The Features I Didn’t Ship
Why boring features don't ship, even when they work
The Editor I Deleted
Last month I built a markdown editor for Telescopo, a highly requested feature. Took six hours. Live preview, syntax highlighting, the works. It worked `fine`.
I decided to scrap ALL of it.
Not because it was broken. It worked. But sitting there, looking at it, I felt nothing. Just another text box. Another cursor blinking. Another editor in a world drowning in editors.
My app renders LaTeX equations instantly. It makes PlantUML diagrams appear like magic. It has beautiful and fun themes with animated gradients that makes reading specs at 2 AM actually enjoyable. (Highly recommend the “Bad Command” or “Cyberpunk” themes!) And here I was, adding a boring text box that looked like every other text box since 1984.
So I killed it. Kept the new bottom navbar I’d designed for it though. That was actually beautiful.
The AI Name Drop
Since we launched it, Telescopo AI had “AI” in the name. Never had any AI features. I just liked how it sounded (and it’s a nice complementary name to my Mobile AI Headshots app - Telefoto AI).
Last week someone messaged me: “Drop the AI from the name. I hate AI buzzword bullshit.”
You know what’s funny? Version 3 just shipped with actual AI. On-device document summarization using Apple Intelligence. Real AI that does real work on your actual Mac. And that’s exactly when I dropped “AI” from the name.
Now it’s just Telescopo. Now that it actually has AI.
The LaTeX Flex
Everyone renders LaTeX the same way. Load MathJax. Wait. Process. Wait. Display. Wait some more if you want to change the font size. Start over if you switch themes.
I built my own LaTeX engine from scratch. Not because I’m smarter than the MathJax team. But because I’m more obsessive about one specific thing: speed.
Telescopo renders LaTeX instantly. Not quickly. Instantly. Change fonts in real-time. Switch from Light to Cyberpunk theme and watch the equations recolor themselves smoothly. Zoom with your trackpad and see the math scale perfectly.
Nobody else does this. Not because they can’t. Because they don’t care enough. They ship MathJax and call it done. That’s fine. But fine bores me.
The Cloud Nobody Asked For
“You need cloud sync,” a potential investor told me. “Table stakes for document apps.”
Sure. I could add it. Firebase, iCloud Kit, whatever. Sync your documents across devices. Collaborate with teammates. Share with anyone.
But here’s what actually happens: you open Telescopo because Preview choked on your 500-page PDF. You need to read this paper right now. You don’t need to sync it. You need to read it. Fast. Beautiful. Now.
Every feature I don’t build makes the features I do build better. No sync means instant opening. No accounts means no login screens. No cloud means your confidential technical docs stay on your Mac.
The 4MB Obsession
Telescopo is 4MB. VS Code is 370MB. I could make Telescopo bigger. Add frameworks. Include libraries. Bundle dependencies. Make my life easier.
But 4MB is a choice. It means I write my own LaTeX engine instead of embedding someone else’s. It means I optimize every image. It means I question every dependency.
There’s actually a single unoptimized PNG image in there right now that bugs me. I could probably get it under 2MB if I fixed it. I probably will. Not because anyone cares. Because I care.
The Perfect Reading Chair
Someone asked why Telescopo doesn’t compete with Obsidian or VS Code. Here’s why: they’re building Swiss Army knives. I’m building the world’s best reading chair.
You don’t edit in a reading chair. You don’t sync reading chairs to the cloud. You don’t need a subscription for your reading chair. You just need it to be comfortable, beautiful, and always work.
That’s Telescopo. It opens documents instantly. It renders them perfectly. It looks beautiful doing it. That’s the entire feature list that matters.
What Actually Ships
Version 3 just landed with a completely rebuilt bottom navbar. Subtle colors that match each theme. Tighter controls. Better popovers. Apple Intelligence integration that feels native.
None of these are “features” in the traditional sense. You can’t put “better navbar” on Product Hunt. But when you’re reading documentation at midnight, these details matter more than any editor ever could.
The Boredom Filter
Here’s my development process: build something. Use it for a week. If it bores me, delete it.
The editor bored me. Cloud sync bored me. Collaboration features bore me to tears.
But making LaTeX render instantly? That’s fun. Creating smooth theme transitions with Metal? That’s interesting. Building a Cyberpunk theme with animated gradients? That makes me smile every time I open a document. I was so happy using the Cyberpunk theme that I wrote Cyberspace and Bad Command themes just to have more choices in fun animated themes to choose from.
If it doesn’t make me excited to use my own app, it doesn’t ship.
The Next Thing
People keep sending feature requests. Add an editor. Add annotations. Add cloud sync. Add collaboration.
Maybe I’ll build them. Probably, I’ll delete them. The editor needs to be as beautiful as the viewer or it doesn’t belong. The sync needs to be invisible or it’s just friction. The features need to inspire me or they’re just checkboxes.
Until then, I’ll keep obsessing over the perfect reading experience. Making ePUBs and PDFs open faster. Making themes transition smoother. Making LaTeX render better. We just integrated our Mermaid renderer into Markdown, no reason we can’t start combining our rendering engines into an entirely new format that gives even more power and beauty to viewing technical documents.
Because in a world of bloated apps trying to do everything, there’s something radical about doing one thing perfectly.
Even if it’s just reading technical documents.
Telescopo is available on the Mac App Store, for more information visit www.telescopo.ai