We build software to help people accomplish more every day. We believe that being productive isn't just about getting more work done; it's about doing better quality work in less time, freeing up time and mental energy to spend on other things in our lives.
At the Omni Group, one of our inspirational touchpoints is a quote from a 1990 interview with Steve Jobs, filmed shortly after he launched NeXT:
I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.
And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
Steve’s notion of a bicycle for our minds—a tool which we can leverage to dramatically increase our mental effectiveness—inspires us to build the apps we build here at Omni. For computers to assist us in our pursuits, they need software applications. As developers of productivity apps, it’s our role to design and build apps that empower our customers.
In order of importance, our business priorities are:
At the Omni Group, our goal is to make the absolutely best software that we can make. Rather than seeking growth and profits at all costs, we've carefully and intentionally built a sustainable, self-funded and bootstrapped business. This gives us the freedom to focus on the platforms that make developers and users the most productive: Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. It also gives us the time we need to make our software the best it can be on those platforms—so we can ship software when it's ready, rather than needing to ship early because we're running out of funding from investors.
Let's not pretend. Omni is a business, and for a business to be sustainable it must make money. Businesses that lose money can't create great software for very long. If we want to keep creating great software for the long term, we need to earn enough money to be able to make a living and support our families. Most companies put "Make money" at the top of their priority list. We’re honest enough to include money in our priorities, but we’re committed enough to our vision to put it after "Create great software."
When we have good balance in our lives, our work produces better results. We work hard, have fun, and enjoy our work of building, documenting, selling, and supporting great applications. We think it's important to find and maintain a joyful balance between our work and the rest of our lives, spending time with our families and community.
At Omni, it is our company policy to care about our employees, our neighborhood, our environment, and the world.
We value people more than profits, and measure our success in these terms. Businesses lose their way whenever they value profits more than people—whether those people are employees, customers, or bystanders.
We believe that improving the world we live in is the highest priority in life, and that our company is an extension of ourselves and not a separate, amoral entity. We believe we can contribute to and improve the world around us every day through the work that we do. We try to write great software, represent it fairly, and stand behind it in any case.
We have some values that are very important to us. We may not be perfect, but these values are our compass.
One of the strongest foundations for any relationship is respect. We may not always see eye to eye with everyone we encounter, but, as John Gottman found, a lack of respect is poisonous to any relationship—leading to conflict rather than reconciliation. By treating everyone and everything around us with respect, we strengthen every interaction and every relationship.
Truly respecting our customers leads to profound outcomes in our work—such as our stance on privacy, that your data is yours. Another implication of being respectful is our policy of being honest about the state of our products (and everything else).
Decades of experience may have taught us some of the questions we need to consider in our work—but it's important to remember that we still don't know all the questions, much less all the answers. There are always new things to learn, and if we listen to our customers, community, and each other with humility we'll learn much more quickly than if we bring our own hubris to each problem.
We think that valuing respect and humility, along with working hard to create great software products, helps us contribute more to the world than we take from it. And we hope that spreading these values through our work inspires others to do the same.
© 1994–2024 The Omni Group; Apple, MacBook, the Apple logo, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and App Store are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries and regions. Apple Vision Pro is a trademark of Apple Inc.