OmmWriter for iPad Review

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

OmmWriter for iPad Review

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OmmWriter for iPad Review

By Kevin Stout on June 15th, 2011
Our Rating:

:: OVER-PRICED
iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad

OmmWriter is an interesting text-editor that attempts to simplify the writing experience.

Developer: Herraiz Soto & Co.
Price: $4.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPad

iPad Integration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 3.33 out of 5 stars

I love checking out text editors on the iPad. While many don't enjoy using the iPad's onscreen keyboard to write anything lengthy, I use the onscreen keyboard and external keyboards to write on the iPad frequently. In fact, I'm using PlainText to write this review. OmmWriter is described as a text-editor that focuses on its "simplicity and apparent lack of functionality." If that sounds like a fancy excuse for a text-editor lacking features, that's pretty much my verdict on it.

OmmWriter does exactly what it claims to do and does it well. But it doesn't claim much and charges an outrageous price for an app with basically a single function. For $4.99, the customer receives a text-editor with some music and a background. The keyboard looks a little different and has some cool effects (like an imprint/smudge where fingers have touched it), but this is all that the app does. There are other text-editors with much more powerful features than OmmWriter at a cheaper price. OmmWriter's selling point is that it simplifies the writing experience. In the app description, it confuses the readers by using flowery language like "pays special attention to audio and visual effects which include dynamic chromatherapy techniques that promote creativity and aid concentration." In short, it provides pretty backgrounds and light music while the writer writes.

I can understand the demand for a simplified writing experience. WriteRoom for Mac is a similar attempt at this. WriteRoom is a fullscreen text editor with a black background and simple green text in the middle of the screen. In windowed mode, it's almost identical to TextEdit (free, Mac-native app) with the addition of a word count at the top of the screen. I actually use WriteRoom, but only because it was part of a bundle of apps. I would have never paid $25 for WriteRoom, like I would never pay $4.99 for OmmWriter. There are simply better solutions at cheaper prices. I will admit that OmmWriter looks great, but it isn’t as useful as a $5 app should be. One could just as easily play some nice music in the background while using a simple (free) text editor like PlainText and get an almost identical effect. I believe this review would be significantly different were the app priced at $0.99.