7 ms·

IIRC this is Mac only. Although it is developed on top of Chromium. I guess Power Users only use Mac.

by jklinger410 4y ago

1123581321 4y ago
They’re developing a Windows version right now.
- jklinger410 4y ago
  Very cool. When they finally develop a Linux version of their Chromium based browser (already cross-platform) I will consider giving it a shot.
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    Sarcasm acknowledged. :) It's okay if you don't like the browser I like.
LoganDark 4y ago
> I guess Power Users only use Mac. Little Snitch and Audio Hijack/Loopback and Sketchapp and iA Writer and Inklet certainly think so. There are no Windows/cross-platform analogues for any of these. No firewall that suspends connections for an interactive prompt, no way to create virtual audio devices or route audio in Windows, no equivalent to Sketch (Figma comes close I guess) and the Windows version of iA Writer is pretty pathetic. And Inklet simply doesn't have a Windows equivalent even when I have an official Apple Magic Trackpad connected to my computer. There's just a lot of cool stuff that isn't available for other OSes.
- black_puppydog 4y ago
  not sure about sketchapp and inklet, but the first examples are extremely platform specific to the point of requiring a rewrite for different platforms
  - LoganDark 4y ago
    > the first examples are extremely platform specific to the point of requiring a rewrite for different platforms Oh, I know. Just cause nobody's done it yet doesn't mean it's not fair to say that macOS is the only operating system that has tools like these already made, though.
- jraph 4y ago
  > No firewall that suspends connections for an interactive prompt Didn't ZoneAlarm do that on Windows in the 2000s?
  - mh- 4y ago
    there's one I used in the 90s too, like in the XP era, whose name escapes me now.
  - LoganDark 4y ago
    > Didn't ZoneAlarm do that on Windows in the 2000s? AFAIK those connections were blocked, not suspended, until you answered the prompt. Does ZoneAlarm still advertise this / is it documented anywhere? I can't find any info on it.
    - jraph 4y ago
      > AFAIK those connections were blocked, not suspended, until you answered the prompt Ah right, very possible.
- jklinger410 4y ago
  There is absolutely a form of hipster-ism about publishing Mac only software. The truth is, it started because Mac users are more likely to pay for apps and app subscriptions. So the ironic part is that it's not as much about aesthetic or infrastructure or even ease of development as it is about economics.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  In fairness, some of those are rather tied to the operating system, to the point where you're really asking for them to develop an entire new application that happens to do the same thing on a different platform. platform. I mean, yes, it should exist, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for a firewall to be tied to a specific operating system. Pure user application software is less reasonable, though.
  - LoganDark 4y ago
    > I think it's perfectly reasonable for a firewall to be tied to a specific operating system. Oh, I have no qualms about Little Snitch specifically being tied to macOS. I just find it annoying that this general concept of "a firewall that asks you before blocking a connection" has apparently never been implemented outside of macOS. I don't want the network request to fail and the application to panic just because I had to be given a prompt with an "allow" button. Suspend the connection instead please. Windows and Linux firewalls are not yet capable of this, as far as I can tell. If there is one that can, I'd love to replace Windows Firewall with it.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      Oh, that is fair. I assume https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch doesn't work for you?
      - LoganDark 4y ago
        I think if I used Linux either that or Lulu would be what I'd go with, but AFAICT OpenSnitch uses wording that suggests it is actually suspending connections for the prompts instead of outright blocking them. I can't find any info on this in the README so I could be wrong but that could probably work yeah.
    - phneutral26 4y ago
      SimpleWall? https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall
- joshuaissac 4y ago
  > No firewall that suspends connections for an interactive prompt Almost every third-party firewall for Windows has been able to do this since at least the early 2000s. ZoneAlarm had this functionality in 2001, two years before the initial release of Little Snitch. > no way to create virtual audio devices or route audio in Windows This has been possible via third-party software since the mid-2000s (Virtual Audio Cable, VB-Cable, etc.). The other things have equivalents in Windows, too, like Adobe Illustrator for designs, and trackpad vendor-specific software (e.g. Synaptic, Asus) to use it for handwriting.
  - LoganDark 4y ago
    > Almost every third-party firewall for Windows has been able to do this since at least the early 2000s. ZoneAlarm had this functionality in 2001, two years before the initial release of Little Snitch. ZoneAlarm is a whole antivirus afaik, not just a firewall. If there's something out there that can replicate WFC[0]'s functionality while suspending connections instead of blocking them, I'm all ears, since that's my biggest gripe with how Windows Firewall works (since WFC is only a front-end to it). > This has been possible via third-party software since the mid-2000s (Virtual Audio Cable, VB-Cable, etc.). By installing drivers and rebooting your computer and you get a fixed number of them. On macOS with Loopback and Audio Hijack, you can create any number of virtual audio devices and route audio between them however you want with switches and filters and etc. in real-time. > The other things have equivalents in Windows, too, like Adobe Illustrator for designs, and trackpad vendor-specific software (e.g. Synaptic, Asus) to use it for handwriting. Adobe Illustrator is not the same type of software (this is why Adobe created Adobe XD). It's not usable for the reasons I used Sketch. As for handwriting, Inklet was more advanced than that, it allowed you to scale and move the working area around the screen with gestures, and actually write into other applications instead of a dedicated signature window (which is what this "vendor-specific software" were designed for). My point isn't that you can find some solution to create a similar result, my point is that the actual pieces of software that are available are quite unique and don't really exist anywhere else. There's just something attractive about macOS being a true Unix with a huge userbase of people who will pay for good apps. [0]: https://www.binisoft.org/wfc https://www.binisoft.org/wfc
  - 4y ago
- rainbowjelly 4y ago
  iA Writer is available for Windows [0]. [0]: https://ia.net/writer/support/windows https://ia.net/writer/support/windows
  - LoganDark 4y ago
    Except the only thing it has in common with the macOS version is a color scheme. Plus it hasn't been updated in years. You don't actually get any of the things that made iA Writer for macOS so great, and all the technical issues (such as broken trackpad scrolling) are incredibly distracting, defeating almost the entire point of the app.
smsm42 4y ago
Finally, the revenge of Windows users for all those years of "sure we support every platform. I mean every Windows platform of course!" (jk of course)
soundnote 4y ago
It's not power users per se, but these sorts of apps are essentially fashion and all the people making them are long time Mac heads. The fancy software startup space is really faddish and incestuous.

IIRC this is Mac only. Although it is developed on top of Chromium. I guess Power Users only use Mac.

1123581321 4y ago

They’re developing a Windows version right now.

jklinger410 4y ago
Very cool. When they finally develop a Linux version of their Chromium based browser (already cross-platform) I will consider giving it a shot.
- 1123581321 4y ago
  Sarcasm acknowledged. :) It's okay if you don't like the browser I like.

LoganDark 4y ago

> I guess Power Users only use Mac. Little Snitch and Audio Hijack/Loopback and Sketchapp and iA Writer and Inklet certainly think so. There are no Windows/cross-platform analogues for any of these. No firewall that suspends connections for an interactive prompt, no way to create virtual audio devices or route audio in Windows, no equivalent to Sketch (Figma comes close I guess) and the Windows version of iA Writer is pretty pathetic. And Inklet simply doesn't have a Windows equivalent even when I have an official Apple Magic Trackpad connected to my computer. There's just a lot of cool stuff that isn't available for other OSes.

black_puppydog 4y ago
not sure about sketchapp and inklet, but the first examples are extremely platform specific to the point of requiring a rewrite for different platforms
- LoganDark 4y ago
  > the first examples are extremely platform specific to the point of requiring a rewrite for different platforms Oh, I know. Just cause nobody's done it yet doesn't mean it's not fair to say that macOS is the only operating system that has tools like these already made, though.
jraph 4y ago
> No firewall that suspends connections for an interactive prompt Didn't ZoneAlarm do that on Windows in the 2000s?
- mh- 4y ago
  there's one I used in the 90s too, like in the XP era, whose name escapes me now.
- LoganDark 4y ago
  > Didn't ZoneAlarm do that on Windows in the 2000s? AFAIK those connections were blocked, not suspended, until you answered the prompt. Does ZoneAlarm still advertise this / is it documented anywhere? I can't find any info on it.
  - jraph 4y ago
    > AFAIK those connections were blocked, not suspended, until you answered the prompt Ah right, very possible.
jklinger410 4y ago
There is absolutely a form of hipster-ism about publishing Mac only software. The truth is, it started because Mac users are more likely to pay for apps and app subscriptions. So the ironic part is that it's not as much about aesthetic or infrastructure or even ease of development as it is about economics.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
In fairness, some of those are rather tied to the operating system, to the point where you're really asking for them to develop an entire new application that happens to do the same thing on a different platform. platform. I mean, yes, it should exist, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for a firewall to be tied to a specific operating system. Pure user application software is less reasonable, though.
- LoganDark 4y ago
  > I think it's perfectly reasonable for a firewall to be tied to a specific operating system. Oh, I have no qualms about Little Snitch specifically being tied to macOS. I just find it annoying that this general concept of "a firewall that asks you before blocking a connection" has apparently never been implemented outside of macOS. I don't want the network request to fail and the application to panic just because I had to be given a prompt with an "allow" button. Suspend the connection instead please. Windows and Linux firewalls are not yet capable of this, as far as I can tell. If there is one that can, I'd love to replace Windows Firewall with it.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    Oh, that is fair. I assume https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch doesn't work for you?
    - LoganDark 4y ago
      I think if I used Linux either that or Lulu would be what I'd go with, but AFAICT OpenSnitch uses wording that suggests it is actually suspending connections for the prompts instead of outright blocking them. I can't find any info on this in the README so I could be wrong but that could probably work yeah.
  - phneutral26 4y ago
    SimpleWall? https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall
joshuaissac 4y ago
> No firewall that suspends connections for an interactive prompt Almost every third-party firewall for Windows has been able to do this since at least the early 2000s. ZoneAlarm had this functionality in 2001, two years before the initial release of Little Snitch. > no way to create virtual audio devices or route audio in Windows This has been possible via third-party software since the mid-2000s (Virtual Audio Cable, VB-Cable, etc.). The other things have equivalents in Windows, too, like Adobe Illustrator for designs, and trackpad vendor-specific software (e.g. Synaptic, Asus) to use it for handwriting.
- LoganDark 4y ago
  > Almost every third-party firewall for Windows has been able to do this since at least the early 2000s. ZoneAlarm had this functionality in 2001, two years before the initial release of Little Snitch. ZoneAlarm is a whole antivirus afaik, not just a firewall. If there's something out there that can replicate WFC[0]'s functionality while suspending connections instead of blocking them, I'm all ears, since that's my biggest gripe with how Windows Firewall works (since WFC is only a front-end to it). > This has been possible via third-party software since the mid-2000s (Virtual Audio Cable, VB-Cable, etc.). By installing drivers and rebooting your computer and you get a fixed number of them. On macOS with Loopback and Audio Hijack, you can create any number of virtual audio devices and route audio between them however you want with switches and filters and etc. in real-time. > The other things have equivalents in Windows, too, like Adobe Illustrator for designs, and trackpad vendor-specific software (e.g. Synaptic, Asus) to use it for handwriting. Adobe Illustrator is not the same type of software (this is why Adobe created Adobe XD). It's not usable for the reasons I used Sketch. As for handwriting, Inklet was more advanced than that, it allowed you to scale and move the working area around the screen with gestures, and actually write into other applications instead of a dedicated signature window (which is what this "vendor-specific software" were designed for). My point isn't that you can find some solution to create a similar result, my point is that the actual pieces of software that are available are quite unique and don't really exist anywhere else. There's just something attractive about macOS being a true Unix with a huge userbase of people who will pay for good apps. [0]: https://www.binisoft.org/wfc https://www.binisoft.org/wfc
- 4y ago
rainbowjelly 4y ago
iA Writer is available for Windows [0]. [0]: https://ia.net/writer/support/windows https://ia.net/writer/support/windows
- LoganDark 4y ago
  Except the only thing it has in common with the macOS version is a color scheme. Plus it hasn't been updated in years. You don't actually get any of the things that made iA Writer for macOS so great, and all the technical issues (such as broken trackpad scrolling) are incredibly distracting, defeating almost the entire point of the app.

smsm42 4y ago

Finally, the revenge of Windows users for all those years of "sure we support every platform. I mean every Windows platform of course!" (jk of course)

soundnote 4y ago

It's not power users per se, but these sorts of apps are essentially fashion and all the people making them are long time Mac heads. The fancy software startup space is really faddish and incestuous.