BBEdit ready for Intel
Category: Apple/Mac OS...
Posted Monday, August 15, 2005 at 05:38 PM [GMT-6]

According to MacWorld, Bare Bones Software has released a new version of its ubėr-text editor, BBEdit 8.2.3, complete with the "Universal Binary" code support necessary for it to run Mac OS X on an Intel chip, as well as on the current PowerPC chip.

Aside from being able to say that they've done it, I'm not sure what advantage having this version gives Bare Bones, or its customers, for that matter. OTOH, it's nice to know that software companies are already jumping on the new Mac/Intel bandwagon, and that conversion of key apps is apparently not an insurmountable problem.

One of the commenters on the Macworld story notes that the new release is "only" 7mb larger than the previous PowerPC-only version. I guess that's pretty good for a dual-platform program, but I can remember when entire applications were less than 7 meg (but that's another old codger story altogether, which I notice is being told through another comment thread on the article!).

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I *love* BBEdit. The BareBones folks have always been so on top of Apple's changes, and BBEdit is my favorite application. I've bought every version since 4.0 - there is no other application that I upgrade nearly that often.

And they're responsive! I reported a bug in 8.0, a real human replied to me within a day, and the bug was fixed in the next dot-release.

BBEdit is one of the major reasons I stuck with Apple through some of the doubtful times - I can't find a comparable text editor on Windows or Linux. UltraEdit on Windows comes close, and I'm continually trying to learn vi, but it's probably true that I've bought as many Macs because of BareBones as I have because of Apple.

And you've gotta love their release notes - they read like release notes, not press releases:


Fixed a bug where blue turds were left on the screen...

...to avoid the situation in which WebKit outsmarts the user...

If a file being opened has no type or creator, we no longer map its name through the Internet Config mappings. This solves the case of a file whose name ends in ".mac" being opened as a picture on machines whose IC file mappings date back to the Mesozoic Era.

Posted by: Brian at August 16, 2005 07:20 AM

I confess that I underutilize BBEdit. I'm still using 6.5. I've been meaning to upgrade, but keep finding other things to spend my budget on. Nevertheless, I agree with you implication: Bare Bones is the kind of company we wish Adobe, Quark and MS would be.

Posted by: Eric at August 16, 2005 08:48 AM
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