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Apple’s Mac App Store has a highlighted app section called “Apps for Writers” which includes a number of good alternative word processing apps called Manuscript Makers, as well as Distraction-Free apps with minimalist interfaces, apps for Journaling & Blogging and apps for saving Notes & Clippings. Let me recommend what I consider the best choice for each of the four categories.
Manuscript Makers
Apple highlights five apps they recommend for this category, including their very own Pages ($19.99). However, I also recommend either Scrivenor ($44.99) or Mellel ($28.99). The other two apps are Movie Draft SE ($29.99) and Ulysses ($29.99). Download paws in typing town for mac.
Scrivener
One of our editors, Tobias Buckell swears by Scrivener, calling it the “gold standard for writing anything larger than 4,000 words.” He also said that he “adores it. It’s the #1 go to app on my machine.” At nearly $45 it is the most expensive app in Apple’s list of recommendations. However, it seems like a case of “You get what you pay for!” It has overwhelmingly good reviews in the app store.
More than a word processor, Scrivenor helps you organize your work and also offers a distraction free interface, even though it didn’t make that list in Apple’s recommendations (see below).
The Corkboard feature helps you gather all of your reference material and ideas so that you can organize your thoughts and create your masterpiece. My college English Composition professor taught me to research and write this way using 3×5 cards. No longer needed with Scrivener.
Mellel
If $45 seems a bit rich, maybe $28 fits your budget better? One of my pastor friends swears by this app because of its handling of Hebrew, thanks to its Israeli developers. Designed for working on long documents like a book or dissertation, it too includes powerful organization functions. For desktop publishers, you will like the layout features and control.
Distraction-Free Writing
I’m not a fan of distraction-free writing. But a few of our writers here at GottaBeMobile and our sister site Notebooks.com use them. Scrivener stands out as the app of choice, as I said above. Strangely, Apple didn’t include it in this category of recommended apps.
The two highest rated apps are Byword ($9.99) and OmmWriter Dana II ($4.99), with WriteRoom ($24.99) the most expensive of these apps just behind them. They also included iA Writer ($9.99) and Writer ($2.99) the cheapest of the apps.
OmmWriter II Dana II
When you judge an app you look at the features and screenshots and then read the reviews. If the first two look good, but the reviews wildly vary as to the quality of an app, it makes it hard to want to download and check it out. Of these apps, two stand out in this third evaluation category – reviews. OmmWriter II Dana II has 249 ratings with 224 of them being 5 star and 13 4 star ratings. That means that of the 249 users only 12 users think it rates 3 stars or below. That led me to download it first.
Aside from the very annoying music or environmental sounds in the background and the ridiculous noises you get from each keystroke, the app is beautiful. You can also change the backgrounds. I was puzzled as to why the developer included these distractions in a distraction free app is puzzling, but once you turn them off and pick a more subdued background, the app measures up to the user reviews.
I like the concept of this app and, if I preferred distraction free writing, I could see how this app would benefit me. I write mostly shorter form content like blog posts, letters and outlined notes for my preaching. But for a long document that doesn’t require a lot of formatting, this style of app would be perfect. I do wish it had one paragraph formatting option – the ability to either indent automatically or to have a small amount of space between paragraphs. You have to do this manually, which annoys me.
Scrivenor and Pages
My recommendation would be to go with Scrivenor if you need a powerful writing and formatting tool but also want an option for distraction-free writing. If you upgraded to OS X Lion, then use Pages if you don’t want to spend as much. You can use Pages in a full screen mode in Lion (see below) but still have access to the formatting tools by mousing to the top of the screen.
Journaling & Blogging
In this category, one app stands out for bloggers – Mars Edit ($39.99). However, the other four apps do something totally different. They let you record your thoughts in a digital personal diary, something I do not do a lot.
Mars Edit
For bloggers who want to write offline, format offline and then upload to their blog, Mars Edit offers the only really good solution on a Mac that I’ve found until Microsoft ports Windows Live Writer. Don’t hold your breath. At $39.99 Mars Edit is expensive, but also clearly the best. It contains a powerful image insertion tool. You can set up the options for your blog to post as a draft or publish write away. It also handles categories and tags quite nicely. If you post to multiple blogs, Mars Edit will let you set them all up and switch easily between them.
I wish that the formatting options were available on a toolbar instead of one drop down menu. You can use keyboard shortcuts for many of them, but not all.
Day One
The Interface of Day One ($9.99) and the recommendations in the app store give this app the nod. The Menu Bar quick entry tool encourages you to write a journal entry quickly and easily. The reminder system also nudges you to journal each day. You can quickly find your entries based on the calendar view or the list view, each of which shows entries according to the date.
The app syncs with DropBox so that you can then access entries on the iOS app ($1.99) as well. You can set a password to keep your thoughts private. The simple interface offers a few formatting tools, but not so many that you get distracted.
If you want to listen to what you wrote, select it, right click and choose either Speech or Add to iTunes as a Spoken Track. That last feature might be worth the price alone if you want to create spoken word documents quickly for someone who likes to listen to your writing or someone who cannot read for some reason.
Notes & Clippings
Of the four apps here, Evernote has to be the most useful for one reason – more people, apps and services use it than any other note taking, gathering organizing or snipping app available on any platform. The other two note taking/clipping apps are Yojimbo ($38.99) and Together ($39.99). I can’t recommend them due to the cost and lack of ubiquity that Evernote provides.
Top Apps For Mac
Evernote
With Evernote you can do a few things:
- clip info from various sources like the Internet or from email
- organize info in folders and with tags
- sync info between multiple devices including smartphones, tablets, and computers
- take notes, record audio and snap images
I primarily use Evernote as a shoebox for my information and as a notebook. I save things like tax receipts in one folder. I keep meeting notes from my job in another. I tag these so that I can quickly find them. When I take a trip I save things like hotel receipts and itinerary information to a folder made for that trip. When I have a special project, I create a new folder and save notes to that folder that I need to remember.
I use iPad apps that allow me to make meeting notes with my stylus and import them into Evernote, either by sending them via email or in some cases directly from the apps.
One of my most used apps, Bible Reader from Olive Tree, incorporates Evernote by saving all of the margin notes I take on verses in the Bible to an Evernote folder.
The web interface, iPad app, Android app and computer app all work together to sync all of my notes. I paid for the premium membership ($5/month or $45/year) which gives me all the bandwidth I need (up to 1GB/month). However, even as a heavy user, I seldom go past the allotted bandwidth given to users of the free edition.
Below you can learn how a dairy farmer uses Evernote to help him organize his business.
MindNode Pro
If you like to use mind maps to organize thoughts and brain storm ideas, MindNode Pro ($19.99) might help you become more productive. Mind mapping software lets you visually organize thoughts. For example, if you make presentations, you can set up a mind map with your speech. Put main ideas with supporting ideas connected to the main idea in a visual patter. Create a flow chart of the speech with each point in order and with an introduction and conclusion and all of the supporting material in each of those.
Writers might create a mind map to organize a story or article. MindNode Pro lets you put together mind maps with visual tools. It has plenty of tools for quickly and easily creating charts and organizing your mind maps.
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Most bloggers today are familiar only with services designed for use with their choice of web browser. If you edit a WordPress.com account or WordPress.org installation, chances are you login and publish your material through the cloudware provided.
The same goes for Blogger and TypePad users, and as well as options like MySpace and Vox. But if you’ve grown tired of those standard frontends, and would prefer to utilize software to blog for work or for personal enjoyment, there are alternatives that you should know about. For Mac users in particular, there are several that prove as useful, powerful, and visually worthwhile as any comparative webware.
Here we present our best discoveries. Share your suggestions in the comments, too!
Flock
People conditioned to regard their Web browser as their de facto “blogware” will likely warm to Flock fairly quickly. You might say that’s because Flock is a browser as well. Its foundation is the Mozilla platform. The joy in using Flock and all that it grants easy access to is that it's built for the social web. You can network and share photos and cool web pages with little effort. And, yes, you can blog, all while navigating the web just as you ordinarily would.
MarsEdit
One of the most celebrated of publishing utilities for Mac OS X users, MarsEdit, now in version 2.2.2, is not a free package. Its cost is $29.95 after a free 30-day trial. But a common refrain heard by users is that the more often it is employed the more the price is so clearly justified.
Apart from dead simple uploads and a quickly-learned interface, MarsEdit sports features like compatibility with Blogger, Drupal, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Vox, and more, a Flickr connection, and integration with more hardcore Mac-specific text editors like BBEdit and TextMate. In short, it’s a power tool.
ecto
Another multi-service editor of MarsEdit-like design, ecto puts considerable emphasis on getting you from A to B to Z as quickly as possible. It certainly holds its own by comparison with others on the market. Its list of supported blog services is extensive, to say the least. Presently in Version 3 form, ecto has been around for over 5 years, and costs $17.95 to own.
Blogo
Launched by Brainjuice, Blogo seems simply drawn and puts your typical blogware to shame. As with the other editors above, its support list for blogging services is long, allows you to quickly publish media, and can even manage to publish Twitter and Ping.fm messages in association with your blog feed - call it streamlined PR, if you will.
Finally, Blogo gives users the option to produce content distraction-free with an on-board full screen mode. That’s a nice little dollop of GTD whipped cream, for sure.
Tumblr Dashboard Widget
Here’s a super small and super lightweight Dashboard application tossed midstream into the mix. We think Tumblr Dashboard Widget is worth mentioning simply for the fact that Tumblr itself is a bare boned and ultra-minimalist invention. A widget of this size is a fine complement. Enough said.
Mac Journal
An appreciable application both for its adherence to the traditional idea of journaling as well as its implementation of color to make the editing environment that much more colorful, Mac Journal is something that, while quite costly at $34.95 for a license, runs with the best in the business. It may not carry the same fanboy cache as that held by MarsEdit and others, but it's a strong delivery nonetheless.
Blog.Mac
Intended to be a generally fool-proof development, Blog.Mac is more or less the closest thing to something that would come out of Apple’s own software assembly room. It’s not heavy on the details. It’s personal blogging made simple.
The current release, Version 1.3 Beta 4, talks to Apple’s MobileMe web hosting service and offers better Mac OS X Leopard integration. It will set users back $29.99. The creators at Largemouth Software also offer a Blog.Mac template editor free of charge.
iWeb plus MobileMe
You could go with something independently-made like Blog.Mac, but if you prefer something actually from the halls of Infinite Loop, Apple presents its own website and webpage editor in the form of iWeb. It’s a very controlled setup, and comes with all Mac computers sold today (standalone iLife suite runs $79), and to make use of it in ways that takes advantage of the “Apple experience,” you’ll need to pony up $99 per year for MobileMe hosting (formerly '.Mac') and photo gallery access and so forth.
RapidWeaver
Some people just want to blog in their own unique way, requiring a departure from many popular web services today. Samsung ml 2010 driver download for mac os. RapidWeaver lets users wield an editor’s stick in ways that no other application here is able. Of course, that can mean a concerted effort to continue a blog for a significant period of time within the environment provided by RapidWeaver and the folks at RealMac Software, but hey, if you want choices, you’ve got choices with this one. Nearly limitless options, really.
Fluid
Okay, so you’ve parsed the choices listed above, and you’re not quite sold on any of them. Perhaps you recognize more than ever your liking for the way your blog service of choice operates, but you'd rather have it resemble an application within your Dock or menu bar. Fluid lets you do just that. It behaves as a kind of super powerful webclip creator that allows you to access web applications without having to visit the URL in Firefox or Camino or whathaveyou. There’s a bit of a wow factor that goes with this download.