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iA Writer 3 — The quintessential writing machine, rewritten.
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"If you came here to read about ground-breaking new features, we have to apologize: iA Writer has not become bigger. It has become lighter, smarter, more refined." I like that attitude. Reminds me of OS X Snow Leopard. Cleaning up code debt and refining things. Not just an arms race for features. Nice one.
@joshuapinter Going back to basics, simplifying everything, from name to UI with full backwards compatibility was one of the hardest things we have done strategically. Not easy, and not easy to communicate, but it worked. Happy you understand and like the approach.
@urbnist Yes. Via markdown. 
Great update. Unfortunately, I switched to Ulysses and very happy there for now. One thing I would lik to see in both products is collaborative editing of documents in the library. Such a hassle now in markdown. Just invite a friend in and edit together (or at least make the document visible to him so he can check/review). Worked easier the old way, but otherwise I really like the library approach.
@florisvaneck The collaboration thing is big. I'm waiting for someone to integrate with Draftin or for Nate to just make mobile apps for Draft (there's already a Chrome app).
@mostlymarius Nate is CEO of highrise now. I may be wrong, but my guess is a mobile app for Draft is not in the cards given the amount of time he spends on Highrise.
Awesome work on this release. I love the new library concept and the new gestures on iOS. Great update to one of my favorite writing apps!
Very happy to see this released! I wrote at length about Writer vs. Ulysses recently, and while the new Library addresses some of my reservations about Writer, it doesn't really compete with Ulysses and its wonderful sheets. I expect this was intended as a midway point as far as complexity, but I really don't think that the additional functionality would have been an impediment. It's awesome that the former Writer Pro's syntax control has been folded into the main product though, and I appreciate the departure of the whole workflow thing.
A few random thoughts:
- Still no smart quotes with the Nitti typeface...bothers me more than it should but I love the way my Ulysses setup looks in Source Code Pro
- The Preview pane is fantastic, I love that it can be resized. In tiny mode it reminds me of Sublime Text's document overview, which is very useful
- I find the choice of blue for syntax highlighting kind of difficult to read in the standard daylight mode
@mostlymarius Nitti has plenty of smart quotes in all languages, the English standard ones are just not that obvious. We trust the skills of the type designers though and won’t request more obvious ones.
@mostlymarius Hey Marius, interesting perspective. As an owner of both too, I'm also enjoying the iA Writer update, particularly the decision to only have one version now!
Just to add my thoughts for any others thinking of purchasing one or both, which are that at the moment that I'd probably go with Ulysses if I was writing some kind of book or longer piece with multiple chapters / sections (because of the sheets as you mention).
I still like iA Writer for shorter pieces (that usually end up as blog posts or emails or smaller bits of web copy) where I'm just looking to get the thing out my head / quickly remove all other distractions as fast as possible. (I know I can use Ulysses for short pieces too but that's just how my brain feels towards both of them at the moment).
Great job on the update guys.
@reichenstein Hi Oliver, I appreciate the response! I absolutely respect that you're deferring to the expertise of the typographer; I think it's just a matter of preference as I recognize that smart quotes are present, I just prefer the look of Nitti Grotesk's, which are of course less angular. Regardless, it's a very tiny nitpick, just something that I notice when writing.
@nickcdavis Terrific way of putting it. If you think of a spectrum of complexity, it would probably have Writer on the far left, Scrivener on the far right, and Ulysses in the middle somewhere.
@nickcdavis @mostlymarius short-form will get me to try this out! (I use Scrivener for my novel and other long-form)
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