Fullscreen editors – The new battlefront

Posted by Nick Loadholtes on January 22nd, 2007 filed in Blogging, OS X, Software Development

There’s a bit of controversy going on about Mark’s post about full screen writing apps. Mark doesn’t quite see the point of the application (it basically is a word processor that takes up the whole screen) and makes some comments about how he doesn’t like this. His comments were a bit over-the-top, and of course, people took exception to this.

But this is nothing new. Emacs vs. vi, Whopper vs. The big Mac, Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux, Kirk vs. Picard. There have been many holy wars before, and there will be many more. And like most of them, this is one is over something seemingly small and insignificant.

For some people these apps are the best thing since sliced bread. Myself, I don’t really get the appeal of the application. If I want “full screen” editing, I usually just maximize the window, but I’m simple like that. To each his own I suppose, no one is forcing you to use the app.

But one thing I do get is the cool free publicity that these apps are getting! WriteRoom is the leading full screen editor for the Mac, and with Mark’s blog post making the front page of Reddit, I imagine that it is getting a lot new traffic which translates into new sales. At $24.95 a pop, even a dozen extra sales will mean a few extra hundred dollars for the developer.

That’s not too shabby. Hopefully this little flare up will result in the developer (Hog Bay Software) winning a few new customers. Mac Developers can use all the free attention they can get…