App Store para OS X
Screenshots
smartphone
iCloud, iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, OS X, utilitários
sem comentários
I am forever searching for perfection with respect to a few different things: the perfect set of headphones, the perfect bag, and the perfect text editor. The pursuit has taken me close but has never sealed the deal. I am coming to terms with the fact that I will never find it. Rather than banging my head against the wall and draining my wallet in search of a bag that will do day-to-day and traveling with equal aplomb, I have embraced the notion of compartmentalization. Using a series of bags in various sizes and combinations to accomplishes my goals. I've also embraced that attitude when it comes to editors.
For my development needs, I have been happily using Sublime Text 2 for several months. Sublime is a a pretty full-featured solution for coding but when it comes to editing Markdown, my favorite blogging and documentation writing markup language, it leaves a bit to be desired. I had tried using ST2 alongside Brett Terpstra's, Marked App, which is an outstanding utility for viewing Markdown files, but it felt clumsy having to use two separate apps to write.
Enter Byword.
Byword is a self-described, "Simple text editor for Mac and iOS," which is accurate and to the point. The Mac client is very subdued. There is no chrome to be had in the main window, in fact, the only things visible apart from your words are the word and character counts, displayed faintly at the very bottom. And while they are turned on by default, they can easily be turned off with a keystroke.
Another big strength is the built-in Markdown preview. A quick ctrl + opt + p launches it, rendering Markdown for quick easy viewing. From the preview the contents can be copied as HTML to the clipboard, or exported to an HTML file.
Byword also boasts the ability to sync with either Dropbox or iCloud. At the time of this writing, I have only used it with iCloud, and while the iCould syncing on the iOS client is excellent, the Mac client leaves a little to be desired. In order to create a new iCloud document, the "Open from iCloud" window needs to be opened, exposing the "New Document" button. Once the window for the new document pops up, the only choice for saving is to save it to a document called "untitled." Then, the only way to rename the file is to open the "Open from iCloud" window, find the "untitled' document and edit the name as necessary. Hopefully this is an oversight that will be addressed in later versions.
The workaround I've been using is to save the document to the desktop which allows you to rename it as you save it, and then select "Move to iCloud" from the file menu which works as advertised, getting it off your Mac and into the cloud. It's an annoyance, but not a deal-breaker.
iCloud integration on the iOS client, however, is seamless. By default, new iCloud documents take their filename from the title of the document and can also be edited from within the document by clicking on the header. Another aspect that sets Byword apart from other Markdown-friendly iOS text editors is the subtle bar that sits atop the keyboard. By default, that bar displays the word and character count, but a quick swipe to the left reveals shortcuts to characters frequently used in Markdown. Rather than having to hit the shift key to access the extended keyboard, the shortcut bar reveals the asterisk, tab, and pound key, as well as self-closing parentheses and brackets. The only thing that I feel could be changed about the shortcut bar is that the hash and asterisk key belong on the same bar, rather than having to swipe twice to reach the hash.
Byword may not be the perfect text editor, I will likely never use it to write code, but it is as close to being the perfect Markdown editor I have encountered. Even if you never write a lick of Markdown, its a great to get words on the screen without all the extra chrome and baggage that comes with using a bloated word processing program.
Taking and sharing notes is a vital part of what many users will want to do on their (http://www.imore.com/ipad). We've already taken a look at the (http://www.imore.com/2012/03/19/noteshelf-remarks-notability-ipad-handwriting-app-shootout/), but what about the best typing and text editing notes app? Let's find out!
Every computer needs an office suite, and Microsoft’s Office can be rather pricey, especially if you have to install it on a bunch of PCs at the same time. Happily, there are budget alternatives.
If you have an iPad, Apple’s excellent tablet version of its word processor costs just £6.99. And Byword, a seductively beautiful word program for Apple Macs, is the same price.
Scrivener is a PC program. It’s a stunning and subtle tool for writers that does everything from storing the videos and research material that inspires you to checking your spelling. It costs £27.
But how about even cheaper? By which I mean free. That’s the price of LibreOffice, which has recently had a decent update that makes it much better than last year’s model. With any program like this, the first thing you need to check is compatibility: there’s no point in saving hundreds of pounds to find that nobody else can read your documents and spreadsheets.
LibreOffice does well, but not flawlessly: you’ll be able to read and be read, but your formatting may on occasion suffer some changes. Word processing is handled by Writer, which looks frankly humdrum and has some idiosyncrasies. Like the word count, which, as with last year’s version, is only visible when you call up a separate box to show how near you are to reaching the ideal length for that report.
Calc, the slightly queasily-titled spreadsheet also looks a little low-rent, but on sheets of figures this is more forgivable. There’s presentation, database and other programs in the suite and though none is poor, and all are amazing value, they’re not quite advanced enough to mask the sense of disappointment you feel when switching to this after Microsoft’s suite, or – for Apple users, the remarkable Keynote presentation program.
This is clearly the best LibreOffice yet, but it’s still hard to recommend it as a viable alternative to paid-for programs. It looks as low-rent as it is, and feels clunky and unpolished.
For word processing, try something like Scrivener instead – there is a learning curve to discover its unique features – to see if it suits. Or, if you use a Mac or an iPad for your writing, Byword is essential.
3 Stars
Free
Since the original iPad’s release, the device has come under fire from, frankly, died-in-the-wool PC fans, claiming it’s for consumption only. Anyone who’s used an iPad – or, for that matter, a capable smartphone or alternative tablet – knows that’s hogwash. Sure, few designers want to set fire to their PCs or Macs and go mobile-only, but when you are away from your set-up, the current generation of apps enables you to work while on the go. And when you’re surrounded by all your technology, the best apps can still inspire and prove useful. With the help of designers and developers, we unearth 20 of the best.
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1. Adobe Ideas
Price: £6.99/$9.99
Platform: iPhone/iPad/AndroidAdobe is widely known for its complex and weighty desktop applications, so it’s great to see the company innovating with user-friendly and straightforward mobile apps. Adobe Ideas in particular appears to be a common part of iOS and Android users’ toolkits, enabling designers to jot down quick ideas that can be later worked on in Illustrator or Photoshop. “It’s awesome for sketching, particularly the iPad version when you’ve got one of the Wacom capacitive-display-friendly pens,” says designer and writer Stephanie Rieger.
2. Adobe Shadow
Price: Free (during beta)
Platform: iPhone/iPad/AndroidAdobe Shadow seemed to spring from nowhere, but developers love it. The free software enables you to test a website on a Mac or PC and automatically have a number of connected devices mirror the site. “It really makes testing on mobile devices a lot faster,” enthuses frontend web developer Christian Oliff. “Just install the extension in Chrome and your iPad, iPhone and Android devices sync to whatever’s in the Chrome window.” Shadow is expected to be part of Adobe Creative Cloud.
3. Byword
Price: £1.99/$2.99
Platform: iPhone/iPadFor people in the industry who spend as much time crafting words as they do visuals or code, a decent writing tool is a must. Although many work with some variant of an office suite, plenty of simpler writing apps exist. Blogger, author and speaker Paul Boag is a big fan of Byword: “It’s a great app for writing blog posts, with a clean, uncluttered interface and Markdown support.” The app also boasts iCloud and Dropbox-sync across Mac, iPhone and iPad versions.
4. Dropbox
Price: Free (requires Dropbox account)
Platform: iPhone/iPad/Android/BlackBerryFile-sync/share service Dropbox was the second most popular app among the people we spoke to. Developer Andrew Dean calls it revolutionary, but says its potential is only being realised by a select few; he thinks the “next wave in creative and productive apps will be focused around services such as Dropbox”. But beyond being a foundation for other apps, Dropbox is useful for sharing files and bringing documents to the iOS ‘walled garden’. “I use it for transferring mock-ups to present to clients on my iPad,” says Oliff. Elemental director Tim Gibbon uses Dropbox similarly: “It allows me to share files with clients and quickly update devices simultaneously. It’s also compatible with iPad and Mac, so I can access everything everywhere and check files while on the move.”
5. Evernote
Price: Free (requires Evernote account)
Platform: iPhone/iPad/Android/BlackBerry/Windows Phone 7Digital scrapbook and archiving tool Evernote enables you to store all manner of files and thoughts, transporting your information “to the magical cloud of elephants”. With web designers often juggling ideas and inspiration, it’s no surprise this app was the most popular with those we spoke to. “It’s the only mobile app I extensively use,” claims developer Christopher Imrie, who finds it indispensable for organisation and note keeping. “I use it for client project notes, product development roadmaps or ideas, product support queries and meeting notes. For meetings, I use Evernote on my iPad; when on the go, I have the data on my iPhone; and at the office, it’s all there on my Mac.” Student and interaction designer Tash Wong also lives by the app: “I can take notes, jot down ideas, clip articles, and email links all to one place.”
6. Flipboard
Price: Free
Platform: iPhone/iPadFlipboard takes your favourite feeds and converts them into a digital magazine for iOS. Metakinetic lead designer Daniel Ruffle thinks it’s a great app: “With so many inspirational sites and feeds available, I find Flipboard perfect for collating everything into a manageable, well-presented app to read. Its newspaper-like presentation enables easy skimming, and you can rapidly exclude anything not of interest, but you can also drill down further when unearthing a gem.”
7. Harvest
Price: Free (requires Harvest subscription)
Platform: iPhone/AndroidOnline time-tracking and timesheet software Harvest is well-liked among freelance web designers, and so it follows that the company’s mobile apps are popular. But Harvest’s apps also showcase that you need more than a mere connection to a service – you need something that makes sense on mobile and that enables people to be more productive. Freelance web developer Stephen Fulljames elaborates: “Harvest’s mobile app focusses the UI on the most important tasks – recording time and expenses – and you can take receipt photos and sync them later. When buying train tickets, I can record them immediately, ie before I forget!”
8. iMockUps
Price: £4.99/$6.99
Platform: iPadPerhaps the biggest benefit of the iPad is a sense of focus: the device essentially becomes whatever is being run on it. This means no distractions, enabling you to quickly and efficiently get on with tasks. iMockups for iPad is, thinks UX designer Aral Balkan, “great for creating low-fidelity wireframes for designs”. The interface is a simple multitouch drag-and-drop affair, which enables you to concentrate on functionality, rather than visuals. Documents can be emailed in the app’s own format, or exported to PNG and BMML.
9. Instagram
Price: Free
Platform: iPhone/AndroidFilter-infused iOS photo-sharing app Instagram now has hundreds of millions of users and also arrived for Android in April 2012. Designer Tom Muller tells us it’s “not necessarily a tool used for production of work, but I use it heavily to facilitate broadcasting work-in-progress and other work-related imagery to Twitter and blogs”. Web strategist Jason Pamental reckons it’s his tool of choice for getting in daily creativity: “We can’t always be in love with every project, but I like to kickstart my day with challenging myself to find an interesting photo on my morning dog walks. I’ve been doing this since before Instagram came out, but it’s become something of a ‘thing’ in and of itself. I collect the photos on my own site and use it as an ‘inspiration gallery’.”
10. LiveView
Price: Free
Platform: iPhone/iPadIncreasingly, designers and developers are creating projects for mobile, but they’re not creating them on mobile devices. This produces a disconnect, because what you see on your computer’s display won’t necessarily equate to what you eventually see on a device. Web standards guru Oli Studholme recommends checking out LiveView, for “getting instant feedback on how things look when designing graphics for mobile apps and sites”.
11. Nebulous Notes
Price: £2.49/$3.99
Platform: iPhone/iPadEarlier, Dean raved about Dropbox being the foundation for a number of highly useful apps, and one of his favourites is Dropbox-centric text editor Nebulous Notes: “It offers Markdown previewing and customisable macro shortcuts, and you can edit files from any Dropbox folder, unlike many other apps, which tie you to just one. It also provides local file storage with synchronisation. It’s the closest thing to a Notational Velocity/nvALT in-your-pocket.” There’s also the option to change the app’s theme and full-screen support for the focus-obsessed.
12. Opera Mini
Price: Free
Platform: iPhone/iPad/Android/BlackBerry/Windows Mobile/SymbianThere have long been arguments about a WebKit monoculture developing on mobile, but as we’ve noted in the past, this isn’t accurate, and web designers and developers on both iPhone and Android could do a lot of good by downloading Opera Mini and testing sites in it. Senior usability engineer Adrian Roselli adds that, where possible, you should go further: “Install Opera Mobile, Firefox, and Dolphin for additional browser testing”.
13. Penultimate
Price: £0.69/$0.99
Platform: iPadDesigners like to scribble: notes, ideas, sketches, wireframes. They also like to collaborate, which isn’t terribly easy to do if your scrawls are on the back of random envelopes. This is where Penultimate comes in. “It’s my go-to app when I need to take notes or quickly sketch something,” says freelance web designer John Alex Jacob, adding that it’s easy to use, versatile, and has both Dropbox and Evernote support. Oliff adds that plenty of thought has gone into the interface: “It looks beautiful, with a large canvas, and there’s a selection of ‘papers’ with different textures and background patterns.”
14. Remember the Milk
Price: Free (requires Remember the Milk account; ‘pro’ is $25/year)
Platform: iPhone/iPad/Android/BlackBerry“I live religiously through Remember the Milk on iPhone,” says Econsultancy news editor Vikki Chowney. “The ability to create lists on-the-fly is invaluable for me, and it’s worth upgrading to ‘pro’ for the ability to sync whenever you like.” The straightforward to-do list manager also caught the eye of UX designer Mark Forscher, but mostly in app form: “I use the iOS version, and I actually prefer the app’s interface to the regular website.”
15. Sketchshare
Price: £2.49/$3.99
Platform: iPadAlthough we’ve already mentioned sketching apps, digital creative Michael Heald recommends taking a look at iPad app Sketchshare. “There are plenty of great sketching apps for mobile, but Sketchshare offers something different, in allowing you to share sketches in real-time with other iPad users,” he says. “In situations where a conference call isn’t getting the message across, you can sketch live. And because this is a true sharing tool, a client can draw on the sketch at the same time. It’s allowed me to get to a solution way faster than via chatting and a bout of email tennis.”
16. TeuxDeux
Price: £1.99/$2.99 (iPhone)/free (web)
Platform: iPhone/webThe bare-bones but visually compelling Teux Deux is another to-do app that’s popular with designers. It’s available for free on the web, and there’s also a commercial app for iOS. Student and interaction designer Allison Shaw is a big fan: “It’s dead simple – and therefore kind of hackable – but it also got a lot of usability details right: it’s dated so that you can be realistic about when things are going to happen; unfinished items automatically roll to the next day; and days don’t end until 4 am, meaning insomniacs like myself don’t feel bad for working late into the night!”
17. TED
Price: Free
Platform: iPhone/iPad/AndroidSome apps aren’t about building things, and are instead intended to inspire and get you thinking. TED talks are some of the finest brain food imaginable, and the app enables you to access a selection of talks and download them to your device for later playback. “It’s simply addictive,” says Gibbon. “TED brings plenty of content into a classy, simple app I can get lost in for hours. It’s great to flick through, browsing inspirational talks from a variety of interesting and talented people.”
18. Textastic
Price: £6.99/$9.99
Platform: iPadAlthough many people argue tablets are for productivity and not consumption, it’s also rare anyone creating websites advocates shifting from a desktop to an iPad, but Morgan Adams reckons Textastic makes such a notion seem surprisingly reasonable: “This text editor for iPad makes almost all my non-image work possible, even if my laptop isn’t with me. Textastic connects directly with FTP servers, Dropbox, and local storage for offline work. It’s a great code editor, with syntax colouring, search-and-replace, and a neat strip of extra programming character keys on the on-screen keyboard.”
19. What The Font
Price: Free
Platform: iPhone/AndroidWhen it works, WhatTheFont is like a little slice of magic. You snap a photo or send to it an image from your on-device images and the app attempts to figure out what font is shown within. Muller says it’s one of the few apps he uses when he’s at his office desk, because it works as a useful companion to his Mac: “It enables me to keep my main focus on whatever files I’m working on without having to flip back and forth between browser and file to check a font. It’s also very handy in restaurants to check menu fonts!”
20. Wunderlist
Price: Free
Platform: iPhone/iPad/Android/BlackBerry/webWunderlist is another task manager that’s snared designers with its ease of use and sleek UI. “It’s changed the way I keep myself organised,” says Flash game developer Iain Lobb. “I can keep a separate list for each project, put to-do items in order, and flag really important ones, meaning I do vital tasks first.” Designer and UX expert D Keith Robinson is also an admirer: “It’s a great service that works well on mobile, helping me stay organised as my back-up brain.”
What are your favourite mobile apps? How much work do you use tablets and smartphones for? Let us know in the comments.
For the lowdown on what designers are doing with their tablets, check out this best iPad apps article over at our sister site Creative Bloq.
Let's be real about this. You can't do everything on an iPad. As Shawn Blanc pointed out the other day, you can't make iOS apps on it, for example. But you might be surprised by how much real work you can do on it with the right tools. If your work requires generally office-like capabilities, there are definitely iPad solutions.
Here are five road-tested apps for getting things done on an iPad. It's not meant to be a complete list, but it's meant to be a flexible one. These are tools that are not tied to any particular method of working. They'll help any digital worker stay sane and accomplish things, and you might find that the iPad is a surprisingly nice device to use for them.
Paper - free
This app just came out last night, but it blows away other drawing apps out there because of its clear interface and relative ease of use. If you need to brainstorm in free-form ways or sketch out ideas, this is the way to go.
It's still not the most natural thing in the world to draw on a touchscreen, but this app's brushes are careful and precise. It comes with a free fountain pen, and you can buy more brushes for $1.99 via in-app purchase.
The key to Paper is its natural gestures. You swipe up from the bottom to access your tray of tools, and you can swipe them out of the way for a full-screen, blank canvas to work on.
Paper for the iPad from FiftyThree on Vimeo.
Undoing mistakes is a hard problem for iPad drawing, and Paper nails this. It uses a two-finger "rewind" gesture to let you step back smoothly in your drawing. Just wind it counter-clockwise to undo and clockwise to redo.
If drawing with fingertips still looks weird, there are styluses out there. I've ordered a Cosmonaut stylus by Studio Neat for testing, so look forward to that review if you think you might want a stylus for your iPad.
Byword - $2.99
Byword is a plain-text editor, which is the most flexible way to write. You never have to worry about which version of Microsoft Word the other person has or anything like that. It syncs with Dropbox or iCloud, so you can have access to your documents on any device. You can also export files by email or through the documents folder in iTunes. You can even print from it.
It has a nice custom keyboard that lets you move the cursor around with arrows, a very helpful addition to the iPad's keyboard. It barely has any preferences, which is a good thing. You can choose from a few simple fonts, and you can turn auto-correct and spell-check on and off. But otherwise it's just a place to write.
Byword is great just for notes or drafts, but you can also use Markdown to format your text and produce full-fledged documents. Markdown is simple, human-readable markup that converts easily to HTML. Byword does that conversion automatically. So you can put bold, italics, headers, links and images into your Byword documents, preview them and export them as HTML just by tapping a button.
OmniFocus - $39.99
OmniFocus is serious software (note the price tag). There are clients for the Mac and the iPhone as well, all of which are equally expensive for their categories. But it's an unscientific fact that OmniFocus geeks like the iPad client the best, and you don't need all three to get things done.
Many pixels have been spilt about the uses and benefits of OmniFocus, so I'll be brief. The great thing about OmniFocus is that you can manage every single one of your life's tasks in it. It is, in an extremely basic sense, a "to-do" app, but it's no mere checklist. It allows you to organize your tasks by project and context, so you can keep your chores and your work projects here without mixing them up.
A project might be something like "RWW posts," "Big report for my boss," "Books to read" or "Fixing the car." Contexts are "Work," "Home," "Grocery store" and so on. A task can have a project and a context, so the "Work" context might include several projects. Contexts can even be associated with places, so you can view your tasks on a map.
OmniFocus has a forecast view, so you can see all the various tasks you have coming up, as well as a review mode, so you can check your own progress. Yes, it's a pricey app, but I think of it as an investment in using it. If you invest your time in OmniFocus, it will pay you back in sanity and accomplishment.
MindNode - $9.99
This one is further down the list because it's not retina-ready yet, but it still works great on the new iPad.
MindNode is for "mind mapping," which is a way to outline projects or ideas using tree-like diagrams. You start with a central idea, and you draw branches to ideas that follow. You can color-code them and move them around as you work. It's great for brainstorming or planning with more freedom than a text outline but more structure than a blank page.
MindNote supports a variety of export options. You can save as MindNode or FreeMind mind map formats, as OPML data, as a text outline, as a PDF or as a PNG image. So you can use this app's particular style of outlining but still share it with anyone on your team.
Trello - free (iPhone app)
This is last on the list because it's not iPad-sized, but it actually looks and works surprisingly great on the iPad. Hopefully we'll be able to update this post soon with a full-sized iPad version.
Trello is collaboration software that is totally, completely free. In his extensive review yesterday, Joe Brockmeier said it's "as easy to use as a whiteboard and Post-It notes." That's a pretty helpful way of imagining what Trello does. Every member of the team gets a column, and that person's tasks are a stack of short notes.
You should read Joe's review for the full run-down. But if you work with a team, this is a great way to keep track of who's doing what. You can even use it by yourself for a nice, two-dimensional way of keeping track of a few projects at once.
It's best in the browser. You can get to it through Safari on the iPad, but it's a little too clunky and slow to be useful. But the free iPhone version does the trick on the iPad.
What other apps do you use to work from your iPad? Share them in the comments.
Background
When I discovered Byword for Mac I was an instant fan. The application did almost everything I wanted from a text editor at the time, and it was obvious the developers had put a lot of work and care into it. The attention given to even the smallest details was remarkable. I appreciate that. And so, I used Byword exclusively as my text editor on the Mac for a long time.
However, I found that I often started something in Byword on the Mac but didn't finish in one sitting. I wanted to be able to pick it up from the iPad and/or iPhone and continue writing whenever I was away from the Mac.
Back then, Byword for iOS didn't exist and few desktop applications had an iOS counterpart to sync with. iCloud was just a rumour. So, I saved Byword's text files in Dropbox and accessed them with multiple apps from the iPhone and iPad. I eventually settled on iA Writer for iPad.
That worked fairly well, although it wasn't an elegant solution. Then iA Writer became a universal app (iPhone/iPad) and added iCloud sync between Mac, iPhone and iPad. I purchased the Mac version and loved the sync, so I used this setup for a short while, but missed a few things from Byword.
Fortunately, Byword followed suit shortly after and launched their universal iOS app with iCloud support. It's amazing. I'm back to being a full on fan.
Byword for iPhone and iPad review
Byword on iOS is a beautiful app and a pleasure to write on. It's light grey background and dark grey text works well. It provides good contrast without trying the eyes.
The developers added an extra row to the iPhone and iPad keyboard in a very clever way. It's about half the size of the keys so it doesn't take up much space. You can swipe it left and right to get to 3 different views, one with word and character count, another two with Markdown shortcuts and navigation keys.
Markdown support
Byword for iOS is clever in the way it supports markdown. The additional row above the keyboard is a real time saver. One view gives you the main characters used in markdown (brackets, parenthesis, quotation marks, asterisk). Tap it once and the icon turns into the close state. The other view gives you shortcuts for headings, links, images, and lists. Tapping the link button types the full markdown syntax for links and puts the cursor inside the brackets ready for you to type the anchor text.
Another thing Byword has is markdown preview. I find this incredibly useful and it's one of the features iA writer doesn't have.
Sync
In Byword, you can sync documents via iCloud and Dropbox.
I find iCloud very good in real life use. It's fast and it has never failed. However, with Byword you have to choose either iCloud or Dropbox sync, you can't use both at the same time. I only use iCloud, so I don't mind this, but iA Writer does let you use both simultaneously.
Preferences
Byword gives you four font options only, and I'm glad they didn't add more. With too many options I tend to tinker with them instead of getting to work. This is one area iA Writer took to the limit with no options whatsoever. Granted, the font in iA Writer is beautiful.
You can choose between the common Helvetica and Georgia fonts, and also 2 relatively uncommon ones from the M Plus family, M+ C Type-1 and M+ M Type-1. I chose M+ C Type-1 and I love it. It looks particularly good in the iPhone's Retina display. I don't have a new iPad yet but I assume it looks just as good.
Byword also allows you to turn on or off autocapitalisation, autocorrection, spell check and text expander support.
Export options
This is where Byword shines and iA Writer falls down in my opinion. To get your writing out of iA Writer you can only email the plain text as attachment or text or copy/paste it into another apps.
With Byword for iOS, you can:
- Export to HTML: to iCloud or iTunes documents
- Export via email: as rich text, plain text, attachment (which exports an HTML attachment)
- Copy HTML: perfect for blog posting. I use this all the time.
What's missing from Byword for iPhone and iPad
There are a few things I hope they add to Byword for iPhone and iPad soon:
- Focus mode: It'd be useless in the iPhone because of the screen size, but I'd like it in the iPad. iA writer has it on iPad and it works well.
- Markdown visual representation while writing: the Mac version turns headings bold and it makes the markdown syntax elements light grey. This makes it very easy to read and I'd like to see it in iOS.
- Dark mode: When writing at night in the iPad, the dark mode would come in handy.
Summary
Both Byword and iA Writer are very good and it's a tough call choosing between them. It's mostly a subjective choice and both do the basics well (ie. markdown support, iCloud sync, clean writing environment, good fonts). I think the extra keyboard row in Byword is much better than the one in iA Writer. And if you need preview and specific export options, Byword is the winner.
Help kids learn a thing or two about nutrition with Smash Your Food HD, an app that lets users watch videos of various foods getting squashed, smashed and otherwise annihilated in order to learn what’s inside them. Following that is Byword, a clean and simple writing app that syncs with cloud services to make it easy to create and save documents from anywhere. Dots Ball, a vertical, scrolling, jumping game with a lot of elements, leads today’s gaming selection, followed by TrafficWonder HD, a line-drawing puzzler in which you’ll need to keep cars from crashing.
Smash Your Food HD puts an interesting spin on nutrition education. The app is meant to teach kids about the foods they eat, but instead of just showing figures and information, it allows kids to smash foods in the app’s interactive videos. By manipulating the machinery on-screen with touch controls, users can mash sodas, burgers, doughnuts and all kinds of other foods, in order to discover what’s inside.
Users start by picking a food and guessing how much sugar, salt and oil is to be found within it. The smashing reveals what’s actually in the food, allowing kids to see what’s good and what’s not so good for them to eat. Smash Your Food also includes personalized nutrition tips for kids and parents alike. All the smashed food uses real HD video – it all really did get smashed – and detailed sound effects so you can get the full sloppy experience as you smash things up.
Byword (iPhone, iPad) $2.99
Writing on-the-go can be tough with mobile devices for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the quality of the apps that allow users to take notes or create documents. Byword’s boon is that it strips out the bells and whistles, keeping the work space uncluttered to make it easy for writers to put words down even when using an iPad or an iPhone.
Byword automatically syncs your documents with iCloud and Dropbox to make sure you never lose what you’re working on, and allows you to export documents as HTML for blog posts or even print directly from the app. Byword can also be used for writing emails, and allows you to do lots of the same things you can do in other word processing programs, such as creating bulleted or numbered lists and editing them quickly and easily.
Dots Ball (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Vertical-scrolling jumping game Dots Ball uses a lot of the same rules and conventions as similar games in the iTunes App Store that lots of players have probably played by now. Tilt controls allow you to guide your character, a bouncing ball, around the screen with the aim to hit small dots to continue bouncing even higher. But a wealth of power-ups and different effects available to players makes Dots Ball a little more interesting than your run-of-the-mill jumping game.
The various dots you can land on in Dots Ball all have different properties, and your jumping is limited by a slowly depleting energy bar at the top of the screen that needs to be refilled periodically. You can’t just jump forever to see how high you’ll get, you actually have to pay close attention to where energy becomes available so you can grab it, and to know when to conserve energy and when to spend it to make bigger leaps.
Puzzler TrafficWonder HD provides you with roads and cars of various different colors, each with a matching destination. Your goal in each level of the game is to draw a line from each car to its destination, attempting to get them there using the amount of fuel you have allotted in each stage. The trouble is, the cars all run at the same time, and you’ll need to plan your routes in order to keep them from colliding.
TrafficWonder throws lots of different elements your way. Some cars are faster than others, for example, and you’ll need to divert traffic in order to avoid collisions. But you also want to save as much fuel as possible to keep your score high, and that means TrafficWonder is going to demand some brain power and probably a lot of trial and error.
Clutter-free writing spaces are important to regular writers or coders. For those with numerous Mac or iOS devices, it’s similarly important to be able to transfer documents between them easily and with little effort. So, we come to Byword, an app that promises a clean writing interface and the ability to sync via iCloud or Dropbox between iPhone, iPad and Mac. It does a decent job of it, too.
Using Byword is nearly as simple as it looks. Swipes form the basis of much of the control system. They control switching between documents and the all important editing features. On the iPhone, everything is clearly displayed despite the small screen space. The keyboard may take up half the space but there’s no other clutter in the way of the author’s train of thought, not until they choose to see more. A swipe above the keyboard opens up the editing options comprising of brackets, parenthesis, quotation marks and asterisk, all ideal for coding practices in particular.
For the writer, these editing options do omit one vital feature. There’s no button, such as in iAWriter to skip to the next word. Everything else, however, is spot on and ideal for entering either brief notes or extended copy. Functionality that allows for exporting to HTML or email is there, as well as the ability to print directly using AirPrint and a compatible printer. The “Copy HTML” feature will be of particular use to bloggers, as it produces HTML code based on the plain text and Markdown syntax provided.
iCloud and Dropbox functionality works well, making it near seamless to switch between iPhone, iPad and Mac. Using Byword via the iPad is easier on the eye with no need to concentrate on the small editing features, but otherwise both versions are effective.
The ability to adjust font size would have been convenient, especially on the iPhone’s small screen but otherwise Byword has all the bases covered.
While as primarily a writer, I’ll be sticking with iAWriter, when it comes to needing an app that does both plain text and markdown effectively, I’ll be strongly considering Byword. It straddles the two paths well, rarely missing out on any vital features. It’s an ideal jack of all trades.
Posted in: iPad Apps and Games, iPad Productivity, iPhone Apps and Games, Productivity, ReviewsTagged with: $2.99, Byword, coding, dropbox, icloud, markdown, Plain Text, Productivity, writing
Review disclosure: note that the product reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note that if the developer provides the product or not, this does not impact the review or score.
Posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2012 at 12:33 pm. PTWritten by Jim DalrympleShawn Blanc posted his thoughts on iA Writer and Byword. Ben Brooks wrote something about them yesterday as well, which was very humorous.
Personally, I prefer Elements. Quick, easy, uncluttered and uses Dropbox for storage.
Originally, I had hoped this piece would be a round-up of Retina-enabled productivity apps on Apple’s latest iPad, but the unpredictable nature of App Store updates, plus no responses to some feelers sent out over the weekend, have forced me to focus on Apple’s offerings. This is not a bad thing, since the lead time the iWork team had with the new SDK hopefully allowed them time to create a refined launch product.
So here are my impressions of how Apple’s own productivity apps, which have been optimized for the new iPad’s high-resolution display, fare on the new tablet:
Keynote
Even if Keynote is your least-used app of the iWork suite, if you give just a trivial amount of presentations it is easily the suite’s killer app for you. The ease of hooking your iPad up to a projector and pretty much eliminating the not-so-silent prayers that go along with marrying projectors and presentations is a gigantic stress reliever. When I started looking at the new Keynote app and opened up a few of my presentations I was overjoyed with how great even graphics not optimized for the Retina display look and how crisp and un-pixelated the text looked. Then I crashed back to earth when I realized unless I was hooking into a truly fantastic display — which most conference rooms don’t have — there would be little to no difference in what the audience would see since the iPad screen is a higher resolution than the display.
Where I did find handy was how graphics looked on the Retina display. Looking through a draft of an old presentation, I could see where I had cheated and downloaded a Creative Commons graphic file that wasn’t a good resolution. On the original iPad and my MacBook, I could fool myself into thinking it wasn’t that bad. On the new iPad, I could see that, yeah, it really did look that bad.
What I haven’t been able to benchmark efficiently is how well the beefed-up GPU and 1 GB of memory will aid the creation of graphics-heavy presentations. My limited, non-scientific tests didn’t yield a marked difference on a 30-slide presentation where most if it was full-bleed graphics. However, a 30-slide talk is pretty small. If someone creates large, graphics-heavy presentations regularly, I’d love to hear from you.
Numbers
If Keynote is in the running for the least-used app of the suite, Numbers is likely the winner of the never-used award. People who are spreadsheet users probably aren’t using Numbers. Still, Numbers, in a way, I think benefits the most from the new display. It’s been my experience that spreadsheets often try to cram too much text into one page, making it impossible to read. On the new iPad, text set to the smallest size was perfectly readable, while on the original iPad it was a blur.
Pages
During testing, when I opened a file with Pages on my old iPad, I realized just how much I’d been suffering for my art. My first reaction: I used to work on this thing? Opening a document with 10-point type was an awakening. Sure, I was amazed at how great my e-mail looked, but when I opened a document with a couple thousand words I’d typed on my old iPad, the, dare I say it, awesomeness of the Retina display hit home. Even now, looking at my MacBook Pro, my iPad is going: Look at me. Now look at your MacBook, Now look at me. That display looks like the bad end of the horse, doesn’t it?
How the apps affect my workflow
What I love about writing these articles is it forces me to take an inventory of my current writing process and tools. The new iPad with an external display is looking like a more visually comfortable writing environment than my MacBook Pro. The key tool for me is iCloud, so my main writing tool is Byword for iOS (which also looks awesome on the new iPad) and OS X because it looks great and syncs between all three of my devices. Pages is well-poised to take the top spot for writing apps this summer when the OS X version of iWork becomes fully iCloud-aware.
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Ideal writing environment. (Byword is really great, by the way). (Taken with instagram)
Blog sobre assuntos relacionados principalmente ao mundo Macintosh (Apple e afins), mas que tambem aborda tudo que vier a tona com relacao a internet, tecnologia, novidades em informatica, gadgets, eletronicos etc. Inclusive pode falar sobre qualquer outra coisa, que nao tem problema: basta que seja interessante. ;)
I prefer Byword by far. It handles Markdown editing and previewing very well, and the experience is so good that I've used it for all of my work today. I can write in Byword, and thanks to the Markdown support in the Squarespace iOS app, I can publish right from my iPad. It feels like the future, and I love it when the future happens.
There are lots of reviews of the new iPad. Lots and lots. My review? In deeply abbreviated form, here it is:
The screen is amazing. You must see it before you make up your mind. It's pretty much every superlative people have thrown at it, aside from the glare and brightness all of these suffer from in direct sunlight. Everything else is nearly the same as the iPad 2, save slightly more weight and thickness, but if you're going from an iPad 1 to the new one (as I did), you won't be bothered a bit -- you're still saving weight and thickness over the first-gen.
Charging takes forever; it's a big mother of a battery in there, capacity-wise. 4G is flipping awesome, I watch my bandwidth like I used to count my minutes on AOL. The graphics are insane in terms of fluidity; Infinity Blade 2 wasn't as detailed as a PS3, but the polygons and texturing in such a small device are getting close fast. Battery life is great in my limited usage so far. Fingerprint magnet, as always.
I don't care for the more recessed power button versus the topmost button on the iPad 1. The camera is just like my 4S: gorgeous stills and video, and that makes photo and video apps fun to use, unlike my 4S. FaceTime on this screen is really some Jetsons-age business (but that's not new). Everything is zippy, and I feel like using gestures more often. I'm guessing the additional RAM is why apps aren't crashing left and right.
If you have a first generation iPad, update. If you have an iPad 2, you're probably fine unless you feel you need the better screen or 4G. I chose the Verizon 32 GB model because I wanted plenty of room for apps and I wanted to use it as a hotspot. Still the best tablet available at any price. Five stars.
Rather than add another thousand words to the review pile, let's spend some time looking at why the iPad matters and where Apple may be going with it. I suggest Apple is working towards the invisible computer, towards a seamless integration of technology and humanity, and the iPad is one of the last abstractions of technology between man and computer. Think of it as a battery-powered window to the future...
The Magic of Faking Reality
The haptic screen rumor that hit the wires just before the new iPad was unveiled was just the sort of crazy tidbit that kicks things up to the next level in the preamble to any major Apple announcement. But it made sense because it's an evolutionary step towards the goal of "invisible" computers -- or, computers which aren't called computers at all.
Why did we want to believe the haptic rumor? When I look back, it seems ridiculously gimmicky -- for now. But a lot of crazy things are bandied about before an iPad announcement. The one we all knew had to be true was the Retina display screen, and it not only makes a big difference, it does an incredible job (as Apple nearly always does) of transitioning us from the less-than-real to the I-can't-believe-it's-not-real. That's why the first iPad was called "magical" and that's why this iPad is just called iPad, while Tim Cook said Apple is revolutionizing the category it created. It's also why the transition to Retina on the iPad works so well. And again, the iPad is just one slab of metal and glass between us and pervasive technology.
Something that has surprised me is how good even very old apps look on the new iPad. Apple has made some stunning technology transitions. From classic Mac OS to OS X, from PowerPC to Intel chips, from beige boxes to leading the way in design -- so it's no real surprise that the transition from one resolution to another would be handled well. iOS developers also have the example of the iPhone 4's Retina transition to work from. But I was struck by the display, and I think it speaks to the future where Apple will continue to work towards duplicating reality as much as possible.
Speaking of reality, as I said before, sometimes Apple uses familiar design cues, and sometimes it reinvents them. Take the "no home button" weirdness that swirled around Apple's invitation. Add to this the Apple TV iteration and people wound up declaring a voice-enabled iPad HDTV Apple Docking Coffee Table was on the way.
Here's my point: Apple called the new iPad just "iPad" for a reason: it is everything, and it is nothing. If you were nonplussed by the design, or even "let down" that it was slightly heavier or thicker, you were missing the point. You really missed the point if you think the Retina display was a disappointment. Apple will sell a ton of these for the same reason samurai warriors went to a very few guys for their swords -- because they did it exactly right. The iPad continues a relentless pursuit towards the creation of the perfect tablet, the tabula rasa, or even the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Either way, in the end the technology disappears. The iPad is the invisible computer, or at least a step on the way.
Apple likes to use skeuomorphic, "realistically rendered" design for apps like GarageBand and your contacts, notes and calendar. Not everyone enjoys this look (some really hate it) because the apps are, like Siri, merely an abstracted simulation of reality -- and a leaky abstraction at that. Where the apps abandon real world models (iMovie or iPhoto as examples) they help make complex tasks simple by making interfaces work for the user.
Haptics will happen on Apple devices, but only when the technology creates a seamless experience, from buttons to sliders to knobs or feathers. I wrote this entire analysis/slash review on the new iPad, but I'm reminded of the old 40-column text word processor I used on my Apple II. You knew that was a computer. Despite using a Bluetooth keyboard, this new iPad feels so much less like a "computer" and more like a "word machine" or even just a quiet, brilliant typewriter.
Does the Retina Display help? Yes it does, quite a bit. On the iPad 1, I could still see pixels, which reminded me of that old phosphorescent monitor. The new iPad merely presents the letters. I'm using Byword to write, so all I see are words and a word count. It's lovely. It no longer feels appropriate to compare this to a "computer," it's more like an appliance -- which was the point all along.
A Computer for the Rest of Us
There's a spot in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs where, just before the Macintosh launched, Steve pulls out a prototype of a laptop using a folio, and shows it to the Mac team. "This is the computer we'll be making some day," he tells them. Of course the MacBook Air is basically what that turned out to be, but if you look at someone using a small folio case with keyboard and an iPad... That sure seems aligned with Steve's vision.
More than that, the iPad's interface, "pictures under glass" that it may be, is such a powerful illusion that the original was called "magical" but I would say the new iPad is truly magical. Interfaces look real. We wanted to believe in haptics because it makes sense to take the illusion further. As an aspiring magician myself, the struggle is to perfect an illusion in a way that what you are saying you are doing is exactly what you appear to be doing (even if it isn't).
In the case of an iPad, turning a knob in GarageBand is a somewhat less than satisfactory experience versus doing the same thing in real life. There's no click, no force feedback in your fingers, etc. Simulating this on as elegant a machine as an iPad, as of today, would be clunky. So I'm glad they didn't go gimmicky. But the tech will advance, and we'll keep seeing ever more magical things.
These advances will be iterations, logical and relentless and wonderful. That's the type of company and culture that exists at Apple, despite the issues people write about (us included). If people talk about the spark being gone from Apple, I would suggest that while it may have lost its greatest showman, his genius lives on in the form of the ethos and passion behind every Apple product. The climbing stock price and sales numbers are good evidence of this.
You Say You Want a Resolution
I sort of chuckle when Tim Cook says that the iPhone and iPad's success has startled them. That's true, of course, because the transformation of consumer electronics has been sweeping. Going to CES for just a couple of years has shown me how rapidly the uptake in "pictures under glass" has become. I mean, before the iPhone, look at what Engadget was excited about at CES back in 2005! So yes, the adoption rate of touchscreen devices by consumers has been shocking. How fortuitous that Apple dropped "computer" from the company name before the iPad!
Let's revisit the Pepper Pad from that dark CES many years ago. Can you imagine normal people using that as we use iPads? Of course not. It reeks of computer. It declares, "I am for people who may be inclined to read manuals, and I require a learning curve and many settings."
Now, there's something to be said for not catering to the lowest common denominator if you want to make beautiful things. I have been guilty of thinking some people are just too dumb to be allowed to use an iPhone, for example. But when Apple dropped "computer" from its title, it was prescient for so many reasons. The company has allowed itself to become transformed by a revolution we all knew was coming; the integration of technology into our society, not as a compartmentalized, specialized job track or skill set, but a pervasive use of technology to augment our minds and bodies to do amazing things. The iPad, remember, is made to disappear.
Some might say that our better and better machines are like the wings of Icarus, but I like Steve's description of "bicycles for the mind." And once you step out of the "computer" paradigm, anything is possible. We're starting the post-PC era not just because we have new ways of synchronizing, hosting or sharing our data. We're starting the post-PC era because "personal computers" no longer necessarily need to be traditional "computers" -- they merely need to be personal.
Cloud aside: On my new iPad I'm experimenting with a hybrid cloud approach. I don't yet use iTunes Match (hundreds of mashups won't match anything), so I'm only using my 13" MacBook Air for iTunes music sync. Everything else is via iCloud or WiFi sync (apps, mostly). The biggest pain point thus far has just been waiting to download apps on my miserable Internet connection at home (my ISP is AT&T). I am careful not to download dozens of large apps on Verizon's 4G because it'll blow through that data cap in a hurry. So far it's worked well, however, as I avoid many of the weird and annoying iTunes sync issues I have had with numerous other iDevices going all the way back to my monochrome iPods.
Resolutionary
The iPad, especially the new iPad, with a screen that will make you believe anything is real within its borders, is Apple's next step towards the future, where devices merely work to assist us, and specialized knowledge is only needed in the field where one works. In other words, the tools get out of the way.
We've seen patents for haptics, 3D, advanced image and motion sensing and lots of other great ideas. I think what we can expect going forward is a refining of the tools we use, and a natural evolution of the product lines. The Apple TV of the future, for example, will be revolutionary, perhaps, but not so much in raw technology as in implementation. The new iPad is not revolutionary so much in raw technology (the screen, made by Apple's phone rival Samsung, will soon be incorporated by others) as it is in implementation. From old apps holding up well to new apps looking incredible, Apple has moved the game further down the road without being beholden to the past or leaving its customers too far behind. Eventually the screen won't be the point because the screen will be everywhere.
Apple doesn't have to build a car or a refrigerator. Manufacturers already have incentives to make their devices compatible, and they have. What I look forward to is a deepening of the ecosystem, perhaps even widening it a bit, and a continuing investment in materials science, software and hardware engineering, and more. Apple's influence goes beyond its own ecosystem, clearly impacting the consumer electronics industry, education, research, design, manufacturing and more. Look for more of that in the future as well.
The iPad represents the future direction of technology, I believe, more so than any other Apple product available. It is the high-tech made simple, potent and distilled into a simple slab of metal and glass, designed to become the tool you need when you need it. If you're wondering what Apple will do next, just look at what it continues to do each year and add a little magic once in a while when it knocks our socks off with a real revolution.
The iPad may someday give way to wrist-based holographic "eyePads" or add scratch-and-sniff capabilities, but the philosophy behind it will remain. It's that philosophy that will continue to shape our lives by integrating so seamlessly with them.
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Byword & iA Writer iOS Apps Since my blog post about writing tools a couple of weeks ago both Byword and iA Writer have released iOS versions of their Mac Apps. I downloaded both of them and have been...
Nelle settimane precedenti vi abbiamo parlato della possibilità che la suite di Microsoft Office approdi sull’App Store. Nonostante molti di noi puntino esclusivamente ad un prodotto famoso in ambiente Windows, sullo store online possiamo trovare applicazioni dello stesso genere, una di queste è Byword.
Il software nasce come un editor di testo con la possibilità di inserire elenchi puntati, numerati, asterischi, citazioni, parole in grassetto, corsivo, link, immagini e quant’altro. Come potete notare, esso integra tutte le normali caratteristiche di un qualsiasi editor di testo, ma forse anche qualcosa di più.
Infatti, grazie ad iCloud, ogni documento salvato sul dispositivo potrà essere condiviso con tutti gli altri device. In questo modo potrete accedere a quanto creato da iPad, iPhone o Mac semplicemente collegandovi al vostro account del servizio di storage online. Per ultimo ricordiamo che il software salva i file nei formati txt, text, md, mmd, markdown, markdn, down, mkdn, mark e fountain.
L’applicazione qui descritta è disponibile sull’App Store al prezzo di 2.39€.
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För ett par dagar sedan kom iA Writer till iPhone och nu var det dags för Byword att ta steget och då både till iPhone och iPad. Nu handlar detta inlägg om Byword men det vore fel att inte nämna iA Writer då apparna kanske inte är likvärdiga men överlappar mycket vad gäller användningsområde.Båda handlar [...]
Ieri è uscito Byword per iOS (che io non posso installare perchè sul mio vecchio iPhone sono ancora ad iOS 4). Ne è nata una diatriba su quale editor sia migliore tra il suddetto Byword e il suo diretto sfidante iA Writer (anche questo con app sia per OSX che per iOS). I due avvocati erano Shawn Blanc per Byword e Ben Brooks per Writer. L’articolo su Writer è quello che mi ha lasciata con quella perplessità da baccalà…
Io uso Byword, ma ho anche Writer, che uscì per primo. Le differenze? Minime! Ma sufficienti per renderle due app dalla filosofia opposta. Spartane entrambe, ma di quello spartano classy (LOL), Writer si presenta con finestra lattea virante al grigio (#EFF0F0), barra nera e graaande cursore turchese che individui subito sul monitor. Il font è grosso così non ti cechi. È anche mono (Nitti).Appena inizi a scrivere la barra scompare, e con essa i pulsanti. Ha una modalità “focus on” che opacizza il testo e lascia in evidenza solo la riga che stai scrivendo. Ti dovessi perdere. Non c’è altro. Non ha preferenze. Prendere o lasciare. È talmente poco compiacente verso l’utente che gli impone addirittura di avere i bottoncini della title bar colorati. Io non ho mai usato OSX in blue, sempre e solo graphite. La finestra oltre una certa dimensione non è riducibile in orizzontale. Usando un font enorme, si capisce perchè. In basso ha una barra (anch’essa a scomparsa) col conteggio di parole e caratteri, suppongo perchè è molto comune quando si scrive su commissione avere un’indicazione sulla lunghezza del pezzo espressa in numero di parole. Almeno nei telefilm americani così si vede. Arrivato al numero richiesto metti punto e fine, mica si bada al sottile.
Byword, invece. La finestra si presenta monoblocco. Ovvero: la title bar e la barra in basso – che indica il numero di parole e caratteri e il formato del file – non sono elementi separati dall’area di scrittura, come in Writer (anche se scompaiono), ma sono integrate e limitate alle scritte e ai tre bottoni in alto a sinistra. Non disturbano e non scompaiono (tranne che in full screen, dove resta il titolo), hai sempre sott’occhio quanto hai scritto. Il testo è in fade-out mano mano che si avanza. Ma dove Byword veramente diverge da Writer è nelle preferenze: Writer non le ha Byword sì, poche ed essenziali.
Finestra in #1A1A1A (❤) o #F2F2F2, margini larghi, stretti o medi, e – à épater les bourgeoises – scelta del font di default. Byword ne propone una cinquina di quelli classici (Baskerville, Cochin, Courier, Georgia, Helvetica, a grandezza media), ma lascia all’utente la scelta di cosa impostare e a che grandezza. Io Helvetica mono 13 pt.
Byword, come Writer, supporta markdown. La differenza è che fornisce una preview: ⌥⌘+P per vedere il testo formattato, ESC per tornare al testo. Writer no, gli sviluppatori sostengono che è per principianti, l’esperto scrive in markdown e nella sua testa già vede l’html. Raw ovviamente. What you mean is what you see.Altro non c’è. Eppure il detrattore di Byword sostiene che tutto questo è eccessivo, che lo distrae, che gli fa perdere tempo, che finisce nell’imbuto vorticoso dei settings e non scrive più perchè sta tre ore a guardare (con la faccia da baccalà) i font da impostare. Si inabissa in tutto questo noise e perde definitivamente il signal.
Sto scrivendo questo post in markdown su Byword. Ci sono link e immagini, ho bisogno di controllare che abbia scritto giusto, che le immagini siano linkate bene, che appaiano. In Writer non posso vederlo, in Byword sì, mi basta passare a markdown preview.
Sto scrivendo sul mio Macbook e ho varie app aperte e passo da una a un’altra per fare screenshot, copiare un url. Ho tutto sott’occhio, regolo la grandezza di ogni finestra a mio piacimento, così mi basta lo spazio dei 13” che ho. Writer non mi consente di metterlo alle dimensioni che servono a me.
Sto scrivendo a tratti, il documento per fortuna si autosalva (anche in Writer ovviamente, sono entrambi lionizzati). Ma preferisco scrivere sul divano con la lampada a luce soffusa. Writer e il suo bianco acceso sparano e mi rendono insopportabile guardare allo schermo. Byword ha la finestra scura e gli occhi non bruciano.
Le impostazioni… Ci ho giocato la prima volta che ho usato Byword e poi basta. Provi combinazioni differenti e trovi quella che più ti garba. Generalmente non mi garbano quelle prefissate dallo sviluppatore. Il testo mi piace piccolo, mi consente di scrivere e leggere di più nello spazio che ho. La modalità focus on non mi serve perchè voglio vedere la riga nel contesto. Devo essere sicura che il ritmo sia giusto. Non lo so come scriva chi si focalizza sulla singola riga… Non è codice, questo.Insomma, stare comodi e a proprio agio. Ben Brooks dice che invece gli serve la scomodità, per scrivere, e per questo scrive da Starbucks, su sedie scomode, e non in ufficio. In definitiva quindi, voleva dire che Writer è una tortura per masochisti. Forse è il modo migliore to get things done, soprattutto quando quelle things che hai da fare ti vanno talmente poco a genio che inizieresti a smanettare svogliatamente nelle preferenze dell’app piuttosto che iniziare a scrivere. Ma non ci si può anche divertire e compiacere, nell’usare un’app e farci qualcosa che abbiamo voglia di fare?
UPDATE
17.03.’12 – Purtroppo devo aggiornare. L’ultimo update di Byword ha modificato un po’ l’interfaccia rendendola più standard, con una barra normale.
March 15th, 2012 | Link a questo articoloGustomela ha di recente pubblicato un articolo, Byword vs. iA Writer, in cui confronta le due migliori applicazioni minimaliste di scrittura al momento disponibili per OS X e iOS.
Scrive, dopo aver elencato le poche impostazioni di Byword (iA Writer non ne ha nessuna):
Altro non c’è. Eppure il detrattore di Byword sostiene che tutto questo è eccessivo, che lo distrae, che gli fa perdere tempo, che finisce nell’imbuto vorticoso dei settings e non scrive più perchè sta tre ore a guardare (con la faccia da baccalà) i font da impostare. Si inabissa in tutto questo noise e perde definitivamente il signal.
Gustomela, come chiarisce nel post, si riferisce alle argomentazioni a sfavore di Byword sollevate da Ben Brooks in That Clicking Sound, in cui lo statunitense si lamenta di come la possibilità di modificare certi parametri (font, colori, ecc.) lo porti ad una inevitabile procastinazione e gli impedisca di scrivere. Magari ha ragione e son particolare io, ma non ho mai pensato di dare la colpa al mezzo per una mia mancanza. Altrimenti mi chiedo cosa debbano dire gli scrittori che sfornano un libro all’anno nonostante usino Word e siano esposti ai suoi tredicimila pulsanti, i loro lamenti devono essere udibili anche da Marte.
Scrivere scrivo con tutto, ma questo non significa che non provo diverse applicazioni e diversi flussi di lavoro per farlo. In fondo passo una discreta porzione del mio tempo a buttare giù parole, sarebbe ingenuo non cercare di ottimizzarlo e renderlo confortevole.
Malgrado i miei sforzi, e forse per la mia agnosticità verso il mezzo di scrittura, non sono riuscito a trovare differenze marcate tra le versioni per OS X di Byword e iA Writer. In fondo la loro funzione principale è di essere editor Markdown, nient’altro, il resto sono dettagli. Le due app sono così simili che per giustificarne l’acquisto ho dovuto creare artificialmente due utilizzi differenti: iA Writer per scrivere articoli per questo blog, Byword per tutto il resto (appunti universitari, pezzi destinati a Day One, ecc.).
C’è da ricordarsi che stiamo parlando, come ho già detto, di due applicazioni praticamente identiche, le cui differenze sono nulle se messe in prospettiva con altri editor simil-Word. Perciò se siete indecisi su quale prendere non state troppo a scervellarvi: compratene una sola su entrambe le piattaforme (OS X e iOS) e vivete felici e contenti per il resto della vostra vita.
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I've been giving three new applications a whirl the last week or so. Launch Center, Byword for iOS and Sparrow for iOS.
Launch Center
First up is Launch Center. I've been pleasantly surprised by this app. It has some good integration with other apps that inhabit my iPhone (Omnifocus, etc) and has helped clear up my Home screen a bit, making way for more apps that I use regularly.
One of the most useful things about it is the fact that I can get to apps that may be buried in a folder somewhere and access the one specific function I use regularly and need in the fewest amount of taps possible.
For instance, Instagram can now be buried in a folder on my Home page. Foursquare and TomTom can live in their "Traveling" folder on Page 2. I can access my OmniFocus database or create a new OmniFocus item from the same spot (admittedly, this adds a tap to the sweet bookmark I talked about in my Home screen blog post, but we'll see how this goes...).
I like the niche this app serves and I can see using it for a while. It is well-designed and seems well-supported by its developer, App Cubby.
Byword
I've supported Byword for a long time now. I feel it is the best Markdown editing application out there. I write all of my posts in it and some of my short- to medium-form writing (long form is still Scrivener). When I saw that they released an iOS version yesterday, I posted it about it here, then downloaded it and started messing around.
The reviews seemed good, the price was reasonable and I was pretty excited.
On first impression, the app seemed solid, although my spotty connection made Dropbox less-than-functional. I decided I'd sit on it for a while and keep using Nebulous, as I had for the past few months. The local caching in Nebulous, along with the way it handles sync and the formatting freedom it provides are still top notch.
When they announced iCloud support for Byword for Mac, I was nonplussed. My text file-based workflow is highly dependent on Dropbox. I name files a specific way to take advantage of Dropbox's ubiquity and centralization to manage things. Having the ability to search all of my writing using nvALT has been an extremely useful addition as well. I ignored Byword's iCloud support because it meant re-thinking how I did all of my writing.
After some thought, and watching David Sparks' video on how he was using Byword for Mac and the newly-released Byword for iOS, the wheels in my head started turning...
I fired up Byword for Mac and turned on iCloud support, opened up a new post entry and hit "Save". It brought up the file naming screen, as usual, but I noticed the menu entry "Move to iCloud". Selecting this essentially enables all of Apple's iCloud features like the ability to revert a document through Time Machine, Save a Version, etc. It's pretty seamless. But that's not the magical part.
Opening up Byword for iOS on my iPhone, I turned off Dropbox sync and enabled iCloud. There was my file, in the exact same format, cursor blinking after the last word I had just typed on my Mac. Whoa. Not bad.
While it doesn't have the same formatting freedom and flexibility of Nebulous, the iCloud support might be a killer feature. I will still end up using Nebulous for Dropbox notes, but I suspect I'll be moving to Byword for iOS for short-form writing, especially given the extremely functional, elegant iPad editor. At the very least, I will use it to push posts along when I'm away from my MacBook Air.
Going forward, iCloud will be a placeholder area for my working documents. Once I complete a piece, I will just select "Remove from iCloud" and stick the file in its usual spot on Dropbox. That keeps iCloud clear of clutter and keeps my nvALT file-indexing ticking along as it has the last year or so.
Sparrow
Given my reticence about using all of Google's services recently, I've had a hard time finding an adequate Gmail replacement. I have hotmail, Yahoo!, old school POP mail accounts on ancient UNIX servers and shortmail, but none of them hit the mark for me for many reasons when trying to avoid Gmail -- it is just too good.
Until today, I've felt email needed to be ubiquitous. The promise of the cloud was that I would have synchronized email on all of my devices all the time. But if I really give it some thought, there aren't really many emails that come in, among my many emails, that are truly important -- nothing that needs to be reacted to right away.
So when I heard that a new version of Sparrow was released for iOS, my initial excitement was that we'd get a new commercial to match their earlier, surreal effort and we'd get a revolutionary iOS interface for reading and interacting with email. Well I was happy on both counts.
The review of Sparrow on theVerge and Frederico Viticci's excellent article about Sparrow's history and his views on the functionality of the iOS version both do a better job than I could running down features of the app. All I want to do today is give you my impressions of a few things related to the app.
Interface
Gorgeous. Well-designed. I love that they've removed the toolbar on the bottom. It is one of those changes that you never think about because the toolbar always contains such critical functions, yet they were able to move them other places which made sense and maximized your screen real estate for what matters most -- the content itself.
Integration
It doesn't support push email yet and that's a big problem if you need to know things right away. However, I've decided to take a more laid back approach to email. If someone needs to reach me right away, email is never the best way and pretty much every normal human realizes that. If it isn't that critical, then it can wait until I'm ready to know about it. I sure don't miss having that nagging red badge on my Home screen...
Sparrow supports iCloud email. That being the case, I am able to pull out all non-work email accounts from the Mail app (which I rely on for Exchange support for work) and keep it somewhere much more pleasant.
Somewhat discouraging is the Facebook support to bring in pictures of your contacts. Even though it gives me another chance to say "Fuck Facebook", it makes me sad whenever I see an application that helps sink Facebook's teeth into another part of our online lives. We need less support of Facebook, in general, but at least this integration is optional (unlike Spotify's mandatory Facebook hooks, which prompted me to drop Spotify altogether).
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So there you have it. I'd suggest picking up any of these apps. Each one excels in some way and, if you're interested in interface design, there is a lot to learn from each one. The benefit for us is that good design makes us more efficient and makes using our devices more fun.
iCloud has made Byword compelling
A new version of the minimalist text editor Byword is now available on Apple’s app stores for the Mac and iOS devices. If you’re already outfitted with a plethora of word processors and text editors you might ask why you would want to shell out for more.
Byword has just become very compelling due to its iCloud integration. Write on your iPhone, edit on your iPad and access on your mac. No emailing documents around, no multiple versions, no hassle. And having provided this functionality before Apple has added it to iWork (shame on you Apple!) is a great advantage to their product.
Great apps on the app store will now all be using iCloud; and iCloud integration will have to be designed into applications from the get go to be competitive.
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Byword is a word, a Mac app for the generation of words, and, as of yesterday, also an iOS app for the mobile generation of words. Byword is exemplary of how to make a writing app on the iPhone and iPad. That’s certainly high praise, but well deserved.
Byword for iOS features excellent Markdown support, automatically helping you along with bullet points, allowing you to export your HTML, preview your Markdown, and even copy the raw HTML to the clipboard (score!). A flexible bar at the bottom of the screen plays the part of character and word counter and extended keyboard, which is a very interesting approach – though the buttons could probably stand to be a bit bigger. The iPad app boasts a good full screen mode, and both the iPad and iPhone support a really great gesture to quickly move back to list view (swipe right).
Syncing options include iCloud and Dropbox, and I opted for the latter. Dropbox sync happens very quickly, but it’s a little different than expected. Much like the Evernote app, Byword simply pulls down a list and quick previews of each of your notes. Only when you tap on a note will the full version be downloaded to your device, so don’t be surprised if you load Byword up and find far fewer files in the list – it probably means you’re offline.
The only thing from the desktop Byword app that I miss so far is typewriter scrolling. I think it makes a lot more sense to have the text stay centered on screen, instead of constantly peering down towards the bottom of the screen as I type.
vs. iA Writer
- Dropbox support in iA Writer isn’t quite as good as in Byword, especially since you get kicked to the main level (/Dropbox) of your directory every time you load the app up fresh
- iA Writer still has the excellent focus mode and the accompanying typewriter scrolling going for it
- iA Writer’s Nitti Light font is still the most legible thing since, well, ever
- the lack of settings in iA Writer are as annoying as they are awesome – if you hate fiddling, iA Writer is still the app to go to
- Copy Text: iA Writer has a great two-tap solution for copying all of the text you’ve written within the app, so that you can paste it into another.
vs. WriteRoom
- WriteRoom is still one of the best when it comes to syncing all of your files completely and having them available on-device, regardless of your online status
- WriteRoom could learn a thing or two from Byword about going full-screen
- WriteRoom doesn’t support Markdown in any significant way
- WriteRoom does, however, have an insane number of settings for typeface, word and line spacing, and an excellent working scrollbar so you can zip up and down documents with ease
Shawn Blanc recently wrote in his own Byword review that “You can’t throw a rock at the iTunes and Mac App Stores without hitting a minimalistic writing app.”, and he was right. However, Byword isn’t just another one for the pile. It may be just a 1.0 release, but I think it’s already one of the top five iOS writing apps out there in terms of features, feel, and finish. Byword is undoubtedly worth the $2.99 for the iPhone and iPad versions.
Byword was purchased by the author for review on iSource. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
The simple, lovely-looking Markdown-aware text editor for OS X now is now available on iPhones and iPads, complete with document synchronisation powered by Dropbox or iCloud.
Via Finer Things in Mac.
If you want a simple, powerful way to write, preview, and effortlessly sync your docs across Mac, iPhone, and iPad, Byword is a great choice. I switched months ago, and its debut on iOS made my week.
As I tweeted yesterday, I have always written everything for Quarter-Life Enlightenment in Byword.
The fine gentlemen at Metaclassy just released Byword as a universal iOS app yesterday, so I thought it time to pay my respects to my favorite text editor.
Regarding Preferences
The minimalist writing app market is incredibly rich, but for me, Byword has always maintained just the right balance of features and simplicity. There are preferences, but there aren’t that many. Choose your font, column width, and whether you want a light or dark background, but otherwise, you won’t find much to fiddle with here.
Ben Brooks, however, disagrees:
I don’t dislike Byword for any one reason — I dislike it because it doesn’t work for me because of the fact that I am a tinkerer and using an app that I can tinker with, when I want to focus, is a truly bad idea.
Of course, having options doesn’t make Byword a bad app, and I know that’s not what Ben is saying. It’s the responsibility of the writer to have the self-discipline to “set it and forget it” when it comes to preferences. Ben’s text editor of choice, iA Writer, famously has zero preferences. For him, no preferences is best because it helps him do the work.
I, on the other hand, love going through preferences. Usually, the first thing I do when trying a new app is look for the Settings button. I like to customize the app to my liking, and when it comes to text editors, I think there’s value in being able to choose, for example, your font size. If I find an app aesthetically and functionally pleasing, I’m more likely to use it. Preferences allow me to tailor an app to my needs, thus increasing its aesthetic value or functionality for my experience using it.
Once I’ve set my preferences, I generally have no problem forgetting about them. Once in a while I’ll try a new font or something, but otherwise, I set it and forget it. But, that’s just me, and some may find Byword’s modest preferences to be too much.
My Writing Workflow
As of this moment, I’ve done very little long-form writing on my iOS devices. I have no desire to type hundreds of words with my thumbs on my iPhone, and while I can type at a pretty good clip on the iPad, I encounter friction when it comes to managing my documents. Allow me to explain.
I write articles on my Mac in Byword using Markdown syntax. Once an article is ready to be posted, I log into my Squarespace account and copy and paste the text into a New Post field. Then I schedule the publish time and date, hit Save, and I’m done.
Everything I write gets stored in Dropbox. QLE posts are all saved in the QLE folder. This way, I have everything I’ve ever published in one place, and it’s all safely backed up via Dropbox.
When trying to write on an iOS device, the friction I’ve encountered heretofore stems from knowing where the document is and getting that document into the QLE folder. On my iPad, for example, if I write a post in PlainText, it gets saved to my Dropbox in the PlainText folder. I then have to move the file to its proper place whenever I get back to my Mac, assuming I remember to do so.
Now, yes, most apps with Dropbox support allow you to change the Dropbox destination folder. But, some don’t, and they might rely on iCloud or some other syncing service.
My problem with writing on iOS is that I’ve never felt like I had a good sense of where my document is. For example, in Phraseology for iPad, my documents are in the Phraseology app, and to get them out, I need to export them, or email them to myself, or… something.
I’m not saying these apps don’t offer solutions to my consternation, but they’ve never “just worked” when it comes to my writing workflow. They’ve never fit perfectly right out of the box. They’re all great apps with great features, for sure, but the thought of using them to write usually makes me wince rather than tap and start writing.
Until Byword.
My Desktop Workflow on the Go
I’m not going to spend a lot of time telling you about Byword’s features or interface. (See Shawn’s and Viticci’s excellent reviews.) It’s simple, clean, and beautiful, with just enough options to make it your own. I love how it looks and works on my Mac, and the new iOS versions are no different.
Byword for iOS has created the mobile writing workflow I didn’t even know I was looking for.
When I opened Byword on my iPhone for the first time, I was given the choice between iCloud and Dropbox for syncing. I use Dropbox because it lets me know where my files are: in a folder on my Mac, which is backed up to the cloud. If I need a document, I know where to go to get it. With iCloud, documents are in the app… but I feel like I can’t get to them outside of that app. They’re somewhere in iCloud, but I can’t “touch” them, so to speak. They’re isolated to the app itself, and I can only work with them there. I believe this is what Merlin was talking about when he expressed his concern about iCloud.
Now, I do use iCloud for contacts, calendars, bookmarks, and more. It’s great. But, my writing is too precious for me to not know exactly where things are. That’s just me. I do hear that iCloud sync works beautifully in Byword, and even slightly faster than Dropbox sync.
Anyway.
After choosing Dropbox as my sync preference, Byword automatically created a Byword folder in my Dropbox where new documents would be saved. I changed the folder to my QLE folder, and in seconds, all 259 files were visible in a clean, beautiful list. The kicker was that, by default, the list was organized by Date Modified, so I could see all of my posts in chronological order, which is so much more useful than alphabetical order. Tap on a post, and there it was, just as if I’d opened it via the Finder on my Mac.
The best part though, is that if I type a new document on one of my iOS devices, it gets saved right to my QLE folder alongside every other post I’ve written. Now, no matter what device I write on, the document goes right where it’s supposed to go. I don’t have to worry about it.
I’m sure other apps can be configured the same way, but for me, Byword just rocked my face off from minute one. The interface is gorgeous and offers just what I need — no more, no less. Byword is reliable; I feel like I can trust it. I also love being able to use the same app across all three devices. It just feels good.
No longer do I feel any friction when writing on an iOS device. When I want to write, I can pick up my iPhone, iPad, or Mac. In all three cases, I open Byword, write, and things get saved to my QLE folder in Dropbox. I feel like a whole world of mobile writing has opened up now that I always have Byword — my writing weapon of choice — by my side.
Actually Writing on iOS
Patrick Rhone has infamously been writing long-form pieces — like a-thousand-words long — on his iPhone using the onscreen keyboard. I was among the skeptical as to how it could be done, but with Byword, I can finally see it.
This entire post, which Byword tells me is currently 1,309 words, was written on my iPhone in landscape mode, with my feet up on my desk. Just my two thumbs and me.
It actually feels really good. Byword’s Markdown shortcuts make block quotes, parentheses, brackets, etc. relatively painless. The biggest annoyance is switching to Safari, going to a web page, and copy/pasting a URL you need for a link. Otherwise, it’s quite pleasant.
Will I be writing on my iPhone or iPad on a regular basis? Maybe, but probably not. I’m still much faster on my Mac, of course. Then again, the slower pace is kind of nice. Either way, it’s great to know that when I’m away from my Mac, my preferred writing environment is right in my pocket, if and when I need it. With Byword, I can definitely see myself starting articles on the go, when the mood strikes, rather than jotting down ideas in Notesy and waiting until I get back to my Mac to actually write.
Love at First Type
I get excited when my favorite apps are updated or when something new and great comes out, but I’m particularly passionate about Byword. It’s my style. It just clicks with me, and the new iOS apps are no different. I can’t wait to see how the app progresses.
I can honestly say that without, Byword, this website might not exist as it does today. Byword makes me want to write. For a writer, such an app is truly priceless.
You can buy Byword on the Mac App Store for $9.99 and on the App Store for a special introductory price of $2.99.
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After a brief moment in the iTunes in the iTunes App Store sun last week, Markdown text editor ByWord has officially arrived on your iPad and iPhone. It’s a companion to the excellent OS X version of ByWord, and is one of a growing number of apps to sync using iCloud.
Byword for Mac is a minimal-looking Markdown editor which manages to pack in a lot of features besides. A new version now supports iCloud from the desktop, ready to sync up with Byword for iOS, and uses a pop-up iCloud browser to do it. I imagine that it will use the built-in Finder-based iCloud browser in Mountain Lion.
Byword for iOS is beautiful too look at, all faded grays and tasteful palettes. On launch you can choose between Dropbox and iCloud syncing, and from there all your documents are taken care of. Back over on the Mac side, Byword fully supports resume, versions and has proper Lion full screen, so you can pretty much forget about saving documents (with one caveat: to use the “Move to iCloud” menu item on the Mac, you first need to actually save the file).
The iOS app also has two optional rows of keys at the top of the keyboard for Markdown-specific shortcuts. these are accessed by swiping the word-count which sits in this row by default.
There are more goodies in here, with TextExpander support and various options for exporting your text, but at its heart Byword is just a very good and very easy to use text editor. Right now you can get it for $3, rising to $5 in the near future. I would use this all the time if somebody, please, anybody would turn on Markdown support at Cult of Mac.
Don't worry, we won't post anything.
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