you are what you launch: how software became a lifestyle brand

lol, this description of Obsidian:

it doesn’t care how it looks, it cares that it works. it’s functional first, aesthetic maybe never. there’s no onboarding flow, no emoji illustrations, no soft gradients telling you everything’s going to be okay. just an empty vault and the quiet suggestion: you figure it out

On the other end of the spectrum are these apps:

these apps aren’t solving new problems. they’re solving old ones with better fonts. tighter animations, cleaner onboarding. they’re selling taste.

the ui is the brand. the founder’s blog post is the manifesto.

it’s not about what the software does. it’s about who it’s made for.