Bare Bones, the maker of the great text editors BBEdit and TextWrangler, is planning to retire the free TextWrangler, and make BBEdit free for basic features.
… last July, we released BBEdit 11.6. You can use this version unlicensed, forever, for free. Without a license, BBEdit now includes all of the features that TextWrangler offers, plus quite a few others. That’s right. You no longer have to pick between them.
If this sounds like TextWrangler will eventually be sunsetted, you’re right; it will. While the next version of macOS hasn’t even been announced yet, when it ships, TextWrangler won’t be updated for it–but BBEdit will. You could keep using TextWrangler, but why?
Try BBEdit out for 30 days, after which you can still use its text editing capabilities for as long as you’d like. If later you decide you need one of the exclusive features or one of the authoring tools, you can buy a license from directly within BBEdit.
It makes sense. They don’t need to maintain two separate apps when one can provide both the basic, free functionality, and the more powerful features with the purchase of a license. If you need a powerful text editor, get BBEdit.
It actually makes more sense for Bare Bones to handle its free text editor offering this way, especially since those who use the free version will lose no functionality. This might parlay into more sales for Bare Bones as a user can readily see what features are available (for a fee) that might be missed otherwise. And, it should be easier than supporting separate products regardless how much code is shared. In any case, I would like to thank Bare Bones for all it has contributed to the Mac community over the years. You guys rock!
Yeah the idea that they would maintain two separate but similar apps with completely different names was always a head scratcher for me. I’m sure they had their reasons but making a free version of BBEdit you can then upgrade later is a wise move.
It actually makes more sense for Bare Bones to handle its free text editor offering this way, especially since those who use the free version will lose no functionality. This might parlay into more sales for Bare Bones as a user can readily see what features are available (for a fee) that might be missed otherwise. And, it should be easier than supporting separate products regardless how much code is shared. In any case, I would like to thank Bare Bones for all it has contributed to the Mac community over the years. You guys rock!
Yeah the idea that they would maintain two separate but similar apps with completely different names was always a head scratcher for me. I’m sure they had their reasons but making a free version of BBEdit you can then upgrade later is a wise move.