The Summit Blog

In this article, we share a few design details from our latest product, ChessDrop.

This article takes a look at the bitcoin landscape today, in terms of the changes we’ve observed around the digital currency during the past few years.

To achieve widespread adoption, bitcoin products must translate the unfamiliar realities of the mathematical currency into concepts and usability models that are easily understood by consumers and organizations. This article examines, from a product design perspective, a leading bitcoin product, Xapo.

Learn how we use the combination of two Mac applications—Daylite and Direct Mail—to communicate more effectively.

We’re in the final week of beta testing prior to launching Rego, Makalu’s second product for the iPhone and I wanted to share with you a few reflections on the experience of getting here.

There’s a moment in chess when a game deviates from a well known sequences of moves each player has memorized. They call this going “off book” and it’s an interesting metaphor for modern software development.

Occasionally the internet spotlight lands on some designer’s unsolicited redesign of a popular product, rekindling the age-old discussion of whether unsolicited design can be good design. This article looks at that question.

Sometimes I get contacted by individuals who are planning to start a services company and are seeking advice on a variety of related topics. One of the most common questions is, “How do I determine an hourly rate?”

Matt’s book, Money for Something, is a straight-forward guide to investing. To help readers put theory into practice, we took a boring financial calculator and turned it into something that lets you experiment and create your unique investment plan. Read on to see how it all came together.

Blocks make Objective-C much more expressive. They can also reduce the amount of code you need to write, which reduces the amount of code you need to maintain and debug. Any developer who has ever worked in a higher level language like Ruby, Python or Javascript should feel right at home using blocks. Once they get past the awkward syntax at least.

Our experience with RaceSplitter has taught us that customers love getting personalized service, from someone who knows the product inside and out. And that love translates to loyalty, retention, and word-of-mouth marketing.

It’s not every day an opportunity presents itself to develop a product for 1.5 million people. But that’s what happened when we were engaged to develop the iPhone component of Catalog Choice’s new suite of premium services.

Although we’re doing good work by other people’s standards, it often feels like we’re not doing our best work, by our own standards. This article explores what we can do about that.

Our aim for version 1.0 of RaceSplitter was to deliver a “minimum viable product”. This article discusses what that means to us.

After a decade of successful client work, we at Makalu realized our dream of creating our own product—RaceSplitter, an iOS application for the timing of sporting events. This is the story of how it happened.

This article describes how we approach service pricing at Makalu.

A potential new customer was surprised when I told him we don’t sign NDAs. This article explains why.