By now I’ve had a chance to use iA Writer for Mac. In fact I’m using it right now to write this post. And I have this to report: Less is less.
You write with it. And not much else. Its defining features are ones that actually remove things.
- The title bar disappears when you start typing.
- FocusMode hushes down everything you’ve written except for the sentence you’re writing.
- Full screen mode blankets your display with a calm, almost-white background, leaving your text with centered and preeminent presence.
If Dieter Rams designed a writing app, it might be a lot like iA Writer. It’s innovative. It’s aesthetic. It’s understandable. It’s unobtrusive, honest, long lasting, and is as little design as possible.
But why is it less?
Because it’s less confusion. Less redundancy. Less distractions. Less fumbling with numberless features that don’t in any way contribute to translating thoughts into words. It’s less in the way. Less equipped to demand anything of its user other than recording thoughts and ideas. This frees you from thinking too much: Is that paragraph too long? How do I create a numbered list again? Where was that column layout option? Was that a run on sentence?
IA Writer is less of what doesn’t matter.
And that’s why it’s going to be successful.
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2 insightful responses to iA Writer: Less is Less
I still think there’s a couple of display and keyboard quick key fixes that should go into the next release.
I enjoy using it.
Personally I don’t think it’s worth the hefty price tag, half the price is probably a little more realistic. Having said that I still paid it, and so did you, so I can’t see that being an issue that will hold them back.
The best thing iA did was releasing the iPad version first and get a huge following on their work. I doubt that this product would have been as popular if they had released it first.
Agreed that it’s missing a few things (like markdown file format support). But it’s a solid, honest product. As far as the price, yes, $18 is a little steep — if you’re doing a feature comparison. But I personally don’t feel I overpaid because I want the experience it provides, and enjoy writing with it more than an alternative app rich with features.