On 20 May 2010, at 6:32 PM, Keith X wrote:
> I've been a satisfied BBEdit customer for a very long time. My
> Powerbook blew out yesterday and I'm replacing it with an iPad. I
> *really* need BBEdit for my iPad, which will arrive in about two
> weeks. Thanks for a great product!
Um. You used a laptop computer for the kind of text-editing task that demands a
power tool like BBEdit. You are replacing it with a device that doesn't have a
keyboard,* and has a system for storing and exporting documents that is, to be
kind, very awkward. The screen is much smaller, so examining more than one
document would be painful. You're willing to make the leap on the faith that
before you get to the other end of the leap, there will appear a product that
hasn't even been hinted at. And it will satisfactorily replace the power tool
you ran on your laptop.
Do you see flaws in this? I never, ever say this, but if you _need_ a
keys-mouse-and-hard-drive computer, and you can't afford a $600 + KVM Mac mini,
your iPad money is better spent on a Linux, or even Windows, box. They're cheap
(to use a very precise term).
An iPad BBEdit would require an incredible amount of rethinking (it can't be
the same product), and I would guess that most of it would have to be done from
scratch. I'm not saying that it's beyond the considerable powers of Bare
Bones;** I'd be delighted to see what they made of the iPad. If it were less
than $40, I'd buy it sight-unseen. But I would not expect it to be easy, soon,
or a complete substitute for Mac BBEdit.
— F
* Yes, there are hard keyboard options. My experience of the Apple Bluetooth
keyboard is that Apple's text system is sluggish with it; and of course there
are no command keys. If you need responsiveness, resign yourself to sacrificing
a third-to-half of the screen for a non-tactile screen keyboard. Also, the
experience of the talented author of iSSH is that things like arrow and
function keys work with the Apple text system, but aren't available as events
to third-party applications. That would be a huge constraint on the developer
of a text editor.
** Those powers don't include being two places at once. I see that BBEdit is
under active development. I wonder if a company that had been fully occupied
with a Mac product could with the same resources support the Mac product as it
does, while creating a completely-new editor for a completely-different
machine. But I'm speculating as much as anyone else is. The complete absence of
comment from Bare Bones cuts both ways.
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