Wingman: Git + GitHub + OS X | Hacker News Reader

Wingman: Git + GitHub + OS X

wingmanapp.com

126 pointsbasil66 comments

I'm shocked that an indie Mac app that isn't in the app store is trying to get away with selling a $29 license that has no free trial. To Github developers, of all people. Shenanigans.

It'd be one thing if you had an awesome video whereby I could see in this in action. Or tons of awesome reviews from people I respect. Hell, I would pay $5 to try it out.

But you want me to pay $30 bucks in hopes that this doesn't suck? There is too much competition in this market to even attempt this. This developer is shooting themselves in the foot.

Why is it such a big deal that it isn't in the app store? As far as I can see automatic updates is the only advantage that the app store brings... and even that has been handled for years without problems by third party updating systems like Sparkle.

The App Store forces your into this un-friendly model. Most developers respond with lower prices that are hopefully offset by a much wider audience [folk who are ready to buy, in a software store owned by Apple]. The lower prices and sometimes helpful reviews also reduce the risk of trying out something that ends up being bad.

sadly, I'd say because it's a centralized place for reviews that makes it less likely a company might publish a half-written something

Yeah, the app store model keeps the reviews out of the hands of the developers. Almost like a consumer protection.

Ya, hopefully their product is better than their marketing.

Well, if it does everything they says it does, does that still make it any good? raises eyebrow

Restricting it to Github is also annoying, if not slightly stupid.

This seems like a cool idea but i'm bewildered by one thing. Why is this a menu item? And does it have hotkeys?

Because, for better or worse, my menu bar is essentially full, and I save and manipulate my code and repositories via my keyboard, not my mouse (well that's mostly true. I still browse my git repos using GitX).

The workflow ideas seem worth trying, but the interface isn't something I can get with (although i will cop to not having any good ideas on how to improve this. I wonder what a quicksilver-like workflow would be like).

I recently discovered Bartender to help me with my menu bar and cannot recommend it enough.

Link: http://www.macbartender.com

I'm a big fan of the app, and the developer finally fixed some annoying bugs from the 1.0 release.

One of the landing-page feature boxes mentions that it's driven by hotkeys.

If you're into the workflow then check out git-flow, it seems to be a direct port of it.

Personally I find it way too specific, rules with no bend in them rarely work well.

Checkout git-process:

http://jdigger.github.com/git-process/

Our team have been using it for a few months and love it. It is basically a minimalist version of git-flow.

Menu items make for better screenshots when marketing features.

Really surprised to see people balk at $29 for a software productivity tool. I mean, I get it if it's not worth it for you, but I happily paid a similar amount for SourceTree (before it was free ;) ), and pay similar amounts for all sorts of development tools. It doesn't take much productivity gain for these sorts of tools to pay for themselves quickly. This is the sort of thing that a dev lead might buy for his team to teach/enforce the git-flow workflow quickly and easily.

We happen to use Mercurial around here, so that was my biggest turnoff, but the rest of the value proposition made plenty of sense to me: Solve one problem. Solve it well. Charge real money.

I wish these guys success. :)

So is there an equivalent for Mercurial, i.e. automates best-practices recipes for common dev workflow steps?

I suggest moving your imagery over to a CDN. Chrome network tab clocked your site at taking 30 seconds to load all the images. (I am on a 100mbit connection)

I'm on a 30mbit connection to the outside world and I'm finding it just as slow.

And most of the images are @2x retina sizes.

The images and the download itself are both crawling for me.

Same issue here, I'm getting an estimated download time of four hours for the app itself.

Or just turn on Cloudflare.

Cloudflare is a CDN.

Seems awesome - like a GUI for git-flow.

What is the pricing for this? Seems there's a free download at the top, but the bottom says "Buy for $29.99". Might want to make the pricing structure clearer. :)

From what I can gather it's some kind of dodgy Shareware thing. Although I can only guess since they really have made little effort to make it any more clear.

Neither the "purchase" site [1] nor anything inside the app itself [2] clearly explains the terms of the free download, or why one should even consider purchasing a licence.

I understand this is a fresh product and everything but it's expected one makes an effort to make these terms far clearer before asking for people's money.

Is this a simply a case of neglect or an example of a dark pattern [3] in the wild?

[1] http://wingmanapp.com/purchase

[2] http://i.imgur.com/aD5g8.png

[3] http://wiki.darkpatterns.org

What makes shareware dodgy now?

Nothing. You've misinterpreted. Or I've miscommunicated. Perhaps both.

Read what I wrote again without presuming I'm universally referring to all Shareware as being dodgy; just this particular instance.

I'd love to try this, but I'm uncomfortable entering my github username and password - shouldn't apps like this be using oauth instead of basic authentication?

Also, the sign in button appears disabled until you actually purchase it (I assume it's not just a bug), which makes the prominent Download link on their site with mostly hidden mention of pricing feel pretty shifty. Behavior like this doesn't instill confidence or trust.

I have a native iOS app that works with GitHub's API. I had the exact same concern as you. As a user, I would much rather use an oath of flow instead of entering my password.

Unfortunately, GitHub actually suggests you use basic auth for native applications. Their reasoning is that the application secret would need to be shipped with the binary, thus making it… not secret (even with various obfuscation).

Source: http://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#non-web-application-fl...

I don't know what their reasoning is, but there's another obvious reason - if you're trying to protect against a malicious app, unless you get it from the App Store so you can be assured it's sandboxed and it uses an external web browser to show the OAuth dialog, you don't have any real guarantee that it can't steal your password anyway. Although it might be easier to write an app that steals your password if you enter it directly, that's not much real security - to that extent, the sense of protection that the OAuth dialog gives you is false. (This is especially silly for iPhone Twitter apps, where the standard is to pop up a web view which the app can easily inject JavaScript into.)

One nice thing about Windows 8 app development is that they provide a method through WebAuthenticationBroker to have the browser instance hosted in a secure separate process from your app to prevent any shenanigans.

SourceTree has something similar: a GUI for git-flow. Mac has the best tools for git and in linux i can't find something with the quality of SourceTree.

link: http://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/08/01/smart-branching-wit...

I'm truly intrigued and curious... my startup Gitpilot (http://gitpilot.com/) is trying to solve a similar problem. Was Wingman conceived from any inspiration of Gitpilot? Truly curious, especially because of the airplane naming scheme.

Wingman is a friend you take to the bar, not an airplane. But props on your app/startup - pretty damn slick UI.

A wingman is the other pilot flying a sortie with you, supporting you in a dangerous mission. The bar-cruising friend only wishes he could be that awesome.

I stand corrected (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingman).

Command + Return probably isn't the best key combination for this. Most source code editors on OS X use that key combination to insert a new line below the current one regardless of cursor position.

Downloaded it. Ran it. Entered my github credentials... and the login button is disabled.

hm.

Having the same problem...

No way I'm dropping $30 without trying it first, especially if it is not on the app store. This isn't exactly a 99 cent flashlight app.

The page what this brings me on top of Git+Github. Is it just a GUI around Git to avoid having to learn the ~5 everyday commands?

So I was ready to buy Wingman, but then paused and thought. Why isn't this on the App Store? Am I really going to use it? I am all for productivity tools, and honestly willing to pay for anything that makes my life easier, but I think I just need a trial of Wingman, just to make sure it is what I am envisioning.

Alienating developers from git? What's next, hiding them the source code? I do not really see the point of this app.

So this is graphical representation of gitflow... and tied to github... it sounds cool, I am a little suspicious how many people will really need this. From angry comments I see this is not tied to appstore, kudos for that, hope more devs would do it like this.

Does this work with git-flow already? I wouldn't switch away from an existing git based workflow for this but I'll consider it for future projects.

I'm not into these stuff, but this might be an alternative: http://codejournalapp.com/

For all the comments about no trial version, they cover this at the bottom of the page by saying they'll gladly refund if you're unsatisfied.

1) I use CMD + Enter for Alfred 2) How is this faster than just going into command line? 3) $30? I'll just stick with command line.

With spotlight at command-space, why not option-space for Alfred?

Because Alfred is basically a replacement for Spotlight, so I just use Alfred instead.

This looks cool. Is there any similar software for Windows?

Are there settings for a --no-ff merge?

29$ ruined it for me

$29 is a small price to pay to increase your productivity.

How do I know it will? I was turned off by the lack of a trial.

http://www.joshlehman.com/thoughts/stop-using-the-cup-of-cof...

s/cup of coffee/29 cups of coffee/g

Ugh, github. No thanks.

Tip.

A lot of people will see the name and have the response that I did. Which is that this is likely to be an app that aims to help sleazy pickup artists out.

Like it or not that is the immediate association that people have with "wingman".

I'm calling shenanigans.

First of all, please don't pass off personal perspectives as fact. An "immediate association that people have"? Really? What actual data do you have to back such an assertion? I had no such image in my head whatsoever when I first saw the name. Am I in the majority or the minority? I have no idea. Neither do you.

Secondly, if we avoided each and every possible warped euphemism in the English language, we wouldn't be able to name anything. Teabag, facial, taint, snorkel... the list of potential innuendo is endless. These are perfectly good words that have been ruined by some jerk who thought he was being clever.

Don't buy into this. Let the 13 year-olds snigger in the back of the room if they want to. The only way to combat this prepubescent inanity is to use these words in their proper context -- as often as possible.

It is unarguable that there will be people who have that immediate association. I stand as an existence proof for that. It is also unarguable that not everyone has that association - you are proof of that.

How many have the association? A few? A lot? From the fact that I did, my inclination is to suspect that it is not uncommon. Perhaps I'm wrong.

Will the name be a barrier to success? Possibly, possibly not. But it is important to know that some people will have that association. Perhaps you think that using the name anyways is a worthwhile public service. Perhaps you think that anything that causes people to get curious is good. Perhaps you think it is not the image you want.

The authors of the tool should take it however they want to. It is their product, not mine. But they should at least KNOW that, for better or for worse, there are people out there who will have the reaction that I did.

While that may be the case, it is merely one usage of the word. "Git" on the other hand has a singularly offensive meaning, but that hasn't done much to derail the success of the tool.

This is an entirely valid point - not sure why you're being downvoted. I recently participated on a project with a client whose product name was synonymous with an alternate spelling of a rare skin disease.

We brought up our concerns about it in development, but they resisted. Their product displaced the skin disease search results in a matter of weeks after launch.

My point being: names are just names, but they can make or break through connotations depending on how well delivery is executed.

The logo is clearly pilot wings. "Wingman" refers to a pilot flying next to another pilot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingman

Of course in addition to the modern meaning, there's the original meaning of wingman (which I presume may still be used by fighter pilots), which is much less sketchy... :]

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