How to choose between notepads, text editors, and word processors for your Mac or iPad
You have an absurd and discouraging range of choices for applications to write on Mac or iOS. It ‘s great to have the choice and tools today are great but AppleInsider shows you how to know what is best for you – and what is it? you will waste your time.
When our species first looked up from the primordial soup, we probably wrote a blog about it in a WordStar word processor. Then came the fire and WordPerfect. Then come civilisation and the dawn of irrecoverable documents with Microsoft Word (from $ 70 / year). At each stage, there was a word processor that everyone used and that we all used for everything. Those days are gone and we say goodbye to them very happily.
For at least the last ten years and certainly since the App Store, our options for writing tools have exploded. It’s great. Whatever you write, there is a tool that is not only good for you but that you will like. If you spend a lot of time writing, having good tools is superb, but also a little relish.
Today, we have several word processors that aim to do everything, but we also have specialized software for screenwriters. We have text editors adapted to your shopping list or writing in the Swift programming language.
We have apps that will allow you to make a sleepy note on your iPhone in the middle of the night and have it on your Mac in the morning.
If you are now looking to write on Mac or iOS, start here. If you have a decades-old hand, start over here anyway. Because until you see what is possible now, you will not imagine everything that has been done to make writing better, faster and more enjoyable.
Contents
There is no more basic than that
Note taking applications
Word processor
Specialized uses
Book tools
No tools are enough
There is no more basic than that
To make this shopping list or to note a phone message, you need a note-taking app and you already have one. On your Mac, there is TextEdit (free) which is so simple and basic that you think you came back to 1980s computers.
However, it is so simple and basic, it does not add much complexity or formatting similar to Microsoft Word TextEdit is also liked by some type of programmer. They are specifically programmers who have not heard of BBEdit yet ($ 49.99).
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Only, look at this. We have barely a pixel in this area and have just moved from the most basic and free note-taking app to a paid and incredibly powerful application for specialized users. You will see this in the range of available writing applications that each of them tries to add more features to get your custom.
You will also see Apple come behind them with new or improved features in its own applications.
So much so that it is possible that you do not even know that TextEdit was on your Mac: Apple will never make a presentation about it. While they made presentations on Apple Notes (free).
It was a slightly practical iPhone application for writing lost thoughts before forgetting them, but now it has moved to the next level.
Note taking applications
Apple Notes, Evernote (free), OneNote (under Office 365 starting at $ 70, Google Keep (free), Bear (free), Keep It ($ 49.99) and more and more make up this next class of products. not the word replacements, they are still not writing your novel or medical textbook.
Yet you can use them for that. You could. Do not do it, and especially do not listen to developers who insist that people write their novels in these apps. Although it is possible to do it literally on any tool, it is also a slogan and we are supposed to make sure that the writing is better and easier, not something something that is possible with slogging.
Take it, however, as a measure of the power of this class of application. You can type anything in any of them, you can do a certain amount of formatting to make the text pleasing. You can not index, you can not cross-reference, you can not write twenty chapters and easily move five chapters.
What these note apps bring you is crucial, however, is the ability to write to the device you have closest. Turn to your Mac to type in thousands of words and each of them is also on your iPhone and iPad.
With the exception of Google Keep, which is more a visual tool and suited to a few short notes, each of them offers the same basic features. They are on both platforms, they are fast, they mean that you can have all your work with you wherever you go.
If this is the class of the writing application for you, you can choose one of them and you would be happy. However, if you use a lot of Microsoft applications to write or anything else, go for Microsoft OneNote because it is especially good.
Today, it is a little more difficult than identifying the most successful people because Evernote is wide and the competition is great. We use Evernote mainly because we have been using it for years but we are moving away. This is not a criticism of Evernote, however: it is rather that Apple Notes has turned out to be more practical.
Even so, Apple Notes does not have the Evernote feature to allow you to record audio in your notes. If you want to do this or if you need to work on Mac, iOS, Windows and Android, look at Evernote.
Word processor
You have already met them. We run the risk of being frustrated when Word crashes – and we repeatedly wonder why it works if Microsoft Excel is so good – but it is a surprisingly powerful tool.
Chances are that most of the books you have read in the last thirty years have been written on Word. Even now, when there are alternatives, the publishing industry expects Word documents so that each alternative application saves in this Microsoft format.
If you create documents with cross-references, Word not only allows you to display text as “see Chapter 3 for more details”, but if you add another chapter, it will automatically change the 3 to a 4 and the academic characteristics you would have to be in a university to enjoy.
No matter where you are writing, you will probably need to collaborate with people. Maybe it’s just your editor, maybe that’s anyone in the entire management team and their comments make you want to cry. No matter what level of suffering you have to face, Word offers commentary and a track change feature not to be missed.
Apple’s pages (free with new Macs) has a lot of the same thing, but not all. The problem with Pages is that it has a wide range of features and tools, but Apple hides them all to give you the simplest appearance. Microsoft is like the boy runner who wants his cars to have the loudest engine, the loudest exhaust and a lot of faster scratches. Both, in their own way, make it difficult to know what you can do with them, but as a rule, Word does more.
If Pages and Word are the biggest on Mac and iOS, there are others like Mellel 4 ($ 49) and Nisus Writer Pro ($ 79). The latter, in particular, has decades of development behind him and a fan club around today. This makes it a general word processor with some specialized uses.
Specialized uses
Everyone knows that writing is writing but everyone is wrong. Everyone should try to write a scenario one day. You can do it in Word, but trust us, we’ve been there already. You create at least half a dozen different Word styles. Then you have to remember how to switch between them without breaking your flow and good luck with that.
If scripts, plays, and radio plays are important parts of your writing, look at Final Draft 10 or Highland 2.
Final Draft 10 was actually a standard tool for screenwriters and, as with publishers and Word, producers expect Final Draft. In fact, these days, they expect the PDF format to allow you to write anything, but Final Draft makes script writing easier.
Highland 2 makes it a little easier. As long as you write only on a Mac, Highland 2 is a modern, fast and enjoyable writing tool. It has recently added more general word processing features, but it will not be Word or Pages.
Book tools
It is not the job of the writer to design and produce books, or at least he has never been and should not be. However, what writers have always had to do is cope with book length manuscripts. That means knowing that this change in Chapter 1 will be a problem in Chapter 24.
Next, it also means simply physically manipulating large volumes of text and that is when you are in the 80, 90 and 100,000 words that even the best note-taking applications like Evernote will be cumbersome.
Word is also built for this but turns out to be a pain: it can be slow to navigate in a large document and even if you have not changed anything, the number of words is a guess for a few moments while Word catches up.
Then there is the fact that Word almost boasts of you when it decides that it can recover a corrupted document. We would just like it to stop corrupting them.
It’s not that all the manuscripts go wrong, it’s that you do not know which one or when, so you end up saving a lot, you fiddle a lot, sometimes you worry a lot. In the end, that’s why we moved to Scrivener ($ 45) for a long term job.
Scrivener does not have the extensive academic tools of Word. However, it seems lighter when you are writing in it and it flies when you are editing. There is a Corkboard view that helps you organize even large chapters. It has the ability to focus only on chapters 7 and 11, for example, and exclude the rest.
Plus, where you feel Word was written by talented engineers – engineers but not writers – Scriptor was made by one of us. You can see this in a dozen little touches that make your writing flow, but you can also see it in the search function of the application.
The Scrivener developers know what it is like to write big projects. Whether it’s fiction where you might want to make character notes or non-fiction where you have to compile a lot of research, each Scrivener document comes with a research brief.
So you open your book and there is the text that will eventually be read by your audience, but in the same document, there is everything you need. Drafts, discarded chapters, PDF of research papers, web links, inspiring images. No matter what. All.
When it comes to producing the book, you can get Scrivener to compile all your chapters into a nice Word document that you send to your publisher. Similarly, you can import this Word document into Adobe InDesign and produce it yourself. A little easier than mastering InDesign, the tool of international publishers, is Vellum (starting at $ 199).
It’s a tool for making e-books and paper or binders too. Scrivener and him have recently been updated to work better with each other and effectively turn your Mac into a publishing house.
You can write your book in Vellum: its text editing features are good. Yet even the manufacturers say you should not. Use a tool like Scrivener or Word that provides features to help the person make the physical writing.
No tools are enough
You will not be writing your shopping list in Vellum, unless you are really serious about publishing every detail of your life for the world to enjoy.
Moreover, you will not use Scrivener for your shopping list or your telephone messages either.
Instead, if you are writing a lot, look to get more of an application across the spectrum of tools. Taking notes is a boon for everyone.
Then there are also two applications that refuse to adapt perfectly to this array of writing tools, but that we would neglect if we do not mention them.
The first is Drafts 5 on iOS. It seems to be the most basic of note-taking apps, but this apparent simplicity belies the power under the hood. You can rate this message in Drafts 5 and tell it to send an e-mail or message or text message to someone with this information. We just wish that it also works on Mac.
The second and last of these tools works on Mac and iOS: OmniOutliner. We use more for event planning than for writing, but we are very well placed to help sort through the ideas we have used hundreds of times this year.
If you have a minute, try using the Word formatting feature, and then get the OmniOutliner test. You will be sold in minutes
This is one of those applications where developers say that people have written novels in and we do not doubt it, we do not understand why.
Because there is a part of us that is missing how simple it was when you have written everything in the same application, the features and facilities of this range are now too beautiful. Today, we have the opportunity to rate an iPhone application, expand it to Drafts, and then turn it into a Scrivener novel and a Final Draft scenario.
It’s a very good time to be a writer. Once you can sort through the sea of different applications available.
