Yes, subtle because one app is not the solution but using plaintext (likely with a light markup), splitting form and content is the way to go. And when we say that plain text is the way forward, this means that not one app is the solution but you're independent in your use of apps.
iA Writer is very well one very solid and proven solution for certain use cases. In fact, I would argue that, independent of what app you use, plaintext plus markup (with the right set of templates) is, methodically, economically and logically, a much more efficient solution than Word. And I'd even argue that it is more efficient in most government, school, NGO and corporate cases.
You may find that delusional. I'm certainly not delusional about the real challenge here. It is not what app you use, but the network of format and formatting expectations, and to make people change habits. After 15 years of trying to convince people to focus on content rather than form, we know very well just how incredibly hard it is to convince people and make them stay in what they enjoy more against everybody else.
Oh, I totally agree with this, and it's awesome to see you interact here. iA Writer is one of the favorite apps I have and I think your approach to building software is incredibly beautiful and more companies should do it this way.
I was responding specifically to a commenter who pretended as though the article was super promotional, which it isn't. I agree your proposition is the right way to transitioning away from MS Office.
Was just saying you're actually NOT proposing to get administrations on iA Writer as their default writing tool, as a prev. commenter was insinuating.
"they're thinking in terms of software rather than file formats" where do you get that from? It's a longer article because it's a complex topic, but we explain in detail how the format it the core issue, and conclude that plain text (especially compared to the now common irrational .docx) would in fact be the preferable, future proof format.
Yes plain text is mentioned in the last paragraph, but the article isn't about that. I'm sure you could set up word to just output plain text, you can set up excel to deal with CSV. That would not be congruent with the entire rest of the article.
And plain text is not plain. You do a presentation with plain text. You aren't using those hyphens as hyphens anymore. So how does that impact those with screen readers? I mentioned CSV, that is still a format, it still has to be defined, you still have to decide how to embed a comma in it.
We are talking about the governments of a continent. You have to have documents that are accessible to everyone. You have to have documents that are secure, you have to have documents that cannot be modified. Reducing that to plain text, is like saying unicode is easy because they're just characters.
What slop engine integration? There is no slop engine integration. We do the very opposite. We separate between human and machine generated text, we are so careful about making sure that people know what they wrote and what they didn't that even make sure that you see when you spellchecked something with the help of Apple Intelligence. There's nothing to fuck or get angry about AFAIK, and I'm responsible for it.
You chose to pander to the slop flinging AI dullards so you can announce AI AI AI in 7.0.
Maybe we can enjoy the benefits of Electron in 8.0.
At least then I can change the cursor color from the ugly cold blue. - You had to force your corpo branding on me while I'm writing didn't you.
I don't think your anger has anything to do with us. Your aggression sounds about as random as your rhetorical reference to Electron when we've been at the native app front for 15 years, or "why did I give them money?" when you were able to pay once and use our app without paying a subscription forever.
With AI also did the very opposite of what everybody else is doing. While everyone was integration ChatGPT calling it their AI we asked ourselves what would happen when everyone does that. We said: No to more money. We said no to AI integration. Instead, we drew a line that at that time literally no one drew.
That in contrast to iA Writer, in 2026, actual generative AI is everywhere, in every OS and every app... this is not a matter of pandering or whatever you may call it. It's a reality that we have to deal with. iA Writer is not an island, as a markdown app,, it is part of a process. Markdown goes from app to app as it should.
I think we did as good a job as we could, drawing a pragmatic line when no one did. Our goal is to make people think more, not less.
I don't know, could you imagine people doing human creative things could be annoyed being confronted by AI everywhere, the thing that is stealing from and destroying artists livelihood?
Yeah, maybe it is a gut reaction on my part.
Read your comment again and tell me that you fully believe in this feature and decided on it because it was important to your carefully crafted experience and human interaction design and not some compromise because everybody is doing it.
The marketing narrative is also jumbled, sorta derisive about artificial text, but telling people to make it their own. Is this the message you want to send? "Our text editor is for people passing off AI slop as their own by slightly rewriting it"?
Your choice of framing and center-staging this feature in the 7 release makes this distasteful.
You can find a fault and imperfection in everything if you really want to. I share your perspective in many ways, and my frustration is that no matter what we do, we get put in the same bad bucket with the very instances we have been battling forever.
I mean, what are you doing on Hackernews if you're a black-and-white AI guy? Look at the top page here: "AIAIAIAI".
Meanwhile, sooner or later, every post that points to us gets ghosted by the system (similar to Daring Fireball, as soon as you cross a threshold, the post gets hidden), who knows why, likely though we're perceived as too SV subversive or it may just be a bug. I am not writing this because I think anyone but you will see it, or because I think I'll change your mind. Just getting steam off my chest. I also take any critique as a critique that I haven't communicated clearly enough, but I still get frustrated and upset by such absurd diametral mischaracterizations sometimes, well, every single time this happens I get very annoyed.
Mostly, people understand where we come from. Even on social media, mostly they understood the last article. One guy thought he was clever framing it as "just an long boring ad from a competitor". Haha, "competitor"... Calling iA Writer a "competitor" of Word like calling "Hank's Special Brew" he makes in his garage a competitor of Heineken. I think that was one guy, and his idiot friend that agreed before he read the article. It still bothers me when I give my very best to be clear, entertaining, and as truthful as one can possibly be when you have a product you sell.
You're criticizing that we may have been too complex in our reasoning for V7? It fucking is a complex matter. No matter how much you want AI to just be a stealing operation... Hardly anything is fully black and white. AI and coding, f.i., are a much better match than I'd have expected. AI for writing much less. But not being a native speaker, it does help me with typos. To deal with reality means that you accept it first and then do what you can. This is what we did with V7. I am very proud of what we did there. It took courage, creativity, and determination.
After 15 years of mostly swimming against the stream, feedback like your initial one makes me fantasize about becoming like everybody else. "Flip the tables, switch sides, and float downstream for once, stop trying to do the right thing, and just make money, sell the whole thing, collect the ‘congrats,' and retire." I'm 55, fighting against windmills is not the healthiest thing.
I also know, however, that I am not swimming upstream because I am so heroic and tough. I just can't be a shameless opportunist to join the SV ranks. It makes me puke. It's against my nature. If our actions were motivated by pure virtue, I could calmly argue against it. Opposing power, for me, is not a conscious choice, it's who I have always been. In spite of all the complaining above, it kind of works, too. Now, if, who knows, against all odds, we do get a little slice of the part of the Swiss software cake that looks like it may be redistributed to a certain minor degree, let's say we get a handful of schools using our products, it would not be unironic (because I was the same relentless troublemaker in school that I am in tech), and yet not entirely undeserved.
Thank you for your frank words, you are right, we do agree on many things.
Sure, machine learning has its uses, but at the same time it will destroy the value of the written word. The web was already full of sub par, uninteresting, and even malicious text, but at least the price of admission was a human sitting down and writing it. In that sense as a reader I was at least connecting with another human being. Now that is gone.
You are measured by the standards you set. iA Writer is not a text editor, it is a design product, it sells an aesthetic. People aren't paying 50 bucks because it has all the features, they do it because they appreciate the process and value of writing, a human endeavour of mastery and creativity. Artists and Craftsmen enjoy thoughtful and focussed tools.
You are not the company, and the product isn't you. I as a rando commenting online don't have the obligation of moderating my rethoric to the extent of anticipating this sort of interaction.
Und scheiss auf die Leute im SV, jeder Aspekt ist dort eine Performance und das Leben selbst nur mittel zum Zweck.
The definition of a well informed, happy, modern man: He reads a couple of lines and goes, "Yep, I know how this article ends. I'm right, he's wrong." Then he watches the first half of a game, switches off the TV, pumps his fist, and says, "My team WINS again." Writes the match report, gets in the shower, soaps himself up, and walks out, unrinsed, fully lathered, super clean.
Drive.file scope is not some secret sauce, it's the standard file picker loaded with UX trouble and bugs. Implementing it would lead to a flood of angry Play Store comments.
We know because we talk to our users for 14 years. We know their needs and their use cases. And we have the numbers to verify. We built this. You're an anonymous guy with a throwaway account on the Internet playing the expert. Your comment history shows that you have a lot of time to show that you're an expert on a wide range of topics.
You say that "we" shouldn't get access to Google Drive. It's not about us, our users demand Google Drive access. They want to decide what to do with their files. We couldn't care less about what is in their drive.
But what if we're hackers or if we get hacked? Yeah, that all or nothing access is not the best engineering from Google, is it?
CASA is trying to tape over that bricolage with the usual security theatre. Because guess what... after paying KPMG for a superficial scan, "we" still would get access to the Full Dive. Until recently we could have done the CASA scan in house and get full access. That's what's bullshit.
It's bullshit like almost all of Google. Bullshit Search that only gives you ads. Bullshit Maps that has become an unusable circus. Bullshit YouTube that is now just as ad infested than 80ties TV. Bullshit "log in for security reasons".
Well, it's not like we don't know about the default file picker. If we'd switch our customers to that clunky, buggy piece of brittle UX bricolage, they start throwing stones. And you know what: They'd be right. They usually are right. They just don't know or care what it costs to build that they don't want to pay for. And understandably, since everything else in Google world comes completely free of charge.
Some experts here seem to think that “It’s great that Google takes security seriously. I don’t want just any app getting access to my Drive.” Guys...
You think this is air you're breathing? CASA isn’t real security. It’s a very badly played security theater. There are plenty of holes, MI CASA SU CASA, that real hackers can use to steal your selfies and credit card info. You still think we’re not informed enough? We never wanted access to Google Drive. We don’t care about your Google Drive or anyone’s Drive at all.
We don’t have, want, or ever asked for access to your files. And don’t start with, “But you could be hackers!” We’re not. Google has our entire history—7 years with them, 14 years building apps, and 20 years as a company. They have our code, user feedback, passports, phone numbers, bank info, and confidential documents. But they still pass the security theatre burden onto us, making us pay KPMG for audits. Not because it makes things safer. It's so they can lean back, do nothing, and then lift both hands and then point fingers in case things go wrong. That scales nicely.
You know what is a much better way to care about safety? A human mind that knows, checks and cares. Oh, that doesn't scale? Okay, so let's increase bureaucracy. Yeah, bureaucracy will make things safer. Safety by bureaucracy was always the best great hacker barrier. Or is it the opposite? Bureaucracy makes you calculable. If I were a hacker, I'd welcome bureaucracy.
Because of security reasons, my web browser cannot write to "Downloads", but "Downloads/a" works.
Because of security reasons, my file manager cannot access "Android/obb" and I need to use a trick with the "Files" app.
In order to improve user experience, the option to directly mount the SD card via USB has been removed. Now I need to physically remove it from the phone because the Android's default way of handling things simply doesn't work when you have more than a handful of files.
BTW SD cards suck on Android, but when you connect them to the cheapest Chinese USB reader and to your PC, then they're magically 10x faster.
It's clear to me that Google pushes business decisions under the disguise of "improvements". I think that removing the audio jack was the symbol of Google moving away from creating a good OS to monetizing their OS. I really wish there was a viable alternative to Android that I could install on any phone.
> If we'd switch our customers to that clunky, buggy piece of brittle UX bricolage, they start throwing stones.
I mean like... have you tried asking them?
I use the Obsidian app on Android with the default file picker is fine for my usage. I barely even notice it, and as a Syncthing user it ensures I get a native and compatible experience.
This arguing over "safety" when Google's stance is entirely logical does not give me a good feeling about your product. Your job, as a developer that relies on Google and Apple to ship your app, is to jump through their hoops. Grandstanding your userbase doesn't sell new licenses, it makes people question relying on you at any point in the future - it hurts iA's brand more than it hurts Google. As an Obsidian user this basically confirms my suspicion that most SAAS-based Markdown editors are totally overengineered and (apparently) not a reliable choice if you only use the Play Store.
It's your call. Putting up with Apple and Google's bullshit sucks, but it's also literally your job as a provider of support to those platforms. If Google's behavior is enough to make you react like this, I half expect the Windows, iOS and MacOS builds will join Han Solo by the end of the year.
iA Writer is very well one very solid and proven solution for certain use cases. In fact, I would argue that, independent of what app you use, plaintext plus markup (with the right set of templates) is, methodically, economically and logically, a much more efficient solution than Word. And I'd even argue that it is more efficient in most government, school, NGO and corporate cases.
You may find that delusional. I'm certainly not delusional about the real challenge here. It is not what app you use, but the network of format and formatting expectations, and to make people change habits. After 15 years of trying to convince people to focus on content rather than form, we know very well just how incredibly hard it is to convince people and make them stay in what they enjoy more against everybody else.