Gus Mueller

Founder of Flying Meat, two-decade indie Mac maker of Acorn and Retrobatch

@ccgus Mukilteo, United States5.9K followersMac & Desktop App Makers Design Tools Open Source Makers

About Gus Mueller

Gus Mueller is the founder of Flying Meat, an independent Mac software company he started in 2003 near Seattle, Washington. For more than twenty years he has made a living building native Mac apps, making him one of the longest-running indie developers on the platform.

Flying Meat's first hit was VoodooPad, an award-winning desktop wiki, which Mueller later sold to Plausible Labs so he could concentrate on his image tools. Its flagship today is Acorn, an affordable, approachable image editor for the Mac pitched as an alternative to heavyweight professional suites, alongside Retrobatch, a node-based batch image-processing app. Over the years he also shipped smaller utilities such as FlySketch and FlyGesture.

Mueller is also known in the developer world for FMDB, the widely used open-source Objective-C wrapper around SQLite. Flying Meat is a genuine family business — his wife Kirstin handles support and finances — and is often cited as a model of a calm, sustainable, profitable software company.

Products by Gus Mueller

Acorn

flyingmeat.com

Image editor for the Mac, designed to be powerful yet approachable and affordable.

Retrobatch

flyingmeat.com

Node-based batch image processing app for macOS.

VoodooPad

flyingmeat.com

acquired

Award-winning desktop wiki for the Mac, later sold to Plausible Labs.

FMDB

github.com

Popular open-source Objective-C wrapper around SQLite.

Builds indie alternatives to:Adobe Photoshop

Exit story

VoodooPad

→ Plausible Labs · 2013

Running both VoodooPad and Acorn had become too much for one developer, and VoodooPad was being neglected. Gus wanted it to keep growing with a team behind it while he focused fully on Acorn.

by Gus Mueller

Gus Mueller's journey, 2003–20132 milestones · self-reported

Exit
Launch / milestone
Started 2003

2003Launch: Founded Flying Meat to make better Mac applications
2013Exit: Sold VoodooPad to Plausible Labs to focus on Acorn

Timeline

2003 — Founded Flying Meat to make better Mac applications, starting with VoodooPad.
2013 — Sold VoodooPad to Plausible Labs to focus on Acorn.

How Gus builds

Build native, well-crafted Mac apps and sell them directly.
Keep the company small, profitable and family-run.
Make professional tools approachable and affordable.

Gus Mueller FAQ

Who is Gus Mueller?

Gus Mueller is the founder of Flying Meat, an independent Mac software company founded in 2003 that makes the image editor Acorn and the batch processor Retrobatch.