I’ve used iA Writer on Mac and iPad for years as my main writing environment. I’m typing this in it now. It’s strongly opinionated in the right ways: iA made a lot of design decisions on my behalf so that I’m not distracted by the temptation to fiddle with a thousand configuration knobs instead of, well, writing.

I leaped at the chance to try an early beta of their new iA Presenter app last year. It promised to make writing presentations as easy and pleasant as Writer made it to write words. In fact, their approaches are nearly identical. Both apps encourage you to write down your thoughts, and then they make them look pretty. Oh, how Presenter delivers on that promise! Rather than nudge me toward tweaking fonts, layout, page transitions, and all the other styling options you can possibly apply to a PowerPoint slide, it gives me an editor window where I write Markdown text. Then it renders that text as a series of beautifully styled, elegant slides. And with a couple of clicks, it can publish that presentation as a PDF that mixes slide content with narrator notes in a format that an audience can appreciate.

iA officially launched Presenter today and I bought my (one-time purchase! non-subscription!) license immediately. I’m grateful that I’m not regularly expected to talk to crowds. I’m also grateful that when I do, Presenter exists and saves me from the additional stress of trying to make my content look nice on a screen. It’s everything I love and appreciate about Writer’s approach to public writing, applied to public speaking. Congratulations, iA, and thanks!