But for some reason, when things go online everyone becomes obsessed with data and productivity. Are you transcribing your meetings? Did you optimize your note-taking workflow? What keyboard shortcuts are you using? This leads to the sterile, generic software tools popping up every day optimized for eking out that last bit of output. Humanity is completely traded for efficiency.
Over the last year and a half, it's become apparent to me (and to the team here at Macro) that what we need more authentic, human connection not ultra-productive work streams. We need more people feeling like they can bring their full selves to work. We need to realize that burnout is a much bigger problem than remote workers not getting things done. We need to bring empathy and emotion into the virtual world we now work in.
We completely rebuilt Macro over the past year to focus on doing just that. It's a Zoom client (so you can join any Zoom meeting with it) that is completely redesigned for expression and inclusion. We subtly show you how much you're talking so you can pull in people who have trouble joining in the conversation. We let you change the shape and color of your video stream to feel more comfortable with people staring at your face every day. We let you organize your window that way you want so you can feel most at home in a meeting with your team. We optimize for fun and hopefully help reduce some Zoom fatigue.
It's been a tough road technically to build Macro with the level of reliability and feature parity people expect from a new videoconferencing client. We've been frantically writing Typescript, Obj-C, Swift, and everything in the middle to bring a client that delights without sacrificing functionality. Because of that, we're macOS only for now (let's just say there's a lot of native code that has to be written for each platform) but we're actively working on adding more support! I'd love to hear your feedback :)