Agile Tortoise has today updated its Drafts app for the iPhone, as well as launching an all-new version for the iPad. I have been using the iPad version for a little while now and it turns out to be pretty fantastic. The iPad app has an all-new UI, and incorporates the additions to the new iPhone app. Let’s take a look:
Drafts is a fast-launching app designed to be your go-to place for writing anything. To this end, you are dropped right into a new blank document on launch (the delay until the previous document is archived is now configurable) and – once done – you pick from a long list of destinations. These can be emails, task in most popular task-manager apps (OmniFocus, Things. The Hit List and more), Tweets, note apps (Simplenote and so on) and others.
These destinations can be switched on or off and reordered, so your list doesn’t get too long. And on the iPad, that list pops out of the right side of the page, making it dead easy to use.use.
Writing
Getting text in is easy. The new fonts panel lets you pick from some beautiful typefaces, but the mechanics are also strong. Markdown is fully supported (the PR e-mail I got last week is written in Markdown), as is TextExpander Touch. Along the top of the regular keyboard is a handy extra row of Markdown keys, with asterisks, hash (or pound) symbols, underscores, dashes and so on.
In fact, you could almost use Drafts as a standalone note-taking app, as there’s an instant search field above the list of recent drafts, which winnows the articles as you type.
Link Mode
There’s also a new Link Mode which hides the keyboard, disables editing and allows you to tap on phone numbers, addresses and web links. This could be handy for so many things, but quick and dirty contact lists come to mind.
Actions
Along with support for new apps (Writing Kit, Threadnote and more), there is also a great new feature for plain text nerds: Append to Dropbox. This takes your Draft and adds it to the end of a text file in your Dropbox (the file is called Journal.txt). That right there could obviate whole to-do list apps for many people.
iPhone
This is a review of the new iPad Drafts, but the iPhone gets a few new features worth more than a quick mention. The new look and new fonts are in there, as are the new export destinations. The iPhone also get s a full-screen reading mode (swipe down on the toolbar to activate) and will now sync with the iPad version, or other instances of the iPhone version on other devices. It’ll even sync the status of which apps and services you have already shared the drafts too, which is pretty incredible.
Trust
But the best things about Drafts, especially the new iPad version (I still don’t own an iPhone) are the attention to detail and the fact that you feel you can trust it. Drafts is polished so much that it gets right out of the way. And this in turn, along with its great stability, mean that you trust it to just work, every time. I have actually removed Tweetbot from my iPad’s dock to make room for Drafts, just so I can use it to quickly, well, to quickly do anything I might ever want to do with text.
If you don’t already have a version of Drafts on your iDevice, you should probably do something about that now. Drafts for iPad is just $3.
Source: Agile Tortoise
Thanks: Greg!
