Early Monday morning the Herraizsoto family was lucky enough to welcome its newest members: two shiny iPads, flown in all the way from San Diego on the lap of Papa Rafa himself. As you can imagine, it has been a bit more difficult to stay focused in the office since their arrival. The iPads have been making their way from desk to desk, often retaining traces of previous excitement and intelligent observation in their text editors, such as, “WOW SO COOL this is what it is like to type on an iPad !!!!1 ahdklsaaLKL I thi”
For the OmmWriter team this excitement has been coupled with the realization that everything we have worked so hard to design and define up until this point is about to be completely restructured. Onscreen keyboards? Multiple orientations? File Management? Touch? Every day we are discovering more concepts and designs to completely rethink.
Needless to say we couldn’t be happier.
Any Suggestions?
Julian
I’d love to see Om on the iPad.
I think it goes without saying that we’d all LOVE to see Om on the iPad! The aesthetic would make a perfect transition, I’m just worried that it won’t be comfortable to type long things on…
I just tried typing using a wireless keyboard connected to the iPad, and the experience is awesome. The default keyboard is OK, but definitely not adept for typing all night long.
Surpise us
Make it different. Make it new.
It should have something more than the pages app and yet keep the “ooomm” atmosphere. A beautiful clean interface, an external keyboard support, easy and safe way to save and open (and manage?) previous files.
Make it different. Make it new. Be creative.
Suggestions? Yeah, please update the Desktop-Version. Need a spring-wallpaper.
Being able to upload a document to Dropbox, Google Docs, and/or Evernote would be great.
I look forward to seeing your app on my iPad.
I love Om: it’s unique, distinctive, and has the Zen of Apple in its DNA. So I cannot wait to see it ported over to the iPad, I think the iPad makes a natural platform for Om. I also run the Tucson iPUG (iPhone + iPad Users Group), I track trends for apps very closely. The most important advice I can give you is that the synchronization method can make or break the usability of an app. Please give a lot of thought to this. After a user is done writing in Om on the iPad, what happens to the file? How does it go into something more permanent? There are several options and approaches: some are simple but inelegant (such as emailing to oneself which creates a data management issue but is easy), some are very elegant, especially for users with multiple devices (such as using WebDAV servers), etc. My opinion: As much as I love Apple, I think Pages on the iPad has very poor data sharing/exporting. They haven’t thought it carefully, it’s a mess. I think the iPad is a natural with a cloud solution – consider WebDAV, or DropBox, or something along these lines. Thank you for making Om, it’s one of the best Mac applications I have, and I cannot wait to see it in the iPad
“Suggestions? Yeah, please update the Desktop-Version. Need a spring-wallpaper.”
Indeed! So many things remain wanted in the desktop version imo. Is Omm considering adding RichText support/mode? I love the application’s environment and GUI, but to be honest, without being able to write in bold, italics, smaller or larger font (within the same document), it’s kind of useless.
So, yes, please focus on getting us a verion 1.0 before you switch to the iPad. I assure you, your user demographic in the desktop verion land is bigger.
I agree with all the commentators before me.
[ 1 ] Ommwriter is awesome, [ 2 ] update the backgrounds for all the seasons and then throw in a couple of surprises and, [ 3 ] focus on improving the desktop version of Ommwriter before porting / making a new version for the iPad.
Honestly the only thing I care about right now is for OmmWriter to reach Windows computers. Once you master the two main operating systems, THEN you should move to things like the iPad, etc.
I can’t wait for the Windows version – I’ve heard and seen and read too many good things to keep waiting much longer. Hurry!
Courier would be nice.
Take certain cues from Instapaper Pro, since Apple doesn’t provide an API to control brightness, a “Night Mode” would be wonderful. I also agree that it needs to integrate with Dropbox and/or Google Docs.
The desktop version desperately needs italics!
Thank you all for the comments and advice! We are playing around with some pretty wild ideas, it should be fun!
Have to say I just found out about Omm and love it to death. I would definitely take a look at the other writing applications and do something clever with file management. Currently none of the other applications seem to display stored files well. Maybe a list layout when held vertically and an automatic switch to writing a new / the current document when held horizontal?
There’s something delightful about apple’s page turning interface in iBooks. though it’s of course unnecessary in a word processor (or at least as unnecessary as it is in an eBook), what about virtual pages and a delightful transition between them? Might omm for ipad feel like a magical journal?
I just discovered Ommwriter too and I absolutely love it. It’s made my writing time much more enjoyable. I look forward to writing because I look forward to using the software. I would love love love to see an iPad app as soon as possible. Other than more music and different backgrounds I don’t need the desktop version to be super feature rich. I copy my writing to Scrivener which I use for managing projects. That’s where I play around with text. I just use Ommwriter for the writing environment it creates. I’ll co-sign the importance of file management and some of the suggestions above.
Do you have any plans, for the IPAD version? Thanks, my Ipad needs ommwriter
My only advise is that you take into consideration everything people says here and your own ideas. Work hard, improve it, make the iPad version (don’t be in a hurry abouy the Windows one) and put a price to your work.
I’ve paid so much money for applications not as good as Ommwriter.
Thanks for all this free time and I think now is time for you to get a reward. Good job!
I love Omm writer; I would like to see new wallpapers, and Courier font. But what I really, really want is…. typewriter key sounds. Then I could feel like I’m really writing without dragging out my old Olympia SM4.
Keep up the great work chaps, I look forward to the update.
Please put an icon in the menubar (desktop-version).
And please let the OmmWriter as it is right now (Beta V2). Meditate on the beauty of imperfection.
Ommwriter is a natural fit with the iPad. I will pre-pay you now for an iPad version. I have that much faith in your ability to create a “killer” product. Imagine putting on a pair of headphones, in an airport, and just typing away. Love that thought.
I know you are fighting to maintain OmmWriter’s simplicity and I want to encourage you in that struggle. Its goal is to let the writer just write. I use OmmWriter to write. The absence of formatting forces me to craft my words to convey emphasis. Later I open my text in Pages or place it in InDesign for formatting or copy it to a blog.
The background image and music set moods for writing. It would be nice to have some control over these to create different writing environments.
The one and only thing Ommwriter could really use in my mind is a new mechanism for text search and replace. This is true of every single full screen text editor I’ve used (at least 3 others). Having a normal OS dialog box pop up when I hit cmd-F just destroys all the carefully constructed atmosphere full screen editing is supposed to provide. It really kills the mood. Make search/replace look and feel more like the rest of the app… integrated, serene, natural.
postscript : allow me to add my voice to the requests to avoid adding formatting controls. Just editing text is the main task required and adding layout and design features just distracts you.
I concur with many of the earlier posts that what is needed is an iPad app that has the same calm interface and simplicity that the OS X version has. Just ensure that it works well with the optional keyboard/stand and has an easily understood process for getting the files off of the ipad during a sync, and it will be perfect.
In fact, i thought about seeing if the existing UI components in the developers toolkit could be cobbled together for a rough and ready MOOwriter with the Chi-Fil-A Holstein cows munching on a green hillside in as the background as an interim solution….
If you can port OMMwriter to the iPad, though, it would be fantastic!!
Very interesting site, but you must improve your header graphics.
The standard onscreen keyboard for the iPad has a look that seems antithetical to the design philosophy of OmmWriter – it’s clunky and obtrusive where OmmWriter is simple and elegant. If it is at all possible to replace that default keyboard with a layout that features better designed keys and a transparent keyboard bounding box (so that the background image can show through), that would be fantastic.
Dear Zack, We could not agree more. That is why it is taking longer than expected.
My suggestions (based on the competition I’m choosing between):
1. Online storage and automatic sync (like Evernote)
2. iPhone & iPad version (like My Writing Nook)
3. Encryption (like Penzu)
4. Side bar w/ list of documents (like My Writing Nook, Penzu)
I’m a devoted Omm/writer and, like many here can’t wait to see the iPad version. Please add me to your notification mailing list if I’m not already there. I would pay more than the usual iPad (writing) app price for such a treasure, I’m tellin’ ya.