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Comment by eli | Hacker News Reader

That's cool and all, but a Windows client would make a lot more business sense. There are already a couple of nice git clients for Mac. There aren't for Windows.

And I assume github is targeting SMB with its paid offerings. Unless you're a design shop or a hip startup, odds are you're not running OS X. Based on my unscientific data, most companies have the devs working on Windows (or occasionally Linux).

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> Unless you're a design shop or a hip startup

They are the latter. Welcome to the San Francisco bubble, where you think everyone uses iPhones and Macs, because in your world everyone does. It's the same reason Twitter has a Mac app but not a Windows app. They build these things for themselves (and arguably they should).

You're not describing a bubble, "making something I want" isn't some outlandish absurd thing for developers and designers do. Bubble is rapidly outpacing pivot for most misused word.

He meant bubble as in 'echo-chamber', and in that sense of the word it isn't overused.

It's not outlandish or absurd to design something you might want, but it is a bit silly to ignore a larger market with the same underlying need.

They're not ignoring a larger market, they're ignoring a smaller one:

> Beyond that, one-third of our traffic uses Macs. It's not a small market for us.

I feel like I must be missing something here; how is the 2/3rds that don't use Mac OS the smaller market?

And as others have pointed out, the market doesn't just consist of GitHub users, or even Git users. In this case, it's developers who use an RCS and need a good desktop application to go with it.

In any case the point may be moot; judging by the rest of the comment you quoted they're not ignoring other platforms at all but rather just using Mac OS as a first step, which I can understand.

They probably all use macs though, why not develop first for something you understand well and can immediately put to use yourself. It probably started as a fairly experimental product, now that they have a version out and a clearer idea they could more easily tackle a windows version.

Twitter has a Mac app because Loren Brichter wrote a fantastic one and Twitter bought it (and Loren too). I'm not particularly aware of the state of Twitter on Windows, but I find it plausible that there is no single excellent Twitter app that Twitter wants to buy (or if there is an excellent one, maybe they don't want to sell).

We built the Mac app because 1) we wanted it 2) to learn how a desktop client should work prior to tackling other platforms.

Beyond that, one-third of our traffic uses Macs. It's not a small market for us.

I can't argue with your reasoning

But I just switched from self-hosted SVN to Github and it was painful for our Windows devs. Offer a stupidly easy upgrade path from TortoiseSVN to Github and I would have joined a long time ago. In fact I'd pay extra for that. I think I am not alone.

We're well aware that Windows support needs improvement. Rest assured we will be addressing that issue.

TortoiseGit? SmartGit?

You aren't alone. Using Github on Windows is TERRIBLE. It's not even worth the trouble at this point. Even at the command line it's a mess.

I access my repo from home on my mac.

Anyone else noticing that Github is becoming synonymous with "Git" - like kleenex is to tissues and xerox is to copying machines?

Crag do you mean GITHUB, the website and service, overall, or just GIT the version control system?

I recently left at&t interactive, the definition of large corporate culture, and they gave all developers macs and were using github:fi.

I'm now at another giant company you have all heard of. We all have macs and are using github.

The tides are changing.

How do you know they didn't research their user base and find out that more people used OSX than any other OS?

I can honestly say I do not know a single dev who uses windows for development, everyone is on Linux or OSX. My unscientific data is probably as good as yours. So I wouldn't be surprised if they looked at their browser data and realized OSX was a pretty big market.

They're eating their own dog food. Maybe they're making it because they want to use it themselves first. I'm sure they're heavy users of Git, and it would probably be easier to do iteration on something you use instead of iterating on something you'll never use (on windows).

A Windows client doesn't make sense when most (all?) Github employees are on Macs. Mac is higher priority than Windows.

I get that dogfooding is important, but github employees aren't the target market.

Github employees are the target market, they use Git don't they? What use is developing a windows app that none of the developers will use initially?

Selling software where the target market is exactly the same as the people writing it seems like it's the exception not the rule. I assume most OpenTable devs do not own a restaurant.

sounds like a strawman argument to me...

Sure, but my point is that most of Github's potential customers are not on Macs.

Right, but you build on the platform you like/know first, then you expand to others.

My point is that their UI could change, and it's easier to test out UX on something that you'll use everyday, than on something that you'll never use. They made Github because they wanted to use it themselves, not because they saw it as a money making scheme.

For productivity apps (and especially developer tools), it's not worth chasing customers on a platform you don't love -- you'll do a bad job and you'll be unhappy doing it.

And as Mac users, they may be consciously avoiding the reverse of an all too familiar situation, where non-Mac-using Windows developers shoddily port their app to OSX.

you think the average git user is on windows?

http://www.survs.com/WO/WebObjects/Survs.woa/wa/shareResults...

Narrowing yourself to 'git users' is a silly thing for two reasons:

1) there are many Windows devs out there who require a VCS 1a) ...who will only use a GUI-based VCS (seriously)

2) there are many users of other VCSes (e.g. Subversion)

These are big markets waiting to be tapped. The answer is not "don't try if nobody else is tapping them". Hacker News is the last place I expect to hear that!

I think it's a massive opportunity. These people are using Subversion because TortoiseSVN is a nice piece of software, not because they are anti-DVCS partisans.

If someone made an app like Tower but for windows and charged $50-100 for corporate licenses, they could make a killing.

Or, if the Github team, having first created a GUI for Mac, which they use themselves and can more easily test, were to then create a Windows version and charge $0 for it, they could convince a lot of Windows Subversion users to switch to Git and Github, paying monthly for private repos.

Which looks like where they're going with this.

github should do some os fingerprinting of tcp connections to its servers and they'd be able to tell fairly accurately what most of their customers use.

That would be very cool.

But I personally think the value in a Windows client would be in bringing new people to github more than satisfying existing users.

Judging by their use of chameleon, and their general UI choices, I think we can expect an iOS client from github as well in the future (using the same codebase as this desktop version). I think that OSX + iOS > Windows users in that regard.

I'd say the choice of Chameleon was driven by them wanting it to look "modern" or iOS-like. A native Git/Github client like this doesn't make sense on a device where you can't develop code (except in the web browser with Cloud9 or something).

In respect to the Windows question, I wouldn't be surprised to see them ship one in a few months, once they iron out the bugs and determine exactly which set of features a native client needs to provide.

We chose Chameleon because it provides for an awesome layer-backed environment to code AppKit in.

Everyone's all cuckoo about Chameleon because it lets you port iPhone apps — but the real win is a fully layer-backed environment with modern APIs (UIKit).

Our decision to use it has nothing to do with iOS at all.

Performance is not that good though, specially for scroll panes. The app is great except for that.

I'm not so sure of that. If Mac is still the hacker (pg hacker, not New York Times hacker) platform of choice then there may be at least as many Mac users if not more.

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