A home-cooked app

As I began wrapping up this version of Mattebox, a number of friends have asked—understandably—why I decided to make a photo app. In such a crowded market, what makes Mattebox different? What is the unique value proposition? Why would someone use Mattebox over Lightroom?

This is so interesting to me. If I had instead spent years working on my Neapolitan pizza recipe and invited the same friends over, would they have asked “what differentiates your pizza?” Would they have asked whether my pizza had any advantage over Spacca Napoli?

As it happens, this new Mattebox began at a very distinct point in time, just after the release of the iPhone 12 Pro. For the first time, I could shoot incredible ProRAW photos directly from the default camera app, which was always a swipe away. I had a brand new M1 MacBook Air which was 7X faster than my old MacBook, enabling me to quickly design in SwiftUI. I had a two-year-old daughter, and found myself taking more iPhone photos than ever. And it was November 2020, at the height of the pandemic, so I welcomed a distracting project.

I used Mattebox every day, and it evolved through constant use. After a while, my wife Susan asked for a copy, so I installed it on her phone. Years went by like this—a family photo app with just two users. So many of my our favorite photos and videos of our daughter have passed through Mattebox.

In other words, I didn’t start with a competitive analysis, or a business canvas, or a survey of consumer sentiment. It’s just not that kind of app. You could say I based Mattebox on the needs of the end-user (me)—but really I made it because nothing else was to my taste, and it was fun to build. It’s what Robin Sloan calls a “home-cooked app.”

Now that I’m releasing this reboot of Mattebox to the world, it feels a little nerve-wracking—like inviting thousands of people over to my house to try my pizza. But I’m excited to share Mattebox with more people, and I certainly hope you love what I’ve whipped up.