People are curious about what I think’s so great about @MuseAppHQ. I think I can boil it down to just one particularly representative example: Selection.

Anyone who’s used a graphics program — your Photoshops, your Pixelmators, your MacPaints — knows there are two ways to make a selection:
1) Drag a box.
2) Lasso an arbitrary shape.

Dragging a box is simple and fast: one click, one drag — and the drag can be adjusted in real time so the *only the click* needs to be targeted. Fast. Easy. Minimal twitch factor. But not very precise.

For precision (selecting around a non-box thing without cutting into background) there's the lasso. It lets you carefully trace the path of the selection you want. Carefully being the operative word. You need to target each and every point on the path. Using the lasso is sweaty.

Muse lets you use either a box or a lasso to make selections. No big innovation there. You make lasso selections with the Pencil. It’s very nice to be able to use the iPad’s most precise instrument for Muse’s most precision operation, but that’s not breaking new ground either.

What’s amazing is how it presents modality. See, in Photoshop, &c. tools are modal. And (importantly) I have to manage this mode in order to get the results I want.

If I want to make a box selection, I have to have to be in box-selection-mode. If, instead, I do it in lasso-selection-mode, I end up with a diagonal-squiggle not the box I intended.

Speaking to the developers out there, this mode is state. It’s a bit in my mental model. I have to know “am I in box mode?” before use the interface because different gestures (drag vs. trace) and different levels of precision (breezy vs. sweaty) will be required depending.

This means before I can let muscle-memory take over and do the gesture I know I need to perform, I *literally need to context switch*. Halt everything, consult state, potentially switch mode, and then try to resume the half-subconscious action I was trying to take a moment ago.

So how does Muse deal with this? You make a lasso selection with the Pencil as normal. To make a box selection instead, just hold the Pencil at a low angle, like you were shading with it:

I want you to look at that video again. That little flip of the Pencil in the hand? That’s the context switch. Muse takes the it completely out of mental state and turns it into a physical thing, amenable to muscle memory.

This is a level up, but also not unique. Anyone who uses Photoshop does so with one hand on the keyboard so as to hold down one or more modifier keys while working. ⌥⇧⌘-drag this or that for different behavior. That sort of thing.

What impresses me is the careful thought around the interaction. The Muse developers realized they needed precise (lasso) and imprecise (box) selection UI in their app. And they realized a (small p) pencil has precise (line) and imprecise (shade) modes physically build into it.

Connecting those dots isn’t hard, but thinking about selections in your app carefully enough to see the dots is.

Anyway, maybe I’m reading too much into it. But this level of thought (or, at least, the appearance of it) is pervasive throughout the app. I haven’t felt this cared for using an app in a *long* time. It makes it an absolute joy to use.