Just released on the App Store today, the $5 app packs some cool and unusual mind-clearing features that raise the bar for distraction-free writing apps. Where most other apps of its kind are designed to offer little more than a minimalist screen to write on, OmmWriter adds in a variety of wallpapers and sound schemes designed to deepen your immersion in what you're writing.
Users of the PC and Mac versions of OmmWriter will be pleased to find some of the same meditative soundscapes and landscapes on the iPad that they've come to know on the desktop, and a few new ones too. Paired with a keyboard, writing with OmmWiter on the iPad is virtually indistinguishable from writing with OmmWriter on a PC or Mac. Your mind settles into a steady stream of consciousness as soothing white-noise audio effects play gently in the background. Simple visual backgrounds offer your peripheral vision a break from the text on the screen without actively drawing your attention away from what you're writing.
OmmWriter represents a compelling departure from the conventional wisdom about focus and productivity, acknowledging the mind's natural tendency to wander and satisfying that tendency with just enough visual and auditory stimuli to prevent you from breaking away from your work altogether. The premise, it seems, is that if your monkey mind has a small amount of additional input to play with, you'll be less compelled to break your concentration away from the task at hand.
In practice, I find OmmWriter's approach incredibly effective. In this app, I'm inclined to keep at my writing tasks for longer periods of time, I'm less antsy, and I feel more creative than I do with more conventional apps. I can't say this with any scientific backing, but I think the chimes help induce a deeper, more engaged train of thought than I normally enjoy while working (ask anyone--I'm a notoriously shallow thinker), and I find myself less distracted by thoughts outside of the work at hand.
Where OmmWriter for iPad falls short is in its controls interface. Its minimalist design offers few cues to help you navigate to the settings menu and even fewer to help you figure out what result you're likely to get from tapping any given setting option. The icons are vague, presumably by design, but I'd appreciate a little more guidance through the menus so I can get the app configured the way I like it without excessive guesswork. An app designed to enhance your focus on your work shouldn't require so much mental energy to navigate in the Settings menu. Also problematic: There doesn't appear to be any way to get into the Settings menu when you're hooked up to a keyboard in portrait mode, which is a problem worth fixing soon.