Show HN: Brewer X, a native macOS client for Homebrew

I clicked on this really fast because this would be nice... but I really have to complain about the pricing model. $49 "once" is a scam when it only comes with 1 year of updates but an extra year of updates for $29 (60% more!!). Exactly how many features can one add to a Home-brew UI in the space of 2 years? There's no detail on what's in the roadmap to warrant such a price (on the website) nor is there the option of a trial. I shouldn't have to email for a refund (as advertised) if I feel like $50 was a rip-off. Honestly, if this was $10-20, I would already have paid.

Agreed, the plethora of overpriced non-essential apps with shit pricing models that cream "one-off" and "as-a-service/updates" models really irk me. I just flatly refuse now.

Try making a living as an indie developer and then bitch about pricing.

As others have noted, the up-front honesty and realistic pricing are a lot more refreshing and encouraging than some race-to-the-bottom pricing that guarantees the dev is not paying attention or is going to be forced to find other ways to feed their family.

If you aren’t prepared to compensate someone for the value they’ve created that’s fair, but claiming it’s somehow their fault is not being honest.

Thanks ;)

This is the first place where we received such negative feedback. Even if we're a bit surprised, I think some of them might be quite useful and interesting. However, some of them are just not even worth responding, to use kind words ahah

It really feels like a solution in want of a problem.

I'm already in the terminal!

I'm sorry if the website didn't convey the right idea, but we know that this is not, at least right now, a "painkiller". This is just something nice to use. Not targeted to somebody with the wet dream of macOS being a tiling window manager... We're developers ourself, we love the terminal, and we recognise its strengths. If you're already satisfied with that you absolutely don't have to purchase Brewer X. Friends as before ;)

That’s quite a common pricing model isn’t it?

You get a perpetual licence with an option for continuing to get updates after the first year.

If it was a monthly subscription there would be lots of complaints too.

Maybe it is a bit expensive but I do think we should reserve the word “scam” for actual scams :) The pricing is at least extremely clear, even if you don’t agree with it.

I agree a trial would be nice. I wouldn’t buy this without being able to try it.

Thanks for you observation. We understand the price might seem a bit high (for the current state of the app), but the last thing we wanted for it was to be a "scam". The whole website design with the pricing always upfront was chosen exactly to convey a sense of transparency... maybe it's not as effective as we thought.

We would really like to offer some sort of trial. Can I ask you if you would prefer a perpetual one where just the basic features are unlocked or a time-limited one where you have everything availble? Maybe we can even do both... after the time-limited trial the app locks all the advanced/non-essential features. We're open to ideas here.

It's not a 'lifetime license' for macOS if it comes with only a year of updates, because macOS regularly breaks backwards compatibility.

I'd prefer to see, $49 for version 1. Then an upgrade price in a few years when they release version 2.

My biggest issue is 49$ for... a UI like this isn't homebrew itself lol, its just a GUI for something you rarely need to interact for 49$ really?

We're aware of the possible issue you're pointing out. Since we're relatively new to macOS development do you have any idea on how others deal with this? There are a lot of apps out there with the same pricing model. Sketch for instance did this for years. They should have found a solution, right?

Sketch is a tool used by people 8 hours/day (or at least was). Therefore, their pricing is more accepted by users/customers. In your case, it's not really a tool that one will use daily.

What you could do is have one version for all buying customers, but you have a feature state depending on the purchase date. Customer X buys Version 1.1 on 2024-04-20 and receives all new features until 2025-04-19. after that, bug fixes and new versions are delivered, but new major feature additions require a license renewal after the cutoff date. So, it would be decoupling major features from the app version. I have seen some Apps doing that, for example Halide.

Sletch is a complex app that is used by professionals for 8h a day and costs $99. Your app is not comparable to that, just the pricing model. In relation to Sketch, your app is crazy expensive. I would have bought it for $19.

I don't doubt there's a crowd that would pay for this tool, but not sure HN is the right target audience. Maybe /r/macapps?

I feel like people here likely aren't willing to pay for UIs on top of ffmpeg, brew, git, etc.

Especially with open source versions:

https://github.com/buresdv/Cork https://github.com/brunophilipe/Cakebrew

Just my take- could be totally wrong / have a poor perception of who uses HN these days.

THIS! 49$ for a frontend UI for an app thats mostly used with 1 off install/upgrade commands?

Note: Cork is not open source. Cork is source-available and under the Commons Clause. As of commit 404943c, the README.md [1] of Cork mistakenly calls Cork "open-source":

> Cork is licensed under Commons Clause.

> This means that Cork open-source

even though the very FAQ for the Commons Clause asserts otherwise [2]:

> Is this “Open Source”?

> “Open source”, has a specific definition that was written years ago and is stewarded by the Open Source Initiative, which approves Open Source licenses. Applying the Commons Clause to an open source project will mean the source code is available, and meets many of the elements of the Open Source Definition, such as free access to source code, freedom to modify, and freedom to re-distribute, but not all of them. So to avoid confusion, it is best not to call Commons Clause software “open source.”

The Commons Clause bans selling of the software and is written in a way that allows the copyright holder to add more restrictions [2]. Cork does add more restrictions [1]:

> This means that Cork open-source and you can do whatever you want with Cork's source, like modifying it, contributing to it etc., but you can't sell or distribute Cork or modified versions of it.

> Moreover, you can’t distribute compiled versions of Cork without consulting me first. Compiling versions for your personal use is fine.

[1] https://github.com/buresdv/Cork

[2] https://commonsclause.com/

You might be right... Honestly this is the first place where we received such comments. Definitely our mistake.

Although, I think it's worth pointing out that Cakebrew hasn't been actively maintained in 3 years and has never supported Casks. Cork on the other hand is actively developed and supports Casks, but we think the interface and user experience are not the best. For what we've seen so far Brewer X mostly appeals someone who can't get along with poorly designed UIs just to use a free tool.

Free alternative available here: https://www.cakebrew.com/

Repo link: https://github.com/brunophilipe/Cakebrew

LGTM.

I don't know what LGTM means

“Looks good to me”

OP, please do not be discouraged by the pessimism in some of these comments. I don't think they are representative of your target audience for this app.

Those who know how much had work it takes to build and launch a product like this - especially such a nice looking one, appreciate your work!

Thank you so much ;)

We clearly didn't expect some of these reactions but we probably didn't know the audience of this website very well... Our bad.

Thanks for the "nice looking" :)

> pixel perfect design

This phrase has lost all meaning. We can see from your screenshots that the table titles are misaligned from the items, as is the “Search” text.

Don’t call something “pixel perfect” unless you really went in there and manually nudged every element pixel by pixel.

I'm clearly not in the demographic for this. However, I'm immediately dubious about any "maintenance scripts claims". That sounds very opaque. Does your app have any rollback / contingencies in place in case your maintenance scripts break something?

• Automatic replacement of apps installed without Homebrew

Does that mean your app would look in the homebrew repo to find similar apps and links it?

it does look very nice, but as a long time mac user who does often pay for conveniences like these... $49 once is already far too much for the value it provides and there's no way in hell that i'd be willing to pay the annual subscription for updates.

if this was a one off $20-$25, i would buy it.

Hi there! Thanks for your opinion. We get that for some people the current price tag is too high. Honestly we think that going forward with everything we planned to add will be justified. However, we admit that maybe is hard to ask people to pay upfront for some benefit they will get in the future.

You don't have to pay an annual subscription for updates. If you decide to not do that you can continue using the app. Was it clear in the copy or not? Maybe we can make it even clearer. Thanks

I think the issue might be that in this model it’s not guaranteed that I’ll be able to run this on my system in x years.

Okk I get it but a lot of other apps do the same… consider that from our perspective the alternative would be to run a standard subscription. Is that preferable? Personally I would say no, but maybe it’s just me.

honestly the main issue is just that the value provided by a gui for a package manager i can already make use of isn't worth $49 to me (and many others i'd wager), and it certainly isn't worth paying multiple times for. i'm sure the features you have planned are cool but it's still just a front end for homebrew whichever way you look at it.

i don't mean to diminish your work at all - it really does look great and i mean that, and hopefully you'll prove me wrong, but i don't think you've properly considered what value this actually provides to the people you want to buy it.

you might say that $49 + an annual subscription (and it is a subscription by the way, you can call it what you like but that's objectively what it is) is what you need to charge in order to make the time/effort you spent on development worth it for you, which is fair, but consider it from the POV of a potential customer: it's $49 + an annual subscription for a prettier way to achieve something that they probably use quite rarely, something they can already do, and something which there are already free alternatives to.

consider something like bettermouse (https://better-mouse.com). macOS is borderline unusable without it, i'd sell my computer and switch to linux that same week if bettermouse disappeared. i make use of it for 100% of the time i use my computer, and it costs $7.99 one time, forever. the developer could double or even triple the price, and it still wouldn't even be half of what you're asking for.

> i'd sell my computer and switch to linux that same week if bettermouse disappeared

Off topic, but can you tell me exactly why?

macOS's weird mouse + scrollwheel acceleration is a dealbreaker for me, i only find it usable with a trackpad

Isn’t there already a client for homebrew on macOS that you trigger by the command brew?

That's exactly what brew does. Just execute it and it updates everything automatically ... for free.

Pricing comments aside, this looks very nicely designed and executed.

Thank you so much!

All the best, but… yeah I don’t see myself and in fact anybody paying for this, even less a “subscription” amount. We are not talking about git or some command with hundreds os options and combinations, but brew, which is so simple that any abstraction on top seems to me like overkill.

Thank you. As I said in another comment, we know this is not a "painkiller" app, at least right now. We just wanted to create something nice to use. Everyone who's already happy with using brew in the terminal should not even try Brewer X. The app is for people who sometime prefers to have a good UI in front of them.

Of course, our hope for the future is to add enough new and cool features that brew could never offer that the app might be interesting also for everyone else. Till then keep using the terminal ;)

I really hate those "How dare you charge money for software" comments, when we’re talking about something that looks neat, comes from friendly people who respond to comments, and costs around two cocktails in Miami

Thanks for the comment. Means a lot to see someone who recognises that.

We know that not everybody has the some financial conditions but we didn't expect such harsh reactions for the price. I agree that maybe we could improve some of the wording we're using, but the price itself seems pretty reasonable to me. Personally I have multiple pieces of software which I pay 50 bucks a month or more to use. $49 for the first year and optionally $29 after that didn't seem a problem for us...