Every Day

One of my favorite movies is Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Jiro is in his eighties, has made sushi for seventy years, and still shows up and finds ways to improve the restaurant experience bit by bit each day. Over time, he has figured things out like: massaging the octopus for 50 minutes instead of 30 minutes produces better texture, that the rice is better when it is served at human body temperature, and that the sushi needs to be angled differently for left-handed customers. No one would notice each change, but over time, these add up to make his a truly great sushi restaurant.

One of the most fulfilling aspects of building Hobbes has been waking up every day and working to improve it. Sometimes it is fixing a bug, trying a different color, or improving an interaction. Other times, it is throwing away something I have built and starting over from scratch with a new idea. Since launch 3 weeks ago, I have been delighted by a lot of you using the app and sending me feedback on what's working well, what's not, and what's completely broken at times. I have made over 90 changes to Hobbes since launch based on your feedback.

Here are the main ones:

Habits, rewritten. When you start a habit, you now pick your starting point. The gentle version builds the pattern first: "add protein at one meal." The strong version gives you a personalized numeric target. Start gentle, and when the pattern sticks, switch to numbers anytime from the habit menu.

Logging is even faster. If you have an iPhone, you can now log a meal without opening the app at all. Just tell Siri "I want to log a meal with Hobbes" and say what you ate. That's it. Inside the app, chat now has push-to-talk dictation. Hold the mic, speak, release, sent. This has quickly become my preferred way to log meals when I am not taking photos.

Reminders that know your schedule. Surprisingly, the most requested feature was notifications. Hobbes now sends push notifications customized to your goals, timed to when you actually eat.

And the rest. A lot of UX polish: the habits screen, the macros, and the weight trends have been fully redesigned; you can swipe between the main screens; the illustrations in the app are better; etc. And dozens of bug fixes: chat understands and responds better now, the UI works better on Android phones of all sizes, and the infrastructure is more stable now to prevent app outages.

If you already have Hobbes, update the app to see the improved version. If you haven't yet tried Hobbes, download it today from the App Store or the Play Store and use the code 'THANKYOU' on the subscription screen to get a full year at just $20 (and equivalent in other currencies).

This is the best version of Hobbes that has ever existed. Until tomorrow.