Octopus Thoughts
AKA our blog, in which we talk about design, technology, inclusion, and anything else we’ve been thinking about lately. Oh, and adorable cephalopod stories, because they make us happy.
Now we’re cooking with gas: hamburger menus in the kitchen
What I learnt about design when I couldn’t turn on a lightbulb; or, how a cooker hood nearly drove me to distraction.
How we fixed the mic on macOS Monterey
When a bug in macOS meant Mic Drop stopped working with Bluetooth headphones, we needed to come up with a fix. The solution was far stranger than we expected.
Let’s not go back to normal
Everyone’s talking about going back to normal. But is normal the right goal? We have a rare opportunity to redesign our lives. What could we be doing better?
Moving slowly and (not) breaking things
On collapsed ceilings, why living in Portugal will teach you patience, and why we’ve been working on our latest product for a year.
Hooray! Everything is terrible.
Why we all work better together when we contribute complementary skills, and why critical optimism is the best of all possible worldviews for our times.
The year in review: 2020
Our first full year of business! Of course, we picked the messiest one we could find. We didn't accomplish everything we'd planned, but we made it through in one piece, which feels like an accomplishment on its own.
A watched employee never boils
Employers are warming up to the idea of remote working, but not everyone is quite ready to trust their employees fully. Instead of resorting to privacy-invading software, it's time to update how we think about our productivity.
How to mute a mic in six months
For a relatively simple app, Mic Drop took a lot longer than you might think to build. It turns out that there's a lot more to simplicity than there seems—and audio, in particular, is especially complex. Matt explores beneath the surface to share what we've learned from our first foray into macOS app development, from a (mostly) technical perspective.
The Remote Meeting Etiquette Guide
With the coronavirus pandemic ongoing, it looks like remote working may be here to stay—which means lots and lots of Zoom meetings. Since video calling is our new normal, it’s time we had an etiquette guide for our post-COVID world. Spoiler alert: keep your trousers on and mute your mic.
Say hello to Mic Drop!
Mic Drop is a little app for your Mac that makes it super easy to mute (and unmute!) your mic, using a global shortcut or a menu bar control. It's also our very first app, so please forgive us if we use too many exclamation points.
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