Current bandwidth usage, and a bandwidth breakdown for the top apps.Writing is fun and it is considered to be the best way to express your thoughts and feelings. Some are conventional word processors, others are text editors and then there is WordPress which can put your words straight on to the web.An advanced Mac system monitor for your menu bar, with CPU, GPU, memory, network. There’s a great selection of tools for the job. Writing applications for Mac users can make a huge difference with their usability.We have compiled a list of 10 Creative Writing Apps for Mac designed to cater to all your needs: 1) Squibler Squibler provides a really useful and efficient writing tool to help unlock the creative geniuses of every writer.While the Mac may not be a typewriter, many people use it to write.More to the point, it has everything anyone needs in a word-processor. Kitchen sink includedWord has everything you need in a word-processor. Life can be less trouble that way. All of them co-exist with Word in one way or another.Given Word’s place in the world, there’s a strong argument for sticking with it when you write for work or for clients.
Office is also on my phone and until recently I had a Windows version running the Mac as well as the OS X version.Depending on how you look at these things, Word is either a powerful, full-featured, professional document creation tool or bloated and clumsy. Buy Word as part of Office 365In fact I can use Microsoft Office on up to five devices. Today you can switch from Word on Windows to Word on a Mac without any jarring adjustments. That’s no longer the case. Complexity can also make Word hard to master.Chances are you won’t scratch the surface of what Word has to offer.For years the Mac versions of Word were quite different from Windows versions of the software. It can feel bloated and clumsy. Best Apps For Writing Mac 2011 HasIf I need to switch to another screen, say to check facts in an email or on a web page, the distraction free display reverts to a normal, distracting display. The distraction free mode is great, or it would be if it stayed put. Microsoft Word Mac OS XWord:mac 2011 has a distraction free full-screen mode – shown above in the screenshot. I could live with that, but Word doesn’t do a good job of getting out the way on the Mac. It feels as if it is two generations behind the current Windows version of the software. Well, maybe not if I see Track Changes coming first.The current Mac version is Word:mac 2011. Although I can’t easily write an interview for a client or newspaper then send it to them easily with WordPress, it is the jumping off point for this personal look at alternative writing tools. I have to take my hands off the keyboard, mouse to the top of the screen and change the display from Visual model to Text mode then manually add the HTML command or perhaps at the start of the cross-head and a closing code at the end.While WordPress gets the job done for posting stories like this one, it’s not a great tool for other writing jobs. While it is easy to add lists, embed media, link to web pages or produce elegant pull quotes, adding a cross-head is clumsy. WordPress is fast, lightweight and relatively painless.However, it isn’t without flaws. WordPressWordPress can be as clean as a blank sheet of white paper in an old-school typewriter. It works. Pokemon gameboy emulator macFour years ago it may have been ahead of its time, today it feels somewhat old-fashioned.At first sight Apple’s Pages ’09 resembles Microsoft Word. That’s not a lot of money, but is in marked contrast to Microsoft’s approach which allows one purchase covering all supported devices.Pages is well overdue for an update, the ’09 is a dead giveaway. New owners of those devices get free versions, it would cost me $14 to add the iPad version of Pages. Each of the three programs are in the OS X App Store and sell for $25 in New Zealand.Apple sells the same titles for the iPad and the iPhone. The three work well together in much the same way as Microsoft Office. There’s the Numbers spreadsheet and KeyNote, a presentation tool. Pages is more a flexible layout tool. Producing documents that, as far as my clients are concerned, came from Microsoft Word is easy.While Pages functions as a perfectly good word processor, that’s not what Apple has in mind for the software. Unlike Word, it does a great job of getting out of the way, there’s a distraction-free screen that works just as you’d expect. It’s a great option for collaborating with others although there is one specific and annoying flaw in Google’s software. Anyone taking a look at the options should at least consider Google Docs and the Microsoft Office Web App version of Word.Google Docs is sleek and clean. Google DocsModern Mac writing tools aren’t limited to the apps that run directly on the hardware. If I was preparing a business report, a newsletter or a book this would be my first port of call. It means you might add a word or delete characters at the wrong place. This is the annoying flaw mentioned earlier. If you’re not a touch-typist this may not bother you.Second, the text can often be too small to read, zooming Google Docs does strange things to the mouse and cursor so they no longer line up properly with the page. If you touch type, this will slows you down and could make your hands ache. There aren’t so many keyboard short cuts. IA WriterOn one level Information Architect’s iA Writer is my favourite Macintosh writing tool. I know other journalists who tolerate Google Docs, I don’t know of many who love it as a writing tool. This makes it hard for comfortable reading and means you’ll struggle with proofreading.None of these shortcomings may worry you — they are possibly personal or just things that bother people like me who write for a living. IA Writer Mac OS XIA Writer is fast and productive, but the reasons that make it great for short writing jobs work against it for longer more complex tasks. It does spell-check and it does allow minimal levels of mark-up. As I have written elsewhere, iA Writer the nearest thing in the digital world to using a mechanical typewriter and a clean sheet of paper. It is not a word processor.I like it because it is clean and stays right out of the way. Writer is not so great for anything over around 500 words.That’s mainly because iA Writer is a text editor. Once there you can set up themes. To get to the controls you need to mouse to the top of the screen. On a MacBook Air the characters are tiny, barely large enough to read.You can change the font, type size, colour, background colour and the line spacing. Start typing and the text appears in black, 12-point Times New Roman. The software is free, but you’re expected to make a donation if you use it.When you first open the application you nothing, just blank light grey screen. FocusWriterLike iA Writer, FocusWriter is designed from the outset for distraction-free writing. I’m struggling to find the best tool for longer jobs. It could best be described as a text editor, which makes it useful for dealing with HTML or CSS.For short writing jobs iA Writer is my clear favourite. Other Mac writing toolsA couple of people suggested Mars Edit from Red Sweater Software. If you need to work with Microsoft Office users you can save as RTF.FocusWriter is the most basic writing software in this round up, but it gets the job done. Neither is completely satisfactory, neither is awful.
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