Drafts for iPad

My goto writing app of choice is iA Writer. At least I thought so. I saved to Dropbox or iCloud and pick it up wherever. I thought it was as simple as that (and it is) but I heard about this other app. When I hear about other apps I tend to perk my ears up like a sleeping cat. What was I missing out on? Write 2 was also good but my heart was encased in stone and loyally enamoured with iA Writer like some doe-eyed teenaged girl smitten by some guy from the 'wrong side of the tracks.' So what's so great about Drafts (for the iPad)?

Price: $4

Compatibility: iPad (There's a separate iPhone version)

Drafts (for the iPad) is a word processing app if you didn't gather my opening paragraph that talked about nothing else than word processor apps that aren't Pages. It's stylish, simple, but most importantly, packed to the brim with accessibility to a stupid range of online services that I will start listing right now.

    • Evernote
    • iCloud (with Drafts for iPhone)
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Other apps like Fantastical, Notesy or Tweetbot
    • Dropbox
    • E-mail
    • Native functions such as Calendar and Reminders

That's all fine and dandy and all but what's so great about all this? Allow me to explain. Before with iA Writer all I could do was write and save to iCloud, Dropbox or e-mail what I wrote which meant I had a limited amount of choices and an annoying save system. I can choose where to save in Dropbox (create folders and navigation) but this was tedious and at times confusing.

How does Drafts fix this? By giving that option if it should please you as well as giving Evernote addicts a bone (seriously, not a fan of their app). Drafts save file system is nothing short of a breath of fresh air, giving me a drafts inbox, a trunk (where I put documents that I'm done with) and pinned things for later reference. This leaves me with a draft folder with blurbs I'm still working on that are plain as day. When I have documents I'm done with it's quick to copy to clipboard or export where I need it to go.

What else do I love about this app? How about I shotgun all this out at once in one long run on sentence. Ready? Okayletsgo, man this app opens fast, as soon as you open it BAM ready for typing input god do I love that no waiting just type type type and away I go and when I'm in the app the interface is so awesome all I gotta do is swipe right to see my documents inbox and its all there waiting for me like a faithful manservant wait that sounds weird but then what if I swipe left and then BAM exporting options are there and that's all you need man that's so freaking cool.

Still I haven't justified anything about this app that's how much you can do with Drafts (for the iPad). It can be your Evernote input machine when you're starting to cram loads of initial notes for backing up. It can be your calendar event creator, reminders coordinator, hell it also has markdown capabilities for all you bloggers and programmers out there. But one of the cool features that is a crime I haven't even touched upon yet is the custom actions tool. Like I mentioned before, creating a file name in Dropbox with iA Writer removes you from the writing process. With Drafts you can create customized automated actions which can be added to the front page of the action menu. This means rather than typing out for example:

Blog Name - 2013.06.20 - Some Dumb Shit

You can make it automatic by creating a template action which would look like this:

Blog Name - [[date]] - [[title]]

Remember a good app is one that does the work for you and leaves the non-tedious BS to you. But iA Writer's still cool.

 

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