The winner

| Byword

Ommwriter’s too much of an oddball and WriteRoom’s feeling its age, which leaves us with four top apps. Buy Byword, iA Writer, Focused or Ulysses and you’ll be happy.

Which is ‘best’ in part comes down to personal taste. Focused is modern and pleasant to use. iA Writer is much improved and boasts a superb two-up mode. Ulysses is easily the best all-rounder (so buy it!), but the torn-off panels to get stats in full-screen aren’t very discoverable, and they distract. So Byword nicks it, not as the prettiest nor the most flexible app, but the one that has that indefinable something. It’s also fast, efficient, robust, very affordable, excellent with Markdown, and just plain nice to use!