iA Writer has no focus, or vision, for what they want to be. There’s a little bit of the hyper popular wiki-style linked notes apps (Craft, Notion, Mem, Obsidian, and all those who came before). There’s a little bit of the historical writing interface that iA Writer made obscenely popular. And then there’s this sense of Text/Code Editor they have baked in. And there’s file management.

iA Writer, when it came out, was extraordinary. I loved it. But the current iA Writer feels like an app being product managed by someone who feels as though they need to morph the app into whatever the latest bit of feedback they got in their emails — without a sense of being willing to say ‘no’. It’s not a good app anymore.

Brooks Review

So many apps and services suffer from feature creep and this desire to be everything to everyone. I wish more people paid attention to the fact that it often leads to cognitive overload and poor experience. And beyond apps and services, in today’s world where FOMO is a global affliction, just saying “no” is the ultimate feature.

February 14, 2023. San Francisco