Happy 20th Birthday Curio! 🥳

[george]

In February 2004 Curio was released to the world. It’s amazing to think that Curio is now twenty years old.

The goal was to create a user friendly, freeform environment to mimic a real-world notebook or whiteboard and then supercharge it with an unlimited canvas; support for files and multimedia; collections like lists, mind maps, and kanban stacks; PDF browsing; Sleuth assistant; web views; sketching; markdown; extensive meta support; and anything else we could cook up. Pretty simple goal actually.

Curio To Do
Make the most powerful brainstorming, note-taking, and research environment for macOS.

Baby Pics

I found a few pics that show off Curio’s early days…

Curio 1 (early 2004)

Curio’s original app icon:

Curio 1.0 screenshot:

Marketing:

First video of Curio in action:

Curio 2 (mid/late 2005)

Curio 3 (mid/late 2006)

Physical Materials

And here’s a pic from my earlier post celebrating Zengobi’s 20th anniversary and detailing the history of Zengobi and Curio (Zengobi was formed October 2002). It was always so exciting to see a Curio product review in print. I loved swinging by the local Barnes & Noble to check for reviews. The yellow flyers in the picture were distributed at an educational conference.

The CD-ROM’s you see up there were produced and sent out to several dozen design schools across the country. Here’s a detail:

And Now We’re at Curio 28… Wow!

After just releasing Curio 28 it’s fun to look back at the initial Curio. I’m just as proud of that first release as I am in this latest release.

I’m Feeling a Bit Verklempt

It’s been an absolute blast working on Curio. Truly a dream job. I love reading about what you are creating with Curio. Fan mail and posts definitely keep me going. When I read workflows or see screenshots and customer projects I’m always astounded at what you all are doing. Please keep sending me feedback and comments!

Spread the Word!

As you’ve probably surmised, word of mouth from happy customers is our primary means of marketing. Please spread the news about Curio to any social contacts you might have including friends, colleagues, family, podcast listeners, YouTube audience, or that person working in the coffee shop.

To celebrate Curio’s 20th birthday through the end of February all new Curio Pro and Standard traditional licenses are 20% off in honor of Curio’s 20 year birthday. No coupon needed.

Thank You!

A mega huge THANK YOU to all of you for supporting Curio’s development. It wouldn’t be here without you!

Much more is planned for Curio so stay tuned for more features and functionality!

Happy birthday, Curio!

George

[quorm]

Think of all the thousands of people who made the best out of their interests because of Curio! Truly life-changing software.

Thank you, George

[Nils]

Thank you very much for your outstanding work. I enjoy it every single day.

[Amontillado]

Curio is indispensable. Sometimes I create a new project for no more than an outline. Often, I find I want to add more and it’s nice to tuck the word processing or DTP files in the same Curio project that mapped them out. Curio is always close at hand even for fairly simple things.

Good to see Peanut’s ongoing presence, too. Life without dogs would be bleak.

[DrJJWMac]

(singing off key) … Happy birthday to you … Happy Birthday to yooooou!

At a pace of 28 versions in 20 years, we should see the 25 year birthday bring us version 35. You have the pace mark now George.

Wonderful accomplishments every time. Congratulations and thank you for your one-man dedication across development and support through all these years.

–
JJW

[anamorph]

Happy 20th birthday to Curio! Great work, George! You are making a huge positive impact on so many of our lives. Thank you for all your inspired hard work!

As I’ve mentioned before, I find Curio absolutely indispensable and mission-critical. Literally every project I work on, from big business projects to weekend honey-do lists all get helped along the way by Curio.

[Juliovet]

Happy Birthday Curio! I bought my Mac in 2020 and started to use Curio just last year. This month it has become my powerhouse app, I use it for everything! It holds my projects, notes of projects, learning interests and notes related to them. I also use it organize my tasks and it interacts closely with my BuJo. It’s the first app I open when I turn on my MacBook and also the first one I open when my mind feels curious about learning something. Just today I was organizing information about skin conditions and created a mind map about them, then created a new idea space and added a bunch of images and links related to otitis externa in dogs.

Thanks Curio! Happy Birthday!

[intermagic]

Thank you, George, for this outstanding software and the world’s best support I have ever received! Every time someone asks me how I organise all my many projects and ideas and I show them Curio, they are completely stunned that such software exists and they’ve never heard of it (which reminds me, we’ve discussed Product Hunt before). And sad when they realise that it only runs on a Mac Happy Birthday Curio!

[retemirabile]

Thanks very much, George, for your great work on Curio – you have created a tool that is like no other. I can’t imagine doing my work (teaching) without it! On to the next 28 versions

[joel.s]

Wow, Happy Birthday to this fantastic creation! George, you are amazing. Curio sets the standard for thoughtful design and execution on the Mac and my life would be a lot more complicated and a lot less productive without it. Can’t thank you enough!

[JJAmbrose]

My MacBook Pro is at this point 14 years old, so it’s not been capable of running the latest and greatest version for many moons, and I sadly haven’t been even really using said Mac, but Curio is going to be an instant purchase for me should I ever pull the trigger on a new Mac. Truly appreciative of the years of memories I have organizing my nerdy and/or professional pursuits in Curio along with kicking the tires on several betas.

Cheers to 20, George, and wishing you health, happiness, and success in the future!