In my quest to find a decent word processing app that isn’t as costly as Pages, I’ve been trying many different apps. Instead of focusing on one app today, this article will feature different apps because these apps have many of the same features, so writing about each one separately will get repetitive. For this week I’ll be discussing the following: Werdsmith, iA Writer, NewPad, Textilus, Compositions, and Quick Office. All of the apps have many of the same features in common such as copy and paste, a dictionary, word count and spell check.

I took a picture of the paragraphs so you could see how the creations in each app looked after copying and pasting into Word. Like all things, each app has its good parts and annoying parts. You get a lot of features with Quickoffice, but if you’re not into Google Drive, then the app is worthless. I like how Werdsmith lets you keep all of your ideas together then elevate their status when you’re ready. For exporting, iA Writer has a good interface with Dropbox and uploading files from the app to Dropbox was quick after I figured out that Dropbox was better than syncing to iCloud. The others did not make a lasting impression. This experiment has been interesting. I’m trying to use my iPad for more than Twitter, games, and Netflix. I know my iPad is not a laptop, but it is a powerful device with potential I’m not using, which is my mistake, a mistake I’m trying to correct.

There will be no iThing of the Week next week. I’m based in the USA, and next week is Thanksgiving.