vowe's choice: iA Writer

by Volker Weber

I am an author. Not an editor. Authors write original copy, editors take the author's manuscript and improve it. There is no collaborative process. I write the text, I submit it, and the next time I see it, I am looking at a PDF. If I am lucky. Sometimes I get to see the mistakes I didn't make on paper. ;-)

And this is what I see when I write. iA Writer. It's a program stripped of all unnecessary features, with beautiful typography and spell checker. It lets me focus on the text, it even lets me focus on the current sentence.

And better yet, it lets me switch devices in an instant, from the iMac, to my iPad, to the MacBook Pro. Because it automatically saves all edits in the iCloud. I have never even lost a single sentence.

Highly recommended. Available in the Mac App Store, and in the iTunes App Store.

2012-07-30 :: email :: twitter :: facebook :: google+

Comments

Really? You don't see an Author Review? I give every writer an opportunity to answer queries and to point out that my "tiny little edit" inserted an error.

Esther Schindler, 2012-07-30 17:05

Not all editors are created equal. :-)

We are a big ship with more than 80 editors. I work with only a handful of them, because each one of them has their own area of expertise. There are always at least two people behind me, one editor and one QA. When an article goes to print, there will be one or two editors, and one or two QA. It's quite possible that an article is read (and corrected) by up to five people. Somewhere in the process it is typeset and layouted. And before it goes to print, I should get to see the final PDF.

Quite often, I do not get this final PDF. Which usually does not matter, since all the other people are very good. But it has happened on occasion, that an editor has added "facts" to the story that only existed in his imagination, but which were so plausible, that they were not caught before going to print. And frankly, I may have thought they were correct even if I had seen them.

Back to the "not created equal": there are some editors I would not want to live without. They generally make everything I write a lot better, and I get all the credit.

Volker Weber, 2012-07-30 17:29

They generally make everything I write a lot better, and I get all the credit.

They work for Heise. :-)

Jan-Piet Mens, 2012-07-30 17:37

Kann das Programm Fußnoten?

Johannes Matzke, 2012-07-30 17:54

Nein. Ich verwende auch keine Fußnoten. Es weiß auch nicht, was Überschriften sind oder Kapitel, es oaginiert nicht, kennt keine Seitenzahlen, es macht keine Inhaltsverzeichnisse. "stripped of all unnecessary features" :-)

Volker Weber, 2012-07-30 17:57

I discovered the iA app last week from this excellent in depth article on the design process with the designer.

Highly recommended

Interview from the verge magazine

Chris Millar, 2012-07-30 20:35