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True; that's the only subscription model I find acceptable for software that hardly changes in meaningful ways. For example, I refuse to upgrade Git Tower to ve
by thijsvandien 7y ago
True; that's the only subscription model I find acceptable for software that hardly changes in meaningful ways. For example, I refuse to upgrade Git Tower to version 3 as a protest against fournova's new licensing. Up to that point, I was a loyal customer and product advocate, basically buying every upgrade anyway, but by my own choice. Instead, I'll be on version 2 "forever", despite all its flaws. It was even worse for Windows users, who bought licenses (on my advice, sometimes...) for a thing that realistically speaking never came out of beta. To have a usable product to begin with, they suddenly needed to pay for a subscription. There was zero response to my email explaining this, so there's that. Now I'm keeping my eyes open for alternatives.
- optimiz3 7y agoSame here for Adobe Creative Suite; still on version 6 (perpetual license), which I run in a Virtual Machine due to support end-of-life.
- dd36 7y agoIntuit Quickooks is same way. Hasn’t substantively changed in 20 years but they stop you from importing new data if you don’t update to latest every 3 years. They need some real competition.
- toasterlovin 7y ago> They need some real competition. Have you tried Xero? I haven’t, but if you have, I’d be curious to hear your take on it.
- keithnz 7y agoWe run our company on Xero, it's pretty good!
- projektfu 7y agoThere’s Sage 50 if you want desktop, but even desktop QB is on life support and everyone’s going online.
- takeda 7y agoSwitched to GnuCash and didn't look back. The UI is uglier, but at least it works correctly with double entry bookkeeping.
- dangoor 7y agoFWIW, I think Adobe actually adds quite a bit to Creative Cloud every year, plus they offer fonts and connections with their mobile apps and such as part of the same price. Creative Cloud today is a very different beast from CS6. (obdisclaimer: I worked for Adobe several years ago, but have no current stake other than being on the CC photography plan)
- matwood 7y agoAnd I think all the plans come with cloud storage which syncs across devices. I fought the subscription plan for LR, but realized I usually updated yearly and had this complicated file management system for my photos. For $120/year I have the latest LR versions on all my devices and only have to worry about true backup. I do keep an eye out for a LR replacement, but I haven't found anything that comes close to LRs file management.
- wlesieutre 7y agoSame boat here. I’ll concede that they do add things, but as a pretty small scale hobbyist they don’t add anything I want or need. But they expect me to pay the same full price as a pro user. I used to buy it every couple of versions or when it went on sale, and that was good enough for my needs. No such luck anymore.
- dangoor 7y agoDepending on what you do use, Mac users actually have lots of great choices now. The Affinity apps, for example, are terrific.
- wlesieutre 7y agoI’ve got them! Did a stint on Sketch as well. It’s now gone subscription, but it think it’s the more acceptable “still works but you stops getting updates” type subscription like jetbrains. What I really want is an Affinity photo library manager like Lightroom. I’ve looked at some currently available options and not been impressed, but there were tweets to the effect that Affinity was thinking about it.
- prox 7y agoSwitched to Affinity, Photo, Designer and Publisher are pretty awesome and a true replacement for Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Switched 1.5 years ago, never looked back and saved a lot of money in the process. There are a few things it doesn’t have, but its impressive nonetheless. The devs are very committed to speed and anti bloat.
- Stratoscope 7y agoTry SmartGit. I don't know how it compares with Tower, but it is very powerful and easy to use. I like the way it integrates Git features into a consistent view. For example, stashes and reflog commits can be viewed and manipulated in the same log view as any other commits. They offer both purchase and subscription models, and a free license for open source work. Runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. I've been using it for years and have always been very pleased.
- Nextgrid 7y agoCheck out Sublime Merge, from the creators of Sublime Text: https://www.sublimemerge.com https://www.sublimemerge.com
- spectramax 7y agoI switched to Sublime Merge from using Git Tower (their licensing was awful after v3). Never looking back, SM is amazing. Git Tower folks: Stop pissing off your paying loyal users. Get a hint, I want my money back because you guys never made v2 properly stable and jumped on v3 for an awful cash grab. Fuck you, kindly. Sublime HQ is an amazing company. I would pay for their products even if they charged double. Honesty and integrity matters. You’re not selling to normal sheep, programmers are a smart bunch.
- akie 7y agoI am just replying to say that I have the exact same experience. I love Git Tower and recommended it to many people, but I haven't upgraded to version 3 and likely never will - for the exact reasons that you have lined out. I think FourNova (the company behind it) is probably missing out on quite some cash here...
- manigandham 7y agoThere's also Fork: https://git-fork.com/ https://git-fork.com/
- echelon 7y agoI'm really curious - why do people want a graphical git client? The command line exposes everything, and the model is simple and intuitive. I work in a very large monorepo, so it's not like I'm working in a git tree that isn't complicated.
- mandeepj 7y agofor a new person, it's almost impossible to get anything done with git command line
- OJFord 7y agoYou could say that about any tool, of course you have to spend some time to understand how to use it safely and effectively. 'for a new person, it's almost impossible to get anything done with a table saw'
- jstrong 7y agodo people say, "a table saw is simple and intuitive"?
- throwawaymath 7y agoI haven't heard anyone say that, but after thinking about it for a second I sure as hell would. A table saw is a lot easier to use than git.
- OJFord 7y agoWell on the face of it, it's a simple tool isn't it? It's a spinning saw blade, and surface(s) against which to rest the wood being cut. And I've never used one, but I'm sure it takes some learning, skill, and practice to get good cuts the way you need them, e.g. bang on 45deg all the way across for a 'mitred' corner joint. And it certainly needs learning, care, and attention to operate safely. I don't mean it to be an insensitive analogy - accidents involving table saws are obviously horrendously worse than those involving git.
- brianpan 7y agoFYI, Git Tower is made by JetBrains is made by 7 people. JetBrains is a company of 1000. Not all software scales to allow that kind of model. Also, JetBrains can afford that model because the JDK and other software languages are changing and it's not very feasible for their users to stay on an old version for very long. https://www.fournova.com/company https://www.fournova.com/company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBrains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBrains
- jakobegger 7y agoI also switched from Tower when they introduced subscription pricing. My current git setup: - Git Fork for committing, pushing - P4 Merge for resolving conflicts (it's not a pretty app, but the fantastic feature set more than makes up for the non-native look) - GitUp for reordering, editing and splitting commits - Command line for the rare things the GUIs can't do None of those cost money and I don't understand how these awesome apps are all free. I would pay for all of them, they are much better than Tower.
- csmiller 7y agoI found P4 Merge to be totally inscrutable, could you elaborate on what makes it so good?
- acemarke 7y agoI suggest using SourceGear DiffMerge for resolving conflicts. Best 3-way merge conflict handling tool I've tried: https://sourcegear.com/diffmerge/ https://sourcegear.com/diffmerge/
- jakobegger 7y agoIt's a 3 way merge tool that works well with Fork. To be honest I can't say how it compares with other merge tools, I tried a few merge tools some time back and liked P4 best.
- je42 7y agoCool ! Git fork looks quite like GitX (which is unfortunately not indevelopment anymore) !
- redgc 7y agoI upgraded to version 3 but feel like they haven't made a product improvement since, despite the new subscription model. Staging of chunks still remains the killer feature to keep me with it but I'd be happy to switch (pay) if anything else came along.
- hota_mazi 7y agoI switched from SourceTree to Fork, which is awesome for me. Check it out.
- kalev 7y agoIt’s interesting to see quite a few others in here had the same struggle with upgrading to tower 3 as I had a year (or 2?) ago. Then I moved to vscode with it’s git integration and that works just as good.
- tobidobi 7y agoThanks for your thoughts on this, Thijs! Here's Tobias, the CEO of Tower. We want to make sure that Tower can stay a high-quality application in the long run. This means we want to constantly improve the application, add new features, fix bugs, and help users with great customer support. To be able to do that, we need a steady and reliable source of income. The thruth is: for us - a small, self-funded business - a recurring revenue model from a subscription is the only sustainable way to survive. A model where the user gets to keep the last version after she stops paying for the product does not work for a small business. If you have a team of 1,000 employees like JetBrains, you might be be able to afford this. But not a 7-person team like ours. For two reasons: (1) First, it doesn't provide the steady and reliable source of income that we depend on. It's the old one-time payment model of the past - which we tried and which did not pay the bills for us in the long term. (2) Second, and maybe more importantly: very quickly, there are lots of different old versions of the product out there. People want bugfixes, documentation and support for their version, no matter if they're currently paying or if they don't anymore. With a 7-person team, we simply cannot do this. We need to focus all of our painfully limited time on _one_ version and make sure to improve that one. Most of our users make a simple calculation: "Can Tower help me or my team save some time or prevent some mistakes?" Over the course of the next 12 (!) months, even 1 or 2 hours or a mere handful of mistakes would make this worthwhile. If so, Tower has _easily_ paid itself off. We offer a free and fully-featured 30-day trial that will help you answer this question for yourself - without any risks or commitments.
- HelloNurse 7y agoFor the customer, automatically converting long subscriptions to perpetual licenses for an old version is a major safety net (the software will not stop working if I stop paying) and it proves that the vendor is committed to improving the product enough to make upgrades compelling. On the other hand, reasonable customers do not expect support beyond the latest version and whatever they are currently paying for: "we have fixed that in the latest version, which you should buy" is a valid and honest answer to support issues. For a tool that can be changed with very little friction like a revision control client, the typical "calculation" about spending money is likely to be waiting for an actual troublesome situation and then get out of it with a short subscription or a 30-day trial.