alt.hn

5/21/2026 at 6:21:37 PM

BBEdit 16

 https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/bbedit16.html

by qaz_plm

5/21/2026 at 7:37:25 PM

In 1998 bbedit 5.0 cost $120 usd. Adjusted for inflation that would be about $245 usd.

Today an individual license costs $60.

Wild how software pricing and sales models have changed, and good on bare bones for staying away from subscription pricing.

by kennywinker

5/21/2026 at 8:04:05 PM

The software world is different today. People expect you to release security updates as vulnerabilities are discovered. They expect you to fix your application so that it works on the newest macOS that deprecated and broke the old APIs you used (or switch architectures). We expect continuous maintenance for a fixed price. I wish Textmate had a yearly charge to keep their team running instead of the one time purchase that starved them.

by pokstad

5/21/2026 at 8:31:55 PM

I think there is one major difference that separates the two eras: in ye olden days you bought software for a fixed price and while it's understood you might only receive updates for a limited time, you could continue using it so long as you had the ability to run it. For example, you didn't have to upgrade to Windows XP if you were satisfied with Windows 98. With subscriptions, it's a recurring fee to continue accessing the software at all.

by hgs3

5/21/2026 at 8:35:48 PM

Windows sells more copies of its software the OEM route. Also, they sell specific versions that eventually end support. Today you might consider Windows almost a loss leader since Microsoft is diversified with many services on top of windows.

by pokstad

5/21/2026 at 8:04:44 PM

I would rather software companies sell at more realistic prices so that they have a sustainable business, and signal to others in the industry that it's still possible to build a sustainable business.

No, we should not praise software companies for hobbyist practices like selling $1 app on the App Store, which say, 30% goes to a digital distribution store, and then of your after distribution fees, about 20%+ percent goes to the federal and local government.

Pay for updates, and charge rightfully like you're supporting an engineer's salary, and that you have a commercial real estate lease to pay, and the compensation packages of full-time employees with benefits.

And boo people who say otherwise. No other professional field do I know of exists where cheap bastards abound while the entire industry is dependent on monopolies to pay the high wages of engineers.

by bellowsgulch

5/21/2026 at 8:40:01 PM

Unfortunately Apple doesn’t allow paid updates short of releasing a whole separate app, and you can’t do upgrade discounts for current owners except via weird bundle discounts by sticking the new and old versions together as a package. So Apple is to blame for all the subscriptions.

by wlesieutre

5/21/2026 at 8:22:54 PM

No other professional field I know of lets workers invent and alter their own tools, collaboratively, for free, and share them for free with all their colleagues.

If surgeons could wiggle their fingers and make a better scalpel, at no cost, and give a copy to all their friends, also at no cost, I bet they'd have some pretty spiffy scalpels going around soon and many docs would stop paying for them.

by kstrauser

5/21/2026 at 8:30:08 PM

> No other professional field I know of lets workers invent and alter their own tools, collaboratively, for free, and share them for free with all their colleagues.

Blacksmithing, metal working?

by doublerabbit

5/21/2026 at 8:41:10 PM

Did I miss blacksmiths gaining the ability to infinitely duplicate and teleport their finished pieces into people's hands? Can one learn this power?

by idle_zealot

5/21/2026 at 8:46:27 PM

Teleport? You mean over fiber optics that cost millions to install and maintain?

by exe34

5/21/2026 at 8:41:18 PM

To a point, although you can't make your own kiln for free. The tools in those trades consume a significant amount of resources, where computing is basically free once you pay for the hardware. Something like GCC is the software equivalent of a steel mill. Even if you could design one and give out the designs for free, you'd still have to pay for the raw materials to construct one.

by kstrauser

5/21/2026 at 8:17:29 PM

Implying that one of the oldest still actively developed commercial text editors is not doing sustainable business practices kinda misses the mark. They’ve been at this since 1992, 34 years ago. I think they know their business.

by kennywinker

5/21/2026 at 8:24:27 PM

Customer acquisition and retention is so very hard and expensive. It’s a tough equation.

by browningstreet

5/21/2026 at 7:41:41 PM

The pie (market) has also vastly expanded since 1998. Need to factor that, and not just inflation.

by factorialboy

5/21/2026 at 8:20:20 PM

I assumed that was implied pretty heavily by what I said. Either they were overcharging in 1998, or the market got bigger.

by kennywinker

5/21/2026 at 7:50:12 PM

Proportionally, competition has vastly expanded too.

by sedatk

5/21/2026 at 7:28:18 PM

My search for a "just a text editor" ended with "CotEdit". It's Mac native, not Electron, and supports both RTL and vertical text. All I could ever want.

by LeoPanthera

5/21/2026 at 6:32:06 PM

Proud user since the classic Mac OS days (anyone else remember the OpenDoc version?), and it's still a solid editor at a good price.

by classichasclass

5/21/2026 at 7:27:15 PM

TextWrangler!

by Cassell

5/21/2026 at 7:27:01 PM

Same. Recently moved to Windows (blah) but if I move back, that's a purchase for me.

by sigzero

5/21/2026 at 7:22:07 PM

I use Zed more now, but BBEdit's still pretty great. I love, love, LOVE that I can extend it with shell scripts or Python tools or Rust apps or whatever else I have laying around. Sometimes I don't want to write a whole plugin, let alone in JavaScript or whatever. I just want to say "process this text with this tool" and have it work. BBEdit's second to none for that.

by kstrauser

5/21/2026 at 8:08:33 PM

That’s the power of vim, emacs, nano, and I think Kate too. Piping the current text and/or collecting the output of a given comment.

Another nice thing is the ability to collect paths, line and column numbers from the output for navigation.

by skydhash

5/21/2026 at 8:19:12 PM

For sure. I use Emacs regularly too, and of course it supports this kind of thing. BBEdit makes it flat out pleasant though. I appreciate how well the new additions melt into the UI.

by kstrauser

5/21/2026 at 8:23:01 PM

I won’t disagree with that, but my daily driver is OpenBSD. Emacs is what I got ;)

by skydhash

5/21/2026 at 8:27:54 PM

Right on! I have much love for Puffy.

You'll never hear me speak evil on Emacs. It's one of mankind's greatest software accomplishments. But I spend most of my days and nights on a Mac, and when in Rome...

by kstrauser

5/21/2026 at 7:45:21 PM

It still doesn't suck.

by KenSF

5/21/2026 at 6:46:44 PM

Love to see this app trending on HN.

by _HMCB_

5/21/2026 at 7:01:47 PM

I have used and loved Barebones stuff in the past, but strikes me as odd they're still advertising Yojimbo on their main page. It was fantastic, but has been abandoned for quite some time.

by headwayoldest

5/21/2026 at 7:11:12 PM

It's supported for Tahoe. It's still good functional software and this is the ideal right? They're selling finished software for a flat price without needing a subscription model to support continued development.

by sharkjacobs

5/21/2026 at 7:15:10 PM

You were downvoted but right. The changelog[0] shows that the current minor version (4.6) came out in 2020, and its only had 3 bugfix releases since then, most recently in 2023. A lot has changed since 2020, so this doesn't know about the major iCloud updates, or Apple Intelligence, or UI changes (not just talking about Liquid Glass either).

None of those things imply that it's broken or unusable. Still, it means it's going to feel like a dated app and that's not fun.

[0]https://www.barebones.com/support/yojimbo/archived_notes.htm...

by kstrauser

5/21/2026 at 7:36:23 PM

> so this doesn't know about the major iCloud updates, or Apple Intelligence, or UI changes

I'm not familiar with macOS: Why would an application need to be updated for any of these? Were the existing APIs insufficient to integrate these?

by debugnik

5/21/2026 at 8:13:48 PM

Yes, and that's universally true for all APIs. All of those have added new features that are widely adopted by other apps, and the older apps can't automagically start using new features without using a newer API, or having code added to take advantage of them.

For instance, an app can't start using Apple Intelligence if it's compiled with an older version of the SDK that doesn't know that such a thing exists. There are some UI exceptions, such as if the OS starts rendering high-level requests like "draw a button" in a newer style. Lots of other things take specific application support, though. MacOS 14 added desktop widgets. Unless an app adds code to configure and deploy widgets, that's not something the OS can do for it. That means that Yojimbo couldn't possibly offer widgets showing, say, the 5 most recently added documents.

If you're OK with not needing or wanting the newer features, and it doesn't rely on some old API that Apple deprecated, then sure, continue to use it! It's still a fine app. But each passing year means that all its updated competitors can do new things that it can't.

by kstrauser

5/21/2026 at 8:37:46 PM

Thanks for the examples. I simply wasn't expecting the features you originally listed to require application support, I see they're more involved that I imagined.

by debugnik

5/21/2026 at 8:47:20 PM

You bet. Even with things like iCloud, any old app can store a file in iCloud Drive just like any other folder on the computer, but apps have to use the CloudKit SDK to use more advanced sync features. It keeps getting updated annually, so apps using an older CloudKit can't use features that've been added since then.

by kstrauser

5/21/2026 at 7:38:23 PM

If they add one word, “Legacy“, under the product name, I would likely be adequately warned.

Barebones is great!

by Barbing

5/21/2026 at 8:16:10 PM

i still use it as a quick and dirty text editor for things like my .bashrc

much love for them sticking with it for so long

by latchkey

5/21/2026 at 7:04:55 PM

Love BBEdit!

by steviedotboston

5/21/2026 at 6:48:55 PM

So great to see this -- the last version of BBedit I paid for is the gold standard for me, for editors... I mean compared to twenty other editors of various kinds on desktop Linux and elsewhere..

by gnerd00

5/21/2026 at 6:30:52 PM

I wonder if it will ever get emacs tabs.

by jfb

5/21/2026 at 7:17:00 PM

I use emacs but I don't know what you're referring to. Can you enlighten me please

by marcelox86

5/21/2026 at 7:28:40 PM

I think maybe he meant chords.

by k33n

5/21/2026 at 6:55:35 PM

[dead]

by throwaway613746

5/21/2026 at 6:33:52 PM

> Support for vi keyboard emulation, for basic navigation and editing;

I'm sure some people will like this update, but it's a big meh for me. I'll wait for some further updates to upgrade.

by ndegruchy

5/21/2026 at 7:48:12 PM

You can search for text within images.

by dizhn

5/21/2026 at 7:43:18 PM

BBEdit used to be my text-transformation tool.

Happily paid for every update for years, even when I used Emacs, I kept BBedit in reach. For quick text edits/transformations (because Regex in Emacs is hard to use). But with LLMs + nvim I hardly start bbedit anymore.

So now with LLMs, I tell them what I need and they write a shell/Perl/Python script to make the craziest transformations.

by submeta

5/21/2026 at 8:26:22 PM

This really resonates with me. I feel ya. And yet, now those pre-existing tools can make fantastic user interfaces for the new AI-developed things. I just wrote a command line tool to do a thing I needed done, and used Alfred to make a GUI for it. Now it feels like a full-blown GUI, although I just wrote the CLI bits and wrapped them in Alfred.

In BBEdit's case, I could see adding all your new tools as text filters to have a standard way for executing them, either through scripting or in a text window.

by kstrauser