A Ulysses Replacement for Windows
I've been a Mac guy since 2007, when I bought my first white plastic MacBook. I loved that laptop, and then also the aluminum one I replaced it with in 2011. That old MacBook Pro finally gave up the ghost a few months ago. Actually, it still worked fine, it just stopped getting updates after eight years. Anyway, as much as I love the Mac, I just can't justify two thousand dollars for a medium-spec MacBook Pro anymore. There are just too many inexpensive alternatives out there; I even wrote a pair of books on moving exclusively to Chromebooks!
Still, a lot of the software on the Mac is really outstanding. If you go to YouTube and watch videos from nearly any kind of creative person, they're always running a Mac. Almost without exception, the best creative software is Mac-based. And one of my favorite Mac software titles is Ulysses, a very nice markdown editor/writing program. I've written several books using Ulysses, and I've worked on at least parts of most of the others there. Some authors swear by Scrivener, but I prefer Ulysses. It lets you type in just plain old text files, and then it converts everything to the format of your choice when you're done. It's really sharp-looking too, with a dark mode before everyone else had it, really nice typography, and an easy-to-use library organization that keeps all your files in the cloud, and not only does it auto-save, but you don't even need filenames. Just load it and type.
There's only one thing that really limits Ulysses: It's only available on the Mac platform. I've got a really nice Windows laptop that I bought a few years ago when I decided against the MacBook, but I hardly used it because I detest Microsoft Word and couldn't find anything better on Windows.
Until now.
Inspire (https://www.inspire-writer.com/) is a Windows-based clone of Ulysses. It's got the library, sheets, groups, export features, and backup. It works with a choice of different cloud services, as opposed to just iCloud with the real Ulysses. It has a full-screen mode, dark mode, and similar themes. It will even post my writing to a WordPress-based blog like this one (although I had some trouble with this feature, I'm not above thinking I was doing something wrong).
Figure 1 Inspire Screen Shot
I'm still not sure if I'm totally sold on going back to Windows from the Apple world yet, but Inspire solves one of my biggest hurdles. As far as moving from one app to the other goes, Inspire can easily import markdown files as well as .docx and plain text files, so getting them out of Ulysses and into Inspire won't be a problem.
The menus are different, as are the layouts of the dialog buttons and the icons to do various things, but that's due to the way Windows works. The important stuff is essentially the same as Ulysses. I was able to add pictures, links, and all the usual markdown elements without looking at any of the help screens. And I'm not completely sure yet, but from first glance, I think the spell-checker is actually quite a bit better than the Mac one.
Overall, I like it, and it's easily the best app of its type I've ever seen on Windows. Now if it would just come up with an iPad version
Pick it up at https://www.inspire-writer.com/
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