Staying on script: MacJournal for iPhone and iPod touch
by at April 16, 2010 10:26 am
Sections: iDevice Apps, iPad, iPhone, iPhone/iPod touch/iPad, iPod touch, Originals
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MacJournal has been one of my favorite writing utilities for the Macintosh pretty much since its release. Although its main strength is its support for various blogging systems such as LiveJournal, Blogger, WordPress, .mac., etc., my use has been more basic; I use it store notes and ideas for my various writing projects. The only significant drawback to this is that I don’t always have my computer with me when I’m hit with a good idea. With MacJournal for iPhone and iPod touch, that’s no longer an issue.
I covered the need for storing ideas while on the go in my article about iTalk for iPhone. That’s a wonderfully simple but powerful recording device that I use when its impractical to type on the iPhone’s touch screen (when driving, mainly). And although it does sync with the Mac, the files are stuck as audio clips. I could leave them that way, but that takes up disk space and is kind of unwieldy when searching through my ideas. If I can type, I will, and do with MacJournal.
It’s a friendly program, offering instant tips when you first launch it:
They’re not really needed, though, as the app is quite intuitive. To create a new journal, simply tap the + button on the bottom left of the screen while at the root level. If you’re already in a journal, hitting this button asks if you want to create a new entry or a sub-journal of sorts.
This ability to create journals within journals makes it very easy to organize your thoughts within certain projects or categories (I can keep my creative projects away from open reviews list, for example). If you have an idea for one project that you think is better suited for another, moving it is a simple matter of hitting the Move icon at the bottom of that entry, then selecting its new destination. Here, you can also choose to send an entry to a blog, provided you’ve set yours up. Unfortunately, I don’t see that there’s a way to copy an idea to another location, other than to use the iPhone’s copy/paste abilities to create a duplicate entry.
Within your journals, entries are clearly labelled by the title you give them (and date, if you choose to have that automatically added). You can also elect to have previews appear underneath the title. By default, entries are listed in the order in which they were created, but you can manually drag them into any order you want. For blogging, order by date is fine. For documenting ideas and keeping track of your project’s content, manual sorting is the way to go.
And as you can see in the preferences screenshot above right, you can create a 4 character passcode to protect your precious, brilliant ideas.
Now, all of this wouldn’t be worth much more than Apple’s Notes if it didn’t sync with the Mac version, but it does that quite well…now that it’s been updated to v1.0.1, anyway. You’ll need MacJournal v5.2, Mac OS X v10.5 and a wireless network for it to work, but it’s then just a matter of hitting the sync button in the iPhone version and telling it with which Mac you want to sync. You can even sync with multiple Macs, which allows my iPhone to become a conduit between my home and work computers.
Syncing works both ways, with some limitations. The iPhone version is text only with non-encrypted journals, so no photos or embedded files can be moved from the Mac. If you see something you’d love to include in your project when you’re out with your iPhone, you’ll just have to have to replace a photo with 1,000 words. Also, styled text in the Mac version becomes plain text on the iPhone. I’m fine with this; I wish styled text wasn’t an option at all in MacJournal for the Mac.
In forthcoming versions, I’d love to have the ability to add photos from within MacJournal to sync with the Mac version. GPS capabilities would be great, too, for easily pinpointing and saving locations of relevance to my writing projects. In its current iteration, however, MacJournal for iPhone and iPod touch is a great tool for helping you document and organize your project ideas no matter where you are, and for keeping track of them when you’re able to get back to your computer.
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