Byword vs iawriter mac#

The fact is there’s a reason one pays for a Mac vs.

Byword vs iawriter upgrade#

Regardless, this is a considerable upgrade from the iA Writer interface whose primary goal was not moving from your keyboard but made previewing quite the pain. Ulysses is helpful in embedding / previewing pics, embedding videos (not previewing) and are yet to allow for either on tweets. That’s a terrific feature and one that iA Writer could care less about (remember, they are the markdown writer - plain text writer) but frankly, most of my posts are social in that they connect to a bunch of images, videos, and tweets as jumping off points for conversations.

Multimedia: Speaking of embedding YouTube videos, the only reason I briefly switched to Medium (more on this later) was their exceptional web editor that allows you to preview any multimedia link (from images to YouTube videos to tweets) right there on the page as will be seen on your published page.

And that’s really the most important part of the reservation – the holding!

Byword vs iawriter how to#

See, you know how to take the reservation you just don’t know how to hold the reservation. It’s like one of my favorite moments from Seinfeld, where Jerry and Elaine mock the reservationist for taking their reservations but not holding it. Just syncing across devices within iOS isn’t enough (maybe if you’re a real amateur) but it’s the ability to hold the documents in place, for perpetuity that gives a writing app the distinction it deserves. And just the fact that Ulysses backs up all its documents with version control was enough for me to switch. I still can’t find that iA doc which was lost while transferring it across folders on iCloud.

Backup & Version Control: Oddly enough, losing a well-written draft on iA Writer was the trigger that led to my switching apps and one that early users of Microsoft Word might recall.

Believe it or not, the past week has seen me draft over three posts, and being intentional about setting a date/time to start blogging and completing the process truly helps beat back writer’s block.

Progress Bar: I love the goal-setting feature which pops up when you hit attachments in the main-screen that allows you to not only tag (which makes for the easiest organization something that iA Writer was strangely lacking) but also lets you add images (yet another feature that I found missing in iA Writer because previews were almost impossible to do) but most importantly, it allows for goal setting (both in number of characters, but more importantly with a due date for your writing).

Onboarding their Subscription and building a community made it worth the price of admission Not only does Ulysses guide you while you type in markdown commands but it eases the confusion should you forget the syntax like when you try to add a URL with the basic syntax, it automatically pops up the URL title bar and you take it from there vs.

Ulysses on the other hand does a pretty good job of educating you on Markdown and distills it down to core features that every writer needs – whether it is adding images, videos, or footnotes (all three of which I had desperately sought to add on iA Writer but constantly lost and finding myself scouring the web for Markdown syntax).

Markdown Onboarding: The challenge at times (for me) with iA Writer was that the organization was rather nebulous around Markdown 1 that seemingly is a feature, not a bug.

The Writer’s Journey: The way the app is organized - from personal notes to blogging to writing a book all the while allowing for random thoughts to permeate an “Inbox” is a terrific way to organize the writing process, regardless of your stage of writing interest.

Better Organization: There’s a story to be told about story-writing platforms like iA Writer and Scrivener but Ulysses organizes itself best from the eyes of a writer.

Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.įranz Kafka, born on July 3rd and my greatest inspiration to overcoming writer’s block Five Reasons to Switch to Ulysses! So, without further ado, here are the five reasons I decided to “upgrade” to Ulysses from iA Writer.ĭon’t bend don’t water it down don’t try to make it logical don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion.

It takes the craft of writing seriously, provides an accountability better than any other writing platform and seems to make the inscrutable keyboard-friendly plain text formatting syntax - Markdown just as simple as needed. Kafka on Writing or How to Beat Writer’s BlockĪfter some debate, and a few years of using iA Writer, I switched to Ulysses recently since it feels like a grown-up version of iA Writer.