Thanks for your thoughts on this, Thijs! Here's Tobias, the CEO of Tower.
We want to make sure that Tower can stay a high-quality application in the long run. This means we want to constantly improve the application, add new features, fix bugs, and help users with great customer support. To be able to do that, we need a steady and reliable source of income. The thruth is: for us - a small, self-funded business - a recurring revenue model from a subscription is the only sustainable way to survive.
A model where the user gets to keep the last version after she stops paying for the product does not work for a small business. If you have a team of 1,000 employees like JetBrains, you might be be able to afford this. But not a 7-person team like ours. For two reasons:
(1) First, it doesn't provide the steady and reliable source of income that we depend on. It's the old one-time payment model of the past - which we tried and which did not pay the bills for us in the long term.
(2) Second, and maybe more importantly: very quickly, there are lots of different old versions of the product out there. People want bugfixes, documentation and support for their version, no matter if they're currently paying or if they don't anymore. With a 7-person team, we simply cannot do this. We need to focus all of our painfully limited time on _one_ version and make sure to improve that one.
Most of our users make a simple calculation: "Can Tower help me or my team save some time or prevent some mistakes?" Over the course of the next 12 (!) months, even 1 or 2 hours or a mere handful of mistakes would make this worthwhile. If so, Tower has _easily_ paid itself off.
We offer a free and fully-featured 30-day trial that will help you answer this question for yourself - without any risks or commitments.
Interactive Rebase (as well as Pull Requests) is already implemented! I suggest you check it out while it's still in Public Beta (= free) --> www.git-tower.com/public-beta-2018
No ETAs, but the team is fully and exclusively focused on making Tower better every day (meaning: no other projects). We're working on Tower full steam!
Our goal with Tower is to make working with Git easier and more productive, for both Pros and Beginners. We're putting a lot of time and effort into design, workflows, and usability.
Additionally, we're making a lot of Git's "power-features" more accessible: it's not enough to just "somehow provide" a feature like Interactive Rebase. It's only helpful when it's carefully designed and really useable...
With the current Beta version (www.git-tower.com/public-beta-2018), I think we've made great progress to achieve these ambitious goals. However, of course: please see for yourself :-)
Tobias here from the Tower team! I'd like to confirm your assumption: we're indeed working full-steam on improving Tower for Windows (and Mac, of course ;-)
We have quite some exciting features and additions on the roadmap!
Tower team member here :-) We are of course working on lots of improvements, especially in the current beta phase. Regarding interactive rebase, by the way, I can say that it's already on the wish list :-)
Tower team here: thanks for pointing this out! This is already on our todo list - and, in fact, already being worked on! Won't be an issue for very long ;-)
The learning platform on git-tower.com/learn also contains lots of content for learning Git on the command line (without Tower). This is true for both the 150-page book and the 24-part video series.
Hmm... "data corrupting bugs"? Honestly, we haven't heard of a single case in all of our 5 years of being on the market (--> a Tower team member here).
Could you please get in touch with more information via [email protected] ? We'd be happy to help!
Being able to do basic things on the command line is definitely nice. And the question is not command line VERSUS a GUI. Tower, e.g. can be used side-by-side with the command line.
However, Tower help you both become more productive and make fewer mistakes. No one likes to inspect a complex project history on the command line. Getting a visual representation of a conflict helps you resolve it more confidently. Automatically having local changes stashed away prevents problems...
There are indeed many scenarios where a GUI is plain helpful - for beginners and pros alike.
First, let me say that Sourcetree is an excellent application, too. However, most people that chose Tower over Sourcetree prefer our approach in regard to user interface, workflows, usability, etc.
A visual conflict wizard, a new service account manager, automatic stashing... Tower goes a long way to make using Git both as easy and as comfortable as possible.
Sure, you're not limited to code when using Git. Especially when collaborating with others (and more so when working with plain text files), Git can help a lot.
I'd suggest you give it a try; both Git and the online version of our book are free!
Thanks for reading - and for the time to write down your feedback! Much appreciated!