Tower 9 for Mac is here | Hacker News Reader

Tower 9 for Mac is here

git-tower.com

26 pointsbrunobrito47 comments

I was a really happy Tower user before they moved to SAAS. I can’t justify a monthly fee for a git client.

Same here. I now recommend https://git-fork.com – great client, much more sensible pricing model.

Been using Fork for several years at this point and it’s treated me very well. Out of the clients I’ve tried, Fork and Sublime Merge are by far the best in terms of feeling lightweight, responsive, and stable without skimping on features, and Fork’s UI is built in the way that makes most sense to me.

I held out for more than a year and then gave in. Having to research, find, and learn a new git GUI was going to cost me more than $70.

So I've punted the problem for another year. But I strongly agree that it's absolutely the wrong fit for this kind of app. They will start adding all kinds of bloat just to justify the monthly fee.

Not researching, finding and learning a new git GUI is also going to cost you more than $70. Year, after year, after year ...

One more reason to learn the command line.

Once you know how git cli works, any UI is easy to understand.

No vendor lock in.

A gui adds a lot on top of a git cli for me. Scrolling diffs/history and adding/removing staged lines alone is better. Using a gui doesn’t mean you didn’t arrive there deliberately.

I actually do almost everything in the CLI (checkouts, pull/push, branches, most no-conflict merges, most rebases, tags, etc), however when you're rebasing, messing with branches and merges, nothing beats a visual medium to just even look at the graph and make sense of it.

that's one of the saddest things of our times, that indie shops are dying over the subs chasm. I wish there was more innovation in between paid once and monthly, right now offering yearly sub seems like a good solution. In any case $60 per year seems like a steal if the product helps you out to perform better doing your 150k job

Working Copy has got it right: a purchase unlocks all features to date, plus any new Pro features for the next year. After that point, you don't get any new Pro features -- but you don't lose the ones you paid for. The app is under continuous development and there is a constant stream of new free features.

There's great alignment between the developer and the users: dev gets people who pay more than once, and is strongly incentivised to add reasons to upgrade; users never get stuck with an out-of-date app and get to choose when to stump up more cash.

I wish more apps and services would adopt this model.

Same with Panic Software (MacOS app developers), while I haven’t been using it, I really like how they’ve set up the pricing model for Nova [1] using that same model. I’m happy to pay for new features when I need them, but don’t take things away from me that I already paid for!

[1] https://nova.app

Yeah that sounds a lot like the classic:

buy this software and it comes with a 1 year support contact. You can download any new releases that occur while you have n active support contract. if you don't choose to continue the support contract once it ends, you can continue using the latest version released while you have the contract (and possibly older versions too).

The big difference though is that with this model the consumer gets security, bug fixes, OS compatibility updates, etc even after the subscription/"support contract" has ended. This may have the downsides of possibly getting new bugs over time, or gradually accumulating new menu items etc that you can't use.

I honestly nearly spat out my coffee when I saw the pricing page. Cannot fathom how or why anyone would pay that for a GUI on top of git.

Yep. I switched to Sublime Merge. Very reasonably priced, especially when bundled with Sublime Text.

Sublime Merge is terrific. I've been using it since 2019 and haven't had any issues. Was such a massive leap up from SourceTree.

Isn't Sublime Merge also Saas at $75 a year per user for a business license? (which is slightly cheaper than Tower's Pro license)

No, a personal license comes with 3 years of updates, after which it continues to be usable without updates.

> Individual licenses are valid for 3 years of updates, but do not expire after 3 years. Only if you wish to use newer versions will an upgrade fee be required.

+1 for Sublime Merge, I use it every day and love it. Also seems to be one of the few git clients with Linux support, surprisingly.

Agreed, I stopped using it as soon as they introduced this pricing model. A shame.

Take a hint from JetBrains or something, and if you absolutely must have some subscription fee guarantee a permanent version, and then actually patch bugs in all the versions for a reasonable time. Or just sell us a product, and offer maintenance/sell upgrades if you must.

Otherwise, go out of business - especially for this kind of product.

Last week I finally made the leap from Tower 2 (which was the last non-recurring one) to a modern version.

The transition was smooth but also it's very annoying that when you open a project and press the down key, it moves through the lateral menu instead of through the files (until you hit one file).

This breaks ~6 years of muscle memory. Could this please be amended (in an opt-in manner, of course)?

It would re-gain my trust, which is necessary for paying a subscription.

I recently made the leap in the opposite direction: after being asked to pay 59€ to continue using the app I downloaded Tower 2. So far I'm not missing anything they introduced since then. I'm actually happy about the old app icon.

When the warning that the license is running out popped up some time ago I expected the app to still work. Just that I won't get any new updates (like Sketch). But no: it just stops working and demands more money. Pew....

> it just stops working and demands more money

Now I start to understand that licensing models like JetBrains' "perpetual fallback license" are really fair. Of course, the "buy once and get all updates" licenses which were available back in the day when apps such as Sublime Text were called "shareware" (actually Sublime Text still has a similar license: if you buy it, you get 3 years of updates) were even better, but hey, software developers need to eat too...

Glad the transition was smooth (for the most part)! Thank you for trying out a new version of Tower.

That's definitely a nice suggestion — I will pass it on to the team.

Pay-once licence, please. Feel free to charge for major upgrades, but subscription is unacceptable.

Still using Tower 2 sometimes :)

Tower 9 for Mac has just been released. This 4-minute video covers everything you should know: https://youtu.be/CuCCGSlBkis

Here's what's new — I'll be here if you have any questions!

1. Merge Improvements:

- Merge UI: indicates the number of unresolved conflicts between two branches. Files now show badges depending on their status and it’s possible to view only conflicted files.

- Instant Conflict Detection: when merging, the dialog will instantly let you know if conflicts will occur.

- Restore Unmerged Versions of Files: developers can rollback accidental actions.

- It is now possible to create empty commits (or skip them entirely) and edit commit messages after resolving conflicts.

2. Diffing improvements:

- Auto-Expand Diffs in Changesets (you can set it to never, always, or for a number of items).

- Large Diff Warnings (you can adjust the threshold in the Preferences, default is 20 kb).

3. New Features:

- Snapshots: stashes that are automatically re-applied to the working copy (to quickly carry on with your work).

- Reveal any commit, branch, or tag in Tower's "History" view.

This is a free update for existing Tower users with a current subscription. New users can download a free 30-day trial.

Also: Tower is free for students, teachers, educational institutions and non-profit organizations.

> This is a free update for existing Tower users.

Given the pricing model precludes ongoing use without ongoing payment, this would seem to be a rather disingenuous thing for them to say.

Yes, that's understandable. But we still prefer to make it clear to everyone.

I feel like saying "Free for existing users with a current subscription" would be a lot more clear. I'm a customer who owns an older perpetual license and a lapsed subscription but it's not free for me since I'd need to restart my subscription to use it.

Thank you for your suggestion! I have edited my comment and will keep that in mind for the future. Also, thank you for your support — if you'd like to give the new features a try and you run into any issues, just let us know.

I’m in a similar situation. If you change your pricing model so that a lapsed subscription means an end to updates rather than an end to access, I’ll upgrade my Tower 2 license immediately.

I do understand that your current licensing model is probably very effective at getting big revenue out of corporates. I am a solo user who interacts with git maybe once or twice a week. I know I’m not an important customer for you, but it is sad you can’t even throw a bone to the little guy.

The Git UI built into all Jetbrains products (Pycharm, IntelliJ, etc) is fantastic and does everything you’d need.

Why would you pay for something separate?

I'm not very familiar with how Jetbrains products handle Git — if it has everything you're looking for, I understand it can be a hard sell.

Most of our users enjoy Tower's ease of use, with features such as drag and drop to perform most tasks (including rebasing, cherry-picking, etc) or the possibility to undo pretty much everything (probably my favorite feature: https://www.git-tower.com/features/undo/mac). Many complex Git actions (e.g.: branch comparison or solving merging conflicts) are very simple to perform in Tower.

If you ever find the time, I suggest you give our trial version a shot!

Maybe Java people like it because it feels very Java-like, but that's a huge downside to me for any other language. I can't stand using Pycharm. So heavy weight, slow, bloated, ugly. Reminds me of using Eclipse.

What UIs are people using these days other than this? I'm mostly using command line but I like having something simple for commit editing and reviewing diffs file by file. I was using gitg for the last months on a linux laptop for this, which is fine but not spectacular. I got my new mac (finally) after waiting for that for several months yesterday and to my pleasant surprise, gitx is still being maintained and getting updates: https://github.com/gitx/gitx

I've used that for many years and I love it. But curious to hear what others use. Closed source is a bit of a non starter for me usually.

I really like Sublime Merge. The interface should be an easy transition coming from the CLI (its focus seems to be on making the CLI convenient over creating a pretty interface like Tower and Kraken and SourceTree try to). And it's from Sublime, one of the most consistently high quality development teams out there.

I think the nicest interface to git is magit: https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/magit-walk-through/

It's excellent for keyboard-driven workflows.

I use gitg as well, I think it does a fine job of the important stuff for me (visualizing commit history, viewing diffs, managing branch operations) but it certainly is a bit on the bare-bones side of things.

As a side-note, gitg will actually compile for MacOS, but modern GTK/GNOME libs are really poorly optimized for the platform. If it didn't make my Mac 70c when launching gitg, I'd probably feel more comfortable using it as my only git client.

I've used GitUp for years: https://gitup.co

Free, open source, and has really nice keyboard navigation / shortcuts.

Have been really happy with Fork. I wish I could pay them more for updates (not a subscription though).

Used Tower since 1.0 but ditched it last month. Moved back to non-subscription Tower 1.0 but focusing on lazygit and CLI with merge support from old Kaleidoscope version. VSC is more than a good enough git gui too.

Tower’s GUI just became crap over time, it was a step forwards moving back, ironically.

We're sorry to see you go! I would love to know what went wrong, if you ever find the time — just email bruno + our domain name.

Sure Bruno, I'll email you now.

This is requiring a subscription, and it mac/windows only.

Sublime-merge supports also Linux, is a very nice git ui, and you pay once for the licence.

If you like Sublime text, it's the same type of experience, but for git.

Does Tower support env variables? Last time I checked they didn’t. I wonder if there is any GUI git app which duplicates/shows exactly which git console commands were used?

We do support environment variables, though not through the UI yet — it’s on our top priority list.

One can use a file to adjust env variables: https://www.git-tower.com/help/guides/integration/environmen...

as someone who only uses git from a terminal: what advantages do guis bring?

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