Since I was on a roll, I decided to ask ChatGPT for app advice. I wrote:
ChatGPT returned a thorough, and I think, reasonable recommendation. Obviously, the response depends a great deal on how the prompt is framed and the variables included.
Based on the articles and presentations you’ve uploaded, I’ve noted several key patterns in your writing and content structure:
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Outline and Structure:
- Your articles and presentations often have a clear, logical structure with headings, bullet points, numbered lists, and sections. The use of headings (e.g., “Practical Advice,” “Introduction,” “Application”) helps organize your thoughts effectively.
- You regularly use sub-points, as seen in your devotionals and practical advice columns, which require a good outline feature.
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Use of Footnotes and Citations:
- Many of your documents, such as the devotionals and leadership guides, include footnotes with citations from the Bible, literature, and other sources.
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Inclusion of Visuals:
- You sometimes reference or rely on slide images in your presentations, though none of the documents I reviewed included actual embedded images. You’ve mentioned using images of slides, which suggests you’d benefit from an app that supports embedded media easily.
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Cross-Device Syncing:
- You require seamless syncing across Apple devices through iCloud, which limits the tools to those that support Apple ecosystems efficiently.
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Article Length:
- Your typical articles range from 3 to 5 pages, fitting within the scope of a moderately long document where you’d benefit from an outline view to navigate different sections of your writing.
Recommendation
Considering these elements, Ulysses emerges as the best app for your needs. Here’s why:
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Outline and Structure: Ulysses has an excellent organization system with an intuitive hierarchical structure that allows you to see the outline of your documents. You can add keywords, organize notes with nested folders, and break down long articles into manageable sections.
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Footnotes and Citations: Ulysses supports footnotes and citations seamlessly, ensuring you can reference Scripture and other texts efficiently while maintaining your preferred writing style. It also allows for custom formatting of footnotes, which is important for your citation-heavy work.
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Media Embedding: Ulysses supports adding images, which is crucial when embedding slides into your presentations. You can drag and drop images into your documents and easily manage them alongside your text.
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Sync Across Devices: Ulysses integrates perfectly with iCloud, allowing your documents to sync across all your Apple devices (iPad, iPhone, MacBook), which suits your current setup.
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Distraction-Free Writing: Ulysses provides a clean, distraction-free interface similar to iA Writer but with added functionalities, such as robust file management, which may be useful given the number of articles and presentations you handle.
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Export Options: Ulysses offers multiple export formats (PDF, DOCX, ePub, HTML), which would be useful for distributing your articles in different formats, whether for internal reports, publications, or blog posts.
While iA Writer is a minimalistic app that also integrates with iCloud, its outlining and organizational features are not as strong as Ulysses, making it less suited for the detailed structure your writing often requires. Apple Pages, while powerful for formatting and visuals, lacks the same distraction-free writing experience and seamless note-taking functionality of Ulysses.
Conclusion:
Given your writing style, use of footnotes, embedding needs, and requirement for seamless cross-device syncing, Ulysses would be the most suitable writing tool. Would you like more information on how to set up Ulysses for your work?
Me: Sure. But first, a question. Why Ulysses instead of Pages?
That’s a great question! Here’s a comparison between Ulysses and Apple Pages in the context of your specific writing needs:
- Outline View and Document Management
• Ulysses: It offers a flexible, hierarchical outline that lets you break down your articles into smaller sections (called “sheets”). This is extremely helpful for navigating longer documents and keeping track of ideas. You can also organize articles by folders, keywords, and groups. For your articles and presentations, which are often structured into sections and subpoints, this makes it easy to jump between different parts of the document.
• Pages: While Pages does have an outline mode, it is not as intuitive or as focused on section-based navigation for large documents. Pages is more focused on formatting and layout, which may make it harder to see the overall structure of your document while you write.
- Footnotes and Citations
• Ulysses: Footnotes are well-integrated into the flow of writing. They are easy to manage and insert, without disrupting your writing process. This is crucial given your frequent use of biblical and literary references .
• Pages: While Pages does support footnotes, managing them can be clunkier, especially when dealing with longer documents or multiple footnotes across several pages. Pages excels more in formatting but doesn’t offer as seamless an experience for text-heavy documents with numerous citations.
- Image Embedding
• Ulysses: Ulysses allows for easy image embedding, but it’s more focused on writing rather than formatting visuals. It’s great if your goal is to integrate slides or images alongside text, but without complex formatting. You can drag and drop images, but the design tools are more limited than Pages.
• Pages: Pages excels in layout design, allowing you to arrange text and images with precision. If your documents require extensive use of visuals (like complex reports with graphs or media-rich presentations), Pages has more design control. However, you may not need that level of control based on the current examples you’ve uploaded.
- Distraction-Free Writing
• Ulysses: This app shines in providing a clean, distraction-free environment for writing. You can focus entirely on the content without worrying about formatting or layout until you are ready to export. This is particularly useful for writing and revising lengthy articles and devotionals where content is the priority.
• Pages: Pages has a great balance between writing and layout design, but it’s not as distraction-free. Its interface is more complex, with numerous tools that might distract from your writing flow, especially when working on text-heavy documents.
- Cross-Device Syncing and File Organization
• Ulysses: Ulysses uses iCloud to sync your documents effortlessly across all your Apple devices. You can start writing on your iPad and continue on your iPhone or Mac without needing to worry about file management or formatting issues. Ulysses also has robust organization features (tags, folders, goals) that help keep your documents in order.
• Pages: Pages also syncs via iCloud, but file management is more traditional—documents are individual files, and you need to organize them manually. For someone with numerous articles and presentations, this could become cumbersome.
- Export Options
• Ulysses: It allows for easy export in various formats (PDF, DOCX, HTML, Markdown, and ePub). You can customize your export options to match your needs (e.g., blog posts, reports, or devotionals). This is ideal for content creation across different platforms.
• Pages: Pages has strong export options too, including PDF and DOCX. However, Pages lacks the streamlined, customizable export workflows Ulysses offers. Ulysses’ exports can be tailored for each kind of output you need, like publishing to a blog or creating a print-ready PDF, without requiring extensive reformatting.
- Writing Focus
• Ulysses: It is designed first and foremost for writers. It helps you focus on content creation, allowing you to add notes, comments, and research directly within the document without distraction. Given your style of writing, where content and structure come first, this emphasis on text over layout could help maintain focus.
• Pages: Pages is more geared toward those needing both writing and layout control in one platform. It’s excellent for visually rich documents like brochures or newsletters, but that might be overkill for most of your articles and devotionals.
Summary:
• Ulysses is ideal if your primary focus is writing and organizing text-heavy content (e.g., articles, devotionals, speeches), with minimal distractions and easy handling of footnotes and citations. The app’s outline view, distraction-free interface, and file management system make it the better choice for creating and managing large volumes of written content across devices.
• Pages is more suitable if you frequently need to create highly formatted documents that combine text with complex layouts, such as newsletters, posters, or visually rich reports. However, for your current style, Ulysses’ focus on content and structure outweighs the layout benefits Pages offers.
Does this comparison help clarify things? Would you like guidance on how to get started with Ulysses now?
out of them, which is still hard work.
! (I had to edit a couple of points, but it saved me a lot of time.)
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