iPhone Stuff

  

When I was tasked to indite a roundup of iPad blogging apps, I figured this would be the customary pros and cons of quaternary or fivesome apps. Instead, I institute exclusive two, exclusive one of which is restricted to WordPress (see our revealing below). Since neither of the digit apps prefabricated me apiece and every that happy, the multi-app roundup I was hoping for instead became a housing of “two apps enter, no app leaves.”

Blogging on the iPad is a compassionate land of concern — I’m also reaching at this from the seek of a prose blog, not a represent blog. Both WordPress and BlogPress earmark you to do the aforementioned base features: identify in your thoughts and advise publish. Neither of the apps permit you delimitate course or info your book — you’re restricted to stark style. Some of this, I am led to conceive from researching another apps with the aforementioned difficulty (Evernote), is how constraining Apple is on its flush book features. On the another hand, apiece and every of the Office-style apps discover there permit you info text, so I don’t undergo what’s up. What I do undergo is, neither of these digit apps modify become near to the feature ordered most bloggers need.

WordPress (Free)

As the authorised app for WordPress, it’s a depressing statement when the prizewinning I crapper feature is, “Some of the time, it doesn’t crash. And it’s free.” A hurried fivesome instance double-check of whatever features yielded quaternary crashes. It crashed inserting a picture. It crashed patch canceling edits. I wouldn’t be astonied if it crashed patch crashing. When I was healthy to successfully append a picture, it didn’t exhibit up in the topical draft; I had to go discover to the topical analyse to wager it, and modify then it was meet code, not a visual. You can, however, control comments, pages, and distribute categories within the WordPress App.

I was also impressed with its offline features. It cached preceding posts which prefabricated it accessible to meaning what I’d  said most a topic.

BlogPress ($2.99)

In constituent to the hearty, “It crashes less” feature, BlogPress also connects to Blogger, MSN Live Spaces, Movable Type, TypePad, Live Journal, Drupal and Joomla in constituent to WordPress. If you’re not using WordPress, BlogPress is the exclusive mettlesome in municipality for you. Unfortunately, it doesn’t enter to Tumblr. I had a aggregation more success with this app, modify within my WordPress-hosted sites. For starters, the exclusive instance it crashed on me was when I adjoining it to Live Journal, and when I relaunched it everything was OK. Inserted pictures showed up inline where I desired them to, and I could change their alignment, but not their size. I was also unable to control comments or modify noise Pages in BlogPress. Still, I institute BlogPress to be worth the $2.99.

My congratulations for BlogPress is somewhat grudging. It’s not a intense app, but I’m hornlike pressed to encounter whatever journal posts I’ve ever cursive that I could do all in either of these apps. Almost every place has bolded or italic text, an image, and a unification or two. Of those threesome things, both apps exclusive permit me embed the image. Unless I’m composition a thin text-only post, I’ll requirement the scheme front-end of apiece place to twine up the post. Sure, the apps are beatific for throwing a place unitedly on the iPad and moving it in the online Drafts folder for after editing, but it’s pretty depressing I can’t rely on either of them to start-to-finish an cipher journal post.

Hopefully, at whatever saucer we’ll wager a meliorate selection, as substantially as the knowledge to info book and append links. Until then, BlogPress earns my avid “At small it sucks inferior than the WordPress app” accolade of approval.

Disclosure: Automattic, concern of WordPress.com, is hardback by True Ventures, a stake top concern that is an investor in the parent consort of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, originator of Giga Omni Media, is also a stake relation at True.