Tom Hanks created a typewriting app that is a bestseller on iTunes.

Oscar winner Tom Hanks recently released an app on iTunes that mimics old typewriters for individuals writing on their iPad. The app, called Hanx Writer, is free (with available upgrades starting at $2.99) and creates the noise and visual back and forth of a typewriter arm on the iPad's screen.

Hanks is a huge proponent of typewriting as a cog in the writing process, as he noted last summer in an op-ed for the New York Times. "Everything you type on a typewriter sounds grand," he wrote, "the words forming in mini-explosions of SHOOK SHOOK SHOOK. A thank-you note resonates with the same heft as a literary masterpiece."

Don't worry though. While typewriters are notorious for lacking a delete or backspace key (how do you delete ink smacked on a page?), the Hanx Writer includes that one modern convenience.




photo: iTunes / Hanx Writer