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