7 ms·
Cathode: A terminal app for mac that looks really cool
- th0ma5 15y agoReminds me of the CRT simulator for Stella http://www.bogost.com/games/a_television_simulator.shtml http://www.bogost.com/games/a_television_simulator.shtml
- gammarator 15y agoYou can download a free version (with some effects locked) from the Secret Geometry web store: http://store.secretgeometry.com/download.php?id=7 http://store.secretgeometry.com/download.php?id=7 http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/ http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/
- amplifiedrhythm 15y agoCool, but definitely not worth $10
- fionabunny 15y agoVery cool! Is there a Windows equivalent?
- cshesse 15y agoOn windows, I use this program: http://hackertyper.net/132892717764 http://hackertyper.net/132892717764
- laconian 15y ago$10? It might be a fun trick to show off to friends, but I am sure as hell not doing any serious work in that. iTerm2 'till I die!
- batista 15y agoA fun trick? Are you kidding me? I've never spend money that fast before (I had bought it before it got in the App Store). Cathode is awesome, especially if, like me, you have ever worked in such an environment (VT100 etc). I even dropped iTerm 2 and use Cathode all day long. Something about the blast-from-the-past feel makes me more productive and feel like an ol' hacker. Only wish it had tabs.
- tuananh 15y agono tabs !! REALLY !? You care to explain how awesome it is?
- burgerbrain 15y agoI never understood why people want their terminal emulators to have tabs. Screen/tmux do it so much better...
- ralphleon 15y agoIt's a neat toy, but is pretty much useless for real work when compared to apple's built-in terminal. Seems to not correctly support PS1s, at least in the case of zsh. I'd be surprised by anyone that would actually pay $10 for this, seems like $1 would be a better price point for a toy app.
- batista 15y agoHow many actual toys (that cost like $1 to produce) cost lots more than $10, and you wouldn't think twice about buying them? How much is a Barbie Doll nowadays? Bitching about $10 reminds me of this Oatmeal strip: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps
- whateverer 15y agoWell, all it's saying is that people feel queasy about spending on Desktop Environment decor.
- Void_ 15y agoDepends on how you want to spend the 10 entertaiment dollars. Some people watch movies, some play World of Warcraft, some buy applications that emulate grandpa's computer. ;)
- batista 15y agoYou're calling me a grandpa?!!! I used those kinds of terminals, mid nineties in Uni...
- dfc 15y agoYou just used "real work" in the same sentence as "osx built in terminal"? Has Apple made a lot of fixes to terminal recently?
- pjscott 15y agoTo elaborate on this: iTerm2 is much better than Terminal.app, and free. It seems to be the default thing that everybody recommends, and for good reason. http://www.iterm2.com/ http://www.iterm2.com/
- Bud 15y agoWhat, didn't everyone else get an actual vt100 from college surplus for $5 and keep it running?
- shaka881 15y agoI don't know why, but this has a strange allure to me...
- scott_s 15y agoCute, but it emulates the warping that I hated in CRTs. I used to waste too much time tweaking my CRT monitors to find the minimal amount of distortion possible. I love modern screens because of this.
- sbochins 15y agoIs $10 the standard rate for a gimmicky kind of app like this on the mac store? Seems a bit high to me, but I'm not an expert.
- robinduckett 15y agoWhat this needs is a web cam bit to emulate the reflection. Currently you can take a photo of yourself but it's just not good enough :P
- noisebleed 15y agoAgreed, that would be awesome.. though just the fact that the angle of the reflection changes as you move the window around was the 'shut up and take my money' moment for me.
- rubberbandage 15y agoI’ve been using this since about version 0.93 and the developer has done a great job with each new update. I’m thrilled to see it on the App Store and with good publicity. I started using because I wanted an authentic terminal experience for hacking around—the slight fuzziness of edges, the phosphor glow when the contrast is turned up too high, the ability to simulate a 1200bps connection—I find it much more captivating than perfect crisp black on white 9-point monaco. That said, it still has bugs—the game of Life in emacs, for example, totally screws up the screen buffer, and it lacks several functions; shift-home/end to go to the start/end of the command line, and key repeat, to name a couple (and it drives me crazy every time I try to use them in vain). Overall though it’s a great throwback, and conversation starter (really!) and it’s $10 I’ve had no regrets in spending.
- Nikkau 15y agoJust remind me http://jstn.cc/post/8692501831 http://jstn.cc/post/8692501831 story. I want one.
- nlmoreaux 15y ago= GLTerminal, from 2002: http://ldopa.net/2006/01/14/glterminal/ http://ldopa.net/2006/01/14/glterminal/
- Hemospectrum 15y agoCathode was made as a third party replacement for GLTerminal. The original was never finished and had lots of horrible bugs, and the author never even released it to the public and (IIRC) had no idea how it wound up on the internet.
- noisebleed 15y agoI'm surprised to see so many complaints about the price. I was happy to pay $10 just to reward the effort for such an impressively geeky toy when it first showed up a year ago, even though I've never used it for real work. I will be complaining if the developers only support the App Store version now though. edit: I hadn't thought about it from the perspective of not being able to play around with it before buying. I wouldn't have based on three screenshots and a one-sentence description. As gammarator mentioned above, there's a free version on the developer's site that's well worth checking out. The granular control of the effects and overall attention to detail is really cool.
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- bonch 15y agoHappy that the developer got it on the app store. There was some question about how sandboxing would affect it as a terminal app. It's a pretty fun app, especially when running fullscreen on Lion. Very customizable. You get your money's worth.
- Karunamon 15y agoCount me squarely in the "I would buy this if it wasn't $10" camp. It's nifty, but that's about it.
- draggnar 15y agoSaw the design and went "o0o0o!" then saw the price and went "aww..."
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- mdonahoe 15y agoThis thing makes my GPU hot.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- hcarvalhoalves 15y agoCool app! Just not too much to my MacBook, 5 mins and it runs too hot. But it's a neat trick.
- sbierwagen 15y agoc.f http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/01/cathode-vintage-terminal-emulator/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/01/cathode-vintage-terminal-emu... tl;dr: The xscreensaver package has a program that does something very like this. It's open-source, and works on both linux and OS X.
- shaka881 15y agoNice. Works on Ubuntu, and it's free. I got my jollies for a couple minutes, realized how much I prefer readable text and smaller but legible font sizes, and closed it.
- rbanffy 15y agoIdeally, this CRT-ness could be a Compiz plug-in. Let's say you could CRT-ize a window by pressing Meta-C or something like it. Then just open a terminal full-screen, apply the plug-in and enjoy your vintage computer. For best effect, change your font to a VT-100-like one (I prefer the 3278-like one, but that's a taste thing). BTW, how hard is it to write a Compiz plug-in?
- Dejital 15y agoPerformance is poor on my Macbook Pro 17in (late 2010) in full screen. Looks great sized down, and I would love to play around with it, but it seems best suited for full screen. ;)
- abecedarius 15y agoIs there a CRT-like terminal for Javascript/HTML? I was just wishing for one to use in a project the other day, but not enough to tackle it myself.
- zokier 15y agoWhile not nearly as comprehensive, using VT220 font[1] is kinda cool too. [1] http://sensi.org/~svo/glasstty/ http://sensi.org/~svo/glasstty/
- 8ig8 15y agoAside: These iTunes links don't work when reading from an iPad or iPhone. It would be helpful if Mobile Safari could redirect to the publisher's website.
- un1xl0ser 15y agoIf you are a hardcore terminal user, then you will run into layout bugs at this stage. I'm interested enough in why this is the case, what exactly had to be written from scratch. There must be some terminal emulators out there under both GPL and BSD licenses. I run into problems using mutt, vi and pagers, so I find myself pressing Control-L a lot. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. This doesn't really bother me. I enjoy being in this terminal. The effects at low volume and to taste can be soothing when you take a break and look at something, watching something compile. I don't like "perfect" text or printing that you can achieve with modern computers. At the moment, I can't use this for e-mail (I bought it on Friday). I'll see how coding goes. Command line editing has so far been bearable.