BRIAND  The realm of Roxio? I disagree. Toast upgrades are $80, a measly 20% off the new price, and you have to mail in a rebate form to get the upgrade discount. BBEdit upgrades are $30, a 75% discount from the new price without having to mail a rebate form. There's really no comparison between the two companies and their practices.  
(Version 9.1.1)

KAIDOH  ok, just to add a second observation on startup speeds: my hand stoped start times are

BBEdit 9.1.1: 8 sec

Word 2004: 65 sec

(both apps haven't been runing before the test as restarting an app is significantly quicker - my machine is a Macbook CD 2 GHz)

If BBEdit would take 65 sec it would drive me mad but I can live with 8 sec (and I'm starting it only once a day in the morning (and btw: yes, I'm cursing every day that makes me start sl-ugly Word))  
(Version 9.1.1)

MR650  Speed Issues in 9.1.1 with current updates seem to be much better than my first post. I did not notice anything in the release notes, but on a MacBook Pro 2.53 in either performance mode my startup times after initial launch are:

BBEdit 9.1.1: 3-4 sec.

Word 2008: 2-3 sec.

I did run a full Onyx cleaning on this system, which may account for some of the performance improvements. Previously, the launch time was about 10 times as long for BBEdit, but about the same for Word. So, if you have launch speed issues try doing 'irregular maintenance' and cache cleaning after applying all updates.

I always used BBEdit for text editing and never used TextEdit because the launch times of the previous versions of BBEdit were about the same as TextEdit (Instant). The fact that launching BBEdit and creating a new document was as quick as creating a new document in other running editors was one of the reasons I found the Application so compelling when it was bundled as an external editor with dreamweaver.

So, as far as speed is concerned I would say that there is a major improvement and it should not be considered a negative point if one is considering upgrading. That said, I would urge anybody thinking about making the purchase to try the demo ( http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/demo.html ) before spending any money.

As far as preferences, cosmetic issues, and unnecessary complexity go; I still feel that there is a lot of work to be done in this area. Without a doubt, the lessons in Help and the information in the BBEdit manual will improve most people's productivity within the application and in general. If you do not know how to work with regular expressions, then take a look at lesson 7 of help or read chapter 8 of the user guide. The find and replace functions of BBEdit are stellar and should be experienced by anybody trying the demo and all owners.

As far as the upgrade system, Roxio adds some significant features to Toast that do cost money in licensing fees, but there is still a big Popcorn/Toast feature scam occurring IMHO. I paid 29.95 to upgrade to Toast 10 and would only do 'not at the show' specials or other upgrades. It makes sense to both search for coupon codes and get the smithmicro and sonic emails if you use a lot of applications and tend to have a list of future purchases. The upgrade price for Toast 10 Pro is ludicrous, and I would hold off on that (still, they are charging you money for essentially integrating streamripper X into toast). At least Sonic TRYS to make Toast look like a single version without 'pay to use' features like their PC offerings. The reason I said BBEdit had entered that realm was that the new features tend to cater to new users and the application has been great as is for a long time. That makes upgrading less useful to many, not all, current users and buying the application as a new user somewhat tempting.

Even in the demo, one might feel slightly overwhelmed at the menubar madness. This is really an application that needs practice and reading to make use exceptional and the UI functional for many.

As for the Stuffitville issue. Stuffit never really made it far past OS 9. BBEdit was right there for the transition and for that I feel Barebones deserves two thumbs up. I don't have any major use for magic menu and no desire to use any disk doubleresque features in a modern OS. There are some limited uses, but the main sales point of that application is use of a proprietary encoding process that the free expander will already open. Upgrades to Stuffit almost feel like robbery. When an application changes from a numbering system to an 'Application 2009', scheme it had better have very few releases (01, 04, 08 word style) or it just seems like the reason to buy it is to have the 'newest stuff'. Plus, it seems like Stuffit is coded with an emphasis on deprecated functions and a hope that an OS upgrade will break the application. That kind of planned obsolescence makes it a very questionable buy, as it practically becomes a subscription model.

All of the products mentioned underwent what appears to be some level of corporate control or dictation of function for the purpose of marketing. Gone are the Made with BBEdit badges from all over the Barebones website. If your product allows people to build websites, shouldn't you promote your own use of that product for your site? Do you really want support through a mailing list? It does show you that BBEdit has a loyal following and you will be able to get help quickly. Personally, I like it. It's a hold over. It feels like 'under new ownership' with an emphasis on appearing professional. Why? Roxio went there and overboard with the animations. Eye candy is not needed to sell a text editor.

I like BBEdit and I use it every day. I don't like the way the upgrades seem marketed to new users. I find the application indispensable and gladly pay my upgrade fee; not just to support the developers, but because I have felt that BBEdit was an application that had the potential to improve significantly and already met my needs.

I honestly feel that the sweet spot for BBEdit upgrades are 2 versions at a time (7-9) instead of every release, unless there is an amazing new feature that you want. For people who are new users or just looking at the reviews on macupdate I cannot stress enough that this is a great tool and the demo is well worth using. If you do not need the power features use textwrangler. Either is a gateway application.  
(Version 9.1.1)

ZO219  Stuffitville! Oh noes! Where all once-decent software goes to DIE ...  
(Version 9.2)

EXORZIST   (sorry for my English)

BBEdit is a professional tool that fits the needs of many people, all in once. Thats why you can set all the things up like YOU want, but the factory-settings are ok to work with and other things you may change on the fly while working with a text-document.

| Preferences: did you ever used the text–search-field for a fast lookup? I don't see any confusion here. And did you forgot to say that the manual is written by a genius (or two:) and reading is fun? BTW - do you have a lot of recent items, some pointing to a server/network-location which could be unreachable at launching time? - lot's of fonts, some on (sometimes unmounted) volumes? Could this be a speed-issue?  
(Version 9.2.1)

BRUMM  "this isn't a forum"

Very useful user feedback here, I like that.

I think MacUpdate is the right place to share user experiences otherwise it would be not much more than a listing of apps.

So everything alright here for me.  
(Version 9.0.2)

HAPPYSUDSY  It's a good thing Macupdate has a feature to the right of every application listed that lets you offer an alternative to this program. People doing it in the application space are for the most part just trolling and spamming. With the advent of the side request field, MacUpdate tries to discourage such things.   
(Version 9.1)

IERIKA  Thanks. I think they have to change the comments section like YouTube. Replies to comments are indented below instead of hiding.

Well...that's just my opinion.  
(Version 9.0)

MINIMAL DESIGN  I won't hide the fact that I'm a TM fanboy ;) And I won't deny the fact that BBEdit is great, it was my main editor until TM came along... BUt after reading your review, I just wanted to say that you might want to look into TM a little more, because a lot of the things that you say are missing are actually there, just harder to find than in BBEdit. But you might also not want to... and I respect that. TM is really powerful once you spend some time with it though... :)  
(Version 8.7)

TOADLING  Thanks for your tempered response, minimal design. I didn't want this to be a holy war and I'm really happy to see people discussing this rationally, especially since I actually like TextMate. It's just that I like BBEdit even more. :)

I used TextMate exclusively on a project for about 5-6 months last year. I'd like to think that I learned the application fairly well, but maybe I missed something, or maybe some things have changed since I switched back to BBEdit.

Can you be more specific about which of the above features TextMate has or implements better than BBEdit? If it can do things I don't know about, I'd certainly be interested in learning. After reviewing my original post again, I don't see any place where I've been unfair.  
(Version 8.7)

SIMDUDE  Excellent review and comparison. I too use and like both but for more tasks, prefer BBedit. For me the reason is simply performance. At work, my company has mostly eliminated macs so I'm still using my old dual 450MHz G4 tower. Old, but still capable. That is unless I use Textmate to open a big file. Searching is pathetic and multiline editing so slow it's unbearable. I've been learning Ruby and for that, the bundles are great.

I think a good comparison would be to do some timings. Opening and searching a larger (>10MEG) file, doing large column selections etc. Granted, many users may only edit small files and this stuff isn't important. But the performance of TextMate has kept me from using it as a primary editor. As I understand it, the next version will be Leopard only, so that really kills it for slower machines (Leopard needs ~900 MHz G4).  
(Version 8.7)

HARRY G.  This is a really excellent review, thanks a lot! TextMate may be the better choice for real Unix geeks ... BBEdit is likely the better choice for experienced Mac users.  
(Version 9.0)

TOADLING  How is TextMate's snippet support significantly better than BBEdit's Clippings? TextMate has a slight advantage in that it recognizes scope. And it comes with more "factory-installed" snippets, but other than that I prefer BBEdit's implementation.

(1) BBEdit allows you to save Clippings as individual text files rather than having to edit them in something like TextMate's Bundle Editor, so you can use the power of the text editor to edit your Clipping library. It's also easy to save new clippings in BBEdit: just select some text and choose "Save as Clipping" from the Clippings menu.

(2) You don't have to remember obscure tab-completion names to insert a snippet. Just type the first few letters (as many or as few as you want) and hit your key combo to auto-complete the Clipping. If BBEdit matches several Clippings to what you've typed, it pops up a selection window that let's you further refine the search, select the one you want manually, or start over and insert something completely different.

(3) BBEdit's Clippings can insert all kinds of dynamic data, even the output of scripts, just like TextMate.

(4) In TextMate, sometimes I remember having seen a command, but I can't find it in that insanely-organized Bundle menu and the search capability is horrendous (perhaps because it limits searches by the current scope?). Anyway, after about 10 minutes of looking, I give up and launch BBEdit and find what I'm looking for right away.  
(Version 8.7)

ANONYMOUS  what's great about textmate is it doesn't have palettes for web development  
(Version 8.2.4)

ARAGLIN  In fact, it has code libraries that are far more comprehensive than BBedits. There is no doubt that BBedit has some powerful grep searching and file comparison features, but TextEdit's text navigation and editing, not to mention unique code folding and a clever implementation of auto-completion, are breathtaking to behold. I will never go back to BB as long as it is priced so high by comparison, despite having used it for years. TE just blows it away, although I eagerly await it's implementation of more powerful file and string manipulation functions.  
(Version 8.2.4)

ANONYMOUS  TextMate is for pros, BBedit is for everyone else. ;-)  
(Version 8.2.4)