Bean is not quite a word processor. More specifically, it is a rich text editor. It fills a gap between simplicity and bloat providing a few more features (live word count, adjustable margins, headers, full screen mode) than TextEdit and quite a bit less that Microsoft Word.

What I like most about Bean though is it’s story. All software has a story and I wish more developers took the time to tell it as Bean’s does.  I could quote the entire thing here I love it so much but here is a sample:

Writing fiction (short stories and novels) has been a passion of mine for a long time. I wondered how possible it would be to create a word processor that works just the way I do. And so, I set out on the path that would lead to the creation of Bean. I suppose this is why painters sometimes resort to mixing their own pigments, why fiddle players resort to making their own fiddles. It’s not necessary for what they do; yet, the process of creating the tools needed for a medium serves to deepen one’s understanding of that medium. In fact, this pattern has emerged in my life: I create in order to understand.

By telling the story of how a product came to be, especially if it was built to fill a need that the creator had, helps to better understand why one may want to download and use it in the first place.