Six punctuation keys sit in the middle with a pair of navigation keys on either side. It looks like the standard iPad keyboard, but with an added row of buttons at its top. To start writing, tap on a document to bring up the keyboard. Tap on it to enter iA Writer's Focus Mode, which grays out everything but the line you are writing and the two previous lines.Īnd that completes our tour of the menu bar. And next to this data is a small lenslike icon. Tap on it to see the time it would take a reader to read the entire document from the beginning or to the spot where your cursor rests. On the right is a running word count and character count. In the middle of the menu bar is the document name. You can save documents to the iPad, iCloud, and Dropbox. The arrow icon in the menu bar lets you e-mail the current document or copy all of its text, and the '+' icon opens a new document. It also provides a shortcut to your recently opened docs. The file-folder icon opens the Storage List, where you can manage your documents stored on the iPad, in iCloud, or in your Dropbox. On the left side of this menu bar are three icons. Launch the app and you'll see a plain, white screen with a thin menu bar running along the top of the screen. It does its best to present a clean slate. IA Writer presents a sparse look, forgoing formatting and almost all other settings to keep you focused at the task at hand: writing. Now that I'm using iA Writer, I am starting to leave my MacBook at home on these trips.

I test out apps on the iPad and then use my MacBook to write about them. On the rare days where I leave my home and set out for my local bagelry to do some blogging, I usually tote my MacBook Pro along with my iPad. It's also available at the moment for only $1.99, down from its usual price of $4.99. IA Writer, a simple text editor for the iPad, was recently updated to include iCloud support.

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