We're not there, not yet

Note 2016-02-15: All images were removed. No Mirrors.

I’ve always thought an iPad would have been a great device for writers, at least with the addition of a physical keyboard (like the Apple Wireless Keyboard), but I was wrong. We’re absolutely not there yet.

Writing process on a touch device

I’ve been writing this 2 articles on an HP touchpad which can be compared to an iPad for its writing experience, I know it’s not the same device and it can’t provide the same overall experience as an iPad, but my purpose wasn’t to do a comparison between these devices , instead my purpose was limited to the blogging experience which is pretty similar. The real problem in writing an article is not the writing process itself, even using the virtual keyboard I’m able to write quite fast - not as fast as if I was using a physical keyboard, but enough to not feel frustrated. And with a physical keyboard, the speed is the same.

The difficulties come with links, images (media) and quotes. When I’m writing something, I usually have 5 or more tabs opened to add links and quotes, but I found it really frustrating to do on a touch device, not for the touchscreen itself, but for the browser (don’t tell me to change it, I’ve tried almost any browser out there and there isn’t anything close to my needs). Apart from the android with its stock browser and its crashes (we’ll see if chrome is better, I didn’t have the chance to try it yet because it needs ICS which is on 1% of the android devices at the moment, ) even safari on iOs has its problems: the process of copy and paste a link or a quote is much slower than on every average PC and with much slower I mean more than double the time than you’d spend on any other nontouch device usually much more; but the biggest problem is the 8 tabs limit which is one of the many nonsenses in apple ecosystem.

In the end, it’s not a problem of the platform itself, it’s an app problem, Touch devices still lack a definitive blogging app.

WordPress for iOs

The official WordPress app provides just enough tools to let you write an article, but not enough to publish it just how you want it. It works great with plain test, but when images, links, and quote comes, it fails miserably. I really can’t get why it can’t have a native Markdown support, it would be a great step forward.

Current Solutions

The only solutions now are:

• Writing on a Mac (PC);
• Avoid the use of links, quotes, images, media and everything that makes an article worth reading;¹
• Use a script to automatically upload via FTP a file text (even using SimpleNote to keep everything in sync) with the article (this method is a bit advanced and it’d need much more time to be fully covered, let me know if interested);
• Write an app (Good luck with that)

Let me know if you have any other idea or if you disagree.

Update: I’ve tried WordPress Apps for a few days now and they’really also way more buggy than I expected.

What I meant is: Images, quotes, … give the article something more than just works and it’s value added. What I now think is: Words are the main focus and should always keep the main focus. I agree that images and such can enrich an article, but it all starts with words. If the words on their own are not enough to hold your interest, nothing that you add on top of it will do. Any other kind of content should complement an article not being the main focus.