When comparing RStudio vs iA Writer, the Slant community recommends iA Writer for most people. In the question“What are the best open source Markdown editors for UNIX-like systems?” iA Writer is ranked 31st while RStudio is ranked 32nd. The most important reason people chose iA Writer is:
The Noise Free Writing Experience is one of the first approaches to create a first class distraction-free environment. The feature hides the Mac program bar when you start writing.
Specs
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Pros
Pro RStudio is complete with profiling, debugging, plots and package management
Pro It's free
Pro Rmarkdown editor for dynamic reports exported to in HTML, PDF (laTeX) and Word
Pro Noise Free Writing Experience removes even the program bar
The Noise Free Writing Experience is one of the first approaches to create a first class distraction-free environment. The feature hides the Mac program bar when you start writing.
Pro A mode that brings focus to the sentence you're working on
Enabling Focus Mode will dim the whole text except the sentence you are currently writing on.
Pro Can tell how long it would take to read through what you've written
Pro Markdown support
Pro Syncs using iCloud and Dropbox
iA Writer can sync documents using iCloud or Dropbox from within the editor for use across multiple devices.
Pro Create whole document by including separate images/markdown docs
This is new and very awesome feature in iA Writer 4.0.
Pro Can export a Word document
Pro Available for all Apple devices
iA Writer is available for Mac, iPhone and iPad.
Cons
Con Poor navigation
No file structure tree, no options to create file in folder.
Con Interface is not very good
Con Costs money for most licenses except student and educator licenses
Con Git integration
Most Git operations have to get handled via command line.