About Lotus
From client work to my own apps
I’ve been obsessed with the Mac since I first saw OS X running on an iMac G3. I ran a podcast for years interviewing indie Mac developers and reviewing Mac software, and finally in 2008 I was hired for my first software engineering role. I founded Lotus Apps in 2015.
For most of its life, Lotus was a consultancy. The clients who suited Lotus best cared about the details and would commit to a full discovery process. Many arrived sure of what they needed. Discovery usually turned up technical requirements, ways to make money, audiences and workflows they hadn’t explored, and often the right answer was different from the one they came in with. That was the rewarding part.
A few of our original clients are still on retainer, over a decade later and counting.
Along the way I also published several open source libraries, mostly Ruby, and they’re all on one page.
Bobara
I always wanted to make high-caliber, delightful software with a purpose, and now I get to do that for myself. The newest is Bobara, for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV, launching November 9, 2026. It’s the first of a new run of apps. I ran the same discovery process on it that I ran for clients, before writing a line of code.
Coming November 9
Bobara: a purposefully pointless little app about capybaras and boba tea.
Check in a drink, watch Momo soak in the hot spring, and visit the friends who’ve dropped by, on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV.
Thanks to
Chris, Lorena, Benjamin and Reed, for the client work we did together at Lotus.