We're live.

Wake took seventy-nine days from the afternoon it got its name to the evening it got its store page.

Most of that went into teaching a recorder to keep everything it catches. Wake listens for hours and keeps only what crosses the line, so by August a finished take was going to disk the moment it closed, and a long night fits on the disk.

On the evening of September 21, a two-word message, caps lock on:

WERE LIVE

Elijah · Sep 21, evening

Wake was on the App Store. The same day Choppa's Mac build went up as a free public beta. Two days later:

layerz is approved and in store.

Elijah · Sep 23

Choppa in March. Tide in June. Wake and Layerz inside one week of September. All four audio apps were out, each a different answer to the same question: how fast can a sound become something you can play?

• Choppa: a sound becomes sixteen pads.
• Tide: every take layers onto one tape that draws itself.
• Wake: it records when the room makes a sound.
• Layerz: loop the first take, then build on it.

What changed after.

Shipping the fourth one changed the work. The next version of each app would be the first update a real owner receives, so the what's-new card became a gate. And the site became a front door: within two weeks there was one page with every app on it.

Something else started that same week, on the Windows machine. That is the next chapter.