I is for iThings - A to Z Challenge

Today, a repairman walked into my living room, looked at the MacBook sitting next to my iPhone on my coffee table, and asked “Mac person, huh?”

Is it that obvious?

I admit it. I’m a Mac-o-holic. Between John and I, we have iPhones, iPods, an iPad 2, Mac computers, and even an Airport Extreme router. Junkies, both of us.

My iLove began back in college. I owned (and regularly cursed at) a PC, but got to use Macs in the lab - the square ones with the built-in screen. Back then, a lot of scientific software was only available for Macs, but little else.

Years later, I bought my own Mac, a graphite iBook. I loved this thing! It lasted more than 10 years (impressive, right?) before I finally bought a new one only because it was too old to support the newest software.

In fact, it was my husband who bought my MacBook for me after I sold my first book. I did all my editing on it using Microsoft Word. Yes, plenty of software is now available for Macs, including the biggies like Word, Excel, Photoshop, and my favorite, the Sims 3.

I did an earlier post on the cool apps writers can use their iPhones, so what about Mac computers? Like I mentioned, I do all of my editing in Word. But I like to use StoryMill to keep track of my characters and story lines. It’s a great tool that allows you to store research, character info, and a timeline. You can tag each chapter with the characters involved. Even the scenes can be written as unique pieces that can be rearranged within a chapter or the entire book. Cool. But StoryMill is only available for Mac users.

Another popular program for writers is Scrivener. My friend, Amy, really enjoys working with Scrivener. Honestly, I heard about StoryMill first, which is why I have it instead. But I think Scrivener might be the better program. It seems to have the same type of features StoryMill does, but is maybe a little sleeker, easier to use, or just plain prettier. It is available for both PC and Mac.

What other programs do you like to use for writing, and are they PC, Mac, or both?