Test 2 Ease of use

How simple is it to get working?

The goal of any writing tool should be to have you writing text as soon as possible. To that end, Word’s sheer range of formatting options and features can be seen as limiting ease of use. And while both Scrivener and Ulysses are brilliant at what they do, for new users there’s a definite learning curve. Bear Pro’s friendly tutorial notes make getting to grips with its features relatively straightforward, but their existence betrays the need to learn how to use the app.

Both iA Writer and Byword, as you would expect from pared-down, distraction-free tools are easy to jump in and use. But Byword has a slight edge, in part because iA Writer has added new features over the years, such as, most recently, the ability to embed images. While those new features are welcome, they make it marginally more difficult to use.