Mmhmm launches with general availability for Mac

The co-founder and former CEO at Evernote, Phil Libin, is back with a brand new company and product. Libin, a 20+ year tech executive and venture capitalist, is launching mmhmm, a product designed to help people improve their communications over the internet through services like Zoom and Google Meet. According to Libin, mmhmm will define a new category of “IRL+” products that make that hybrid experience more enjoyable and effective than either just online or just real-life. Sounds super interesting, right? I certainly think so.

We've had these video conferencing services for years now but it took a worldwide pandemic for someone to figure out a way to make these video conferences more effective and more like "real life." But that's what Libin and his company, All Turtles, is planning to do with the release of their first product: mmhmm. Starting today Mac users will be able to download and signup for mmhmm without an invite.

From ideation to prototype, it took the team about two months to build it out. I've been beta testing mmhmm for a few months now and I love it. You can see a little video demo I made back in early August in the tweet below.

Since that release the mmhmm team has been hard at work improving the functionality and releasing some more features including co-pilot, dynamic rooms, big hand mode, laser pointers, away mode, and more.

With Copilot​, two people can work and present together. That way, you can speak while your copilot advances the slides, or you can present together. Dynamic Rooms allow you to​ create animated backgrounds generated in real time with code. Each one can be customized according to your unique style, and they use far less processing power than video files. Big Hand makes it easier to communicate visually over video, while also adding a dash of fun to your meetings. However, while mmhmm works on macOS Big Sur, Catalina, and Mojave, this feature is currently only available on the brand new Apple M1-powered Macs running macOS Big Sur. Big bummer! But in perhaps somewhat good news, we'll all be making the move to the M-line of Apple silicon at some point.

What's the future of All Turtles look like?

In terms of future products, expect more to be coming up the pike in the near future. When we spoke with Megan Miller, Head of Marketing and Communications at All Turtles, and lead at Mmhmm Studios, the in-house content team at mmhmm, she told us, "as mmhmm ramps up, we’ll continue to work on new products and ideas at All Turtles in parallel." The All Turtles studio model allows them to tackle real world problems with real solutions – they're currently hiring across the board at both mmhmm and All Turtles to continue breaking down remote work and health barriers.

As for Windows users, the mmhmm team says to "hang tight." Mmhmm will have a basic [free] version as well as a Premium version for $99.99 per year or $9.99/month. Regardless of what plan you choose, mmhmm is making a promise that you will never see ads, "we don’t believe in advertising or any other way of monetizing your data. All of our revenue will come the old-fashioned way: when people pay us to use our product."

Additionally, mmhmm is offering Premium ​free of charge to students and educators​ ​for one year​. If you're interested, please email education@mmhmm.app from your school email address. Lastly, as a special thanks to all of the existing users, the company is providing ​three months of mmhmm Premium for free to beta testers​.