Show HN: Muse 2.0 with local-first sync | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Muse 2.0 with local-first sync

museapp.com

178 pointsadamwiggins153 comments

Hey HN, I want to share with you something I and my four colleagues have been working on for the last several years. It’s a whiteboarding and notes tool called Muse[1]. We just released a 2.0 version which includes local-first sync.

A little backstory: I’m one of the authors of the 2019 essay Local-first software[2]. (Past HN discussions[3][4].) The thesis is to reclaim some of the ownership over our data that we’ve lost in the transition from filesystems to cloud/SaaS. So I’m excited to bring CRDT technology “out of the lab” and into a commercial product as a chance to prove the value of local-first in real-world usage.

As a developer and computing enthusiast, I care about abstract ideas like data ownership. But for most users I think the benefits of local-first will surface in how it feels to use the software day-to-day. One example is ability to work offline or in unstable network conditions: any changes between devices will be automatically merged when you reconnect to the network, no matter how long you’ve been disconnected.

Another area is performance. The sync backend was written by my colleague Mark McGranaghan who has written extensively about software performance[5][6] and why we think the cloud will never be fast enough to make truly responsive software.

A few technical details:

– Client-side CRDT written in Swift, streaming sync server written in Go

– Sync server is generic, doesn’t have any knowledge of the Muse app domain (cards, boards, ink, etc). Just shuffles data between devices

– Transactional, blob, and ephemeral data are all managed by this one single state system. For example ephemeral data (someone wiggling a card around) for example, isn’t even transmitted if there are no other clients listening in realtime.

More in this Metamuse podcast episode.[7]

We draw heavily on research from people like Martin Kleppmann, Peter van Hardenberg[8], and many others. A huge thank you to this wonderful research community.

Even if you have no interest in the Muse concept of a digital thinking workspace, I’d encourage you to try the free version just to see how local-first sync feels in practice. My opinion is that is fundamentally different from web/cloud software is well as from classic file-based software—and an improvement on both. Would love to hear what you think.

[1]: https://museapp.com/

[2]: https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19804478

[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21581444

[5]: https://www.inkandswitch.com/slow-software/

[6]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18506170

[7]: https://museapp.com/podcast/56-sync/

[8]: https://www.inkandswitch.com/pushpin/

Open articleView on HN

Also showhn here in 2020, 189 comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24294397

I love Muse, and 2.0 is a huge gain for me. I only wish that the inking/writing/drawing experience was a bit better.

When I use a real pen to write notes on real paper, my handwriting is pretty! That generates positive feelings for me both when I create notes, and also when I review notes. In the same way, the apps in which my handwriting looks good create a feedback loop where seeing my own handwriting encourages me to continue to write more, and makes the app more "sticky" for me. At the moment, my handwriting in Muse looks displeasing, which discourages me from writing more. I'm currently getting around this by mostly using the new text note type instead of ink, but it is a more limited kind of expression and note taking than free-form inking, which is a shame.

I understand this behaviour/reaction is unlikely to be universal, or might be a condemning expression of vanity on my part in some way, but still - I might not be alone!

I'm a big believer in tools that make us feel good about our work. Pretty handwriting as an output is in that category.

You'd be surprised how much engineering goes into point simplification, bezier smoothing, etc. One of our team members, Adam Wulf, has worked extensively in this space and even open-sourced a lot of the results: https://adamwulf.me/open-source/

...but point remains that we can make the inking experience better in Muse. It's on our list to work on.

I consider Muse’s ink engine pretty good, although I’ve never found anything that comes close to GoodNotes. So that would be the one to emulate – including nice features like their “pause and hold for straight line”, which I really miss in Muse

I’ve felt the same way with GP; IMO the big issue is that the thing that I’ve written or drawn changes during writing. This removes the pen feeling of the Apple Pencil and feels more like a graphic tool? So like drawing circles feels fine, but writing text and seeing that the text feels wobbly while writing gives me the perception that the pencil is not meant to write text in Muse.

Changing while you write sounds surprising. All ink engines have some amount of retroactive smoothing going on, but typically (and this is the same for Muse) it should only be the last 50ms or so of data, and often that part is still hidden by your hand or stylus tip.

Example handwriting in Muse: https://media.museapp.com/website/2022/how/write.webp -- sounds like you're not getting results like this?

If you feel like it, send a screen recording to hello@museapp.com and we can try to debug potential problems in the smoothing algorithm.

You are not alone, and thank you for articulating this better than I could. The handwriting experience is the reason I return to Notability for any significant writing despite its performance problems. I've yet to find an app that reaches the same level of handwriting fidelity.

I really hope the good people at Muse make this a priority. That, and search.

Handwriting on apple notes is even superior.

Using this makes me feel like the iPad is finally better than paper.

It’s so rare to see such attention to detail.

My only wish is that I could pay the team more directly rather than via Apple.

Much appreciated! And yeah the "Apple tax" isn't awesome but lots to be said for user trust on being in the App Store, a frictionless purchase experience, etc.

Instead of assuming that the team gets only 70% of the fee, why not assume that they charge 100% of what they want, and then tack on the 30% that Apple is demanding? That way, the team is getting paid reasonably.

I have to admit it’s not the fee going to Apple that was my immediate concern.

I trust the team more than Apple at this point. I’d rather they had more control over our billing relationship.

Additionally, I consider this a business purchase. I prefer to keep my expenses separate. Most of my spending via my Apple ID is on personal/consumer stuff. Apple don’t make it easy to switch between IDs for different purchases.

I'm very intrigued for the CRDT approach. I always want to try CRDT but always end up giving up local-first for simpler approaches, because I can't convince myself fully since there's a risk of accumulating CRDTs data structures too large.

Really looking forward to see your success, it might move the industry forward and bring better apps for the users.

BTW the app is fantastic!

Thanks! Yes, CRDTs are risky in the sense that they are computer science that is only just at the edge of what's possible in software today. A few folks have put them into practice in small ways (Figma comes to mind) but I wouldn't recommend it for most software projects.

That said I hope we (meaning everyone working on CRDTs and local-first) can help make it suitable for production use and perhaps it will be a common, maybe even standard, way to build software five or ten years from now. That's my hope/dream, at least.

Do you have any plans to handle schema changes for the content stored within the CRDTs as the clients evolve?

(I've been puzzling over that question during some local-first dabbling; I have a feeling that lenses[1] -- or something like them -- may provide a route towards schema version upgrades without any peer synchronization guarantees)

[1] - https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/lenses-etapsslide...

Eh.. probably because I learned of lenses from Ink & Switch in the first place: https://www.inkandswitch.com/cambria/

Yep, we already have basic support for versioning.

The foundation of our approach is to have a versioned, documented schema shared among clients. Every write down to the individual attribute level is persisted with a schema version. We're already several versions in, and indeed think it's healthy to get experience with version updates frequently so that it's not an unusual occurrence.

Currently we use this schema to interpret / coerce values as needed at read-time. For example we see an attribute has schema version 1, and know that it should be interpreted in the sense that we meant as of version 1. In the future, we may also choose to write out updates for "migrations" where that'd be helpful. So that e.g. instead of having to re-interpret values for older version 1, we'd right out an update to he attribute that overwrites the old value and updates the version tag to e.g. 3.

We do think lenses are interesting and the lab from which we spun out has done some good work with them: https://www.inkandswitch.com/cambria/. They're just a bit complex for our modest needs re: schema versioning at this time.

Nice - perhaps there's some kind of equivalence (or at least similarity) between lenses and those migrations. Thanks for the response!

Exciting to see innovation in the note-taking and brainstorming space. Too bad I've decided that the subscription model has got to go, so I'm not interested in using the 'free' side of anything with that model. How else should I fight against it?

Goodnotes knows how to keep users like me happy. Pay once for core functionality and unlimited "objects," and be smarter about monetization beyond that. I started with Notability, and after barely getting the hang it was already nagging me to pay monthly.

As it sits, I think developers are missing out on some of their best users and best feedback, but they do it to themselves by adopting these models without understanding the risks, and scaring away their best customers.

Enlighten us! How are people that don't want to pay for software "their best customers"?

GoodNotes is great, hope they can make the one-off payment model sustainable. But the reality is that cost needs to match with value over time, and the industry is moving to subscriptions because that's a sustainable model for productivity software.

Not wanting a subscription does not imply not wanting to pay for software.

I bought Typora, and would buy a paid upgrade for it. Same for Things. When the software needs improvement I’ll pay for that value. I will not pay monthly for the privilege of using the software that isn’t changing.

I absolutely will not even consider paying for a subscription to access my own research. When I don’t pay Typora, I can still access every document I’ve written. It’s unclear to me from the information presented if I will even be able to access my Muse boards if the company goes out of business.

Totally agree on the data lock-out problem. Quoting from https://museapp.com/memos/2021-06-pricing/

> In an ideal world, a software subscription will let you pay just when you’re getting value from a product, and stop paying when you aren't getting value any more. In practice, many subscriptions feel bad because they are hard to cancel; or worse yet, they require you to pay forever to keep accessing the content you’ve created in the app.

> Muse is different. We never want to hold your data hostage. You should pay for it only when you’re getting active use out of the app.

> Once you cancel your membership (after a month, a year, or ten years) all your cards will still be fully accessible. You can still navigate around, doodle on your boards and PDFs, move cards, and export a subset or all of it as a Muse bundle or PDF. You can search by label, change labels, edit text.

> The only thing you can’t do? Add new content.

> You never need to worry that your data is locked up. We want you to pay for the value you’re getting from the tool, not for the data storage.

If Muse disappears tomorrow. Servers shut down and all. Would access to notes still work?

I am not actually in fear of something happening that suddenly. I defended the general concept of subscriptions elsewhere. Still I am interested to know what happens in such a scenario

In that case you'd still have full access to your documents.

In keeping with local-first values the complete and canonical dataset resides on your devices (Macs/iPads). Sync service outage or total shutdown would result in your no longer being able to sync between devices, but all the devices would have whatever data they had at time the service went offline, and you can continue to make local edits until the end of time.

You can test this out: just put some stuff into Muse, then turn off your wifi / go into airplane mode / shut off the network in some other way. Keep working with your data and watch the sync indicator; it will show that you have a lot of unsynced changes, but never will your ability to work be interrupted.

And, just to confirm, there's nothing that would cause you to get logged out and pushed into some login screen, is there? Spotify had a nasty bug where it locked you out of all of your offline content because their server accidentally responded with a 401 when it had an outage.

Thanks for the replies. I actually did try out Muse after reading them!

A lot of apps do not lock you out once you stop paying. They don’t allow any new writing, but reading and/or exporting is still allowed.

I too dislike being locked out if I stop paying.

Muse allows both reading and exporting still. Going out of business is a concern, but isn’t that an issue with Typora too? If it stops being updated, eventually it will stop working on newer OSes.

Typora saves Markdown files which are editable by anyone in original fidelity. I see that Muse supports exports, but the documentation about this is... light at best. If there was an open-source tool that converted a Muse export into a PDF file that looked like the Muse PDF export, then I think I'd be completely satisfied about not getting locked out.

> How are people that don't want to pay for software "their best customers"?

As another commenter suggested, I never said I don't want to pay for software. I would probably pay a lot for software with functionality like Muse, just never on a monthly basis.

Why are you losing your best customers with a subscription model? I can give you two examples.

1. I recently started using a tool called Homechart, and I was pretty excited to use it, replacing Notion and Clubhouse for task management and organization of thoughts. It has other useful features like inventory, chores, budgeting, recipes... But I was mostly in it for task management.

Unfortunately, Homechart has an obnoxious "buy premium" banner that takes up half of the page _every time you refresh or open the app._ I'm sure you can agree this is a bit too frequent. I asked nicely if this reminder could be reduced on the developer's forum, I was just told "Buy premium to get rid of the banner." It's funny, because I was on the fence with Homechart's $99 lifetime subscription. It's something I would have purchased after seeing the app develop and grow more of a user base over 3-6 months. That developer lost out on more than my $99. I was happy to contribute more than just money to the development of the app, but the developer made their impression and that was that.

2. I really appreciate your enthusiasm in helping to develop this app, but you come off closed-minded when you talk about the economics of the subscription model, or reference your own blogs in response to feedback from would-be customers. I get the need to defend your choices, you just seem not very eager to understand the blind spots that may exist within those choices. Ultimately, subscription models are lazy monetization, especially so when the product is static software. I want what Muse can offer me today, not a promise of what it could be tomorrow (next month) in exchange for more of my money. That's essentially what you're asking for with a perpetual subscription model, and it's why Goodnotes was easy for me to buy. I would go so far to say that subscription models are not transparent and frankly, not consumer centric at all.

I have empathy for your situation. The subscription model is only tired because everyone and their mother is doing it. Netflix was supposed to replace cable, now every cable station has its own Netflix. It's entirely out of your control that people are fed up with adding another line item. You are missing critical feedback from the type of user who doesn't want to make a knee-jerk decision and forget about their subscription for months at a time. Users like that, who know what they want, are pretty valuable in my experience.

Do you have issue with software like Agenda.app where they charge $XX and that comes with one year of updates?

It's certainly a more consumer-centric and transparent way of selling the product. I would feel more taken care of as a customer.

Very few companies/apps with monthly subscription actually provide $X of new value each month for each of its users. It is incredibly hard to do this across your entire user base consistently.

Ok, fair critiques. We obviously see many things differently (e.g. software being static vs requiring maintenance) so probably not much value in arguing further. But in /r/changemyview parlance I'll award you a partial delta. :)

A lot of notes subscription pricing arguments rely on Goodnotes being one time payment or OneNote, Apple Notes, Google Keep being free.

Goodnotes recently switched to free to download and then upgrading with iAP. Before it was always paid upfront. Coincidentally, this free to iAP switch is also a necessary switch to eventually becoming SaaS. If Goodnotes switches to SaaS, sure smaller upstart apps will be there with buy once, but if they get big, they too will become subscriptions. Notability was one time payment just a couple months ago for its entire existence.

OTOH, the other big free apps are run by the enormous monopolistic big brother tech companies. I’d prefer not supporting them and pointing to them doesn’t help because their reasoning for being free is to get people into their own varied walled gardens/ecosystems. A lot of innovations are unlikely to come from these companies apps. They are there to catch the widest net of [casual] users. It’s all business for them.

All of this is like how South Park[0] parodied both Walmart/big box stores, and the consumers who enable this behavior and how it is a cycle that keeps going on.

0. https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Something_Wall-Mart_This_W...

I love Muse so much. It’s a very different way of organizing your thinking. I use it for everything. My todo list, my research, reading papers and PDFs, outlining bits of writing, shopping lists, presentations, trip planning, marking-up images/notes to send to people — not to mention using it for THINKING, which is probably the best part.

Thanks for the kind words, Oliver. And yeah, funny how using computing devices for thinking is still such a novel idea, more than half a century after Engelbart wrote about computers augmenting human intellect!

I've watched Muse for the sidelines for a long time. Huge props to Adam and co for not only creating this quality app but also publishing so, so much about the process of doing that and writing articles that'll definitely inform future efforts.

Anyway, I've watched from the sidelines because I don't own an iPad, but now there's a Mac app! Woo

I went a bit off track with this comment. So upfront I'll say that an iPad and an Apple Pencil is required to make the most of this app. The macOS app is not yet as polished as I'm certain it will get, and the iPhone app is ... severely lacking. (Erm, very focused on what it does?)

Having briefly played with the iPhone, macOS and iPad apps today for the first time I can definitively say:

1. The iPhone app is confusing - especially when syncing for the first time. There are zero controls, you can't sign in or sign out, and it's not even clear how the app works. The iPhone app lets you collect inbox items, then you can drag them out on an iPad or Mac to a particular board later. But it only synced/kept the items I added after I set up an iPad or macOS app. In fact, items only synced after I set up my iPad. (Which was odd.)

2. The macOS app has weird jerky behaviour when scrolling using a magic trackpad where it tries to "stop" at the right points when I kind of just want to smoothly navigate. The same isn't true of the iPad version, or at least the iPad seemed to perform buttery smooth in general.

3. I created a new board on the macOS app and it didn't seem to prompt me to name the board. I right clicked and renamed the board and the UI that showed up was very ... iOS-like? Big fat modal, tiny input in the middle. Not what I expected. Then I added the name, and it didn't show up until I entered the board then exited the board and maybe resized the board.

4. I went to my iPad after using the app on my mac and the items on the board hadn't resized themselves correctly. They moved - yes - but not perfectly. I had to resize and place items again, which felt a bit odd.

5. I wanted to expand the canvas to the left, and couldn't, because the canvas apparently only expands to the right or bottom of the screen. Okay, but then selecting everything on the Getting Started board and moving it to give myself extra space on the left is both annoying and somehow super-slow to finish redrawing/saving. Perhaps this isn't that noticeable because selecting everything is a simple shortcut on the Mac, but isn't frequently/easily done on iPad.

I actually have a renewed appreciation for apps like Obsidian and Craft and Notion because for all the rough edges (and there are often a lot with these kinds of apps!), they really do "just work" pretty darn well.

I think the app closest in spirit, if not in implementation, might be OneNote, with how you can make and drag text blocks and scribble notes with ink and so on. Obviously Muse has the concept of "infinitely nested boards" but I'm not actually sold on it as a replacement for tagging or infinite canvas. If you can't fluid zoom, you're navigating between "pages" but making me think about where I've placed each page's content within its parent, which is a bit strange. It's like having Finder stuck in "Icon view" and no way to set it to "List" or "Detail" view to sort or browse as I please. I enjoy not having to think about tagging or hyperlinks, but ... I also don't have those features either. Snipping of a PDF or image and seeing the larger view (in context) is great, but the alternative I used to use was to use OneNote's PDF Printout feature, and then when later referring to a slide, I could link to part of a OneNote note to go back to it in the source doc.

I actually don't like/use OneNote often because the interface is so different on every platform and because its feature set needs to keep up with the times. For example, a standout feature of OneNote was that it would perform OCR on images and you could search images for text. Cool. But an M1 MacBook or iPad now does that "for free" and as a bonus, you can select text within the image as if it were actually text (something that OneNote never offered unless you converted or extracted the text from the image) and I think it does column detection and so on, like Preview did for PDFs.

I'd really like to see Apple come up with a generic way to embed snippets or previews of documents in other documents. Bonus points if they can find a way to enable "live editing" like Adobe or Microsoft do in their suites, such that from right inside a macOS app that I've embedded an OmniGraffle diagram, say, I can edit the diagram then finish and go back to the app it is being displayed in. Kind of like how if you edit an Excel file in Word, the UI suddenly changes to Excel, but then you stop and it goes back to Word again.

Is it hard? Yes. Would it probably require a lot of transparent layering to make this work? Yes. Would it be absolutely awesome? Yes.

The way I see it, some apps do outlining really well, some apps do spreadsheets well, some apps do diagramming well... I'd love to be able to embed and/or round-trip a screenshot to the original app and then back to a PNG or PDF export again, all without leaving the document or app it's being displayed in.

I know, I'm asking for Apple to reinvent Microsoft OLE. But they would do it better, wouldn't they? An advanced version could maybe work something like iOS Widgets, but should allow re-use of document edit views. Perhaps the auto-save dropdown could be re-purposed to include options for embedding files and showing the file size including embedded files, as well as listing each of the embedded files.

Anyway... not sure how I got to making a feature request to Apple here.

All I'm saying is Muse is pretty awesome, but it could be even more awesome. :)

Thanks for the review. Agree with most of your points here, briefly:

iPhone app is just capture right now, intended for "I just had this thought that I need to muse on later." We don't market it much because it's so limited. Future version will build on the sync infrastructure to offer better capture and ability to look up stuff on your boards.

Board rename on Mac is a quick fix we squeezed in before launch. Will make that nicer soon.

Anchoring boards to the top left explained a bit here: https://museapp.com/memos/2021-03-flex-boards/ -- but has the tradeoffs you mention if you want extra space in the left and top.

OneNote is pretty great actually, ahead of its time. It does still have the "big list of documents" element and in general has the Microsoft level of design polish, which is to say, not much. So certainly our target market with Muse is folks that prefer something better-crafted and from a small/indie team. But that only emphasizes the importance of those fit-and-finish bits you mentioned. Now that our sync engine is finally out in the world we can spend time iterating on that.

Yes, we do need some way to link/embed/transclude documents between applications. OLE was one failed attempt, OpenDoc is another (in)famous example. This is something we're researching at Ink & Switch, but will be hard to innovate here without OS-level support.

Anyhow thanks for taking the time to kick the tires. I will happily take "Muse is awesome but could be more awesome" as validation of the work we've done so far, and motivation to keep improving.

> Anyhow thanks for taking the time to kick the tires. I will happily take "Muse is awesome but could be more awesome" as validation of the work we've done so far, and motivation to keep improving.

Thanks, that’s the spirit it was intended in. I’m looking forward to it.

Also, while I didn’t mind too much on iPad, I really need Dark Mode support on macOS - I have Dark Reader extension installed in every browser, dark mode in every text editor, and now basically every app I use has dark mode on macOS (except VPN apps, sigh…) but to get the most benefit here I have to expand this white Muse window to two thirds or more of my widescreen monitor and… it’s blindingly bright ;-)

Also on the (very long) list of things we want to build. It's more challenging design- and technology-wise than you might imagine, due to the canvas model and relatively arbitrary content folks can bring in. (Actually realizing this will be a good topic to discuss in a future podcast episode.)

Much appreciated. Sharing the journey is a big part of what has made this project fulfilling.

As another commenter pointing out, the Mac app alone is somewhat limited without the iPad as a kind of ink/annotation accessory--but I'm curious to see if people get use out of it. There are plenty of desktop-focused spatial canvas apps (Scapple and Miro come to mind) so clearly there's potential for utility here.

Very satisfied Muse user. It's great for compiling lots of research, reading PDFs, and basically getting a good visual map of what you're learning.

Thanks Dan! Hope the Mac app is a good addition to your workflows as well.

Yesss! I've been looking for something like this for the longest time. Nested thoughts / boards is the way to go!

Will test.

My current stack is something like -

Noteshelf - ipad notes

Clover - mac notes

Bear - phone / personal notes

You can do ipad notes with Clover but I found the UI a little clunky and pencil responsiveness not great.

Great list. Bear is an inspiration for us in particular.

And yeah nested boards[1] and a zooming UI (ala Jef Raskin[2]) is one of the big elements that makes Muse different.

[1]: https://museapp.com/how/nestedboards/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface

Very cool website, I can appreciate the effort that went into describing the features. I've been using Markdown-based tools for thought like Logseq and ObsidianMD, but have run into some limitations.

Any hope for an Android app?

I'm a big fan of text files--my "thinking workspace" for over a decade was a folder full of .txt and .md files and vim. But as more of my reference material and creative inputs are images, PDFs, websites, etc that became limiting.

We evaluated all the major tablet platforms including Android and Chromebook a few years back[1], and found all of them lacking on hardware or OS capabilities in a way that would prevent build software like Muse.

Hoping things have changed since then or will change in the future. I feel like touch as a platform is too important to be so dominated by one vendor.

[1]: https://www.inkandswitch.com/slow-software/

I skimmed the article, but what makes Android not sufficient to interact with Muse? I haven’t tried Muse, but I’ve thought plenty about building a local-first notebook app for thinking. Something about pen input or UI jank? Muse seems less general than I was thinking of it as being if only Apple hardware can run its core feature set…

In a word, latency. Everything feeling responsive and tactile is a part of the (tablet part) of the Muse experience. You can see the latency tests for various tablets in a table partway through the essay, and compare those to the human factors research and see that they are off by an order of magnitude for what's necessary to feel responsive. But those tests were a few years ago, would not be surprised if things have improved since then.

TBH I'm not really thrilled about being locked into iPad+Pencil either. But so far, Apple is the only one that has been able to cross the latency threshold with their hardware and OS. Hoping that will not be the case forever.

Local-first software is my favorite article.

I studied CRDT for six months, read many CRDT papers and created my own local fist app.

it must pack a real punch

I use Evernote for a kind of thought workspace, journaling, and knowledge base. The time-to-type (the time between opening up the app to being able to type something on a new note) has been getting worse with each revision.

Seeing this app with this kind of local-first sync makes me seriously consider moving off of Evernote.

Does this have a sink I can install on one of my Linux boxes that I can use to backup everything?

Evernote is a good example of software that I think had a lot of promise but has decayed in quality and performance over time.

No self-hosted sync service at the moment. At the moment we've got our hands full with making it work well in a production setting. But I'd like to see a world where generic sync services (either as hosted services or self-hosted) is commonplace.

I think decay is an excellent word to describe Evernote’s journey, or at least the bits where I was involved. The UIs became progressively less usable, and somehow felt more fragile. My own use of it was experiment-> embrace -> decay. I can’t just blame the tool, that pattern of changing productivity tools is more of a me problem it turns out.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about an ideal tool for capturing and organizing thought and Muse appears to have addressed my own ambitions and those of experts in the field. Congrats on the great work. With this release I won’t need to get an iPad to try it, but after reading this post I sure want one.

To that end, I’m curious about user stories from desktop-first, and/or desktop-only Muse users.

Yes, we're curious to see how pure desktop usage evolves. A big part of the whole "thinking workspace" concept is the more relaxed posture of tablet use, the ability to scribble on things, etc.

That said, I've used Muse for Mac heavily for the past six months and find it's strongest when I am doing more text-oriented work. I'll also be curious to see how people use in practice and whether the value prop is really all your devices used in tandem (desktop, tablet, phone) or whether there are strong uses cases for just one at a time.

Yeah, I get that you guys got your hands full. I'm curious enough to give this a spin.

Not necessarily a self-hosted sync service so much as an always-on device running this app in the background that accepts changes and stores it locally. That way, if I lose my phone, I have the data backed up on that device, and I should be able to just connect to the sync service and restore from backup. The sync service could still be hosted elsewhere.

The sync server itself also acts as an online backup too - if you lose all of your devices you can login with the same account and re-download.

I've recently read the local-first article and thought this could a good solution for many apps to avoid database servers. This in turn would enable more business models using licenses (e.g. Sublime Text) instead of subscriptions.

I also believe that in the future we'll have these generic sync services you're talking about, just like today we have file syncing services. I actually believe we could start having them today and get most of the benefits of having a local-first sync service. I think we could have a relational database server (something which most devs are used to) running somewhere, paid/hosted directly by a user/company, together with a protocol implemented by a local daemon that allows apps to find that database server. This local daemon could be provided by a service (e.g. Apple Business, Syncthing) that provides group membership, so a set of users and devices could access the same database server (and corresponding database). This solution would always require internet access to be able to use the app, but that's already the normal today, and looking at how the technology is advancing (thinking Starlink, 5G), I can only see that becoming less of a problem.

For completeness, I also don't think a local-first sync service can be implemented with file syncing services + SQLite today, even if you only allow changes when online. First there are still chances of multiple people changing the database at the same time, which is not ok because file syncing services only see conflicts at the file-level and they would not be able to recover from them automatically. Finally, it'd probably also be weird to see a SQLite file in a folder somewhere in the file syncing service which could be accessed by any app that used this protocol. I would love to see SQLite being part of a local-first sync solution though.

In your "local-first software"[2] article, you discuss data privacy and encryption:

"Local-first apps can use end-to-end encryption so that any servers that store a copy of your files only hold encrypted data that they cannot read."

Does Muse encrypt the user's data (notes, images, sketches, etc)?

not yet - but this is very high on our priority list! If we had built in encryption in this first step, then it wouldn't extended development time by many months. Instead, we chose to release sync first, prove the core local-first technology works and is scalable, and add in encryption in phase 2. The basic protocols and data structures are designed with encryption in mind, so we're excited to start work on that very soon.

I'll add to Wulf's note that we on the team are privacy-conscious, listen to us talk about it here: https://museapp.com/podcast/18-privacy/

We designed the architecture to allow full Signal-style e2ee, but given that there are only two engineers on this we had to cut scope on that for the first release. Now we'll be listening to what our customers ask for in terms of where to prioritize in the roadmap. We have quite a few medical professionals and attorneys using Muse in their professional lives, so we've already heard from some of them on this topic.

I really like the idea but even "How Muse boards work" board lagging on my iPad pro 10.5 and I don't enjoy the pen feel. I think default notes app or even better Concepts app (which is another infinite canvas app and doesn't lag) have a much better pen feeling.

Still subbed tho.

Thanks for trying & buying. Concepts has amazing pens (makes sense because it's focused on drawing), but agree we can/should improve the ink experience a lot.

If you're exploring similar apps space, check out https://endlesspaper.app It's iPad only, but super simple and truly gives you "better paper" experience.

Great sketching app! But unrelated to Muse, which is a thinking workspace focused on text, PDFs, links, and images. The ink annotations and ability to sketch are a minor feature.

I hear what you're saying, but really this is up to the end user to decide.

For some, the best "tool for thought" is something that tries to replace paper as directly as it can, because writing/drawing on paper is how some people think best.

So I don't think it's quite fair to say this is unrelated. Perhaps the feature sets are different, but the underlying goal of the end user might not be.

Fair enough. Pen and paper are the ultimate tool for thought, so something that tries to translate them fairly directly into a digital environment also is.

Guess my point here is that Muse is not an attempt to translate paper into the computer, other than some superficial elements like using a stylus to ink. IMO software and computers can go so much further than that.

For readers looking for ideas about exactly how software can go so much further than paper, I recommend this now classic essay by Bret Victor, Magic Ink:

http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/

Indeed. Victor's work is the gateway drug to tools-for-thought; it certainly was for me. Read at your own peril, the rabbit hole goes very deep :-)

Be curious. It's not a sketching app. It's literally endless paper w/ endless zoom levels, which is pretty sick to use in practice. Basically instead of creating "nested" board, you just zoom into the area/letter/shape and start whole new spatial universe there.

Plus it supports images, and drag-n-dropping them directly from other apps in a iPad split mode makes it a joy to use often.

Well said. I'm not arguing its utility--I've used it and I think it's a great app. But I do think of it as "fractal sketching" rather than spatial research.

Any plans to open source some code for making the Go sync server work?

I know there exist service like Replicache that I assume does something similar. But one written in Go would be awesome to see.

Yes, agreed. That would be up to my colleague Mark[1], but I'll take the liberty of copy-pasting something he wrote earlier:

> Unfortunately we're not going to be in a position to open source or license the syncing software in the short term. As you noted there's inevitably overhead with that and we can't take that on right now as such a small team. Also I still feel like we need to prove out our approach more in production, starting with rolling out the sync capabilities to the full Muse user base and scaling that userbase up a bit. I'm open to considering open-sourcing in the future but that'd probably be a ways off.

> I was speaking with another developer at an early-stage company recently and he mentioned that he'd been having good results with Automerge, which has come a long ways in the last ~2 years since we looked at it deeply. Importantly the Automerge[2] team is now tackling the storage and network problems in earnest, making it a more viable production option. So you might look into that project if you haven't yet.

[1]: https://markmcgranaghan.com/

[2]: https://automerge.org/

This is cool. I stopped using Notion forever when I started to place images in my documentation, on 4th image it said: you can't place more images dude, pay us now. This drove me crazy since I wanted this document to be only local, and I could easily use file:// URLs to show them. Funny thing – there is an ability to input image URL but it doesn't accept file:// for dirty money-making reasons. Now there is something better around

Note that this costs money too

Anyone have a Windows, Linux, and/or Android alternative?

Best bet here is web apps like https://kinopio.club/

Kosmik may also be an alternative:

https://www.kosmik.app/

It’s a “visual tool for thought”. The screenshots look very similar to Muse, but I can attest that in use, the actual experience is much less polished.

Also, not really sure it supports any other platform, but definitely looks like an app that would be on Win/Linux before something like Muse will.

I wish this was on the GoodNotes/SublimeText model: pay once for a premium version of the app, and then never worry about subscriptions. The moment something requires subscription my threshold for buying it goes up 1000 fold.

Especially true for any sort of note taking/reference tool. If I’m on the hook for a subscription to access part of my brain, that is a _problem_.

Edit: granted, Muse looks gorgeous and I don’t mind paying for things. Just echoing subscription fatigue.

Exactly.

I have documents I wrote 30 years ago. Looks like this allows export as PDF, at least, but there is no planet on which I will voluntarily rent access to my own documents.

You'll be happy to know that Muse is designed to only gate creation of new documents on the membership, not access to anything you've already created. Lapsed memberships go into alumni mode where you can navigate, move, copy, and export everything.

I’m happier yet to know you’re involved! That at least gives me reason to believe Muse will be around for years.

(^^ parent cofounded Heroku)

Ah, that's an excellent approach, much friendlier than some subscriptionware I could name.

Thanks for the note.

Agreed. Subscriptions make sense if it's a "business" app, i.e. something you are using to run your business, e.g. Adobe CC, Office 365.

But this one looks like personal app, with little in the way of corporate functionality (Kanban boards, todos, etc). Why not charge a flat fee for 1 year of updates, and make updates optional after that?

I have the same beef with the makers of MindNode, a mind-mapping app for MacOS. It's $2.99/mo which is not much, but I chose to go with SimpleMind Pro because it was a flat 25 EUR.

Developers know the term "write once, deploy anywhere". How about "charge once, use forever"?

I get your metaphor, but I think it falls down because "write once, deploy anywhere" was a slogan for Java and it never really fulfilled that promise.

And yes, like anything in life there are top-quality options which tend to be more expensive and lower-quality options which fit a smaller budget. MindNode is a lovely app and worth paying for IMO.

> The moment something requires subscription my threshold for buying it goes up 1000 fold.

I agree, but unfortunately it's the opposite for most folks. Subscriptions are here to stay.

I'm usually not too fond of subscriptions either, but I have to say that Muse has the most ingenious subscription model I've ever come across: If you're using it casually, the free version is plenty (Remember that you can always archive stuff by exporting it, and 100 cards will go a long way. Plus, you can stop paying and still have read-access and even limited editing for your existing boards).

If you use it heavily as a daily driver, then the $3.99 or $9.99 should be a drop in the bucket. It scales very naturally between casual use and the paid tiers. Personally, I could probably do with the $3.99, but I'm choosing to pay the $9.99 since I want to support their ongoing research. Their podcast shows the enormous amount of thought they're putting into this, and it shows! Together with Blink (an SSH app with similar focus on UX design) this is by far the most productive iPad app I have.

Is that how most app subscriptions work? People usually call it “freemium”.

I mean, yeah, "freemium" is somewhat common, but in this case I find it particularly graceful in that the freemium doesn't limit the features, just the complexity of your board

I want to try it but upon Mac download, it requires an email to proceed. Apple sign-on or Hide my email don't populate as an option.

Feel free to use a one-off email account (as long as you have access to it indefinitely, since it ties your devices together). Unlike Figma, Notion, etc we don't ask for anything other than an email.

We tried implementing Apple sign-in but found the experience pretty weak, both for the end user and for us on the business side.

In the future would like to implement some kind of disconnected mode to remove this friction. But email is needed for the sync aspect, which is one of the biggest selling points (and wow moments) of the product.

You can create a Hide My Email address manually if you go to System Preferences > Apple ID > Hide My Email (Options) > Tap the + button.

Hey guys

You removed the app from Russian App store. Do you have any policy for existing accounts?

For some context: I can still download the app from Purchased section of the App store and use in-app purcahse (apple payments via cellular providers work in Russia).

Muse team member here :) Existing accounts are still 100% supported for both customers and free accounts, including our sync service. This only affects new downloads.

Is there (or will there be) a way to share boards to web, for non-Muse users to comment on?

It's fine if those comments don't make their way back to Muse, but some way to share a static view of a Muse board would be helpful.

Yes, that's planned for somewhere in the 2.x series. Now that we have the foundational sync technology in place, we'll expand to other platforms include publishing to the web.

In the meantime, one enterprising customer has already written a Muse bundle (zip/json) to HTML converter: https://twitter.com/jimmyhmiller/status/1449761294589087752

Awesome. Hope there's at least a very basic commenting feature as well.

Do you intend on supporting Search in the future? My use case is to brainstorm, jot down a few things, and just dump my contents of my brain onto a canvas and search later.

We do have a rudimentary search via OS integration already: https://museapp.com/handbook/ipad/#to-search

But yes, this is due for improvement / upgrade and is on our roadmap.

Can someone tell please if this works well with the cheaper ipad and pencil? I am thinking of buy the cheapest ipad and using for exactly something like this.

It does, although it will slow down if you load in large data e.g. big PDFs or large boards with huge amounts of ink.

I have an iPad I use for testing that cost me $250 on Amazon back in 2019! But watch out for Pencil versions, not all are compatible with every iPad model.

I dunno.. Just give me a stack of thin e-ink paper, and an app on the ipad. That's the only spatial thing that actually works... pen and paper

Is there a possibility of adding OCR/linking it with apps like Roam Research or LogSeq?

OCR is one we've investigated but it's tricky to find the right API that is compatible with our local-first values. One customer tipped us off that the creators of Nebo have an interesting one. So we'll look into that.

Lots of folks use Muse together with Roam, Obsidian, or LogSeq just using standard OS tools like drag-and-drop. LogSeq example: https://twitter.com/itsjustmath/status/1527410705820839937

But I think there's a lot more we could do here with deeper integration--deep bidirectional links etc.

Do you plan to have markdown, latex parsing and code highlighting support?

Text formatting (possibly Markdown) for sure. Code highlighting is something I would personally like but depends on how many software engineers decide to become members. Latex is probably out for its complexity, but in the long run some kind of plugins system might make it possible.

Muse is already a 20 year old Linux music sequencing program. Someone didn’t do their due diligence.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MusE

We researched the name heavily as part of registering our trademark. There are hundreds of hardware/software/internet products and services that use the word "muse" in their name somewhere--and that's true for almost any other single english word or even combination of words.

The practical reality of naming things online in this age is that you try to avoid obvious collisions e.g. don't name your photo editing app Photochop, don't name your computer company Newton's Apple. But there's not a lot of risk of customer confusion between different domains like music sequencer vs thinking workspace.

Simply using MUSE by itself with no other words exposes you to trademark litigation, even from FOSS software. It’s the same business category, according to the USPTO, and the existing project simply named “muse” has an automatic first use to the claim. Merely showing prior use by th undermines your trademark application. I dealt with precisely this issue nearly 20 years ago. Your assurances are not a legal justification and read like “it’s ok” when it’s really not.

Muse is a generic common word. It will naturally have multiple uses.

And someone owns the trademark for it in each business category.

Muse Something Something = ok. Just muse? There’s prior art and proof of it.

What is it in your first sentence? For just “muse”? Or muse something something? As in is the problem that just “muse” is trademarked in each business category. Or that “muse” is trademarked once with some software and so it can never be used again since there’s prior art? Is audio software and a note taking app in the same business category?

Any free alternatives?

Muse is free for up to 100 cards, which in practice is quite a bit. We have users who have been using it for free for years. (You can always archive old boards to Dropbox etc with the bundle export format.)

Some other apps in the "spatial canvas" realm I can recommend are Kinopio, Clover, and FigJam. But most are paid with some sort of freemium setup.

I truly mourn the loss of purchasable apps. I don't even bother with downloading the 'trial' versions anymore, because I already know I will never subscribe anyway.

Are these types of pricing models aimed at professional users? I just can't fathom having to pay a monthly fee to be able to additionally invest my private time for some slightly increased utility in my life.

The barrier to use these kind of apps these days is just too high. Its no longer possible to buy this on a whim and use it now or in five years or whenever. Simply using such an app now feels like a work project, because I feel like I have to carefully plan for how long I will need such an app and that I must truly commit in order to reach this time frame. I can no longer have a casual hobby in which I just decide to use this tool for a bit and finish the project in 3 weeks or 3 years, depending on how I feel.

/Sorry for the rant. I'm just disappointed because this looks up my alley.

Yes, Muse is a prosumer app. Our customers buy it for themselves but usually for use in their work. So if you're a freelancer or entrepreneur who spends a few grand a year on computer hardware, various online hosting services, storage (Dropbox etc), and professional apps, a few bucks a month can fit into that budget.

But sorry to hear this means you get left out. We do have a free version that's extremely capable and a lot of people use for years, mainly by archiving older boards to a backup location.

Not thrilled about the trend of services over products.

I’ve been using GoodNotes 5 for a while now and am really satisfied.

One time purchase with iCloud sync with all devices.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/goodnotes-5/id1444383602

GoodNotes is great! More of a digital sketchbook (and better than Muse if you're focused purely on the inking/sketching part of things).

On paying for software, here's some rationale: https://adamwiggins.com/making-computers-better/pay

I utterly despise the current trend towards the subscription-based model. I want to pay upfront and rid myself of the recurring charges.

Developers: you want recurring income? Welcome to the club. Your income is not my problem.

Well, I would hope that purchase of a product or service is a mutually beneficial business transaction. So in this sense how the product is priced is the problem/concern of both parties.

Quoting from https://museapp.com/memos/2021-06-pricing/ :

> You might be used to software from growth-at-all-costs startups: free at the start (funded by venture capital) but eventually your attention in monetized with ads, your personal data is monetized by selling to third parties, or the personal product takes a back seat to the “enterprise” product.

> Muse is following a different path: personal software, made for you and your unique tastes and needs, and funded by direct payment from you and other members. Because our funding comes from you, the customer, rather than investors with their sights on mass-market adoption, our incentives are better aligned with yours.

> By paying for Muse, you help us stay niche, opinionated, and focused on your needs over the long term.

I think it's worth thinking about where the products and services we consume in our daily lives come from and how the incentive models work. And that definitely includes software.

What if mine and Muse’a opinions diverge along the way? Then I can’t keep the old version I like. But I either loose access to what I don’t like anymore. Or pay what Forcwhat I don’t like and hope in future I’ll like it again.

Yes, good point. I'd certainly like software where it's easy to run any version you like.

In the Apple ecosystem that's tough because they roll out breaking API changes in the OS every few years. So if you buy a new computer, upgrade your OS, or otherwise try to keep up with a changing world your software will stop working.

My thoughts on software longevity and why it's a problem for our industry: https://museapp.com/podcast/49-software-longevity/

I’m ex-iOS dev so maybe things changed in the last couple years. But Apple was pretty good at keeping old APIs around for a loooong time. Deprecated apis would stay around for quite a while.

New architectures do break old apps once in a while. But even then apps do survive several years without touching. And if someone wants to keep using apps after that… IMO it’s fair to put some burden on user - they have to stick to old OS too.

But if app is subscription, then Even sticking to old OS won’t help…

These are perfectly good arguments, I think somewhat undermined by the usage rather than feature based price segmentation. It ends up feeling artificially nickel-and-dimey, in a local-sync tool.

Yeah, pricing is really tough. I've experimented heavily with feature-based pricing, most notably in Heroku, and people absolutely hate it. When you put your best features behind a paid upgrade, you're preventing people from evaluating the most important part of the software.

Free trials are another solution, but time also ends up being a bit arbitrary.

In the end, storage is a good metric that doesn't require complex feature gates. We borrowed this model from Notion: they had 1000 blocks free in their original product, but once they started getting those sweet enterprise dollars they were able to give more away for free to individuals. Dropbox and GitHub are two other examples.

Our service still does a lot of work proportionate to data size, so in that sense it's still SaaS and has the same cost dynamics at work. But in the end the real cost of software is engineering salaries, not infrastructure, so that whole discussion is sort of a red herring.

Obviously it remains a problem to solve that our industry can't find a pricing model that is both (1) healthy and sustainable for the business and (2) people find amenable.

It's definitely tough and you're right, it's also easy to make feature-based segmentation infuriating. But (as you know and as this thread amply demonstrates) for pro-sumerish apps, it's as much (if not more) about vibes as it is about price. The 'we're simple software artisans asking an honest price for a quality product' vibe just clashes with the nickel-and-dime vibe of that pricing structure, that's all.

Yeah, truly an unsolved problem. Obsidian seems to have found a good path--free for the core product, $10/mo (standard price for prosumer apps) for sync.

But we felt like sync is a core feature and we really want to give it away for free so that people can experience it. Time will tell if that was a good call.

Do most people have multiple devices they're going to use this in? I only have one iPad, I don't need sync!

A core concept is the idea that creative professionals live a multi-device life. Desktop computer for focused productivity, tablet for relaxed reading and thinking, phone for capture and lookup on the go.

https://museapp.com/how/ipadmac/

Well yes and no. It is your problem if the only options for the software you want are subscription based. To some extent, Photoshop and Lightroom might be examples of this. If I'm not mistaken, Adobe stopped selling one-off licenses for these products quite a while ago. While there are a number of alternatives both paid and free, Adobe's products still capture a considerable portion of the market. Not because people like recurring payments, but because there's whole industries full of people who know how to use those products to produce and deliver quality work. To put another way, I fully understand that you want one upfront payment, it makes sense and I feel the same way, but what if there's no one willing to sell it to you?

Users: I'm not paying for a subscription!

Those same users in a year: Where's the support for all these new features in the OS release just announced? Why haven't there been any free updates to this app I paid you 5 dollars for a year ago? This app sucks, I'm switching to something else. 1 star.

These need not be the only two options. App developers could charge money for updates made i.e. new versions while the old versions keep working as advertised.

Instead of "cloud storage" which might incur ongoing charges, apps can very well hook onto my GDrive/OneDrive to persist data. Also, games have done this "free updates to this app I paid" for years now.

Yes, "pay for a major new version" was the industry model for many years. Office, Photoshop, etc. In the end you're sort of forced to upgrade by file compatibility every two or three years, so it's a subscription with a slightly uneven payment schedule.

There are still some apps that do this, Things is a good example. But that creates all kinds of other challenges when a big part of the product is a service (like ours) if you want to support all versions of the client in perpetuity.

Charge for update. If I like new features, I’ll pay. If not, I’ll stick to old version.

Why would maker take away old version from me if I don’t like the new version?

It's a service, so there's a substantial maintenance cost to maintaining multiple versions. Curious if you also feel this way about Figma or Notion? Or for that matter, auto-updating software like Chrome or iOS?

Why not use iCloud and structure schema to let old versions survive? Solves both issues.

I don’t know what Figma or Notion is. But I dropped beloved Tower git client when they went subscription-only. I still sometimes use their last purchasable version though.

Regarding iOS, It’s possible to refuse updates. I also used iPhone 6 for a looong time and went several years without upgrading OS. I also still use old iPad 4 that receives no updates for years. What can I say… it was a good stable ride!

I don’t care about novelty for the sake of novelty. Once I find a tool I like, I’ll use it as long as possible.

And I’m happy to pay through the nose for quality tools. Be it kitchen utensils or gardening tools or electronics.

You might want to read the original post--a core feature you're paying for is local-first sync, which is explicitly designed to solve a lot of the problems with iCloud.

I do want to see a world where there is a generic syncing service (maybe AWS can run one, but open standards / open source) similar to Dropbox or iCloud. I can pay one lump sum for all my storage and all my apps will connect through it. But so far no such thing exists outside of the crude file-based syncing of Dropbox, and that's not suitable for building realtime apps on top of.

Okay, then maybe that local-first sync can easily support multiple schemes and let old versions run without overhead to devs?

Personally I'm fed up with syncing both as a user and as a developer.

As a developer, I don't want to deal with infrastructure for an app. It's a massive headache to have 24/7/365 responsive system. I want to make apps, not be on-call sysadmin.

As a user, I don't want to worry who is going to sell my data after going bankrupt. And I'd prefer small dev shops don't waste their time on keeping network infrastructure up and running with security patches.

> local-first sync can easily support multiple schemes and let old versions run without overhead to devs

I'd love that. Ink & Switch has done extensive research on how to enable this with p2p technology etc. Our industry isn't there yet... but lots of good folks are working on it. The Muse sync setup is a step in that direction.

> As a developer, I don't want to deal with infrastructure for an app. It's a massive headache to have 24/7/365 responsive system. I want to make apps, not be on-call sysadmin.

Oh yes. I spent many years carrying a pager for Heroku's infrastructure. Part of the appeal of local-first is the sync infrastructure is necessary to transmit data between devices, not for every single keystroke or gesture the user makes.

The model can and has been done successfully, see jet brains for a great example.

I also hate the subscription-based model. I see it as a race to the bottom that devs can't avoid, unfortunately. Your competition can go freemium and pick up casual users and then charge for subs, making your product less attractive initially (why pay a fee to try out an app when another one is free to try?). Most people don't want to pay $40 or $100 for an app. Additionally, users expect features that require cloud services and you need to pay your own fees to keep those lights on, so naturally you want to charge users a subscription fee as well.

Looks good, but I would like a trial, perpetual license and a text based file format that is stored locally and can be version controlled.

It's freemium rather than a trial, so you can use it for free for as long as you want. (Assuming I'm understanding your request there.)

It does export a Muse bundle which is a ZIP archive containing a JSON with the position of the cards and, more usefully, flat files for all the media. PNG, TXT, PDF, SVG for the ink, etc. I regularly drop backups of this into Dropbox or iCloud.

Version control would be tricky because one of the big features is realtime streaming sync. Could be an interesting research problem to find a way to combine Figma-style realtime documents with something that can be checked into Git.

Real time events in a text format can be easily version controlled.

Better than export a zip and store in Dropbox imho.

Right. Particularly because I know exactly where it's going:

1. I sign up for niche but well-made service

2. I pay $50/year or whatever. I'm fine with that because I'm going to rely on this.

3. Not enough other people do. The service shuts down in 2 years with 30 days notice and I have to find a way to get my data out and into a sustainable format

Yep, the "incredible journey" with a dump of your data in JSON sucks.

Muse is built local-first; all your data is kept locally on device, with the sync server merely a second-tier backup. If we go out of business, you keep all the data on your local device.

That said, apps in the App Store tend to stop working if they don't get regular maintenance[1]. This problem and the one you name is a big one for our industry to improve on IMO. Mark and I talked about that in depth in our podcast on software longevity[2].

[1]: https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/24/apple-now-removing-outdated-a...

[2]: https://museapp.com/podcast/49-software-longevity/

Or it goes:

1. I sign up for niche but well-made service

2. I pay $50/year or whatever. I'm fine with that because I'm going to rely on this.

3. Not enough other people do. The service wants to make more money and pivots to enterprise. They don't grandfather old users and the minimum price is now $9.99/mo for a limited feature set, and $14.99/mo (min 3 seats) for the features I used to have

This looks like a fantastic app but the subscription model and lock in together make this a non-starter. I'd rather pay you $60 upfront than $4/mo.

Obsidian has a great pricing strategy - license fee (not needed for most people), no lock in, and optional but valuable services on top that are subscription based.

Obsidian is great, and they are similarly priced to us ($10/mo for sync).

We felt that local-first sync is a core feature of the product, and to exclude free users from that would be leaving out a huge amount of the value. So we opted to include it for everyone, but limit the amount you can store.

With Obsidian, if I stop paying for sync, I still have my notes and a fully functional product.

I can load my notes in vim and keep going should Obsidian disappear.

I can also bring my own sync, via Dropbox or Syncthing or what have you.

> if I stop paying for sync, I still have my notes and a fully functional product

The same is true for Muse. When your membership expires (or you cancel it) the app reverts to free mode, which allows you to read, copy, and export all your data. But if you're over the free card limit then you can't create new content.

That said I have total respect for the Obsidian model. They're really successful for very good reason.

> [3 more]

Is it really though? Obsidian notes are plain text. I can open them in any plain text editor I want without needing to export anything, edit them and have the changes reflected in Obsidian later. The files are located in a folder on my machine - no conversion necessary.

That's a little disingenuous to compare yourselves to obsidian price structure. With Obsidian I can connect it and sync via github/Dropbox/etc, and there are no feature limitations with the free product at all, whereas yours prevents the creation of new notes if you exceed the free note limit.

Not the same at all.

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