In today’s vein of things that suck about how I work, I don’t like my writing tools. I don’t really know why, but nothing for me has seemed to click –  I like to get into the writing zone, and I have trouble doing that pretty much all the time. I’ve had a hunch for a while that the iPad was the answer to a lot of that – it only lets you do one thing at a time, can go anywhere, and works quickly and simply by default – but never found the right app.

Well, I found the right app. It’s called Writer (click that link, or search iTunes for “iA Writer”), and comes from a company called Information Architects. From their post launching the app:

The key to good writing is not that magical glass of Bordeaux, the right kind of tobacco or that groovy background music. The key is focus. What you need to write well is a spartan setting that allows you to fully concentrate on your text and nothing but your text. Many professional writers use SimpleText or Textedit because these are the only writing programs that are totally distraction free. But text editors are not perfect. That’s why we made Writer.

Writer a super-minimal app, with a great typeface and all the features I need and want (Dropbox integration is the big one, but there’s also a word count, one-click copying of all the text, and more), and none of the features I don’t need distracting me (like styling – that’s for later).

But the best feature, by far, is the app’s change to the keyboard. Take a look at the keyboard on the iPad when using Writer–particularly the top row.

Immediate access to the punctuation I use most, plus easy ways to scroll by word (the first two buttons on the row) or character-by-character (the last two), makes the whole process much faster. I love love love this app, and it’s worth every one of the not-very-many pennies it costs, at $4.99.

(Via Liz Danzico)

About the author: David Pierce (1175 Posts)

David Pierce, the founder of Digitizd, is now Reviews Editor at The Verge.