I keep mentioning this software Drafts 4 and often it’s entirely unconscious, more a consequence of how I write so much in it than through any deliberate plan to sell it to you. But I got the chance to expand on exactly why I like it so much when MacNN made it the topic of a Living With column. These are pieces about what something is like after a lot of use, after a long time. It’s interesting because most technology pieces are about today’s new releases and there is only so much you can possibly learn in a short review.

Whereas with a long process of reflection like this, there’s time to have discovered:

It is just a place to write. More than a text editor, less than a word processor, I have been opening it up to write down the odd stray thought for a couple of years. I’ve been opening it up to write the minutes of a meeting. To write a short story. To prepare a script for a presentation. If my brain isn’t somehow befuddled into believing I must open some other writing tool, I automatically open Drafts.

If that were all I did — open, write, rinse, repeat — then I’d be more than happy. I cannot, cannot define or explain this, but there is something pleasurable about writing in Drafts, about the physical typing of words into it, that I don’t get in Word or Pages.

Living With: Drafts 4 (iOS) – William Gallagher, MacNN (27 May 2015)

It isn’t all I do in Drafts 4. Read the full piece for more detail, more explanation and even more enthusing.

Drafts 4 is available for iOS and costs £7.99 in the App Store.