Great Concept. Needs work.

This review ended up getting very long. If you don’t want to read it all, here’s the TL;DR: The concept is great, but the program is really buggy right now and I feel that it’s missing some important features that I expect from a writing program.
Now here’s the full review:
When I first got the iPhone app of this program, I immediately fell in love with it. It was an easy choice to buy it on my mac. I loved the concept and wanted my notes to sync. Unfortunately, I’ve had some trouble with this desktop version. The biggest problem is that sometimes won’t let me click on my saved notes. When it starts acting like this, clicking on the new document icon (not the timed write) will always make the program crash. And the most annoying part is that even quitting the app and restarting the computer doesn’t fix the problem. Luckily, the timed write function always works. In fact, sometimes starting a new timed write will even “fix” the other bugs (not sure why!)
I was disappointed that the desktop app didn’t have a few more options in it when I started using it. I would like to be able to have italics and be able to bold text within the “editing” portion of the app. I understand the main selling point of this app is simplicity, but I don’t consider italics or bold text to be very complex and sometimes those features would be very helpful. Another thing I would like to see in an update that I feel this program is lacking is a simple print mode where I can set margins and then send my writing to the printer. It seems a little strange to me that I have to copy and paste my writings into Word once I finish them just to print them. Another thing Flowstate currently lacks is the ability to be able to reenter an existing document into the timed write mode. I like to work in short burst of writing, so I’ll usually only set the timer for 5 minutes. The problem is that then I would like to continue developing my idea the next day in the timed write mode, but I have to make a new document to be able to start the timed write mode again. My other gripe with the desktop version is that when I use it I get the feeling that the developers just ported the app to desktop. The desktop program doesn’t take advantage of the fact that it’s operating on a much larger screen. the layout is almost identical to the app, which does’t seem right considering that my iPhone screen is 5.5 inches and my iMac’s screen is 21.5 inches. Although I have my complaints about the desktop program, the idea of this program is great and I am confident that the developers of this app will resolve the bugs in future updates and possibly even one or two of my feature requests.

bmwright1 about Flowstate