Our story
From a Linux icon contest to an independent Apple software studio
One school calendar, a design competition, and a shared interest in well-crafted desktop software started a collaboration that has lasted for more than 20 years. This is how it became Apptorium.
By Marcin KrzywonosFounder of Apptorium
I always wanted to make my own programs.
I started programming when I was 12 because I wanted to make programs of my own. My first serious projects were desktop applications for Linux — a kind of prehistory of Apptorium.
The platforms have changed, but my process has not: notice a problem in my own work, imagine the tool I need, and build it.
2004The icon competition
I was working on a Linux calendar where students could record grades, tests, and homework. The application needed an icon, so together with the linux.pl community I announced a competition.
Paweł submitted the winning design.
After that, Paweł continued creating graphics for my applications. One icon had started a collaboration lasting more than 20 years.
2006Bigger ideas on Linux
Our next application was Incollector, a place for keeping websites, notes, software serial numbers, quotations, and other useful information together.
Later that year, we built e-Sofokles, one of Poland's first electronic school journals. It did not become a commercial success and we eventually stopped working on it, but it was an early attempt to turn a complicated everyday process into useful software.
Incollector
e-Sofokles
2011Apptorium begins
I founded Apptorium intending to make Mac applications. In practice, the early years were spent on web projects and dedicated iOS apps for clients while I continued developing ideas for products of our own.
Paweł contributed graphics during part of this period, and other collaborators helped with design and development along the way. The company changed shape, but it remained small.
Around 2016Returning to desktop software
The transition to our own Mac applications was gradual. Workspaces came from a problem in my daily work: every project required opening the same set of files, folders, websites, and apps. I wanted to prepare the entire environment with one click.
Workspaces became one of our first successful Mac products. As product revenue grew, I could gradually finish earlier client relationships and focus on the studio I had originally wanted to create.
2019The app that changed Apptorium
SideNotes began with another personal need: a fast notepad that could slide out from the side of the screen without pulling me away from my work. I wanted it for notes, smaller task steps, code fragments, screenshots, and anything else that needed to stay close at hand.
SideNotes found its audience immediately.
Apple featured it in the "Apps and Games We Love Right Now" collection, and it became Apptorium's biggest success. From that same year, Apptorium has supported itself entirely through its own applications.
Working together again
After spending time on other projects, including a children’s book, Paweł returned when SideNotes needed a few new graphics. Around 2023, our collaboration became regular again.
Today I create and design the applications, while Paweł creates their icons and interface concepts, advises on UI, and keeps Apptorium’s visual language consistent.
We work remotely between Zielona Góra and Poznań. Almost everything about our tools has changed, but we still share a deliberately old-fashioned belief that details matter and an app should be practical, beautiful, and polished before it ships.
“A well-designed app lets you start using it naturally, guided by intuition rather than instructions.”
Paweł Krupski · Visual designer
Still the same motivation
Apptorium is still the kind of studio I hoped to build: small, independent, and committed to building well-crafted tools that solve real problems.
More than 20 years after that first icon competition, the motivation remains simple: create software that helps other people as much as it helps me, and care deeply about how it works, looks, and feels.