This app really bothers me. Writer is sold to people "who can't concentrate while writing," and it seems iA believes the success of the app means the app really helps people focus.

But as anyone on OSX knows, people have a voracious appetite for these kinds of apps (WriteRoom, Ommwriter, ZenWriter). This doesn't mean these apps help anyone write. Rather, it says people who want to write spend a lot of time thinking about their tools. Instead of, you know, actually writing anything.

So there's a market of aspiring writers who obsess over text editors. iA releases Writer, and expands the "zen text editor" market to iPads. Now these aspiring writers can "focus only on their words" on the go! Only, they spend time complaining how, in landscape, you can only see 6 lines of text. Or how it's hard to move around your doc and regain context.

If you really enjoy writing, any other app would get the job done. Hell, pen and paper or a typewriter would get the job done. Instead, iA's tapped into this market of people who want to write but "can't focus." And I feel for them, because their writing tools aren't the problem.