Software has no mass, no detents, and no manufacturing tolerance — which is exactly why it has to be built like it does. On timing as a material, skeuomorphism as a constraint rather than a decoration, and what building companion apps for hardware taught us about both.
From concept to contract manufacturer, we built the hardware behind turning an iPad into a second monitor for your Mac. The firmware — the software that keeps a device's promises — is where the schedule, the reviews, and the trust actually live.
How years of 1-star reviews — ours and every player in the category — became the roadmap for rebuilding a fifteen-year-old audio app, and why the promises that matter are the boring ones.
A customer's plugin crashed our player on every editor open. Same plugin, same app, zero crashes on my machine. A forensic walk from MetricKit JSON to a one-line fix — and the discipline that matters more than the fix.
One engineer, a fleet of coding agents, and a music player rebuilt for modern macOS: sandboxed Audio Unit hosting, deterministic replay harnesses, and the rules that made it work.