OK. I'm learning. Both Brent Simmons and Adriaan Tijsseling commented on my first post and provided additional information. Yeah!!! This works. So now, with further education, I have more thoughts.
Here are some quick corrections:
ecto is not inherently Metallic. You can choose between Metal and Aqua skins. One point for ecto.
ecto is vastly more powerful in its image handling options than Marsedit right now (point for ecto) but Brent is planning to add more options (1/4 point vaporware credit).
Both products will be using Apple's wysiwyg editor when released in Webkit - expected early next year. Meanwhile, Adriaan released his own unique version of wysiwyg so that those who can't deal with raw html can still blog. Now. He was willing and able to do the hard work to make it real now. While rough around the edges, for newbie bloggers who don't speak html, something is better than nothing. I was used to the old ecto and my guess is that new ecto users will adapt more readily to the new wysiwyg way.
ecto does indeed have lots of cool extras not available in the brand new Marsedit 1.0. Adriaan mentioned ecto's way cool new Amazon tool, for example. More points for ecto.
Now, I'm more optimistic that we'll see two complimentary tools in this market. Ecto is well-ahead in the delivery of cool options at the moment. These leading edge options will appeal to the more programming-oriented blogging old-timers - the most influential, google-juiced part of the blogging community.
And then there's Marsedit bringing up the rear with a more mainstream offering that will appeal to the rapidly growing new-blogger crowd who wouldn't know a tag if it hit them in the face. They're the normies who use 10 - 20% of the features of the programs they use.
MarsEdit's main point is to be a literate weblog editor: an editor for people who love writing - Brent Simmons
And since Brent has lots of cred with those same old-timers because of his fantastic NetNewsWire product, Marsedit won't be pigeon-holed as just a newbie tool. As it gains features, it might keep getting a chance to overtake ecto.
Now that Adriaan got me to check out the new Amazon tool, I'm back to using ecto again because I frequently talk about products and like to provide Amazon links with them. The Amazon tool will save me a lot of time and might even make me a buck or two in affiliate royalties. And I often need to do thumbnails, enjoy ecto's drag and drop and extra image settings so Marsedit currently comes up short there. But that doesn't mean I won't use Marsedit for less demanding situations.
For the future, I'm hoping that ecto will steal a bit of Marsedit's polish and that Marsedit will keep adding capability. And equally, I'm hoping that Marsedit will continue its stated intention of appealing to writers first and foremost maxing out the look and feel and ease of use while ecto keeps pushing that bleeding edge with all sorts of rich options for creative expression, personalization and time savings. The blogging, web services and RSS space is exploding with new technology and opportunity and there's lots more to do to keep these guys busy.
This post is brought to you compliments of Marsedit, but I just fired up ecto 2.1.2 to edit my last post so I could easily add in Amazon links to two specific camera references I made. See what I mean?