Writing apps on iPad

Apps and I go a long way back. From installing softwares on the PC and playing with it, and then uninstalling it after “testing” it, I have clogged my Windows installation to such an extent, that I had become a pro at installing it again and again. This was in my college days.

Now in the world of mobile OS, I have played with oldest apps to the latest Android, Windows, and iOS store. These days, after getting my iPad, when I have been busy trying different apps, I read about the Hanx Writer and thought of trying it out. Usually, I try the games for its graphics, and when I am unable to move ahead in the game, I uninstall them. Some apps have been crappy with the unwanted ads or showers of bling, as in Candy Crush Soda. I do have a condition while testing, that I won’t buy the app unless I really enjoy it and find it useful. But some others as in the Smash Hit, has stunned me with their display and has tempted me to buy the app many times.

As the year draws to a close, I was wondering what project to start with for the next year. The instagram challenge of Project 365 is going to be over. Apart from photography, I thought why not give the writing a similar chance. So that’s when I started searching for the writing apps for iPad. I was searching for the free apps as usual as a start. The native app, Pages, and iAWriter and many other famous ones were either paid apps or were very heavy. The Evernote and Onenote apps were useful in doing sync across all the devices, but the interface did not seem tempting. Moreover, they did not had the “word count”. They acted more like the plastic files we had at home, to segregate various notes and clippings. Having said that, I found Evernote to be very useful for using on laptop and would have stuck to it on iPad too, if it was free, and did not crash much on my laptop.

I stumbled across a simple app, Werdsmith, which had a plain interface and beautiful fonts but was limited to few entries. I have now settled on Plain Text 2 to start with, which can be synchronised manually with Evernote and Onenote, as a backup. Though I am still not satisfied and the search is still on.

I also had a go at the famous Hanx Writer. the typical handwriting feel indeed has something magical about it. I was giving a first try scribbling along, and the following came up. Below is the unedited version of what I wrote, and I was super impressed.

xmas1

xmas2

So I wrote another document, thinking the magic would bring me back from writing slumber. And this came up.

mist

If anything could bring you back from a writing block, then you would give it 5 stars, won’t you? But no. This app is only for these kind of scribbling purposes, since these pages can be used as PDF or images in other apps. Doing the editing in the app is very hard, even to do a small rewriting of a word. But for the magic it did, I am sure not going to uninstall it.

What are your favourite writing apps on iOS?

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