iA Writer

Name: iA Writer
Rating: 5.0 (3 reviews)

A Laser-Focused Writing App

5.0•3 reviews•

36 followers

A Laser-Focused Writing App

5.0•3 reviews•

36 followers

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“My favorite iOS app for writing in Markdown, without question, is iA Writer iA Writer is just beautiful. To me, it’s the gold standard for Markdown syntax styling... an elegant champagne flute. That’s iA Writer for me.” –John Gruber

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Launch tags:Productivity•Text Editors•Apple

Launch Team

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Congratulations on the release!! You guys never disappoint! There’s no better app for writing! It’s a pure joy being able to use the same files with either Obsidian or iA Writer depending on the situation! Would you ever consider adding support for backlinks as well? Hats off to the whole team! Congratulations!

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4yr ago

iA Presenter

Maker

@maxwschulz Hi Maximilian, yes, backlinks are next on our roadmap.

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4yr ago

You made my day! 🫶

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4yr ago

The price bump is a bummer, specially in places where dollar is expensive — pretty much all over the Global South. I can't honestly justify paying half of our monthly minimum wage, or 4x than an annual subscription for Microsoft 365, in a text editor for both iOS and macOS. (I know, potatoes and potatoes, but for many people iA Writer competes with Word; they are both text editors!) Also, I can't understand your pricing policy of squeezing potential new users while people that bought iA Writer a decade ago for a fraction of current price get free updates ad aeternum. Maybe charging a lower price from everyone when a new major version is released? (I recognize my comment may sound cheap, but someone had to speak out :)

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4yr ago

iA Presenter

Maker

@ghedin I feel you. We are currently building a platform that will allow you to either buy the apps individually or try the apps and use them all cross-platform via subscription. Apple doesn't offer any of that, so we had to build it ourselves. The coming subscription option will not be the price of a coffee or a pizza either, because the products are not coffee or pizza, they are not cheap to develop, support, and sustain, they don't offer cheap, but high value and we're not Google or Facebook, bombarding you with creepy ads or milking your data for free access. We try our best to allow everyone to work with our apps, but we have to work within the given technical limits (Google allows for regional price variations, so we offer that on Android, Apple does only offer that for subscriptions). Rest assured that we take pricing decisions with a maximum of thought and consideration. We look at subscription prices for comparable apps, we look at what the devices cost that our apps run on, what it costs to develop, support, and sustain an app over many years, what it would mean to launch a new version, and we look at the value an app offers after 12 years of development. That our apps last so long is a strong, laudable quality IMO.

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4yr ago

@reichenstein Thanks for this thoughtful reply, Oliver! You've probably considered this, but I really like the pricing model of apps such as SublimeText and Keepassium: a one-time purchased that guarantees updates for a timeframe (1 or 3 years) and, in case the customer doesn't renew it, she keeps the app in its current version (no more updates) and lose premium support.

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4yr ago

iA Presenter

Maker

@ghedin I'd love that, too. Now, try to do it on the AppStore. No go. Even with your own payment platform, this will be close to impossible on iOS/iPadOS.

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4yr ago

How does this compare to Obsidian? They have a complete PKM setup (wikilinks is a very basic functionality for knowledge management). iAwriter now has a steep price of $100 (only for iOS + MacOS). The only new feature seems to be wikilinks. How does it justify such a price bump?

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4yr ago

iA Presenter

Maker

@newkidtim1 It doesn't compare to Obsidian. It's a different app with a different purpose. But it works well with it, and plenty of people use them in parallel already. And it doesn't compete on the number of features, to begin with. Even though it does a lot of things that others do not. I think in terms of pricing, it's quite competitive since it's not 50.- as a yearly subscription but permanent ownership.

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4yr ago

Been a dedicated user of iA Writer for almost my entire career. It's an indispensable notepad. I'm not entirely sure how I'll incorporate links into my workflow, but if it's implemented with anything resembling the thought and craft iA put into the rest of the product over the years, I'm sure it'll be well done.

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4yr ago

iA Presenter

Maker

@cdohertyk Thank you for your support, Cole. Wikilinks was new for me, too, when we started two years ago, but it quickly became a very productive and natural habit. I use them when I expand on a thought inside an article that fits but would stretch the purpose of the text. I use them to collect thoughts on my favorite topics (together with hashtags), and I use them for more complex projects (with a TOC made of Wikilinks). There are plenty more ways! You can always get in touch with us if you have questions. If you find a cool workflow, please share it with us.

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4yr ago

@reichenstein My workflow is rather boring: I create a new note at the beginning of each month, and each day gets an H2 heading. Then I simply fill it with all the drafts and scratch copy I find myself writing throughout the day, before it is ready for other eyes or to be placed in the 'final' doc. The solo focus/lack of collaboration is actually a huge benefit for me! Perhaps I will begin to remember tagging and linking things together for later reference.

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4yr ago

Krono - History & Pop Culture Trivia

iA Writer is the first app I'd always install on a new device. Rare example of exceptional software that only gets faster, more reliable and qualitatively better with time. Amazingly the wikilinks-style support is what I've been emulating for about 3 years, as other "second brain" apps were either too slow or too badly made to replace my tool for thought — iA Writer. Supercharged tags and auto-links is an amazing bonus. I know that shipping great work is a pleasure of itself, but still — super well done and thank you!

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4yr ago

iA Presenter

Maker

@andreyz Thank you, too, for this wonderful review. We were skeptical at first, but once we tried linking documents there was no going back. We're really excited about extending the shareability of our markdown plaintext files with other apps.

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4yr ago

My go-to app for notes and writing since it was first released. Well done Oliver and team, for continuing to develop it. Hashtags were already awesome, but wikilinks are brilliant for turning your notes library into a real knowledge database, among many other things. I also notice search is a lot faster. I have 12,000 notes and rising, and the last version stuttered on iOS for me when searching. No longer!

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4yr ago

iA Presenter

Maker

@mkhalili Thank you, Merhan. We indeed put a lot of time and energy into making it performant. Lots of people that stress-tested it with thousands of files have reported that it is indeed flying fast. You will also notice, that start-up time is much faster compared to a nonnative app.

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4yr ago

This is a great app and it's awesome to see a new major version. IA is clearly focused on creating a great, highly focused experience, and their attention to detail is often missing from other notetaking apps. The only thing it's missing (for me) is folder support for Dropbox on mobile (like the Desktop version supports), but I understand it's more complicated on mobile. Still, if you're looking for a dedicated text notes app, this is one of the best.

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4yr ago

iA Presenter

Maker

@neilio Thank you Neil. Well, I have good news for you: Last week, Apple announced support for NSFileProviderReplicatedExtension in iOS and iPadOS 16. Most file sync services, including Dropbox, support it on macOS. Once they start using the same code on iOS and iPadOS, you’ll be able to add folders as custom Library Locations. We've been a bit stubborn on this, but finally, it looks like we might have been on the right track. :-)

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4yr ago

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5.0

Based on 3 reviews

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