Metamuse is still on hiatus, but this is a brief announcement of some related projects. Localfirst.fm is a new podcast that Adam is helping to produce. And Adam is on the organizing team for Local-First Conf 2024, held in Berlin on May 30. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Localfirst.fm podcast Local-First Conf 2024

Mark and Adam take a look back at three years of podcasts to reflect on their favorite episodes—and the friends they made along the way. They discus Metamuse’s origin story, walk through the production process, and wax nostalgic on some of their favorite episodes. Plus: a look at what the future holds for our hosts and the podcast. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes NPR The future of iPad Ferrite Hello Internet, Gastropod, Lexicon Valley This American Life, Gimlet Media Most downloaded episodes: Computers and creativity with Molly Mielke, Sync, Growing ideas with Andy Matuschak Mark’s favorite episodes: Local-first software with Martin Kleppmann, Local-first one year later, Hiring, Cities with Devon Zuegel Adam’s honorable mentions: Progress with Jason Crawford, Rich text with Slim Lim Metamuse podcast guest handbook lossless audio Riverside Audio editor Mark Lamorgese Post-producer Jenna Miller Podcasting Microphones Mega-Review XLR microphone pro sound dampening material RØDE Podcaster Pop filter, plosives John Michael Greer

Bittersweet news is the topic of this episode. Adam Wulf and Adam Wiggins discuss the end of an era for Muse, leadership transitions, and what the future holds for Muse 3.0 and beyond. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes An end, and a beginning Ink & Switch Adam Wulf Loose Leaf Here, File File prosumer Industrial research with Peter van Hardenberg Netlify proxy, Webflow, Hugo Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

Is virtual reality useful for productivity software? Yiliu is the founder of Softspace, a VR/AR tool for thought. He joins Mark and Adam to discuss the human brain and body as inherently spatial systems; the question of whether information is fundamentally 2D; and why social comfort is the biggest challenge facing VR today. Plus: how to avoid a dystopian future. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Yiliu Shen-Burke @softspaceninja Softspace Wim Hof breathing method Studio Olafur Eliasson The Brain Maps Out Ideas and Memories Like Spaces Oculus Oculus development kit heads-up display Scott Greenwald’s Media Lab thesis Beat Saber A Beautiful Mind Softspace demo force-directed graph Steven Johnson on DevonThink Google Glass, Magic Leap, Vision Pro Supernatural vergence history of VR PlaneVR: Social Acceptability of Virtual Reality for Aeroplane Passengers

Quotes from famous people or books can turn a feeling or a concept into a memorable chunk of text—how can we do the same for our own ideas? Stephan is the CEO of Obsidian, and he joins Mark and Adam to discuss notes as personal memes, the balance between freedom and cohesion in plugins, and why it's so hard to be messy in digital tools. Plus: why “tools for thought” rubs Stephan the wrong way. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Stephan Ango @kepano @[email protected] Obsidian Pillowy Swedish cinnamon rolls using the tangzhong technique Lumi Erica Xu, Shida Li Growing ideas with Andy Matuschak Evergreen notes turn ideas into objects that you can manipulate Apple Notes, Apple Journal Zettelkasten stream-of-consciousness writing plugin Obsidian developer docs Launchers with Thomas Paul Mann Infinite canvases with Steve Ruiz Obsidian Canvas Excalidraw, ExcaliBrain .canvas format

Planning might have a reputation for being boring, but Adam and Mark believe it can be one of the most exciting moments in your team’s work. They discuss the importance of inspiration and collective knowledge; the musical rhythm of planning cycles; and how to “draw the line” when prioritizing. Plus: the importance of revisiting the plan in times of doubt. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Muse for Teams beta announcement Against boring planning agile methodology ticket trackers Gantt charts, burndown charts Pivotal Tracker kanban board Jesper Jørgensen V2MOM, OKRs effort to impact chart Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy Amazon’s “working backwards” approach go slow to go fast Zoom fatigue shared knowledge vs common knowledge

How can software improve the practice of reading? Tristan and Dan are the founders of Readwise. They join Adam to talk about the history of read-later apps like Pocket and Instapaper; the difference between reading for betterment and reading for entertainment; and the cat-and-mouse game of web parsing. Plus: how the personal knowledge management explosion in 2020 affected digital reading. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Tristan Homsi @homsIT Dan Doyon @deadly_onion falconry My Side of the Mountain Readwise Anki Dan and Tristan meeting on Hacker News Reader Pocket, Marco Arment, Instapaper Mozilla acquires Pocket Why We’re Bootstrapping Readwise Alan Kay on computer science as pop culture Readability.js web standards acid test Reader browser extension RSS Explorable Explanations offline first JSON Patch Second Brain commonplace book, marginalia etymology of “document”

It's been a year since Muse 2.0 launched. To help commemorate this anniversary, Adam Wulf once again joins Mark and Adam Wiggins to do a technical deep-dive intothe Muse's sync architecture. They discuss the benefits such as less ops burden and good developer experience; and challenges such as event vs state based data, handling different app schema versions, and the tradeoffs of a content-aware server. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Developer Duck The Pragmatic Programmer Metamuse episode 56: Sync Muse 2.0 Muse for Teams Local-first software Pingdom Local-first software with Martin Kleppmann Text blocks innovation tokens Replicache, LiveBlocks, PartyKit Automerge 2.0

Twitter has created a whole new generation of internet writers. Francesco is the co-founder of Typefully, and he joins Adam and Mark to talk about the evolution of blogging, the importance of diversifying your platforms, and how Twitter can be used as a beacon to invite like-minded people into your conversations. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Francesco Di Lorenzo @frankdilo Typefully Calm companies with Tyler Tringas Atomic writing Evan Williams and Blogger Mastodon, Medium, Substack Geoffrey Litt Platforms with Joe Wadcan Twitter acquisition So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed Farcaster

Great leadership is imperative to creating a successful company. Adam and Mark talk about setting up a healthy work environment, the importance of conviction and belief, and the role models who inspire Adam and Mark on their own leadership journeys. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Muse for Teams Metamuse episode on Hiring Netflix Culture Deck (2009) Metamuse episode with Mario Gabriele Adam’s Heroku’s values Barbie and Ruth The Score Takes Care of Itself Difficult Men Peter van Hardenberg George Washington The story of VaccinateCA by Patrick McKenzie Sketching User Experiences Slack: The Myth of Total Efficiency The Principles of Project Management Flow Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman High Output Management Management

Better tools and techniques for collective intelligence could be a path to building a more democratic society. Conor is the founder of Roam, and he joins Adam and Mark to discuss his motivations for working on a tool for collective intelligence, why knowledge doesn’t always equal articulated thoughts, and a vision for how to program your own mind. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Conor White-Sullivan Roam Research Bret Victor Andy Matuschak on roman numerals vs arabic numerals Logo, BASIC agent-based economics simulations Choose Your Own Adventure “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them” The Wealth of Networks Institutions and Organizations non-rivalrous goods, public goods 3D printing organs, open-source medicine The Centralized Internet Is Inevitable map-territory conflict micronations critical thinking “I, Pencil” Limits to Legibility Localocracy A Syntopicon Reinventing Discovery

Linking has a rich history as a way of connecting, building, and sharing—creating the hive mind of all human knowledge. Adam and Mark talk about the origins of hyperlinks, the untitled boards problem, and measuring importance by citation or backlink count. And Julia joins to talk about the technical implementation of Muse’s linked cards. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Linked cards Muse for Teams Citations, symlinks, Wiki backlinks content addressable Ted Nelson, coined the term “hyperlink” Knowledge graphs Roam, Notion, Obsidian, Logseq Branching factor Transclusion and excerpting in Muse Splunk, grep command in Unix

Folk practices, such as screenshots of text, offer insight into user preferences and can be a basis for building better software. Omar is the creator of ScreenMatcher, Screenotate, and TabFS. He joins Adam and Mark to discuss the impact of Dynamicland; what it means to create “wiggly” computer systems; and the idea of trying to unlock latent demands of the end-user in order to enhance our ability to control computers. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Omar Rizwan, @rsnous Hijack Your Feed Metamuse episode with Jason Yuan Screenotate Screen Matcher the analog hole Mermaid Metamuse episode with Maggie Appleton Dynamicland A Small Matter of Programming Twine Max Kreminski on Twine projects FFI Vulkan Exterminate All Operating System Abstractions Patrick Dubroy on orthogonal primitives TabFS Dynamicland Geokit work Reactive database relatives: Bloom, Eve, Riffle Displaying graphs in terminal Pixel parsing: Viewpoint, Prefab Buttons Vulkan triangle the charisma of end-user programming “always already programming”

It's been possible to have all-remote teams for at least a decade, but in many ways this approach to knowledge work is still in its infancy. Adam and Mark talk about the pros of remote work like the ability to hire from the global talent pool and life flexibility for team members. They also touch on cons like limited tools for creative group thinking and difficulty building trust remotely. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Muse for Teams / demo video Remote-first Zoom stocks in 2020 Hype cycle curve Messaging with Hilary Maloney Wise, Firstbase, Deel The Legal Implications of Remote Working Cross-Border GitLab’s approach to remote compensation Economic surplus Join the Muse community on Discord Dropbox founder story Wall Street companies back in-person Maker vs. manager schedule

What would be possible if hand-drawn sketches were programmable like spreadsheets? James and Szymon are researching this question at Ink & Switch. They sit down with Adam to talk about the unlikely duo of informality and coding, the future of digital ink, and the role of feelings in research. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes James Lindenbaum Szymon Kaliski Ink & Switch kegging cocktails “there’s always money in the banana stand" Heavybit Inkbase: Programmable Ink Potluck: Dynamic documents as personal software Crosscut: Drawing Dynamic Models Understanding Media Lisp projectional editors, Scratch, MaxMSP Szymon demoing at Strange Loop SketchUp Apparatus, Cuttle ThingLab / demo SAT solver

A command line and a GUI are two completely different ways to operate a computer—but quick launchers and command palettes have found a way to bring them together. Thomas is building Raycast, an extensible quick launcher for macOS. He joins Mark and Adam to discuss the evolution of launchers from Quicksilver to Spotlight to the Chrome address bar; reasons to embed web technologies into a native app; and how voice interfaces like Siri and Alexa fit into this story. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Thomas Paul Mann @thomaspaulmann Raycast Spark AR Raycast API Metamuse episode on platforms Spotlight, iOS Search KDE, Krunner Quicksilver Superhuman, Linear, Notion Arc Siri, Alexa

In the world of tech journalism, a well-crafted narrative is part of conveying truth about the world. Mario writes weekly briefings at The Generalist, and he joins Adam and Mark to discuss his creative process for writing; what Michelin, Stripe, and WeWork have in common; and flaws in the now-popular Silicon Valley narrative of hubris and excess. Plus: how to speedrun creating conviction. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Mario Gabriele The Generalist Telegram: How to Counter-Attack Anduril: The Business of Defense Helium: The Network of Networks Metamuse episode with Dan Shipper Metamuse episode on storytelling Aaron Sorkin – Teaches Screenwriting Whose Story Wins? Y Combinator: The Institute of Innovation Geoff Ralston WeCrashed Softbank: Twilight of an Empire Terra: The Moon Also Rises

The Muse team has begun work on multiplayer features, so Mark and Adam are pondering how groups of people can best co-develop ideas. They discuss the ad-hoc workgroups vs durable teams; the Wisdom of the Crowds; and the implications of local-first on sharing permissions. Plus: TV writer’s rooms. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Group ideation survey for joining the multiplayer Muse alpha program Exhalation, Arrival, Project Hail Mary chalk talk Loom Nikolaus Klein on collaborative creativity Hilary Maloney on creative trust TV writer’s rooms, war rooms Idea Generation and the Quality of the Best Idea The Wisdom of the Crowds Gather Dropbox selective sync

What if we could start with a plaintext note and gradually evolve it into an app? That’s the question asked by Max and Geoffrey in their latest research at Ink & Switch. They join Adam to discuss data detectors, language models and personal text, and the creative process on a research project. Plus: why Stable Diffusion is like a slot machine. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Geoffrey Litt and Max Schoening Ink & Switch An Everlasting Meal The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science previous Metamuse episode with Max Schoening previous Metamuse episode with Geoffrey Litt Potluck essay and live demo GPT3, DALL-E An app can be a home-cooked meal Bonnie Nardi data detectors NSDataDetector variable rewards Metamuse episode with Peter van Hardenberg Formality Considered Harmful Paul Shen, Paul Sonnentag command pallettes “if you’re not embarrassed, you’re shipping too late” GitHub Copilot Cambria

Selling software via the App Store has unique benefits and challenges compared to selling on the web. Markus joins Mark and Adam to talk through the 13-year history of MindNode on Mac, phone, and iPad sold via freemium, paid upgrades, and finally subscriptions. They discuss early inspiring Mac apps like NetNewsWire; the distribution benefits of the App Store; and the emotional journey of transitioning from indie hacker to team leader. Plus: the surprising connection between comic books, infinite canvases, and mind mapping. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Markus Müller-Simhofer Mindnode infinitecanvas.tools by Arun Venkatesan Metamuse episode on infinite canvases Reinventing Comics InfiniteCanvas, an online comic experiment NeXTSTEP iMac G2 Delicious Library 3,, NetNewsWire The Road to MindNode 1.0 “640K ought to be enough for anybody.” AttributedString Vapor framework Rands in Repose on “should engineering managers code?” Apple’s Mac App Store Opens for Business Mindnode and Stage Manager Metamuse episode on brands StoreKit business models in the App Store Things 3

As a product creator, how do you prevent confusion with other similarly-named products in the market? Josh is an intellectual property attorney specializing in trademark law. He joins Mark and Adam to discuss why trademarks exist to protect consumers, not businesses; the legal differences between ™️, ®, wordmark, and logomark; patent trolling and trademark bullying; and the APIs used to monitor trademark databases. Plus: the trademarks of Apple, Monster Energy, and LeBron James. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Josh Gerben (@JoshGerben) Gerben Intellectual Property TESS (Trademark Electronic Search System, or TESS) origin of the name “Google” Lanham Act retainer Metamuse episode on Brand US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) common law right Dove soap, Dove chocolate case law vs statute expert testimonial mutually assured destruction word mark vs logo mark trademark watch service trademark bullying Gerben Trademark Library

Your company exists to build a product, but the meta-project is to build a team. Adam and Mark discuss hiring managers and job descriptions; the benefit of pilot projects over lengthy interviews; and the “dream candidate” exercise. Plus: hiring lessons we can learn from Zappos and Ghostbusters. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Linda Ma Ghostbusters steady paycheck scene hiring manager Local-first engineer JD 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Business Zappos pays employees to quit

Building your business on a platform like iOS, Wordpress, or Shopify gives you access to that platform’s customers, but comes with many tradeoffs. Joe helped to create the GitHub Marketplace and built his most recent startup as a Slack bot, so he knows both sides of this experience. He joins Adam and Wulf to discuss the power asymmetry between platforms and their developers; best-of-breed vs unified suites; and how Slack seeded their early ecosystem. Plus: timezones, definitely the easiest problem in programming. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Joe Wadcan (@joewadcan) Ballotshare Business Development Abstract Fantastical Evenbot shutdown posts GitHub Boards GitHub Marketplace, Heroku Add-ons, Slack Apps Slack’s 5 years as a platform post Travis CI, CircleCI New Relic, Sendgrid Zynga Twitter acquires Tweetie (2010) Sherlock app

A renaissance is happening in productivity tools—and that goes beyond the software itself and into online gathering places for users passionate about those tools. Ramses is the community manager for Logseq, and he joins Mark and Adam to discuss language learning communities and the great flashcard debate; platform options like Discord, Discourse, and Circle; why people join communities in the first place, and why they stick around in the longer term. Plus: why community is not a moat. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Ramses Oudt (@rroudt) Think Stack Club Spaced repetition Flashcard Duolingo, Anki Outliner Logseq, Emacs, Workflowy, Dynalist, Roam Research, Obsidian Knowledge graph Readwise r/puppy101 Logseq’s forum, Craft’s community Discourse, Circle Loom Logseq’s Github

All your questions about Muse, answered! Mark, Adam, and Wulf discuss the purposes of search in knowledge tools; the need for an infinite canvas file format; the many facets of board archival; and how to fund a research lab. Plus: the dangers of iPad use in a darkened plane cabin. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Prison Entrepreneurship Program national recidivism quasimode Storytelling episode of Metamuse Zoho Mail Yahoo’s web directory in the 1990s The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff Kinopio Hick’s Law origin of “hyperlink” Linked cards sneak peek in Muse Paulo Pereira episode in Metamuse Sofware Longevity episode of Metamuse DevonThink, Craft, Notion, Roam, Obsidian, Logseq, Evernote mind palace Deeplinks in Muse FigJam, Miro, Freeform, tldraw, Goodnotes Zettelkasten, GTD Hillary Maloney episode of Metamuse text blocks in Muse Ink & Switch Automerge Panic definite optimism

Designers use general-purpose vector editors like Sketch and Figma to mock up mobile UIs. Play is a design tool that offer a different approach: designing directly on an iPhone or iPad. Dan from Play joins Mark and Adam to talk about the problem with mirror apps; how much time you should spend on sketching before “getting your hands on the clay”; and why developer handoff should be a collaboration, not a handoff. Plus: the correlation between the loudness of your mechanical keyboard and your coding skills. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Dan LaCivita Play @createwithplay Karate Kid UI pattern Play’s Slider Figma Mirror, Sketch Mirror WYSIWYG Spatial Interfaces Play’s spatial UI Honor the Material Metamuse episode with David Hoang Play’s UIButton, Apple’s UIButton Textfield, UICollectionView iOS Design System for Figma Metamuse episode with Paulo Pereira Higher Fidelity Prototype Origami, Protopie iOS 15 Modals & Haptics Bezier Curves Waterfall Methodologies Principles of Product Development Picker in Play Ken Adam: The Art of Production Design Early Ideation Play’s Launch article on Medium User Testing No-Code, Low-Code Variables in Play Glide, Adalo HyperCard Gradual Enhancement Low Floor, High Ceiling SwiftUI Charts

A new foundational document type is on the rise: the so-called infinite canvas. Steve is the creator of tldraw, an open-source canvas toolkit. He joins Mark and Adam to discuss why the canvas might be the ultimate fully-generalized form of all digital documents; why “infinite” refers to openness and possibility rather than just available space; and why canvases create a sense of place that is suited to multiuser collaboration. Plus: smash that fork button and own this thing forever. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Steve Ruiz @steveruizok tldraw MacPaint scene in Steve Jobs Movie perfect-freehand excalidraw direct manipulation Mural, Miro, FigJam Codemirror, Prosemirror AceEditor Github Sponsors Framer Model View Controller Framer Classic Play Illustrator Hypercard LegendKeeper, WorldAnvil HTML Canvas Desktop Metaphor

If you’re on a team responsible for a mature and beloved product, how do you decide what to build next? Paulo is a product manager at Sketch, and he joins Mark and Adam to talk about managing the ever-growing backlog of feature requests and how to balance that against long-term product vision. They also explore the evolution in the design tools market over the last ten years; Sketch’s company culture which values sustainable growth over KPIs and dark patterns; and the privilege and responsibility of working on a beloved tool. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Paulo Pereira @paulozoom Sketch meditative YouTube: Primitive Technology, Ishitani Furniture XOXO, Build Sketch’s editor on Mac and viewer on web corner radius controls Foresight Artboard Templates Sketch pricing page KPIs dark patterns Sketch series A fundraise Sketch 3 (2014) Metamuse on calm companies ramen profitability GitHub’s pivot to venture funding (2012)

Messaging is how your company talks about its product strategically and systematically. Hilary recently worked with the Muse team to create a new message for Muse 2.0, and she joins Mark and Adam to talk about her creative process. Topics include why product messaging exists to solve a problem at a particular point in time; how Apple builds its brand message into product marketing; work idealists; and the importance of creative trust on teams. Plus: some cliché phrases to avoid when marketing your productivity software. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Hilary Maloney @HilaryMaloney Bishop, bouldering, Free Solo brand strategy photojournalism Parlore Muse 2.0 launch memo messaging Notion’s “source of truth” message Metamuse episode on brand Dropbox, WeTransfer above the fold Apple’s “Think different” campaign challenger brand strategy Apple’s “Behind the Mac” campaign Muse memos knowledge management, second brain the four Cs Always Sunny pinboard meme Deep Work brand persona Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule trope Crossing the Chasm Metamuse episode on collaboration with Nikolas Klein

The foundational technology for Muse 2 is local-first sync, which draws from over a decade of computer science research on CRDTs. Mark, Adam Wiggins, and Adam Wulf get technical to describe the Muse sync technology architecture in detail. Topics include the difference between transactional, blob, and ephemeral data; the “atoms” concept inspired by Datomic; Protocol Buffers; and the user’s data as a bag of edits. Plus: why sync is a powerful substrate for end-user programming. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Adam Wulf @adamwulf Fantastical Loose Leaf Wulf’s iOS ink libraries OpenGL Bézier curves Houston Muse 2.0 launches May 24 Metamuse episode on local-first software Core Data Pocket Clue, Wunderlist CouchDB, Firebase Adam’s writeup on sync technologies from 2014 Evernote Pixelpusher Slow Software CRDTs, operational transform Automerge Actual Budget last write wins Actual open source hybrid logical clock, vector clock CloudKit lazy loading API versioning Protocol Buffers Wulf’s article on atoms Datomic “put a UUID and a version number on everything” Swift property wrappers functional reactive programming Sourcery Sentry HDD indicator light Muse job post for a local-first engineer Local-first day at ECOOP 2022

Pro apps on macOS have a look and feel unlike apps on any other platform. Julia and Lennart join Adam to get into the details of designing and implementing Muse for Mac. Topics include the pros and cons of building with Catalyst, how the Muse canvas mixes with system conventions and UI chrome, and our experimental approach to developing the keyboard+mouse command vocabulary. Plus: how Julia rediscovered her love of right-click context menus. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Muse for Mac Metamuse episode on native apps Mac Catalyst 80-20 rule Apple HIG macOS Finder Craft and their guide to Catalyst Metamuse episode on career Audacity labels macOS help menu search Transmit, OptImage, Forecast TestFlight AppKit React Native “medium for thought” What’s a computer? iPadOS morphing cursor

Customer support is sometimes an afterthought for tech product companies, but it can be one of the most important parts of user experience. Mark and Adam discuss using support as a type of user interview; how to balance long-term product vision with listening to customers; and support reputations of companies like Zappos, IBM, and Comcast. Plus: the value of transparency vs why airlines conceal flight delays. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Safe mode Zappos: Deliver WOW Through Service Front Zendesk triage IBM’s legendary customer service First Republic Speakeasy Comcast cares traceroute, line test credit card authorization and capture Flighty Heroku incident reponse and status page pager rotation Oren Teich ARPU, Google’s ARPU

Your career is more than just a way to earn a living—it's a foundation for leading the kind of life you want. Shawn joins Mark and Adam to talk about navigating the non-linear course of a career; whether to correct weaknesses vs investing in strengths; salary negotiation; brag documents; and how to create luck. Plus: the Spinal Tap scale for rating software engineers. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Shawn Wang @swyx Temporal VBA, Haskell Fullstack Academy Two Sigma, Netlify rough notes on what’s missing in serverless Build in public, Personal brand Learn In Public zero-sum Elasticsearch, Typesense cron job Descript The Coding Career Handbook “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward” Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Never Split The Difference a leak in your poker game brag documents, Julia Evans recency bias Adam’s pitch to Berlin startups in 2014 How to Create Luck luck surface area closed-form solution indie games, Braid So Good They Can’t Ignore You lifestyle design Kevin Kwok, P/E ratio, gravitas as a P/E ratio 10x developer Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat and their coding productivity “these go to eleven”

If you’ve built a great product, a launch is how the world can find out about it. Adam and Mark discuss the anatomy of a product launches, including creating a “moment” in your social graph; why you should decouple product releases from your marketing launch; and mechanics like waitlists, feature flags, and press. Plus: how sharing your work with the world strengthens your team identity. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Muse for Mac Product Hunt How they launched it: Mailchimp soft launch waitlists gradual rollouts and feature flags press embargo TechCrunch, Gigaom, The Verge Heroku Postgres Ubuntu release cycle Heroku Cedar How to Launch on Product Hunt

Meeting potential collaborators online is easier when you represent yourself through a personal brand. Brian Lovin is a designer at GitHub, a podcaster at Design Details, and a prolific online maker. He joins Mark and Adam to talk about personal websites; the pros and cons of cold contact over the internet; whether follower counts matter; and how the Twitter algorithm can push back against your personal growth. Plus: the tension between thoughtfulness and daring. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Brian Lovin @brian_lovin Design Details /r/battlestations GitHub mobile apps Mark and Adam on Design Details Spectrum Buffer Security checklist more readable Hacker News How my website works On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog Metamuse episode on brand Prof. Dr. Style “I respond to every thoughtful note” how to email busy people fortune cookie tweets Staff Design alt accounts Facebook’s policy on real names dark matter Staff Engineer Brian’s design critiques App Dissection

What’s the best way for a solo entrepreneur to market their product? Pirijan is creating Kinopio, a spatial canvas on the web, and he publishes new features as screenshots or short demo videos on Twitter. He talks with Mark and Adam about how personality and building-in-public are a unique advantage of small teams; PC Magazine versus YouTube influencers; and why the struggle of building a business is best shared in realtime. Plus: choosing a tool based on vibes. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Pirijan @pketh Kinopio Gleason’s boxing gym The Endless Summer (surf documentary) “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” Fog Creek / Glitch Joel Spolsky Copilot, Kiln Wasabi Metamuse episode on urban design text blocks beta HandBrake teaching hospitals pave the cowpath Indie Hackers and revenue sharing example moonlighting The Making of Prince of Persia posturing MKBHD

The great works of human civilization can last for centuries—but software often decays in just a tiny fraction of that time. How much should this concern us in this increasingly-digital age? And as software creators, what can we do about it? Adam and Mark discuss the durability of papyrus vs CD-Rs vs the cloud; open-source Quake and remix culture; flat file formats; and digital preservation efforts like The Internet Archive and MAME. Plus: sometimes you just have to draw the rest of the owl. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Cesna 172 ForeFlight iPad aviation kneeboards The Long Now Foundation and Clock Buy it for life Metamuse episode on pricing Internet Archive CD-R MAME arcade game ROMs DOOM and Quake as open source Text Mode Quake II and DOOM on a pregnancy test Python 2 and 3 farmers fighting to repair and modify their tractors How To Draw an Owl Ship of Theseus CalDAV SQLite long-term support TIFF extensible file format Cambria data lenses the Lindy effect Arc browser, Not Boring Apps

Rich text editing is a foundational interaction in productivity software. Slim joins Mark and Adam to explain how rich text is more than just bold and italics for prose, but also includes math equations, diagrams, slideshows, and sheet music. Their discussion includes WYSIWYG versus markup languages for end users; how block-based editors change our understanding of rich text; and why Pandoc is Slim’s favorite piece of software. Plus: how to choose the best wagon in Oregon Trail. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Slim “Sarah” Lim @sliminality UC Berkeley, Notion, Ink & Switch 14" vs 16" MacBook Pro The Oregon Trail, 5th Edition Khan Academy R&D group with Andy Matuschak Ply, Slim’s CSS inspector Bert Bos (co-creator of CSS) Notion’s inline equation editor Peritext Further Research is Needed Welcome to Night Vale structured editors Lisp and S-Expressions Pandoc CommonMark, ReMarkdown Beamer, reveal.js AsciiDoc Eternals Overleaf stan Association for Computing Machinery ACM switch to HTML from PDF as archival format MathML MathJax, KaTeX MathOverflow Jonathan Aldrich Bear Finale, MuseScore Graphviz, Mermaid, Svgbob Sketch-n-Sketch

Designing tools for creators is harder than consumer software, but also potentially more rewarding. David leads design at Webflow, and he joins Adam and Mark to talk about mental models, opinionated versus open-ended tools, and being true to the materials. Plus: why complexity is unfairly villainized in design. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes David Hoang @davidhoang Webflow Seeing Spaces low-fidelity wireframes One Medical Quartz Composer Black Pixel SwiftUI no-code tools Heroku citizen developer journey map The Big Bed Civilization built on Webflow Metamuse episode with Weiwei Xu GeoCities Metamuse episode with Maggie Appleton Dreamweaver Web3 RSS mental models Xcode’s Auto Layout vs Figma’s auto layout position: absolute the box model flexbox JavaScript minification Jobs to be Done paradox of choice Webflow’s No-Code Conf OpenDoc, ActiveX Rake task Yahoo! Pipes low floor, high ceiling Obsidian React Native eject Instagram Stories Universe BASIC sprite Glitch original vision for the read-write web Beaker Browser

Ink & Switch is a research lab inspired by Bells Labs and Xerox PARC. Peter is lab director, and he joins Adam and Mark to discuss DARPA-hard problems; the Ink & Switch academic-meets-web essay format; and how an independent research lab can fund itself through a spinout flywheel. Plus: Mendel and his peas, Thoreau and his ants, and the Arrakis attitude of the knife. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Peter van Hardenberg @pvh Ink & Switch hydroponic gardening computer vision knight’s movement in chess efficient frontier Peritext Dynamicland Seinfeld calendar Zettelkasten rich text Metamuse episode with Geoffrey Litt Metamuse episode with Linus Lee “Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife […] It’s complete because it’s ended here.” DARPA Richard Hamming National Science Foundation prime number theorum Ben Reinhardt on innovation orgs Bell Labs list of inventions flywheel Gregor Mendel’s experiments with pea plants “It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?” DARPA autonomous vehicles contest and prize DARPA hard Gordon Brander pre-infusion Yjs the Hollywood model Martin Kleppmann Code for America no plan survives first contact with the enemy “pencils down” peer review citation

With Muse for Mac on the horizon, the team convenes to discuss the merits of native apps versus web technologies like Electron. Discussion points include the conflict between brand identity and apps that feel true to the OS; “proudly native” apps like Sketch and Nova; and the lost art of designing using system components. Plus: the business case for and against building native apps, and why great native apps tend to come from smaller companies. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes The road to Muse 2 Electron DMG file URL widgets GTK /usr the JVM and write once, run anywhere Java servlet, Flash React Native, Cordova transpiler browser quirks siren’s song Audacity Flutter Things principle of least surprise Twitter on iOS non-native share sheet Material Design Google’s iOS apps retiring custom widgets WeChat Microsoft antitrust case in the late 90s how the web broke Microsoft’s monopoly Steve Jobs visiting Xerox PARC Alto, Lisa, Macintosh Metamuse episode with Weiwei Xu V for Wikipedia Twitter’s custom typeface, Chirp ScreenFlow, Sketch, Nova Sketch’s proud-to-be-native article WebAssembly in Figma Sublime Text Finda’s 16ms goal Microsoft CEO deemphasizing the Windows business Obsidian, Superhuman, Linear 1Password’s switch to Electron and subsequent outcry video games and colorblind mode Game Maker’s Toolkit — Designing for Disability

Journalism is changing, as newspapers and magazines adapt to being online and internet-native media empires like Vox and Vice upend the status quo. Dan Shipper is part of this as a founder of Every, a writer collective for business writing. Dan chats with Mark and Adam about the paid newsletter boom; the impact of recommendation algorithms on creator mental health; and content platforms like Wordpress, Substack, and Ghost. Plus: the pros and cons of antigravity machines. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Dan Shipper @danshipper Every John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed Irvin Yalom Substack Firefly Superorganizers divergent mode Nathan Baschez The Economist, The New York Times, Disney Vox, Vice the death of journalism editor dopamine hit Metamuse episode on social media yellow journalism BuzzFeed crypto Ben Thompson / Stratechery Ghost Pulitzer prize kids want to grow up to be YouTube stars Casey Neistat YouTube algorithm changes The Long Tail Harvard Business Review Bedrock Capital The Athletic Divinations The Generalist

What do the Bible, TED talks, superhero movies, and Steve Jobs’ product announcements have in common? They use stories to share ideas, culture, and worldview. Adam and Lennart discuss this, and the role storytelling can play in product marketing and design. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes the smell of autumn Muse is hiring Metamuse episode on our partnership model local-first engineer designer & storyteller the Bible superhero movies as modern myths TED talks Steve Jobs as a storyteller Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone (2007) marketing marketing funnel Muse’s onboarding dark patterns the medium is the message lecture copywriting hero shot html video responsive design CSS transitions scroll hijacking Explorable Explanations WordPress, SquareSpace Notion blew up on TikTok vignette aspect ratio Guy Gavriel Kay worldbuilding iPhone 1 notes app skeuomorphic slide to unlock BlackBerry iPhone 1 commercial “Calamari” Muse Pencil toolkit iPadOS PencilKit Metamuse episode on tool switching marketing design

In a world dominated by mass-produced software, making your own tools is a way to take back agency in your digital life. Linus joins Mark and Adam to talk about his experiences building a personal software ecosystem; tools that are a reflection of the maker’s values and taste; and packaging/sharing solutions like Docker, CodePen, Replit, and Deno. And: is it possible for software to ever be “done”? — Linus thinks so. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Linus Lee @thesephist Surface Duo Nintendo DS Backbone.js Spensa (farming technology startup) Django Replit Monocle full-text search Ink (programming language) changing lightbulb meme DigitalOcean August (Linus’ self-made x86 assembler) Metamuse episode with Weiwei Xu situated software stream fusion in mathematics reverse proxy software erosion aka bit rot FileMaker Pro newline-delimited JSON flat dependency trees dynamic linked libraries Go static linking not invented here Hundred Rabbits lil apps Szymon Kaliski An app can be a home-cooked meal Lucerne (Linus' self-made Twitter client) TweetDeck Taylor Swift Go by Example multi-tenancy Metamuse episode on local-first whoami game modding Deno Deno’s sandboxing and permissions Qubes OS Docker container Heroku Buttons macOS .app bundles CodePen xkcd on modern software dependencies ProseMirror Metamuse episode on filmmaking curl maintainer has been at it for 23 years

Local-first is a set of principles that enables collaborative software without the loss of data ownership associated with the cloud. Martin is a computer scientist on the frontier of this movement, and he joins Mark and Adam to discuss how creative people put their souls into their work; a vision for a generic AWS syncing service; and why local-first could be a breakthrough for indie app developers. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Martin Kleppmann University of Cambridge Debussy four-handed piano piece Martin’s previous startup, Rapportive Apache Kafka Designing Data-Intensive Applications Writing a book: is it worth it? Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud Ink & Switch Geoffrey Litt Pixelpusher the fish says “what the hell is water?” “crushing it” elevator pitch Google Docs realtime collaboration defrag your hard drive self-hosting an SMTP server and spam filtering thin client Peter van Hardenberg Pixelpusher Automerge “there is stuff you always use; and stuff that won’t work when you need it” Slack’s free vs paid message retention federation, mesh network CRDTs How we pay for software Swift, Kotlin technology transfer fuzz testing, Monte Carlo simulation local-first Trello clone demo end-to-end encryption Firebase

The Muse team worked with Max and his film crew on the pilot episode of a new documentary series. Max joins Adam and Mark to talk about how making films compares to making software; why creative trust is the core of a great team; and why we should hire based on networks, portfolios, and auditions instead of CVs and interviews. Plus: 40 people stuck on a film shoot in the forest due to a forgotten shovel. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Maximilian Becht of Kosmovision shooting day post-production E3 set runner Film Academy Baden-Württemberg Zellenflimmern (documentary on media inside prisons) Making Movies Create: a documentary series by Muse watch pilot episode of Create with Katrin Friedmann branded content Marcus Hanisch (Create director) location scouting Jasper Techel (Create cameraperson) Moritz Drath (Create sound and music) professional network After Effects The Queen’s Gambit shot in Berlin maker biographies A Modest Genius (Charles Darwin biography) Creativity, Inc. (Pixar founder autobiography) Barbie and Ruth (Mattel founder biography) film screening the Hollywood model gig sites Christopher Nolan wide angle shots herding cats production manager “fix it in post" the null hypothesis suggest a protagonist for future episodes of Create

Why are we driven to create, and to express ourselves online? Weiwei is the founder of Sprout, a collaborative creation space. She joins Mark and Adam to talk about how tools influence group communication and our sense of belonging; why we should make our online spaces feel more like bedrooms than stadiums or hotel lobbies; and why children’s tools have a special magic. Plus: Nintendo’s withered technology, Winamp skins, and cursor waves. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Weiwei Xu @weiweiwei33 Sprout monowheel scooter Dynamicland growth mindset HCI Metamuse episode with Jason Yuan MakeSpace Google Hangouts, Zoom, Facetime Miro Pointing in virtual spaces Slackmojis, Discord custom emojis Sharpies, butcher paper, calligraphy pens and markers Kindle sushi knives Deluxe Paint introvert Muse Backstage Pass Winamp iOS widgets engagement loops clickbait Metamuse episode on video games World Cup, European championship Adam’s homepage gwalb – grey with a little blue Citizen Kane, Mank, Jaws Nintendo’s “withered technology” Switch

As the world’s economy is remade via software, some founders are finding the one-way ratchet of venture capital too restrictive. Tyler Tringas is working to expand funding options available to entrepreneurs via the Calm Fund. He joins Mark and Adam to talk about a return to classic good business practices; how founders can maximize their optionality; building an investment thesis out in the open; and how to be long-term ambitious. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Tyler Tringas @tylertringas Calm Fund Mexico City digital nomad, slowmad Earnest Capital rebrand bootstrapper, indie hacker building in public Small Giants episode brand episode lifestyle business The Entrepreneur’s new path of maximum optionality the peace dividend of the SaaS wars B2D two-sided market red ocean winner takes all craigslist, Thumbtack covertible note, SAFE Shared Earnings Agreement (SEAL) Calm’s crowdfunding campaign 12factor profit-sharing plans co-op carried interest Joe Wallin Calm Company Express

Creating software is typically done in text-based environments—but would programming be more accessible with graphical programming tools? Maggie joins Mark and Adam to talk about the relative success of Scratch, Shortcuts, and Zapier; how to make the abstract visible; embodied metaphors; and the false duality of artistic versus logical thinkers. Plus: how to make blinking lights for your Burning Man art installation. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Maggie Appleton @mappletons egghead.io Centre for Computing History Pacific Pinball Museum Nintendo 64 the noughties or the aughts React Scratch Zapier, IFTTT, Integromat low-code / no-code Rocky’s Boots circuit diagrams DrScheme Origami Studio Muse memo on infinite canvas with Origami screenshot LabVIEW Logic Pro, Reason the environment in Logic iOS Shortcuts (née Workflow) console loggings end-user programming: embodiment VS Code, npm, Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, React hooks cultural anthropology Geroge Lakoff, Mark Johnson embodied metaphors Dan Abramov Just Javascript pointers in C Redux actions _why’s poignant guide to ruby Learnable Programming Edward Tufte, Visual Explanations, Beautiful Evidence Graphviz DOT graphs jigs in wordworking Unity episode with Geoffrey Litt Flutter, SwiftUI XState Apparatus direct manipulation Dreamweaver Interface Builder Hacker News folk wisdom on visual programming Adafruit circuit debouncing with capacitors walk uphill in the snow Visual Programming Codex Whole Code Catalog

Text blocks are a new beta feature for Muse. Mark and Adam use the opportunity to discuss the origins and philosophy of text in computing, including text as a datum in environments like wikis, REPLs, and social media; the writing workflow of collapsing spatially-arranged ideas down to a linear text buffer; and company memo culture. And Mark shares his vision for how the Pencil could become the X-Acto knife for fast text editing on a tablet. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Review Metamuse on Apple Podcasts Podstatus Cortex, Accidental Tech Podcast “going viral slowly” text blocks beta manual and memo Notion, Roam, Craft plain text ASCII art logograms The Humane Representation of Thought William Playfair Literature & Latte, Scrivener, Scapple terminal, REPL Man-Computer Symbiosis TTY = teletype Roam backlinks and knowledge graph view source Sublime Text Twitter was 140 characters for SMS episode about iPad emacs Org Mode, WorkFlowy Miro, FigJam, GoodNotes uncanny valley IPython, Jupyter Markdown Atlassian’s wiki “turn my ideas into our ideas” responsive design folio keyboard, Magic Keyboard iOS voice input Scribble infinite canvas beta → flex boards kill your darlings

It’s been over a decade since Steve Jobs introduced Apple’s tablet as a “third device” between Mac and iPhone. Mark, Adam, and Lennart discuss iPad’s potential as a creative platform; multitasking, filesystem, and scripting/extensions; multimodal inputs; and the background process problem. Plus: why Apple should build its own pro apps for iPad to demonstrate their vision for the platform. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes iPadOS 15 The Tragic iPad Procreate iPad with cellular network connection user confusion on minimizing vs closing an application Steve Jobs on the third category of device prosumer software iOS fork / iPadOS rebrand in 2019 the Dock, drag and drop iPad morphing cursor the history of mouse cursors keyboard shortcut quick reference by holding down ⌘ macOS Big Sur Control Center seems designed for touch Apple says it has no plans to merge Mac and iPad Surface Studio and Surface Hub Tony Stark’s lab Apple device wifi password sharing Universal Control to share a pointing device between a Mac and an iPad episode with Rasmus Andersson Macbook Touch Bar frustrating text selection on iPhone and iPad

In today’s world, apps and their data are tightly coupled—but what if each person could pick and choose their own tool for use in a collaborative project? Geoffrey Litt is a researcher working on this problem at MIT. He joins Mark and Adam to talk about email as the original BYOC case study; how shared protocols enable niche software; whether it’s possible to design software for someone other than yourself; and how to accidentally become an expert. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Geoffrey Litt / @geoffreylitt “teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea” Project Cambria MIT Software Design Group Ink & Switch Human-Computer Interaction Doug Engelbart Superorganizers profile of Geoffrey including Muse screenshots Bring Your Own Client email as one of the first internet protocols Pine, Mutt Superhuman, Front, Tempo not many clients support video in HTML emails tractor attachments and the three-point hitch HTML meta tags for Google and Twitter progress enhancement reverse engineering ad blockers end-user programming aspiring programmer progressing from Livejournal to HTML coding PHP Hubspot, Mailchimp “toolmaker humility” from Balint @ Craft Solid accessibility in collaborative writing VS Code won the text editor wars “ed is the standard text editor” episode on video games Flash, Java servlet Changing Minds Bonnie Nardi ethnographic study of distributed problem-solving in spreadsheets Wildcard

Tech product designers could learn from the immense challenges of designing cities. Devon joins Adam and Mark to share her knowledge and passion on urban design and economics. They discuss how open source communities compare to cities; historical preservation versus growth and change; the messy middle of public and private goods; wi-fi spectrum ownership; and what to do when the neighbor’s new building puts shade on your vegetable garden. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Devon Zuegel / @devonzuegel Order without Design (book) Order Without Design (podcast) episode on Seattle and Berlin urban economics, planning, and design The World Bank Venture funding in 2020 Paris city walls path dependence Miami Art Deco historic protection centrally-planned economy TCP/IP Manhattan street grid plan (1811) Eminent Domain 1960s highway revolts Discretionary Review Berlin rent cap artistocracy San Francisco’s privately-owned public spaces (POPOS) LinkedIn public cafe Sacré-Cœur Basilica La Défense Paris business district biography of Gustave Eiffel first-past-the-post voting seasteading charter cities Special Economic Zone Shenzen electromagnetic spectrum auction Georgism universal basic income air rights Prospectus On Próspera voxel zoning laws in Japan no on-street parking in Tokyo The High Cost of Free Parking A History of Future Cities City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism

Pricing a product is one of the most difficult and high-stakes part of running a software business. Adam, Mark, and Lennart discuss the latest pricing updates for Muse; the pros and cons of selling through the iOS App Store; concerns with subscription payments for software; and why it’s important to be experimental and iterative with your prices. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Lennart Ziburski Potsdam, Germany Ink & Switch essay on the Muse prototype Desktop Neo The Cloudfall Muse pricing idea maze psychology of why most prices end in .99 conversion rate freemium total cost of ownership Things Mars rover software static linking Heroku pricing pricing books: Priceless, Don’t Just Roll the Dice, Pricing on Purpose pricing for the enterprise Notion previous pricing / free tier with 1000 blocks Sublime Text nagware We’ve Always Had Freemium, It’s Called Piracy Muse newsletter where we first asked beta users to weigh in on price

Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have transformed how we come to a shared understanding about our world. Tobias has been writing about social media for half a decade. He joins Mark and Adam to discuss velocity and virality in information dissemination; how to train your YouTube algorithm; rage tweeting; and how to improve the internet we all inhabit. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Tobias Rose-Stockwell and his writing MUD TinTin++ techno-optimism clickbait This Is How Your Fear and Outrage Are Being Sold for Profit The Social Dilemma The Dark Psychology of Social Networks Jonathan Haidt How to Stop Misinformation Before It Gets Shared Renée DiResta moral psychology algorithmic feeds System 1 and System 2 thinking dopamine hit dunk quote-tweeting The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority How to Disagree moral grandstanding episode on The Information Age the intellectual dark web “The internet is the Freak Liberation Front.” the food pyramid yellow journalism Central Park zoo escape (1874) Great Moon Hoax (1835) Prisoner’s Dilemma Substack Plandemic Free Speech Is Not the Same As Free Reach

Great tools can enable co-creation between humans and computers. Molly Mielke joins Mark and Adam to talk about her thesis on the subject. They discuss product design as a fusion of creative and analytical; how consumer preferences may conflict with the Engelbart/Kay vision of computing; the emerging social norms of collaborative software; and why we should bring back skeuomorphism. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Molly Mielke Whole Earth Catalog and Stewart Brand biopic Abstract Computing History Hub senioritis episode with Andy Matuschak Kid Pix Computers and Creativity The Mother of All Demos TRON Balint Orosz on toolmaker humility episode with Nikolas Klein CVS and Subversion LaTeX Always Has Been meme flow state deep work operational transform, CRDTs Tuckman’s stages of group development the Satir change model Writely skeuomorphism

Probabilistic modeling is useful for answering all kinds of questions, from assessing financial risk to making engineering time estimates. Yet spreadsheets are poor at this job, which is why Taimur and his colleagues are building Casual. Taimur talks with Mark and Adam about ranges as an intuitive way to estimate; the usefulness of Monte Carlo simulations; and the role of math in dating cave paintings. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Taimur Abdaal Casual Not Overthinking Airtable Drake‘s equation line of best fit “not even wrong” Flatland Monte Carlo simulation R closed-form solution RoboCup Slack (management book) queueing theory The Principles of Product Development Flow tail risk expected value gambler’s fallacy distribution shapes e.g. bell curve fan chart Samo Burja of Bismark Analysis meta-analysis preregistered studies confidence interval false positive, false negative onboarding episode A/A testing carcinization combinatorics two-tailed test

Video games are often on the leading edge of technical, design, and social innovation in the software world. Mark and Adam discuss what productivity tools can learn from games including the culture of performance; tools like Twitch and Discord; and end-user programming via scripting and modding. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Seattle cherry blossoms episodes with Rasmus Andersson and Andy.Works Serious Play “death march” in game development developer experience esports Age of Empires II Counter-Strike FEZ; Papers, Please; Baba Is You Core-A Gaming Playing to Win the metagame the Olympics Nvidia frame rate counters Nintendo Switch Makepad code folding Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) Cyberpunk 2077 and everything is securities fraud Duke Nukem Forever No Man’s Sky and launch controversy Mass Effect, Horizon Zero Dawn Muse onboarding scripting, modding, skinning tower defense A Small Matter of Programming My Life as a Night Elf Priest World of Warcraft free-to-play (F2P) games Team Fortress Valve Left 4 Dead Steam Valve employee handbook Candy Crush, Wooga, FarmVille Twitch Justin.tv CGP Grey on Twitch American Truck Simulator Among Us, US congressperson livestreams consumer surplus Discord  T90 Zero Punctuation, Girlfriend Reviews Game Maker’s Toolkit Metroid Nintendo Power magazine haptic feedback Batman: Arkham Asylum / detective mode Tetris max-out score four-minute mile speedruns Twitch paid subscriber emotes Myst built in Hypercard Strider, Angband, rougelikes Lucas Pope, Return of the Obra Dinn

Design and engineering polymath Rasmus Andersson joins Mark and Adam to talk about his new project, Playbit. Play as a means of discovery and learning; virtualization as an underexploited technology for making safe playspaces for programming; and whether macOS will still exist in ten years. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Rasmus Andersson @rsms Playbit What counts as a weed? maskros flowers “write access to your entire worldview” Jason Yuan on fidgitability Virginia Postrel on work vs play Rust Roadster in space foam roll “Adamisms” e.g. make it real Hobo Go, Go by Example slow hunch malleable software xorg.conf convention over configuration macOS notarization woes Chrome OS sandboxing GPU time-sharing write once, run anywhere macOS virtualization, Hyper-V, KVM Linux namespaces Ruby gem: bundle root user An app can be a home-cooked meal Replit Dreams The Cathedral and the Bazaar Macromedia Director demoscene, BBS culture MOD trackers Gameboy DJ performance Raspberry Pi flip displays teenage engineering Alfazeta flipdots vendor

When you pay for software, are you paying for the data storage or the interface? Balint is the founder of Craft, a writing app designed for iPad. He chats with Adam and Mark about design conventions for multimodal input; why import/export is so important; and how to have humility about how your product fits into your customer’s life. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Balint Orosz of Craft Budapest: bridges, parliament building, castle Making computers better Skyscanner Markdown Mac Catalyst retina displays homeostasis multimodal input Craft on data ownership Ulysses I/O TestBundle format best of breed Instagram DSLR cameras, RAW format, Lightroom bidirectional links Excel low floor, high ceiling  iOS share sheet SVG JSON Visual Studio Code Google Photos going paid churn Small Giants Office 365 revenue via Microsoft 2020 annual report bootstrapping

Agenda is software that encodes an unusual philosophy for note-taking. Alex of Agenda joins Mark and Adam to talk about being an indie developer; note-taking as a technique for calming the mind; and the benefits of community and learning tools socially. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Alexander Griekspoor Agenda easter egg Papers biology wet lab R, Jupyter, Matlab CodeWarrior open loops Parkinson’s law Drew McCormack Agenda community Zettelkasten deep dive on notes tools search engine optimization localizations by Agenda community volunteers authentic marketing “cash cow” business model

A “small giant” is a company that chooses to optimize for mojo instead of growth. Mark and Adam describe how Muse was inspired to follow this path, designing the business model, team makeup, and funding source accordingly. Plus: a digression into tender offers and the fine points of US tax law. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Partnership, freedom, and responsibility Adam Wulf Small Giants S&P 500 Clif Bar, Whole Foods, Union Square Cafe Startup = Growth existence proof Signal, Panic, Vanguard index funds and ETFs Chef’s Table meme stocks Delaware C-corp Harrison Metal career capital revenue-based financing maker vs manager VC Math tender offer stock buyback dividends TrustCommerce growth stocks vs income stocks foundations: Mozilla, Apache, Processing, Wikimedia

Tools for collaboration are changing team culture. Nikolas Klein has been a part of this shift in his academic work and on the product design team at Figma. He joins Mark and Adam to discuss creative collaboration including how guardrails can increase comfort with working collaboratively; changing mindset from “my ideas” to “our ideas”; and screensharing as an intimate act. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Nikolas Klein @nikolasklein time logistics for teams spanning US and Europe Sketch Runner Artifacts Schwäbisch Gmünd / Hochschule für Gestaltung CLUI Shopify design system / Polaris Telescope Figma hypergrowth user redesign of Figma comments sea shanty TikTok remix culture bisociation / Arthur Koestler hammock-driven development Sketching User Experiences OBS Studio ring light Zoom Studio Figma cursor Halloween costumes Designer News reaction to Figma launch people who understand the capabilities of software The Dream Machine

Brand is not just a name or a logo—it’s the character of a company and its products. Adam and Mark discuss the memetic and emotive elements of branding; brand as tribal identity; and Muse brand values like thoughtfulness and curiosity. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Brand New history of the Heinz brand logomark Richard Branson / Virgin Pixar Nike / the Swoosh / Just Do It 37signals Tarsnap Sabaki the Muse newsletter The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding FedEx business biography memetic Notion illustrations by Roman Muradov Cragistlist and brutalist web design proof of work typography of Apple, Inc. packaging design on 99designs Harley-Davidson consumerization of IT and Bring Your Own Device BlackBerry, corporate VPNs administrative legibility

How to prototype advanced gestures; how to organize your Muse boards; and how to spot good ideas. Plus, a peek at the long-term Muse roadmap. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Ferrite listener questions thread Balsamiq, Framer, Origami Studio Make it real infinite canvas memo reductionism spatial reasoning Growing ideas with Andy Matuschak retrospective Paul Buchheit Slow Software self-hosting End-user programming Minecraft redstone MySpace customization Figma plugins

Maps can visualize space, time, biological processes, social graphs, and much more. Anne-Laure of Ness Labs talks with Mark and Adam about the multi-thousand-year history of map-based thinking, and how we can use maps in our own creative work today. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Anne-Laure Le Cunff @anthilemoon winter solstice Algerian food Ness Labs @ness_labs mindful productivity the Dunning-Kruger effect How to Be Idle Thinking in maps Cassiodorus Babylonian map of the world the map is not the territory The Invention of Nature Alexander von Humboldt’s Chimborazo map Disney business process map (1957) Krebs cycle floppy disc save icon D3.js Parametric Press Connected Papers digital object identifier (DOI) babies using touch gestures on magazines heads-up display (HUD) Scapple by Literature and Latte focused mode and diffuse mode / Barbara Oakley affinity maps

Jason Crawford writes about the history of technology and the philosophy of progress. He joins Mark and Adam to talk about technologies like messenger RNA vaccines, nanotech, and supersonic jets. Plus society-level questions like whether we are in a period of stagnation, how we fund maverick ideas, and why we need hubris. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Jason Crawford / The Roots of Progress / @jasoncrawford Fieldbook A Small Matter of Programming We Need a New Science of Progress The Torch of Progress — Ep. 13 with Adam Wiggins The Great Stagnation Bessemer steel process germ theory We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters The Rise and Fall of American Growth and Jason’s summary Where Is My Flying Cars? and Jason’s summary Luddites Victorian-era concept of Progress A Culture of Growth Francis Bacon growth mindset The March of Progress World’s Fair posters phase 3 clinical trials Hardcore History techno-optimism 1927 Charles Lindbergh ticker-tape parade Why haven’t we celebrated any major achievements lately? Academy of Thought and Industry Boom 747: Creating the World’s First Jumbo Jet Concorde

Thinking and creativity require privacy. In this data-intensive age, what does “privacy” mean for a tool for thought? Mark and Adam discuss product decisions in the context of digital privacy for the tech industry and society overall. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes US Supreme Court oral arguments live The Right to Privacy (1890) LiveJournal GDPR Brave, Duck Duck Go, ProtonMail, Fathom Signal, Telegram TLS Clipper Chip Alan Turing and the Enigma Machine Local-first software Open Whisper Systems web of trust Signal contact verification Zoom end-to-end encryption whitepaper PGP telemetry PII cookie warnings browser fingerprinting Tor TikTok iOS 14 clipboard notifications Designing for Pragmatists and Fundamentalists Edward Snowden, Citizenfour Tails The Stasi The Lives of Others

Jason Yuan believes that we all should feel empowered to think about ways to improve our computer's operating system. He joins Mark and Adam to talk about stage design, dreaming big versus delivering practical products, and why software should be fun. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Jason Yuan / @jasonyuandesign Mercury OS MakeSpace Screenotate Omar Rizwan Tyler Angert Repl.it Weiwei Hsu Desktop Neo Artifacts iOS 14 widgets Sketch Orgami Quartz Composer Android launchers Gall’s law the iPod click wheel virtual workspaces Dynamicland Bret Victor spring damping David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet Xanadu philosopher’s stone The Mother of All Demos

Andy.Works believes in design-forward products, as seen in his work on Paper for iPad to a handmade analog clock for his young kids. Mark, Adam, and Andy discuss products as vector for culture; maverick game designers; innovation budgets; and pushing back against the idea of scale in software. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Andy of Andy.Works Andy’s clock project Microsoft Courier Surface Duo FiftyThree Paper Paste No More Boring Apps KPI John Baldessari Muse podcast with Josh Miller user-centered design Frank Lloyd Wright The Guggenheim local maxima Making Movies Playdead / Limbo, Inside Oskar Stålberg / Townscraper Jonathan Blow / Braid Notch / Minecraft Jordan Mechner / Prince of Persia not the user’s fault Choose Boring Technology

It's a new world: many creative professionals can now choose where they live, independent of where their employer is headquartered. Mark and Adam discuss the implications of this. Plus: the magic of Silicon Valley, cities that feed your creative soul, and strategies for making big life decisions. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Emigration and other hedges Stripe relocation incentive and Zapier relocation incentive Y Combinator Amazon HQ2 Stripe Atlas and Firstbase Apple and Ireland tax case Amazon and sales tax collection

Jane Portman of Userlist joins Julia and Adam to share her expertise with onboarding. Why guided tours don't work, the legacy of Clippy, and drip campaigns that are more personal and considerate. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Jane Portman @uibreakfast User Onboarding: The Ultimate Guide for SaaS Founders Userlist Benedikt Deicke Intercom lifecycle messaging Claire Suellentrop, Forget The Funnel UI Breakfast podcast tooltips Inspire, Not Instruct aha moment Clue out-of-box-experience (OOBE) Samuel Hulick, UserOnboard, podcast interview Clippy call to action Val Geisler drip campaign tech touch A/B test or split test Max Seelemann

Josh Miller from The Browser Company joins Mark and Adam to discuss how to make a better web browser in 2020. The conversation ranges from user agency in software to architecture to social capital to end-user programming. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Josh Miller @joshm The Browser Company Branch Nate Parrott Einstein quote beginner’s mind Evan Williams Brownian motion The Roots of Progress Jobs to be Done David Adjaye Museum of African American History and Culture Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) HVAC Bjarke Ingels Abstract A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction Snap S1 Snapcodes Evan Spiegel Norton Commander Electron sociology web browser as Figma canvas CERN and the birth of the web Taxi Magic timing matters / Adam’s Heroku values Robert D. Putnam Bowling Alone Scott Heiferman Greasemonkey Rust

Andy Matuschak joins Mark and Adam to talk about rituals for deep thought, how to develop an inkling over time, and the public goods problem of research. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Andy Matuschak: homepage Twitter Patreon How can we develop transformative tools for thought? Michael Nielsen Bret Victor on representation of thought Quantum Country spaced repetition Anki IDEO iBooks deliberate practice Solitude and Leadership LiquidText evergreen notes exponential backoff Heroku haiku names positivism and existentialism deontological ethics intelligent tutoring systems ALEKS Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software Ivan Sutherland / Sketchpad Palladium Magazine mechanical keyboards on Reddit Pricing niche products: Why sell a mechanical keyboard kit for $1,668? tech transfer Genentech and recombinant DNA Dolby Pixar Why does DARPA work?

Lisa Enckell joins Mark and Adam to talk about picking a category, aspirational creativity, and the purpose of product launches. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Lisa Enckell Antler episode with Max Schoening Patrick McKenzie on North Star podcast Platform-as-a-Service containerization dynos serverless Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind Points of Parity, Points of Difference purple cow N26 Circles.Life silhouette iPod ads Signaling as a Service hey.com library of Trinity College Dublin The Substance of Style Marie Kondo Marc Benioff “It’s not when people notice you’re there that they pay attention; it’s when they notice you’re still there." DreamForce, Google I/O Ubuntu release cycle Wrapp 23andMe DNA Day

The rich history of tools for thought stretches back to the 1960s. Adam and Mark talk about how today’s computing, from iPads to Twitch to AI, might help us gain knoweldge and develop novel ideas. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Tools For Thought How can we develop transformative tools for thought? bicycle for the mind Doug Engelbart Alan Kay Vannevar Bush As We May Think the two-step process for developing ideas Roam Research Thinking, Fast and Slow industrial-strength noise-canceling headphones white-noise generators in a Muse email update GPT-3 Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins generative design Twitch Discord

This modern Information Age can make it challenging for a creative professional to keep their focus. At the same time, there are many benefits to being plugged in. Mark and Adam discuss. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age the Information Age The end of mobile The Information Pathology The Slot Machine in Your Pocket digital detox the Industrial Revolution The Rise and Fall of American Growth Thinking About Attention RescueTime Screen Time Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World Center for Humane Technology Gell-Mann Amnesia The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority

Max Schoening of GitHub joins Mark and Adam to talk about principled design, authentic marketing, tools for thought, and more. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Max Schoening @mschoening end-user programming tools for thought SQLite US Library of Congress recommended storage formats Read the Fabulous Manual composability The Twelve-Factor App GitHub Actions ivory tower Trello / card aging Zen of Palm Google Chrome launch comic Things OmniFocus Exponent / Principle Stacks unix / everything is a text stream Overcast Marco Arment free and open podcasts Brave Signal Telegram Fathom Analytics the year of Linux on the desktop flame war khaki pants Daring Fireball Muse email updates no spinners Situated Software

Lachlan Campbell of Hack Club joins Mark and Adam to talk about path from research prototype to released product. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Lachlan Campbell Hack Club interactive media arts at NYU Real web development on iPad Fonts on iPad GoodNotes iA Writer Shortcuts usability tests Minimum Viable Product Notion software release life cycle Gmail beta lasted five years excerpting and wormholes shelf TestFlight The Long Now Steam Early Access Kickstarter Patreon Future Fonts Heroku Labs Gmail Labs iA Writer / Settings

HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) studies how people relate to their digital tools. Mark and Adam discuss their journey into HCI, how others can get into the field, and its influence on Muse. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes You and Your Research The Art and Science of Doing Engineering Stripe Press Human-Computer Interaction Ink & Switch Xerox PARC Microsoft Research MeetAlive: Room-Scale Omni-Directional Display System CHI 2019 proceedings Peripheral Notifications in Large Displays Sensing Posture-Aware Pen+Touch Interactions on Tablets A Small Matter of Programming Strategies in Creative Professionals’ Use of Digital Tools The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff Associative memory Ben Reinhardt and innovation orgs Brett Victor and Dynamicland Andy Matuschak and a new mnemonic medium Johnathon blow and Braid, Jai programming language Rich Hickey’s Hammock Driven Development Dan Luu and Computer latency Martin Kleppmann and Local-First Software

Developing an iPad app with a rich gesture space and unique spatial-zooming visual model is technically challenging. Julia joins Mark and Adam to break down the software engineering behind Muse. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Xcode iOS Simulator Swift Core Data Firebase Zoom privacy issue with Facebook SDK Ruby Postgres Heroku Choose Boring Technology Dataclips Gestures as defined by Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines Shannon Hughes / Detangling Gesture Recognizers The Omni Group GestureVisualization UIGestureRecognizer two-finger scrolling in Muse Muse design goals card-carry maneuver the inbox view hierarchy loading screens open-world games stylus swipe from screen edge to switch tools UIScreenEdgePanGestureRecognizer unix terminal ctrl-C to interrupt a program in unix state machine

The company behind Muse is structured as a small partnership. Mark and Adam talk about why the team wanted this unusual approach and how it's working so far. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Muse is Hiring an Engineering Partner startup employee stock options Netflix Freedom & Responsibility Culture startup founder Starbucks / Howard Shultz Google OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) Salesforce V2MOM (Vison, Values, Methods, Obstacles, Measures) alignment Management by Peter Drucker expensing exercise window vesting and cliffs dilution vest in peace cap table re-up agency Mad Men professonal services cult of personality Disney company transition after Walt’s death trial project / pilot project indie

Professional tools need a manual to explain how they work, but not all manuals are created equal. Mark and Adam discuss their mutual love of manuals, what makes a manual great, and why we chose video as the primary medium for the Muse Interface Handbook. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes Muse Interface Handbook How to use your Rocket Espresso machine and make beautiful coffee Go by Example Heroku Dev Center Ulysses tutorials Working Copy Users‘ guide GoodNotes how-to guides Procreate Handbook Stripe API Reference unix man pages The YouTube Revolution in Knowledge Transfer tacit knowledge The Matrix / I know Kung Fu Building Heroku Add-ons glossary mental model Muse design article Capstone manuscript green screen Looom User Guide RTFM out-of-box experience (OOBE) Bear Notion templates vi

Ideas are foundational for creative and knowledge work. Mark and Adam talk about fodder, making time to ideate, and the value of fresh surroundings. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes ideation House M.D. Where Good Ideas Come from video essays active reading Moleskine Field Notes post-it notes commonplace book OmniGraffle MindNode Google Keep Bear Drafts Shape Up Pocket Dropbox Goodreads Cowen‘s Second Law Slow Software Wiggins‘ Law breadth-first vertical slice state of flow Deep Work academic sabbatical Getting Things Done mindfulness

Muse has a modeless interface with no onscreen toolbars. Mark and Adam talk about the long research journey that led us here. Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes modelessness The Humane Interface administrative debris quasimode tablet platforms command glyphs Muse design article Procreate Paper by FiftyThree Apple Human Interface Guidelines Ink & Switch Surface Studio Surface Dial Google Jamboard Catalyst Xerox PARC Bell Labs Concepts technical pens Looom Teenage Engineering ortho remote Wacom tablets