Peter N. Lewis

Peter N. Lewis is a Perth-based Mac software developer best known as the sole developer of Keyboard Maestro, the macro and automation app for macOS, and earlier as the creator of Anarchie, one of the first internet file-transfer apps for the Mac. He founded Stairways Software in Perth, Western Australia, in 1995.

Born in Jamaica and raised in Montreal, Lewis moved to Perth at 12 and got his first Mac in 1986. He studied computer science and mathematics at the University of Western Australia, then started writing Mac software in the early 1990s while working at Curtin University, with the goal of bringing Unix-grade internet tools to the Mac with Mac ease of use. In 1993 he released Anarchie, an FTP client named after the Archie search engine; it was renamed Interarchy in 2000 after the original name was cybersquatted.

Lewis was an early champion of try-before-you-buy shareware sold online. He encouraged Kee Nethery to start the payment service Kagi and became its first customer in 1994; Stairways later became the first Kagi vendor to pass $1 million in revenue. TidBITS ran a two-part interview with him in 1995, calling him a godfather of Mac internet shareware. In 2007 he sold Interarchy to Matthew Drayton, a long-time Stairways developer.

By then his focus had moved to Keyboard Maestro. Michael Kamprath created the app in 2002, and Lewis, a devoted user, bought it in July 2004 when its development stalled, shipping version 2.0 that September. He has since grown it through version 11, adding programming logic, web-page automation, macro syncing, text recognition and a command-line tool, and has said its user base keeps growing mostly by word of mouth. He sells it directly rather than through the Mac App Store so he controls upgrades and refunds, and still handles much of its support himself.

Lewis is a model of the long-haul indie: more than 30 years shipping Mac software, two decades refining a single product, as the only developer.