Today I filed the paperwork for Purplelink LLC with the state of Georgia. It's a formality, but it makes something real: I'm building software seriously now, not just as a side thing with no home.
I've been writing apps for a while. Some shipped. Some didn't. The ones that stuck shared something in common — they solved a specific problem I had, for a person I understood well, on a platform I cared about. The ones that didn't were usually chasing something I thought was interesting rather than something that genuinely needed to exist.
Purplelink is an attempt to do more of the former. Three apps, each one solving a real problem for a real person.
The three apps
ModernTex (macOS)
I've spent a lot of time in LaTeX. Writing manuscripts, watching compile errors scroll by, switching between four different windows to get anything done. There are editors that help — but most of them are either programmer tools dressed up for researchers, or old enough that they predate modern macOS by a decade.
ModernTex is a native macOS app that treats the academic manuscript as a first-class workflow. Multi-file editing, synchronized PDF preview, BibTeX autocomplete that works, submission-readiness checks, version snapshots. The whole lifecycle, in one place, fast.
Haea (iOS)
Health apps have two modes: the simple kind that just logs things, and the complex kind that tries to do everything and becomes unusable. Haea tries to thread that needle — start with clean logging and basic charts, and layer in real intelligence for people who want it.
The premium features are genuinely advanced: Kalman-filtered recovery state, Granger causality between health variables, circadian rhythm phase tracking, biological age estimation. All of it runs on-device. No cloud sync, no ads, no surveillance model. Your data stays on your phone.
GlobePin (iOS)
This one started as a personal itch. I wanted a simple way to track everywhere I'd been — not a social network, not a check-in app, just a map. GlobePin grew into something more: flight tracking, a 3D globe view, stats, goals, shareable postcards. It's the travel app I wanted but couldn't find.
The philosophy
The tagline on the homepage is "making software that lasts." That's not just marketing copy — it's a constraint I'm trying to build under.
Software that lasts doesn't mean software that never changes. It means software that was designed with enough clarity of purpose that it holds up over time. It knows what it is. It does that thing well. It doesn't need a feature added every sprint to justify its existence.
Apple platforms reward this. macOS and iOS users expect apps that feel like they belong — fast, native, coherent. Achieving that takes more time upfront, but the result is an app people actually keep on their phone or open every day.
That's what I'm trying to build.
What's next
All three apps are in active development. GlobePin is the closest to shipping — it's at build 79 and approaching the App Store submission checklist. Haea and ModernTex are further behind but advancing quickly.
I'll use this blog to write about what I'm building, what I'm learning, and occasionally what I'm thinking about. If you're building something similar, or just curious — say hi.
— Ben Ampel, Atlanta