Nova

Speaking of powerful professional Mac-assed Mac apps, Panic’s Nova text editor shipped, and it is glorious:

If we’re being honest, Mac apps are a bit of a lost art. There are great reasons to make cross-platform apps — to start, they’re cross-platform — but it’s just not who we are. Founded as a Mac software company in 1997, our joy at Panic comes from building things that feel truly, well, Mac-like.

Long ago, we created Coda, an all-in-one Mac web editor that broke new ground. But when we started work on Nova, we looked at where the web was today, and where we needed to be. It was time for a fresh start.

Customizable both visually and functionally, fast, gorgeous, and fun. Nova exemplifies everything great about making Mac apps. And like any great professional tool, Panic put as much work into the documentation as they did the software itself. They even made this delightful intro video.

Fascinating and very clever pricing model too. Nova costs $99 (or $79 to upgrade from Coda, Nova’s predecessor). If you want, that can be a one-time purchase that includes up to a year of updates, and after that, the version of Nova you have is yours to keep. Or, you can subscribe for $49/year after your initial post-purchase year is up, and you’ll keep getting updates in perpetuity. If you elect not to pay the annual fee, you can get back on the upgrade train subsequently just by paying the $49 fee when you’re ready. It’s very similar in spirit to Sketch’s pricing. The big difference between Nova and Sketch’s ongoing renewal pricing and pure subscriptions is that if you choose to stop paying, the version of the app you already have will keep working until it becomes technically obsolete. (Also noteworthy: this user-friendly, developer-sustaining pricing is not possible on the Mac App Store, and thus neither Nova nor Sketch are on the Mac App Store.)

★ Thursday, 24 September 2020