“Do you remember MacWrite on the first Macs, circa 1984? Outside of showing a bomb graphic when it crashed, MacWrite didn’t do much,” Ron McElfresh writes for Mac360.
“However, it did enough to surprise Apple honcho Steve Jobs who had commissioned another word processor for the Mac—just in case. That unique Mac app was called WriteNow, and considered by many to be the best ever Mac word processor,” McElfresh writes. “I remember WriteNow for the Mac. It was elegant, had enough features, handled documents better than MacWrite, and was blazingly fast.”
McElfresh writes, “If you remember WriteNow then you’ll be completely at home with Bean. If ever there was WriteNow reincarnated, Bean is it.”
Full article here.
I loved WriteNow. I used it with my MacPlus as my word processor through graduate school. Between that, my Imagewriter II and Jasmine SCSI 20mb harddrive, I was all set. Why would you need anything more?
I remember WriteNow fondly, but have always preferred BBEdit for writing, not just coding. So much so that I never even bothered to check out BB’s free derivative app, TextWrangler.
So if I’m gonna try out Bean, I’m gonna have to try TW too. If any other BBEdit writers with a review care to reply, I’ll read it, thanks.
WriteNow was written in assembly language (one of the last apps to be, I have heard), which is why it screamed.
BBEdit was also my writing app of choice. Minimal, no need for fonts, variable-width characters. Bean sure does feel slick, though. Just tried it.
I’ve been using Bean for a few years and it is an excellent piece of software. It really gives you little reason to use the bloatware from Redmond.
Unlike most applications, WriteNow was coded in assembly language, instead of a higher-level language. So it was extremely efficient and fast, even on an 8 MHz Mac with a 9-inch CRT. Amazingly (for one of the oldest Mac apps out there), it still worked fine on a recent PowerPC Mac with Mac OS X Tiger (under Classic). I liked its thesaurus and the efficient way the spell checker worked (back when the checking was not done “on-the-fly”); the “word” was used as the text in the correction choice button.
Bean seems to be a nice program…
I thought you were gonna say OmmWriter
OmniOutliner ?
I love OmmWriter too; just tried Bean and it’s not different enough to keep along with Word (which I need for compatibility reasons, sadly). Word, OmmWriter and Pages are all I need and then some. YMMV.
“Pure writing” begs the question, what makes “Pure Writing” pure?
What I have found for extensive documents is that I need to start in an outline mode (or my favorite OmniOutliner) simply because organization of all the different elements in “Pure Writing” need structure, references, comments, planning and such, which outlines can do easily.
You can collapse something the size of War & Peace down to just chapter headings and that greatly simplifies keeping mental track of what you do.
It may be needed to put it in a display program later, but that is no problem exporting to an rtf file.
The best free Mac word processor for pure writers? TextEdit set to plain text mode. Features are for the weak.
Yeah, I used WriteNow all the way thru grad school. I vaguely remember it was tiny, about 300k? Lean, very lean. I liked how you could adjust line spacing so precisely.
WriteNow was awesomely fast, effective and uncluttered. I’ve really missed it. The problem was you couldn’t send a native WriteNow file to any of the 98% of computer users who, at the time, were running Windows. I especially like how you could easily copy ruler setting from one chunk of text and apply it to another chunk elsewhere. Made getting specialty tabs, margins and indents consistent through a doc really easy.
Anyone here ever tried Mellel? Looks interesting.
I too loved WriteNow. Miss it. Currently use Mariner Write almost exclusively.
PS. I am feeling my age.
I have the computers in my evening class loaded with Bean as the only word processor. It’s top-notch.
Mellel is a pretty decent word processor and gets better with each new version update. It’s the Mac equivalent of Davka Writer in that it switches easily between left to right languages like English, and right to left languages like Hebrew.
@Burrell
It doesn’t say “pure writing”, at least not that I see. What I see is “pure writers” and that obviously means writers who are undefiled- most likely undefiled by the evils of sex, but it could be other sins and vices too.
unfortunately it’s open source so all the FOSS haters just better move along…after all it’ll be clearly inferior and a copy of something else, apparently.
Hey, .txt! Isn’t that ITALICS I see in your post about features being for the weak?
I have also used Bean for years. It’s good. But I also like Mellel a lot, and Nisus Writer Pro, and more. There are a whole bunch of good word processors for the Mac. I can think of maybe ten right off. Bean is free. It opens fast. It has more features than TextEdit, which I also like, by the way. In fact, I continue to do more work with TextEdit than with any other word processor. Ninety five percent of the work I do calls for nothing fancy. I do use Pages for fancier work. But so many WP’s work great on the Mac. I only know one that doesn’t. And I’m sure that after another couple of dozen security patches it will be good, too.
Okay, maybe I’m not so sure about that one after all.
Yep, WriteNow was a great application. I finally had to give it up for the sake of compatibility and moved over to ClarisWorks with MacLinkPlus. I REFUSED to pollute my Mac with MS-Dross.
Today, I use Pages and send PDFs. I rarely send editable files to anyone! If they insist, it’s .rtf. Besides, .rtf files have always been even more compatible than native Word files and formatting is less likely to evaporate.
Bean is great. It’s also good for gas.
My vote for favorite word processor of all time is Word 5.1.
I’m a professional writer (editorial, advertising & corporate) and used Word 5.1 until the switch to OS X, when I grudgingly gave it up rather than have to reboot into OS9. And I delayed the switch to OS X for at least 18 months just to keep using Word 5.1.
For whatever reason, it just felt right to me.
@Mr. Reeee, I agree about RTF files. I send them regularly. Sometimes, I don’t think the people on the receiving end even realize what they got since they just open for them without a problem.
I wrote my thesis with WriteNow. It still is the best word processor ever!