SpiralLab

Cloud9/Ace/SkyWriter/Whatever-it's-called-today seems like a much better implementation of this.

Just an update: GitMac is now out of beta and called Sprout on the Mac App Store http://gitmacapp.com/sprout

Saw Avdi do this talk at Magic Ruby. It was really nice, and in depth, and answered quite a few questions. I bet the book is well worth the money.

Same here.

     var _this = this;    //vanilla
     var $this = $(this); //jQuery

Agreed! (IMO the ML backlash is more of a XML backlash that carried over to other MLs).

Regardless - A designer that can design for any* framework with standard CSS/HTML is more flexible than a designer that knows HAML, but could't write vanilla markup.

That why I was surprised about the Coffeescript (preferring HAML is a popular opinion, as-is Rspec: yet Erb and Test::Unit are still the defaults).

Edit: I agree that alt. languages/syntaxes in frameworks are nice. Forcing them on people is not nice.

Agreed about SASS (prefer LESS, but still applies), and somewhat with CoffeeScript (I'm in the "make-it-optional-not-default-but-i-heart-CS" camp)...but 100% about HAML. It just always strikes me as backlash against HTML rather than an actual improvement.

What happens when you give HAML to a non-Rails designer? Maybe it's just taste, but I feel that true markup with template tags for data (erb) is much better than a whole new markup language for designers to learn. YMMV.

Agreed. The "Minefield" (besides being a terrible alpha/pre-release codename) icon left a lot to be desired.

Ah, that makes sense! Sorry.

So it's still easier for people to find and buy your app than it was before the App Store - and you still have to do the same marketing that you would have without the App Store.

What's the problem?

Take this advice! The people that are actually suffering from the problems your business solves are (usually) not managers, CEO, or anyone at the top. It is the people in the middle or bottom. They are usually also so happy to have something that solves their problems, that they will act as an internal champion for you during the sales process.

It's cliche, but Art of the Start http://www.guykawasaki.com/the-art-of-the-start/ explains this tactic very well.

Agreed. Build for the problems you face now - not the problems you may theoretically have in the future.

If a business grows that rapidly - it is most likely that the original systems will have evolved dramatically from day one anyway - in ways you wouldn't have imagined.

I don't care as much as other people that Facebook === blue.

But, IMO it needs a bit more polish. To a designer's eye, this immediately screams "programmer-designed". You may want to hire a designer - hand them these mockups - and let them add a "designers' touch" [more padding, better typographic alignment, softer contrasts, etc].

That said - this is a big improvement over the previous design. Also, please don't feel like I am ragging on your work, just a bit of constructive criticism.

We shared this with HN when we were first starting out[1] (in pre-beta stage) and we just wanted to share the progress we have made and say "thanks" - as our awesome beta tester userbase was mostly HN readers.

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1660200

You probably aren't our target market (people new to Git) - but we are working on Git UI for OSX aimed at making the most common commands easy to perform. http://gitmacapp.com/download

Firebug. The Webkit inspector is catching up nicely, but for now Firebug is Firefox's 'killer feature' (at least for web devs).

This is a straw man argument. The question isn't whether Git could be more intuitive/user-friendly (Hint: It should be, in fact I bet my company on it [see my profile]), or whether it is more secure/cheap to host your own repo.

If you have a million people `pull`ing from your repo, of course you should have be hosting your own public access point. But, in 80% of cases, people can't be bothered to figure out how to set up Gitosis, pay for slices, mess with DNS, etc. just to host a repo.

To put it another way, see: Heroku vs. EC2

Either it's: intentional, or they just don't give a damn.

Considering the sources of most of their revenues, I'd say #2 is most likely. Companies that have been in Enterprise that long, making hand-over-fist money from mediocre products, acquired IP, and vendor lock-in often have a "quaint rag-tag" view of the FOSS development community.

I tend to think it's a myopic viewpoint, but then again we are a tiny indie shop, and they are multi-billion dollar company.

A major selling point of Git is the distributed part. You are allowed (even encouraged) to have more than one "source of truth". For ~7$/mo (including admin. and cheaper than Linode), GitHub is just another place to have a hosted version of your repo, with a nice UI and social features.

Shit happens, servers go down, that's why you also have a remote repo hosted on Linode, and X, and Y too.

Nice! Thanks for the info.

...it's not just the experience it's everything: the hardware, software, UI, materials, industrial design, aesthetics...

This. Try and think of one other computer company that has/takes/enforces that much control on every aspect of their product. Sure, some companies make decent high-quality hardware, and some companies make okay software. But what sets Apple apart is the quality/attention to detail that goes into every aspect of the product.

Each product is designed as an cohesive package, that "just works" out of the box. If you want to hack that product, it's your prerogative, but don't complain that it's not as easy to accomplish.

Disclaimer: We are a Mac software company. We consider hack-ability important, it's just not what Apple is selling.

They should really integrate (or at least link to) their GitHub wiki on their official website. Every time we look into using Cappuccino for a project, the lack of (new or updated) documentation on their website is a turn off (was hoping it would get better after they were acquired).

Compare this [1] to this [2]

[1]http://cappuccino.org/learn/

[2]https://github.com/280north/cappuccino/wiki

This is excellent. Last time I looked at libgit2 was in May and it was seriously lacking. They must have put in a ton of work this summer!

Good job Vincent, and props to Github for sponsoring it.

GitMac is in Private Beta right now. http://gitmacapp.com

We focused more on making Git easy to use, so it's more of a Versions/Cornerstone type workflow.

Yep, you are spot on. GitX is the best OSX app for Git right now. Though last time I checked the barrier of entry was a little high because there were lots of forks with different features.

For the initial release, we are purposefully not including some of the more "advanced" features, until we get feedback on what's most valuable to our users.

Which tasks are most likely to drive you to the command line?

We are shooting for a October/November Beta Release.

Thank for the feedback. That is exactly the void we are trying to fill! Git is awesome, but the functionality can be overwhelming for people at times.

As for the scripting, are you talking about integrating with git hooks, or just plain scripts? I would love to hear more about your idea, email me at theSpiralLab@gmail.com

Forgot to add, of course, you can open any file/doc in XCode/Textmate/app-of-choice directly from gitmac.

Yeah it is definitely a niche product. It's mostly targeted at developers who want a simple one-click way to do the most common actions with local checkouts - add, rm, commit, etc. Or people migrating from a "traditional" VCS, that aren't quite familiar with git commands yet.

"Advanced" functionality - merging, rebase, etc - was purposely left out because that most likely to be done at the command line no matter what.

Yeah, we are in "pre" Beta state, just taking registrations right now.

As far as Xcode integrations go, I think Xcode 4 actually has Git integrated baked in.

It's Intel-only, sorry.

10.5 are both 10.6 supported though.