Hey all, Muse cofounder here. I’ve been on Hacker News 13 years but this is my first Show HN. You might know me from YC08 and as Heroku cofounder and author of 12factor.net.
Today my team and I are launching Muse, a thinking tool.
Engineers sometimes talk about “typing problems” and “thinking problems”; Muse is for the latter. For example: designing a distributed system, doing a deep read of an algorithms paper, or creating a product roadmap.
My colleagues and I spent a few years doing research at a lab called Ink & Switch. You can read HN discussions of our publications on software performance [1], the creative process [2], and local-first software [3].
One research question for us was whether touchscreens could ever be as powerful as desktop tools like vim or emacs. That resulted a prototype we named Muse. We saw commercial potential and spun it out of the lab last year.
A founding insight for Muse is that deep thinking happens away from the computer. e.g. in a sketchbook, on a whiteboard, or just in your head. There are some up-and-coming tools for thought like Notion and Roam but they’re tied to the desktop/laptop form factor and primarily focused on text. We saw an opportunity for a thinking tool that blends together visual media, text, and offers spatial navigation on a tablet.
Since this is a technical crowd, you might be interested in some of the challenges building this thing, like maintaining 120fps at all times. There is no concept of opening a file or a loading screen—you just navigate to a document and it’s already there. Ink rendering is another ongoing engineering challenge, from point simplification to curve fitting to stroke masking for the eraser. Happy to talk about any of this in the comments.
We’re charging $100/year, comparable to other prosumer tools like Dropbox, Evernote, Roam, etc. There’s a generous free tier and you can export your data as a flat files (PNG, PDF, TXT).
> We’re charging $100/year, comparable to other prosumer tools like Dropbox, Evernote...
Well Evernote has a free tier and past that it’s really <$50 per year - plus there is currently an additional 40% off, so I think your competitor pricing research might be a little off.
I mean if you are really comparing against Evernote it’s really free for a similar service, and offer multi-device sync between mobile and their desktop app as a service, so I would say the Evernote free tier is the most comparable even though I like the look of your product.
This is a $19.99 app or $2.99 per month subscription to compete with things like notability.
Annoyingly, it's pretty good. I had trouble getting the first thing to work smoothly, took five goes, but after that things were straightforward. I use my iPad extensively if not exclusively with some clients and my weapon of choice for the last 18 months has been Concepts.app mainly because I draw and write to demonstrate my ideas and thoughts.
I can't actually see a clear use for Muse right this second, but I am going to attempt to use it to lay out a high-level application architecture so let's see how it goes down tomorrow with the CTO. The major issue I can see coming is that everything is slower than me writing on the screen. Creating a box, typing stuff, moving it, then drawing arrows and line. I have to keep switching between fingers and pencil, which disrupts my flow. I'm sure your research will have some insight on this matter. It's a nicely polished product and you seem to have nailed both design and execution, if not the costs - it's not really in my discretionary spending budget right now, but if it proves a critical component, that changes everything. Good luck.
So, onboarding bumps in the road. Downloaded to my phone first, laboriously typed in the magic code from the email, and hey, it works.
Switch to iPad, it's downloaded already, and... I have to enter my email again? AND the code? Okay, the email says, "Click this link on your iPad to register" so I click the link on my Mac (don't do email on my iPad), transfer the link and... Nope! It won't accept it, gives the same, "Open this link on your iPad" message.
I'm with the "Add sign in with Apple" people... seems like a much nicer thing, for us.
Very cool, I recently purchased an iPad pro and Pencil and was looking for something like this. I really like the idea of infinite canvas (a la PureRef) for organizing thoughts and references and making relationships between different types of data.
Since you said you're looking for feedback, I'd love to be able to add an Apple or Google Map view, and zoom into a specific area, add pins, and add notes. Think planning a trip or road trip.
The other idea I've been looking for is something that renders in-line web previews in a flexible way. So if I were to paste a link to a website into the app, it wouldn't treat it as just a text hyperlink, but rather, render a small web preview that I could resize or manipulate to display the portion of a page I'm interested in. Ideally this would then be cached so if the page were to update my preview wouldn't break. But also have an option to refresh the preview to update to the latest content. Or auto-refresh to use it more like a dashboard monitoring tool.
Otherwise, for critiques, I wish it played nicer with landscape/portrait. And I kind of like how interactions are geared towards dragging things in from off the screen or flicking things off the screen, but I feel like it's not quite smooth yet. Things seemed to get stacked together and cluttered half in/half out of the canvas as I was working through the tutorial.
You mention "a generous free tier" yet I don't see any talk on the web page for the free tier nor what all I'm getting for $100 a year.
If I had to decide between this and a subscription to ACM (also $100) I'm taking the ACM subscription, cause I know I'm getting something of value there.
Your main page is focused on content creation, but I think you're missing a key aspect of these kinds of tools -- content searching. Right now, it reads as: thoughts are messy, and your tool enables to think in that messy fashion.... and everything stays messy. My immediate concern is that I can trivially add data to the system, but I can't get it back out (both automatically, by export features, and manually, by navigating it)
Particularly, looking at https://launch-preview.museapp.com/handbook, the inbox/card mechanic seems worth pointing out, and boards/cards as your primary model of higher-level organization.
Also a question: the handbook says boards contain cards, and cards contain boards -- they can be organized as mutually recursive? That's cool. In fact, there are very few of these modern systems that properly let you recurse
Initial reaction : wow ! I need an iPad.
Second thoughts : yet another subscription, seriously what are they thinking?
Third thoughts : what about MY data, are my inner thoughts stored in the cloud?
I was looking forward to trying it but the first thing it did was ask for my email. I would have liked if it let me at least try it without having to enter my email. Anyway, reluctantly, I entered my email but then I never received the access code.
I think you have a pretty big hurdle in the sign up and might be losing customers because of this. I would suggest allowing users to at least try it without signing up and also provide "Signup with Apple" instead of email.
Hi Adam, great to see Muse finally launch! I saw it talked about in some of those earlier posts and have been interested in it for a while.
I still need to actually install this and give it a try (saw it just before a work meeting sadly, about to have lunch with the spouse, etc.), but did want to ask a quick question about it in comparison to an iPad app I found recently called Endless Paper. The main point of it being to have an infinitely zoomable/scrollable “document” you can both draw on with a stylus but also import pictures you can draw over, etc. How does Muse compare to that kind of idea, and does it offer something similar to that? Or is it more of something like Tinderbox where you can organize a whole bunch of different things at a single “zoom level” in a sense?
I’ll leave thoughts once I get a chance to play around with it some :)
Adam, I think what you’re doing is cool and important. One of the reasons I’ve struggled to buy an iPad is I just don’t know how to tackle using the killer feature - immersive interactivity - for thinking.
Most note apps are just that: note apps. I’m sure as you went on the journey of building this, you assessed and categorized every app out there.
As an indecisive consumer, understanding the landscape and thus the unique value for Muse (relative to the other offerings) would be huge. Is this in the same category as a note taking app, what are the philosophical differences, etc. Maybe that doesn’t make a ton of sense, so let me try making the point in a different way:
if you’re right - you’ll have changed the path for humanity’s thinking in the biggest way since the “text editor”. Buying in requires me to understand the compromises and trade offs - something that could be accommodated by sharing your design principles publicly.
For me, I’ve been waiting on the right App to buy an iPad. I’m not sure if this is it, but I have a maxed out iPad Pro I just bought my wife so I can at least give it a go. Good luck to both of us.
Hard to give feedback because your design decisions and trade offs are not public and in your writing you give more of a business vibe than a designer, would've been nice to have the designers here instead of you. But you asked for it so here we go...
Good attempt so far. Frankly, something like it should've been "a mode" for iPadOS. Instead, unfortunately, you're app is restricted by its horrible limitations. There's no separation between content and features that can be applied to content. Take PDF just as an example. No matter how good your team is, the chances that it will create a better toolset than what Adobe already has created are slim. The second I decide to interact deeper with any of Muse's supported content types while in a board, I'm left to leave Muse and deal with an entire different app. Result? My flow is broken. This interaction is conceptually unnecessary. If the PDF is already open in Muse, why can't I bring all the great features from Adobe in and when I'm done I continue with my flow?
2. Your metaphor needs a lot of work. I won't go into many details but I'll highlight one of them. What's up with the grids? Why can't I arrange the content anyway I like? Flipped, 34 degrees, etc.
3. Infinite canvas - bring this in. How to deal with it spatially was solved decades ago.
4. This is related to the last two points... computers are a meta-medium and either you are stuck in the medium that existed before or you're not letting your designers that know this not shine. Stop thinking only in 2D!
Are planning to support the iPad's new touch pad capabilities? Your landing page only shows it working with hands on touch. Wondering if thats due to when it was created vs actual capabilitity, or if you're missing functionality.
If you don't support this for the gestures, where is it on the roadmap? I'm a new iPad pro owner, so this would appeal to me greatly. Honestly, its a sticking point I'm not getting over easily. While they should just 'translate' I know some app developers have had to consider the touchpad when designing their apps for more complex gestures.
Is there any way to "look through" the inbox for a specific thing? I put two images into it, and found when I went to a board that I could only pull the top one out (bit of a pain to have to move it into the board, move the one I wanted into the board, then put the first one back in the inbox).
Might be nice to have a "slide over" type view of all the things in the inbox, and choose one at a time.
Since I seem to be straight in your target group, and since I'm still looking for a good thinking tool, I took the time to write up my thoughts after trying the app.
I currently use two tools: GoodNotes and Concepts. Concepts is much better for drawing, with its layer system and the excellent "use your finger to lasso-select" tool. I love the infinite canvas, too. But Concepts requires too much fiddling. The tool palette can't be fixed. I would like to have the same tool and color palette in all documents, so that I can avoid wasting brainpower on fiddling with tools. Concepts also fails in organizing multiple documents — the viewer wastes lots of screen space and it takes a long time to find a document. I reported all this to the Concepts team, but they seem to prefer to compete in the crowded "drawing app" space rather than in the almost empty "thinking app" space.
GoodNotes is much better for thinking. I love the responsiveness, a simple tool system. Palette management is better in that I could set the colors once and have the same ones available everywhere. I still can't lock/save/export these settings, but as long as I'm careful, this works.
GoodNotes isn't perfect: there is a bug where the app opens with the list of documents rather than where you left off. To use the lasso selection, you have to use the toolbar, rather than use your finger like in Concepts. It has a weird concept of "paper sizes" (what paper?!) — I want to draw on a canvas which is exactly iPad-sized, with no panning, zooming or margins, but I always end up with either wasted margins, or fiddling around with zooming in GoodNotes. Document organization isn't that great — I want to quickly create multiple single-page notes and I do not want the app to ask me each time whether I want to save or delete my "Untitled" document. This isn't Windows 95, people.
Moving on to Muse:
First, to get this out of the way: $100/year is just fine. In fact, I could pay more if the tool became really good. It's a business tool for me (at a first approximation, I get paid for thinking).
I don't care that much about the emphasis on inserting images or videos. That's just not what I do. My notes are mostly drawings and text.
Inserting PDFs and marking them up is a very nice feature and I liked the PDF viewer initially. Still, it wouldn't work for me in practice: when designing electronics I routinely work with 600-page PDFs. I need the tool to remember the position, have a simple bookmarking system, and a way to quickly navigate to somewhere around page 400 visually. Also, no continuous scrolling, please — single page flips only.
I expected a double-tap on the pencil to pull up the eraser and it didn't.
I couldn't figure out how to pan the board (perhaps you can't?). I think I need either zooming+panning or multiple pages.
I couldn't figure out how to delete a card.
I could drop the card into a board (initial screen), in spite of trying multiple times.
The lasso system is way inferior to GoodNotes or Concepts. I'd rather have object-based selection, not one that cuts through anything. And I really, really like the idea (from Concepts!) of using your finger to lasso.
The tool colors are ugly. I would like to have my own palette (5-8 colors and at least two thicknesses).
I tried using Muse for actual work, but at the moment there is just too much fiddling around and I'd lose some of the functionality I now have in GoodNotes.
Summary: while price is not a concern at all, this is quite far from a good thinking tool for me, and the primary emphasis on inserting images isn't aligned with my needs.
I think committing to a year-long subscription is a tough sell. Not because the product isn't great, but because I've tried apps before and then abandoned them because they didn't become a habit. Maybe it lasted a month, maybe two, but they never became part of my routine.
So committing to paying for a year up front is a tough sell.
The other question is why it is a subscription. Not why _you_ want it to be a subscription, but why the product needs to be. You mention in another comment that "all content is stored 100% on-device". So it's not that I'm paying for cloud storage (which I already have, and I don't have multiple iPads so it would be more of a peace of mind thing anyway.)
I understand that it funds your continued development, but it's hard for me to see what that means. Is there a product roadmap so I can say, "Yeah, actually, I want to pay for those new features."
Here's how I would pay:
1. One-time cost for software that would get updates until the next major version.
2. Monthly subscription for software if there is a product roadmap. I want to see what I'm buying.
3. Yearly subscription with a discount to (2). The commitment is worth something to you. It would have to be worth it to me too.
If the app stores all my data locally, why does it require an email? It doesn't even say why an email is required, just an annoying "Enter your email to get started" with no option to skip.
I don't understand why apps have gotten so hostile towards curious users.
That's fair, and we're considering ways to make it possible to try the app without an email.
However I'm curious: do you apply this same criteria when trying software like Notion, Figma, or Google Docs? I assume you have different criteria based on whether the software is downloaded to your local device or not, but would love to understand why that's so.
Last year I stumbled upon the research articles about Muse development at Ink & Switch. They exude care and craftsmanship. Really fun to read. Highly recommended. Muse's newsletter is great, too.
https://www.inkandswitch.com/
I didn't know anyone on the Muse team but was so curious I reached out and asked for beta access and they kindly gave it. I've been using for about a year. I really love it. My use cases are light -- hobby sketches, sundry visual notes -- but I keep finding more things to use it for because it's just so... fun. It's fun feeling so extended and free using a digital tool.
I've been using Muse for a while and it's a lovely, beautifully designed product. Feels like the rare tool that really gets the most out of my iPad Pro hardware. I use it for most of my deep brainstorming sessions.
I'm a PhD student so I have a limited budget, but I don't mind the $100/year price point. It's become a key tool in my research workflow so it's totally worth it. I find it a bit odd that people think Netflix is worth more money than a tool that might transform your creative output.
> I find it a bit odd that people think Netflix is worth more money than a tool that might transform your creative output.
I'm sure for some it will, but at least after a look at the website, I can't imagine it's going to transform my creative output relative to the system I already have for free. (Disclaimer: I don't have Netflix either.)
I’m with you. The comparison with Netflix is pertinent for me. When lockdown started here in the U.K. I cancelled my subscription and started spending more time reading and exploring.
Didn’t think twice about paying for Muse when the time came. There was an available slot in my subscription budget :p It helps me think things through, which helps me do better work, which makes me happy. And it feels good to support principled people who care about how tools, environments, aesthetics, affect our thoughts. No regrets.
iPads/many things aren’t worth the price for some people. We don’t all have the same priorities, and that’s OK!
Maybe the price doesn’t bother me much in the long term because for me, Muse isn’t where things end. It’s where they start, take shape, get fleshed out, discarded, iterated, improved. It’s my desk not my library. If a better “desk” comes along I’ll use that instead. But right now, Muse is it.
Congrats on the launch, it's great to see the space develop as well as more applications being designed for specific uses, I can see Muse fitting in with my other iPad habits (such as Fresco for wire design), and targeting a specific user for their niche.
The price tag certainly has HN crawling, clearly without downloading and seeing how simple it is to use with only an email. Most prosumer companies play down the cost, and highlight the free trial. Given the "power user" nature of getting up to speed with Muse (video + 9 "tasks" to complete) it's worth trying to remove all friction from installs since you'll get churn from a subset even before prompting them about the price, due to the commitment someone needs to make with new habit forming and learning.
Will you be adding collaboration into the app? With remote teams increasing I can see this helping share ideas and promote collaboration outside of Google Docs/Notion/Figma etc.
Did you dog food the development? I imagine designing and building the app would have required a lot of deep thinking!
I particularly enjoyed two recent ones, Authentic Marketing[0] and Principled Products[1] (which also has some background about 12 Factor Apps, if you remember that). Very useful for our stage where we have a new thing, but we're still trying to figure out how to explain it.
My feedback...
1. Trial is way too short for a $99 purchase.
2. Adding a photo, deleting, and re-adding uses up "trial cards" - so the trial is really just tutorial-level playing with the software.
3. Not clear why I can add elements to the top layer... why would I have an Empty Board and a photo next to each other? Why can't I drag the photo into the Empty Board? Instead, the photo covers the board. Confusing.
4. I know you aren't alone, but why do you need my email address before I know anything about this app? Just let me tap open and experiment before you ask.
5. If you must have an email, why aren't you supporting Sign in with Apple so I can use a relay email?
6. I'm not clear when I would open this app. I would've prefer a full page of example boards to see how power users would/will use this tool. I can always delete example boards, but instead I have a blank page and 4 second videos. That screams time investment and learning curve ahead.
- You can use the trial for unlimited time, and many folks do.
- We've tried onboarding that includes sample boards, but this tends to be confusing because it's someone else's thoughts rather than your own.
- There is a learning curve--we like tools take a bit of time investment, but one that will pay off with power and flexibility in the long run. vim and emacs were two inspirations here. https://museapp.com/handbook
yea pretty wild. Especially when you consider the fact this startup will likely be defunct 5 years from now (whether because they got acquired and parent company killed the product, or they couldn't run a profitable company due to such high subscription fees)
Nice to see Muse launch! I've been using the beta for a few months now after stumbling on the Ink & Switch design essay when researching tools for thought.
It's awesome, I can recommend it wholeheartedly - the modeless interaction and spatial organisation might seem subtle, however they really enable a very smooth workflow that allows to think about something without being distracted by the tool.
The best example is probably erasing something in Muse with the 'left finger on screen mode' in contrast to tapping an eraser symbol as in the standard design of note-taking apps. This gets internalized pretty quickly and then erasing doesn't distract ones line of thought anymore. I actually find myself doing this 'second finger erasing' by accident in other note-taking apps all the time.
Like others in the comments, as a student I also found the price tag a bit hefty - however Adam Wiggins mentioned in an email that they are planning a ~30$/yr educational discount. I personally found that a lot more reasonable, maybe that's interesting to other students as well.
This is nearly exactly my dream rewrite of my iOS app Mindscope http://www.mindscopeapp.com/ that I never quite got around to doing. Love this. Congrats!
Mindscope always was text (and later arrows) only, which had its advantages because it forced focus. But I love the Apple Pencil support!
I love seeing your solutions to the same problems I encountered developing Mindscope. Especially Love your solution for dragging one card into another by dragging it then pinching into the other. It feels very natural.
All this talk of a free tier, but I can't see any information about it on the website or app store. Is it the "Free Trial", which indicates to me that it's a time limited demo?
I want this information before installing yet another app that appears too expensive for the value it provides. If I think the free tier might work for me, I'm much more likely to be convinced to go paid once I experience the value it adds to my life.
If this was $8/month I probably wouldn't have given the price a second thought, even though I'm fully capable of basic math.
When I bought an iPad pro, I asked friends what are their favorite apps. One person religiously vouched for how much Muse has affected the way they work on a day to day. Like me, they are a artist and in the software space, and felt Muse gave them the ability to both organize things spatially, while making use of the iPad's drawing features in everything they do.
I was able to get on the beta and found it quite satisfying as an application. Its basically the missing OS for iPad to let you do everything that you imagine the iPad is supposed to let you do.
There seems to be a lot of griping about the $100/year price here. The folks behind Muse have made what seems to be a solid product and want to charge for it to build a sustainable business. I don't understand what the issue is.
On the one hand, people complain about having to pay for things (especially subscriptions). On the other, they complain about startups that try to grow fast, subsidize the cost of the product with venture money, and get acquired and shut down. I don't have a problem with either approach; I think they both have their place.
But how can software developers trying to build great products (and businesses) escape this lose-lose scenario?
You may not feel that this specific product is worth $100/year to you. That's fine; not everything is for everyone. But how do we, as a tech community, better support people and teams trying to create value in a sustainable way?
I'd consider it as much an investment in the iPad itself as it is in the software. In other words, assuming you have already bought an iPad, I'd argue there are hardly any apps that truly take advantage of the tablet interface (exceptions include Affinity by Serif, Procreate). For me, Muse took an expensive screen and delivered on the promise of the iPad/tablet that Apple/the rest of the tech world fumbled. Long live Muse...
- This looks really promising. It is aleady quite usable and there are some really nify ideas in there.
- The price is extremely steep for an app and in addition it it is recurring and the only options are yearly payments.
- Looking at what those guys have created and written before this looks like something I could lobe in the long run (end user programmability, local first etc)
To say exactly how good it is: if there was a monthly payment option I'd probably have signed up already just to support it (I do that from time to time with ideas I love even thought I often end up cancelling most of them.)
I'm extremely impressed with the demo/free tier so far! Out of curiosity, have you tried LiquidText? This is how I envisioned that app working!
Also, so far, I can see myself //easily// getting lost in the nesting. In my "outer most" board, I had to handwrite "HOME" in the top left just to make easier.
I think //searching// is a killer missing feature right now. Also, limits on board nesting depth, and board "templates" something to let me setup a "deep reading a PDF" board template that is reusable.
[+] [-] adamwiggins|5 years ago|reply
Today my team and I are launching Muse, a thinking tool.
Engineers sometimes talk about “typing problems” and “thinking problems”; Muse is for the latter. For example: designing a distributed system, doing a deep read of an algorithms paper, or creating a product roadmap.
My colleagues and I spent a few years doing research at a lab called Ink & Switch. You can read HN discussions of our publications on software performance [1], the creative process [2], and local-first software [3].
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18506170
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20255457
[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21581444
One research question for us was whether touchscreens could ever be as powerful as desktop tools like vim or emacs. That resulted a prototype we named Muse. We saw commercial potential and spun it out of the lab last year.
A founding insight for Muse is that deep thinking happens away from the computer. e.g. in a sketchbook, on a whiteboard, or just in your head. There are some up-and-coming tools for thought like Notion and Roam but they’re tied to the desktop/laptop form factor and primarily focused on text. We saw an opportunity for a thinking tool that blends together visual media, text, and offers spatial navigation on a tablet.
Since this is a technical crowd, you might be interested in some of the challenges building this thing, like maintaining 120fps at all times. There is no concept of opening a file or a loading screen—you just navigate to a document and it’s already there. Ink rendering is another ongoing engineering challenge, from point simplification to curve fitting to stroke masking for the eraser. Happy to talk about any of this in the comments.
We’re charging $100/year, comparable to other prosumer tools like Dropbox, Evernote, Roam, etc. There’s a generous free tier and you can export your data as a flat files (PNG, PDF, TXT).
We’re building in public on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MuseAppHQ and Mark and I talk shop on our podcast: https://museapp.com/podcast
HN is known for sharp critique, so bring it on. Will also answer questions or accept praise if you feel like doing one of those :-)
[+] [-] Closi|5 years ago|reply
Well Evernote has a free tier and past that it’s really <$50 per year - plus there is currently an additional 40% off, so I think your competitor pricing research might be a little off.
I mean if you are really comparing against Evernote it’s really free for a similar service, and offer multi-device sync between mobile and their desktop app as a service, so I would say the Evernote free tier is the most comparable even though I like the look of your product.
This is a $19.99 app or $2.99 per month subscription to compete with things like notability.
[+] [-] vr46|5 years ago|reply
I can't actually see a clear use for Muse right this second, but I am going to attempt to use it to lay out a high-level application architecture so let's see how it goes down tomorrow with the CTO. The major issue I can see coming is that everything is slower than me writing on the screen. Creating a box, typing stuff, moving it, then drawing arrows and line. I have to keep switching between fingers and pencil, which disrupts my flow. I'm sure your research will have some insight on this matter. It's a nicely polished product and you seem to have nailed both design and execution, if not the costs - it's not really in my discretionary spending budget right now, but if it proves a critical component, that changes everything. Good luck.
[+] [-] chris_st|5 years ago|reply
Switch to iPad, it's downloaded already, and... I have to enter my email again? AND the code? Okay, the email says, "Click this link on your iPad to register" so I click the link on my Mac (don't do email on my iPad), transfer the link and... Nope! It won't accept it, gives the same, "Open this link on your iPad" message.
I'm with the "Add sign in with Apple" people... seems like a much nicer thing, for us.
[+] [-] lattalayta|5 years ago|reply
Since you said you're looking for feedback, I'd love to be able to add an Apple or Google Map view, and zoom into a specific area, add pins, and add notes. Think planning a trip or road trip.
The other idea I've been looking for is something that renders in-line web previews in a flexible way. So if I were to paste a link to a website into the app, it wouldn't treat it as just a text hyperlink, but rather, render a small web preview that I could resize or manipulate to display the portion of a page I'm interested in. Ideally this would then be cached so if the page were to update my preview wouldn't break. But also have an option to refresh the preview to update to the latest content. Or auto-refresh to use it more like a dashboard monitoring tool.
Otherwise, for critiques, I wish it played nicer with landscape/portrait. And I kind of like how interactions are geared towards dragging things in from off the screen or flicking things off the screen, but I feel like it's not quite smooth yet. Things seemed to get stacked together and cluttered half in/half out of the canvas as I was working through the tutorial.
Cheers for the launch!
[+] [-] asciimov|5 years ago|reply
You mention "a generous free tier" yet I don't see any talk on the web page for the free tier nor what all I'm getting for $100 a year.
If I had to decide between this and a subscription to ACM (also $100) I'm taking the ACM subscription, cause I know I'm getting something of value there.
[+] [-] setr|5 years ago|reply
Particularly, looking at https://launch-preview.museapp.com/handbook, the inbox/card mechanic seems worth pointing out, and boards/cards as your primary model of higher-level organization.
Also a question: the handbook says boards contain cards, and cards contain boards -- they can be organized as mutually recursive? That's cool. In fact, there are very few of these modern systems that properly let you recurse
[+] [-] jmnicolas|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blisseyGo|5 years ago|reply
I think you have a pretty big hurdle in the sign up and might be losing customers because of this. I would suggest allowing users to at least try it without signing up and also provide "Signup with Apple" instead of email.
[+] [-] FreezerburnV|5 years ago|reply
I still need to actually install this and give it a try (saw it just before a work meeting sadly, about to have lunch with the spouse, etc.), but did want to ask a quick question about it in comparison to an iPad app I found recently called Endless Paper. The main point of it being to have an infinitely zoomable/scrollable “document” you can both draw on with a stylus but also import pictures you can draw over, etc. How does Muse compare to that kind of idea, and does it offer something similar to that? Or is it more of something like Tinderbox where you can organize a whole bunch of different things at a single “zoom level” in a sense?
I’ll leave thoughts once I get a chance to play around with it some :)
[+] [-] dfee|5 years ago|reply
Most note apps are just that: note apps. I’m sure as you went on the journey of building this, you assessed and categorized every app out there.
As an indecisive consumer, understanding the landscape and thus the unique value for Muse (relative to the other offerings) would be huge. Is this in the same category as a note taking app, what are the philosophical differences, etc. Maybe that doesn’t make a ton of sense, so let me try making the point in a different way:
if you’re right - you’ll have changed the path for humanity’s thinking in the biggest way since the “text editor”. Buying in requires me to understand the compromises and trade offs - something that could be accommodated by sharing your design principles publicly.
For me, I’ve been waiting on the right App to buy an iPad. I’m not sure if this is it, but I have a maxed out iPad Pro I just bought my wife so I can at least give it a go. Good luck to both of us.
[+] [-] jmarinez|5 years ago|reply
Hard to give feedback because your design decisions and trade offs are not public and in your writing you give more of a business vibe than a designer, would've been nice to have the designers here instead of you. But you asked for it so here we go...
Good attempt so far. Frankly, something like it should've been "a mode" for iPadOS. Instead, unfortunately, you're app is restricted by its horrible limitations. There's no separation between content and features that can be applied to content. Take PDF just as an example. No matter how good your team is, the chances that it will create a better toolset than what Adobe already has created are slim. The second I decide to interact deeper with any of Muse's supported content types while in a board, I'm left to leave Muse and deal with an entire different app. Result? My flow is broken. This interaction is conceptually unnecessary. If the PDF is already open in Muse, why can't I bring all the great features from Adobe in and when I'm done I continue with my flow?
2. Your metaphor needs a lot of work. I won't go into many details but I'll highlight one of them. What's up with the grids? Why can't I arrange the content anyway I like? Flipped, 34 degrees, etc.
3. Infinite canvas - bring this in. How to deal with it spatially was solved decades ago.
4. This is related to the last two points... computers are a meta-medium and either you are stuck in the medium that existed before or you're not letting your designers that know this not shine. Stop thinking only in 2D!
[+] [-] no_wizard|5 years ago|reply
If you don't support this for the gestures, where is it on the roadmap? I'm a new iPad pro owner, so this would appeal to me greatly. Honestly, its a sticking point I'm not getting over easily. While they should just 'translate' I know some app developers have had to consider the touchpad when designing their apps for more complex gestures.
[+] [-] chris_st|5 years ago|reply
Might be nice to have a "slide over" type view of all the things in the inbox, and choose one at a time.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Infinitesimus|5 years ago|reply
Are there plans to have this cross-platform?
[+] [-] jwr|5 years ago|reply
I currently use two tools: GoodNotes and Concepts. Concepts is much better for drawing, with its layer system and the excellent "use your finger to lasso-select" tool. I love the infinite canvas, too. But Concepts requires too much fiddling. The tool palette can't be fixed. I would like to have the same tool and color palette in all documents, so that I can avoid wasting brainpower on fiddling with tools. Concepts also fails in organizing multiple documents — the viewer wastes lots of screen space and it takes a long time to find a document. I reported all this to the Concepts team, but they seem to prefer to compete in the crowded "drawing app" space rather than in the almost empty "thinking app" space.
GoodNotes is much better for thinking. I love the responsiveness, a simple tool system. Palette management is better in that I could set the colors once and have the same ones available everywhere. I still can't lock/save/export these settings, but as long as I'm careful, this works.
GoodNotes isn't perfect: there is a bug where the app opens with the list of documents rather than where you left off. To use the lasso selection, you have to use the toolbar, rather than use your finger like in Concepts. It has a weird concept of "paper sizes" (what paper?!) — I want to draw on a canvas which is exactly iPad-sized, with no panning, zooming or margins, but I always end up with either wasted margins, or fiddling around with zooming in GoodNotes. Document organization isn't that great — I want to quickly create multiple single-page notes and I do not want the app to ask me each time whether I want to save or delete my "Untitled" document. This isn't Windows 95, people.
Moving on to Muse:
First, to get this out of the way: $100/year is just fine. In fact, I could pay more if the tool became really good. It's a business tool for me (at a first approximation, I get paid for thinking).
I don't care that much about the emphasis on inserting images or videos. That's just not what I do. My notes are mostly drawings and text.
Inserting PDFs and marking them up is a very nice feature and I liked the PDF viewer initially. Still, it wouldn't work for me in practice: when designing electronics I routinely work with 600-page PDFs. I need the tool to remember the position, have a simple bookmarking system, and a way to quickly navigate to somewhere around page 400 visually. Also, no continuous scrolling, please — single page flips only.
I expected a double-tap on the pencil to pull up the eraser and it didn't.
I couldn't figure out how to pan the board (perhaps you can't?). I think I need either zooming+panning or multiple pages.
I couldn't figure out how to delete a card.
I could drop the card into a board (initial screen), in spite of trying multiple times.
The lasso system is way inferior to GoodNotes or Concepts. I'd rather have object-based selection, not one that cuts through anything. And I really, really like the idea (from Concepts!) of using your finger to lasso.
The tool colors are ugly. I would like to have my own palette (5-8 colors and at least two thicknesses).
I tried using Muse for actual work, but at the moment there is just too much fiddling around and I'd lose some of the functionality I now have in GoodNotes.
Summary: while price is not a concern at all, this is quite far from a good thinking tool for me, and the primary emphasis on inserting images isn't aligned with my needs.
[+] [-] tyre|5 years ago|reply
The price point was a shock.
I think committing to a year-long subscription is a tough sell. Not because the product isn't great, but because I've tried apps before and then abandoned them because they didn't become a habit. Maybe it lasted a month, maybe two, but they never became part of my routine.
So committing to paying for a year up front is a tough sell.
The other question is why it is a subscription. Not why _you_ want it to be a subscription, but why the product needs to be. You mention in another comment that "all content is stored 100% on-device". So it's not that I'm paying for cloud storage (which I already have, and I don't have multiple iPads so it would be more of a peace of mind thing anyway.)
I understand that it funds your continued development, but it's hard for me to see what that means. Is there a product roadmap so I can say, "Yeah, actually, I want to pay for those new features."
Here's how I would pay:
1. One-time cost for software that would get updates until the next major version.
2. Monthly subscription for software if there is a product roadmap. I want to see what I'm buying.
3. Yearly subscription with a discount to (2). The commitment is worth something to you. It would have to be worth it to me too.
Rough guesses:
1. $50
2. $10/mo
3. $100/yr
[+] [-] ogre_codes|5 years ago|reply
I don't understand why apps have gotten so hostile towards curious users.
For me, that's a hard Nope.
[+] [-] adamwiggins|5 years ago|reply
However I'm curious: do you apply this same criteria when trying software like Notion, Figma, or Google Docs? I assume you have different criteria based on whether the software is downloaded to your local device or not, but would love to understand why that's so.
[+] [-] bm5k|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bronson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickmain|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raleighm|5 years ago|reply
I didn't know anyone on the Muse team but was so curious I reached out and asked for beta access and they kindly gave it. I've been using for about a year. I really love it. My use cases are light -- hobby sketches, sundry visual notes -- but I keep finding more things to use it for because it's just so... fun. It's fun feeling so extended and free using a digital tool.
I'm pleased to see it on HN front page.
[+] [-] gklitt|5 years ago|reply
I'm a PhD student so I have a limited budget, but I don't mind the $100/year price point. It's become a key tool in my research workflow so it's totally worth it. I find it a bit odd that people think Netflix is worth more money than a tool that might transform your creative output.
[+] [-] natcombs|5 years ago|reply
While the price is nearly the same, Netflix pays for thousands of employees and hundreds of actresses & crews to produce entertainment.
This app doesn’t have hundreds of employees doing my thinking, reviewing my notes, or making suggestions. Apples & oranges
[+] [-] bachmeier|5 years ago|reply
I'm sure for some it will, but at least after a look at the website, I can't imagine it's going to transform my creative output relative to the system I already have for free. (Disclaimer: I don't have Netflix either.)
[+] [-] timlloyd|5 years ago|reply
Didn’t think twice about paying for Muse when the time came. There was an available slot in my subscription budget :p It helps me think things through, which helps me do better work, which makes me happy. And it feels good to support principled people who care about how tools, environments, aesthetics, affect our thoughts. No regrets.
iPads/many things aren’t worth the price for some people. We don’t all have the same priorities, and that’s OK!
Maybe the price doesn’t bother me much in the long term because for me, Muse isn’t where things end. It’s where they start, take shape, get fleshed out, discarded, iterated, improved. It’s my desk not my library. If a better “desk” comes along I’ll use that instead. But right now, Muse is it.
[+] [-] adamwiggins|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmab|5 years ago|reply
The price tag certainly has HN crawling, clearly without downloading and seeing how simple it is to use with only an email. Most prosumer companies play down the cost, and highlight the free trial. Given the "power user" nature of getting up to speed with Muse (video + 9 "tasks" to complete) it's worth trying to remove all friction from installs since you'll get churn from a subset even before prompting them about the price, due to the commitment someone needs to make with new habit forming and learning.
Will you be adding collaboration into the app? With remote teams increasing I can see this helping share ideas and promote collaboration outside of Google Docs/Notion/Figma etc.
Did you dog food the development? I imagine designing and building the app would have required a lot of deep thinking!
[+] [-] bfirsh|5 years ago|reply
https://museapp.com/podcast
I particularly enjoyed two recent ones, Authentic Marketing[0] and Principled Products[1] (which also has some background about 12 Factor Apps, if you remember that). Very useful for our stage where we have a new thing, but we're still trying to figure out how to explain it.
Thanks Adam, et al!
[0] https://overcast.fm/+Y-HVh9MxU [1] https://overcast.fm/+Y-HUBwJwA
[+] [-] bookmarkable|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamwiggins|5 years ago|reply
- You can use the trial for unlimited time, and many folks do.
- We've tried onboarding that includes sample boards, but this tends to be confusing because it's someone else's thoughts rather than your own.
- There is a learning curve--we like tools take a bit of time investment, but one that will pay off with power and flexibility in the long run. vim and emacs were two inspirations here. https://museapp.com/handbook
[+] [-] jordache|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eugeniub|5 years ago|reply
Correction: Previously I got some numbers mixed up, and I said it's almost twice the price.
[+] [-] natcombs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andreilys|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hatsunearu|5 years ago|reply
I can do this shit for free with Concept or whatever and that one also works super well.
[+] [-] adamwiggins|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lumax|5 years ago|reply
It's awesome, I can recommend it wholeheartedly - the modeless interaction and spatial organisation might seem subtle, however they really enable a very smooth workflow that allows to think about something without being distracted by the tool. The best example is probably erasing something in Muse with the 'left finger on screen mode' in contrast to tapping an eraser symbol as in the standard design of note-taking apps. This gets internalized pretty quickly and then erasing doesn't distract ones line of thought anymore. I actually find myself doing this 'second finger erasing' by accident in other note-taking apps all the time.
Like others in the comments, as a student I also found the price tag a bit hefty - however Adam Wiggins mentioned in an email that they are planning a ~30$/yr educational discount. I personally found that a lot more reasonable, maybe that's interesting to other students as well.
[+] [-] epaga|5 years ago|reply
Mindscope always was text (and later arrows) only, which had its advantages because it forced focus. But I love the Apple Pencil support!
I love seeing your solutions to the same problems I encountered developing Mindscope. Especially Love your solution for dragging one card into another by dragging it then pinching into the other. It feels very natural.
Major props.
[+] [-] SparkyMcUnicorn|5 years ago|reply
I want this information before installing yet another app that appears too expensive for the value it provides. If I think the free tier might work for me, I'm much more likely to be convinced to go paid once I experience the value it adds to my life.
If this was $8/month I probably wouldn't have given the price a second thought, even though I'm fully capable of basic math.
[+] [-] rememberlenny|5 years ago|reply
I was able to get on the beta and found it quite satisfying as an application. Its basically the missing OS for iPad to let you do everything that you imagine the iPad is supposed to let you do.
[+] [-] adamwiggins|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] janandonly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wump|5 years ago|reply
On the one hand, people complain about having to pay for things (especially subscriptions). On the other, they complain about startups that try to grow fast, subsidize the cost of the product with venture money, and get acquired and shut down. I don't have a problem with either approach; I think they both have their place.
But how can software developers trying to build great products (and businesses) escape this lose-lose scenario?
You may not feel that this specific product is worth $100/year to you. That's fine; not everything is for everyone. But how do we, as a tech community, better support people and teams trying to create value in a sustainable way?
[+] [-] copypasted|5 years ago|reply
I'd consider it as much an investment in the iPad itself as it is in the software. In other words, assuming you have already bought an iPad, I'd argue there are hardly any apps that truly take advantage of the tablet interface (exceptions include Affinity by Serif, Procreate). For me, Muse took an expensive screen and delivered on the promise of the iPad/tablet that Apple/the rest of the tech world fumbled. Long live Muse...
[+] [-] biztos|5 years ago|reply
Until they change that, there’s no way I’m using or recommending their app.
Is this now considered acceptable for productivity apps?
Edit: and how does that work with GDPR?
[+] [-] eitland|5 years ago|reply
- This looks really promising. It is aleady quite usable and there are some really nify ideas in there.
- The price is extremely steep for an app and in addition it it is recurring and the only options are yearly payments.
- Looking at what those guys have created and written before this looks like something I could lobe in the long run (end user programmability, local first etc)
To say exactly how good it is: if there was a monthly payment option I'd probably have signed up already just to support it (I do that from time to time with ideas I love even thought I often end up cancelling most of them.)
[+] [-] diego898|5 years ago|reply
Also, so far, I can see myself //easily// getting lost in the nesting. In my "outer most" board, I had to handwrite "HOME" in the top left just to make easier.
I think //searching// is a killer missing feature right now. Also, limits on board nesting depth, and board "templates" something to let me setup a "deep reading a PDF" board template that is reusable.