Author 4+

This is hot take after a brief look. The app shows a great deal of thought and love into the process of writing. I bought the full version after only a brief tryout with the free version that doesn’t provide for publishing.

I have used a lot, really a lot, of text editors and word processors over the past 45 years, but this is one that grabbed me immediately. It’s the polar opposite of the ancient Wang word processor which is the only computer writing system I’ve ever abandoned in favor of a typewriter.

Thank you. I hope you will still like it after continued use!

Who needs another word processor. But this one has some nice features that save some time. For example, if you want to see al the places in your document you discuss a certain thing , you can highlight some text, and hit command f to see each sentence that has that text in your document. You can also quickly see the outline of your document from the headings you have used by squeeze-pinching the track pad. So it has some litle shortcuts that save time. It has more advanced features too, like built-in fucntion to insert book reference from a search window where you can search by title/author of the book. For my work, the content has to eventually end up in Word to share with collegues or format for publication. Copy-paste is free, but there is also an upgrade to this app to save in Word format (and several other formats). I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it can easily save to a WordPress blog. So bottom line, this has some really cool features, but doesn’t yet replace Word for my work documents.

Thank you very much. I hope you will find the export function useful. It is something we will continue to improve, including an update coming very soon, which will handle academic citations even better.

Author is a truly new concept in writing. Following the lead of pioneers like Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson (if you don’t know who these people are, you need to do some research!) this is a powerful tool that requires some learning. Do watch the videos to understand the concepts that are implemented in Author. You will soon learn to leverage these features and concepts and will wonder how you lived without them!

Designing a tool like Author is a delicate balance—how to implement the features with a holistic and clean approach such that the software doesn’t get in your way. Compare with large and complex systems like Word and you will find Author a breath of fresh air!

I’ve been working in software and user experience for over 40 years and an application like this does not come along often. I also don’t write many reviews—most software isn’t worth reviewing. Try it, spend some time, and you will be rewarded :-)

Thank you very much indeed eastern sierra! You are completely right that this work is inspired by Doug (the name Author is an homage to his Augment system) and Ted's work has inspired the non-linearity we are working on. This is only the beginning... :-)