Plus, over the last 12 years, we said goodbye to deadlines and pressure. Because we are a small team and support a lot of platforms, we have to choose carefully. If something is easily done and has a clear benefit in terms of focus or the writing experience, it gets prioritized. We get a lot and have internal lists to track them. How have you over the years responded to user requests? In iA Writer, you do not need to think about fonts and colors – you use all your brain power to write the best you can. Good design gets out of the way, so you can focus on your tasks.
Only type nerds will notice, but that’s the point. However, we are also very proud of the typographic experience in iA Writer and go to great lengths creating and fine-tuning our app’s built-in fonts. Not letting users set fonts was a clear statement: Focus on the words. When it comes to the identity of an app, what you do not offer is as important as what you do offer. We had to introduce settings because, as the audience grows, the needs become so varied you have to offer some choice. Outside the canvas, we had to make compromises. Our basic guideline is we preserve the original, focused, pleasant writing experience of version one. No-one comes close to what we do with our typographic engine. When we introduced iA Writer, it had a lot of completely new and unique features – and it still does. For example, Syntax Highlight offers an X-ray on what you write, doing for natural language what coding tools do for code.īut providing focus doesn’t mean being minimal on features.
#Ia writer sale code#
Getting there, we learned a lot from code editors. How did you balance minimalism with the features demanded by writers?įrom the very beginning, we wanted three features: Syntax Highlight, Style Check, and Focus Mode. For focused writing, it’s still the best – and with a keyboard looks and feels like a contemporary typewriter. We liked the iPad right away because it almost did what we’d thought up for the writing device. The early iPad had a much more focused interaction model: one app at a time and no windows. One issue of writing on a computer is constant distractions. Overnight, our plan had become much more manageable. In January 2010, as we were designing our ‘Writing Machine,’ the iPad came out. Years later, I felt it was time to see if something could be done about writing with computers.Īt first, we planned to create our own device – just for writing. Restrictions can be surprisingly helpful! And because your fingers soon start to hurt when typing, that pushes you to find a good twist to successfully end a poorly written sentence. There’s not much else you can do with a mechanical typewriter other than think about what words you want to form next. Yet just as when we speak, we write much better when we think before and while we express ourselves.Īs a student, I bought a typewriter to see if it could help me focus while writing – and it did. The time spent thinking before and while writing was frighteningly low. Most started by adjusting fonts and margins, typed a bit, deleted a bit, moved text around, and got caught in a loop of fumbling. I noticed students wasted too much time on formatting and playing with non-writing-related functions – and that I was no different. Oliver: I used to teach Microsoft Office and academic writing. We speak to iA founder Oliver Reichenstein about what it takes to make a revolutionary writing app – and make sure its shine never fades. The latest iA Writer – still sleek and efficient! Q&A: A brief history of iA Writer
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