Snippet: About Writing Enough [on an iPad] ☇

Patrick Rhone wrote most of his book, Enough, using an iPad—this is going to be the item I use any time I want to counter someone’s “you can’t create content on an iPad” arguments (via Daring Fireball):

I decided on using the iPad and iPhone exclusively for this book a couple of weeks before I actually started writing the first essays. I had long wanted to experiment with the iPad as a tool for long-form and long-term writing and this provided the right opportunity.

I especially wanted to challenge myself to use only the onscreen keyboard. Could I have worked faster using a physical keyboard? Perhaps. That said, I am likely more comfortable than most using the iPad software keyboard. I theorize that this is because I never learned how to touch type. I’m a fairly fast two-finger typist or, as I frequently say, hunt-and-pecker. This being said, I certainly cannot type as quickly on the onscreen keyboard as I can on a real keyboard. In this instance, I found this to be of benefit as the further effort spurred longer thought and greater attention to detail about what I was trying to say and thus, I hope, a better book.

I thought the keyboard options for the Microsoft Surface were going to finally allow people to create content on a tablet—apparently Rhone was ahead of his time?!