Muse — canvas for thinking Reviews

The team at Muse have created an incredible product oriented toward creativity and organization. Musecanvas uniquely manages to combine a blank canvas with structural organization, in turn presenting an opportunity for unrestrained thought and productivity. Never before have I been more effective in terms of idea generation and project development than I have with Muse at my disposal. In addition, the founders behind Muse have been incredible to work with. Their ability to source feedback on the product (and most importantly, act upon it) has allowed them to take a game changing application and continually improve on it. With a dynamite product and a special team committed to improvement, Muse will only get better with time. I’ll be along for the journey, and am excited to see how Musecanvas will impact others in similar ways to what it has done for me.

I have ADHD, and I have always struggled to complete my readings for my classes and take effective notes. I’m also an art student and really think visually and spatially. Because of muse, for the first time in my 4 years as an undergrad, I’m getting my readings done (using side by side mode) and am able to organize my notes and ideas in a way that has really enhanced my learning experience and creative process. It’s like an extension of my brain! I also emailed the team with a question and they were quick and friendly in their reply. Thank you so much for creating Musecanvas!
A few things that could be helpful in the future
-Larger card space/ able to go any direction rather than just to the right (I have an iPad mini so I fill up the space quickly)
-Ability to add cards within a Scribble card

I was about 75 cards into Muse before the light bulb went on: This is a game-changer! Finally, an app that views the iPad not as an iPhone or laptop, but as a unique tool for creative work. A board is a Tabula Rosa where you can place and move cards, drawings, other boards, etc. The interactions are visual and tactile using fingers, the pencil and the keyboard. It took me awhile to appreciate all of the design choices as I was coming from the usual Drafts/Bear/Roam/Notion/Notes world (yeah, finding the right notes app is a quest). Muse is truly different. Now, I use Muse for the creative stuff and Notes for more quotidian needs. I'm guessing that this is still early days for Muse and that it will add features like links in future releases. The subscription prices is much less than Roam's $180/year. Given the power of Muse, you could almost say it's a bargain.

Rant here. I’m getting increasingly frustrated with this trend of subscription based apps. While it’s cheap on its own, the price racks up VERY quickly when you download a bunch of apps that require this subscription based model. There’s like, ten apps I really like that forces this on you, which already makes the monthly price $25-$50 for such basic apps that most people don’t use on a daily basis. We criticize Adobe for it, I don’t see why iOS apps shouldn’t be either. I’d rather pay for it once, like max $30, than be locked into a service that I don’t even use all the time. Extremely bummed by this, I want to be able to OWN the products I love to use time to time and not be forced to use it all the time to make the price somewhat worth it. Musecanvas is quite perfect for my job time to time, but there’s no way I’d use it ALL THE TIME. The sub model for Musecanvas is so overpriced for what it is. I wish I could just...buy this once. Why can’t more apps be like Procreate, buy once and done?

Like many, the linear aspects of most note taking apps is fine for a bit, but doesn’t allow for enough depth once thoughts really start swirling. Having had a chance to use Muse for many months, I’m happy with the more spatial/layered flow to notes and content which makes it thru Musecanvas.

Downsides have been minor (syncing between multiple iPads, some layout issues which various updates have solved), the upsides have been more than solid.

This isn’t a collaborative notes app. Muse is much more geared for ideation and contemplation. To that end, it’s so focused that when it’s compared to others it seems to fall short. Yet, that that focus which makes it perfect for depth and space. Between the gestures, required Pencil aspect, and the light UI iterations, you don’t feel it’s expanding beyond your scope of use.

Muse might not be for everyone (a friend puts Notion on the opposite end, another Mural/Miro). But, for whom it clicks, Muse nails this quite well. Recommended for sure. But, do the trial first... it will help you focus on what you need best from a notes app.

I’m all for supporting developers, and am even okay paying subscription fees. But $99 per year is too much.

Additionally, Musecanvas is missing key functionality:
- Why cant I zoom in and out so i can see all the contents of a board?
- Why am I limited to so few colors when drawing with the Apple Pencil?
- Shouldn’t there be a file view, so you can see all your boards you’ve made at once? It may not be a big deal to have one board containing all of your sub-boards, but what if you have 100s of boards? It would be much easier to find a given board in a file-view than it would be to navigate one mega board.

If you’re intended market is students like me, then you’re out pricing yourselves. Musecanvas seems like it has promise, but there’s just no way I can afford it.

Edit: Thank you for the reply Muse. I intend to keep an eye on Musecanvas! Has a lot of potential, but I hope you all reconsider the pricing!

I’ve used several note-taking/white-boarding apps on the iPad, but none have the intuitive interface of Muse. The nested spatial organization is amazing (especially with the recent update - boards take on the shape of their content). It’s like an electronic of version of my piles of stuff (which I retrieve by location, shape, color, etc). The gestures for navigation are well thought out and a pleasure to use.

The integration with the Apple Pencil is also well thought out: don’t overwhelm with options, switching between ink and scribble (to create cards), using angle to switch lasso mode.

A surprise was discovering a Muse app on my iPhone - able to write a quick note, copy a link, or copy text and it seamlessly appears in my Muse inbox on my iPad.

The free trial is pretty capable, just some limits on the size of boards and number of cards, but these limits are sufficient to play around and decide if you want one of the subscription models.

I love Musecanvas! If you are like me and you like to get your ideas down but don’t use it very much, the 100 free cards is plenty and you aren’t going to run out soon. However, I have one suggestion. Can you make an option where you could change the sizes and colors of tools like highlighters and pens? Sometimes I like to change the colors to keep things new and organized (If there is an option I cannot find it). Other than that, Musecanvas is definitely worth your time and depending on how much you use it, your money. :)

Musecanvas is beautiful and amazing. I want to give you some money... but I don't want to give you $100 up front, and I definitely don't want to have to give you $100 next year to keep using it.

I'd consider a one-time purchase of up to $50 (but I'd hesitate beyond $25).

It seems you think your product is comparable to Dropbox or Evernote, but you're not running a large scale cloud service. Subscriptions make sense for them -- they have an operational cost to keep my data retrievable.

You use my iCloud account that I pay separately for and run locally on the iPad that I own. You don't run a service. You shouldn't structure your pricing as a subscription. That's just greedy. While some people will pay (and plenty will auto renew next year), I would bet you're leaving a ton of money on the table by having such outrageous terms.

If I were to begrudgingly accept a subscription, it couldn't be more than about about $30/year (preferably with a monthly option to explore for a few months without a long-term commitment).

I am a teacher in NYC, and I find this design to be very conducive to the education field for lesson presentations.

Things I Love: 1) PDFs present amazingly, 2) Ability to upload video and audio files 3) Can write/doodle on board

Things I Want: 1) Customize colors (background and pencil), 2) Multiple project boards not connected on one page 3) Have a curser for video and audio playback. Can only play, can’t stop and go forward or back.

Muse, completes the iPad workflow—it’s an open space that allows one to bring together, photos, drawing, sketching, and typed text into an awesome visualizer. It is so much fun to use and see ideas go directly from your brain to your iPad in a visual, shareable way.
My handwriting is terrible, so the text tool keeps things clean but there is just enough capabilities of the Apple Pencil to connect the dots from your head to the screen.

It feels physical.

I’ve been wanting something like this for years. There are other apps that do something similar, like a cork board or index card app, or a whiteboard app, or a mindmap app, or a handwriting app with an infinite canvas, or a mood board app, or a visual reference app. For me, this one app replaces many of the functions of these other apps, and it does it in a natural, comfortable way, that’s easy to learn and feels right.

Some really thoughtful interaction design here when paired with an iPad and Apple Pencil. This is really something I think many of us have looked for, and with muse it’s finally here. Love collecting ideas and connecting thoughts in Musecanvas. Feels much more natural and an extension of where my head is at. I hope Musecanvas grows with features and that it stays around because I can see myself using this indefinitely!

This is a lovely app. I just refuse to pay monthly for something I use randomly. I appreciate the 100 cards for free users, but if there was a flat fee for Musecanvas , I’d buy it in a minute. Take a look at Nebo. I bought that note-taking app in a minute because they had reasonable one-time charges for the features.

When installed on my phone the only option is to type some text and “send to muse” which logs the text written. I tried every input I could and couldn’t get anything else to happen. No creating new boards from swiping, nowhere to login … nothing.

I had my roomate install Musecanvas on his phone to ensure it wasn’t something wrong with my phone and he experienced the same thing. I have no clue what’s going on with Musecanvas.

If this is an iPad exclusive app it shouldn’t be listed as iPhone compatible and mention IOS compatibility on the developer website.

what I wouldn’t give to pour out my mind into an organized, three month roadmap of checklists and kpi’s. but my mind doesn’t work anything like that. my thinking is the farthest thing from linear.

i use notes, email, a moleskin...word docs that quickly pick up url’s and pdf’s, tracked changes (and so many untracked changes)....like the joke, it’s a horse designed by committee: a camel.

tldr: muse is a place to pull everything together and think. im not sure if the universe is expanding, but the internet is, and with every project it’s harder to “put everything on the table” without printing everything out...which itself is a nightmare.

anyways...huge fan, try muse, it’s amazing.

This is a great app, absolutely suit for iPad. But the price for member is $100 a year and not a one time purchased. Even though have good in-app features but don’t provide other cloud base. Don’t think it really worth $100 yearly though.

The free trial with free 100 cards on the other hand is very nice.

I like app a lot for my first uses. The main thing I wish it could do is expand and zoom in. If it was a multilayered organizing and brainstorming app with a truly unlimited writing surface it would be a 5 star app in my opinion. I am very excited to keep using it and looking forward to that update!

The writing experience need to be improved such as the pen pressure, anyway a good app, thanks for making it.

This is one of the only apps that I don’t think about when using. It gets out of my way to allow me to focus on my task at hand. That’s the beauty of it, it’s simple. And this team cares about Musecanvas. Awesome job!