This piece is going to fulfill your meta quota of the day because I’m typing this review of Daedalus Touch from right within Daedalus Touch (incredibly trippy, I know).
But before I go on, let me quickly get this disclaimer out of the way:
Yes, this is another one of those iPad writing apps and yes, its interface is minimal like those of so many others. It does sync manually with Dropbox and MobileMe and it does allow you to tap in the margins to move the insertion point easily through your text. However, that’s probably where Daedalus’ similarity to most other writing apps ends.
Like Reeder for Riting
In fact, if I had to find an app with which to compare Daedalus, it would be Reeder, my favourite RSS reader on the iPad. Both Reeder and Daedalus are navigated by gestures and swipes, and both tend to favour metaphors for interfaces.
Stacks and Sheets
Instead of folders, Daedalus uses stacks. These stacks can be synced separately with Dropbox and MobileMe folders of your choice. Pinch a stack open and you’ll find a set of re-arrangeable plain text papers of varying lengths (based on word counts in each file). This UI looks incredible in screenshots, but it can take a little time to adjust to in practice.
Stacks can be searched, but the search only highlights words within files, and does not filter. That was a definite problem for me at first; I have over 200 files in my iSource folder, so I was initially swiping like a madman to get from the top of the stack to the bottom (where the newest created files appear). The ability to order files by “last modified” would have helped tremendously in this regard, but that, too is missing in the current version. However, I will admit that 200 files is probably an edge case, so I doubt the developers will address this any time soon. Instead of simply waiting for a major update to provide me with a solution, I’ve taken to using a drafts folder for unpublished pieces and am syncing that with Dropbox.
Working with actual drafts is simply a matter of pinching a sheet open. The editing screen in Daedalus is really just a zoomed-in view of a single sheet, meaning that it’s just a matter of swiping left or right to reference adjacent sheets (fantastic if you keep an outline right next to your main draft). In fact, Daedalus goes a step further in servicing your referencing needs, and even includes an in-app browser, complete with bookmarks, so that you can fact-check (or visit iSource.com) from right inside the app.
The rest of the edit screen features are rounded out by three themes, three fonts (but no font sizes, argh), and toggles for iOS auto-correction and TextExpander.
Conclusion
Daedalus gets a lot of points for its design and navigation; it’s simply a pleasure to play with and use. The app also gets major kudos for not being too zealous with regard to its UI metaphor: if you’re really not a fan of gestures, Daedalus still has plenty of alternative buttons or double-tap options that allow you to navigate the app.
The only major features I’d really like to see here are the ability to use search to filter files, a way to organize sheets by “Last Modified”, and a way to increase the font size. But really, out of those three features, I really only expect the option for font sizes in a future update. If I could just get that, then Daedalus and I would be golden.
If you’d like to purchase Daedalus Touch, it’s $3.99 on the App Store.
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Daedalus Touch was purchased by the author for review on iSource. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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TAGS: dropbox sync, writing app
