Prompt 3

First ad0be subscriptions, and now everyone wants in. Why should we keep paying for apps if NOTHING has changed? I pay for games and apps and I’ll pay monthly for dynamic content. But for a terminal app!? I thought Panic made some good apps in the past. but I’m not going to pay anyone and “maybe” get a new feature that I didn’t ask for. Sometimes I’m glad Apple just copies the idea and includes it in the next OS version.

I own and love using the original Prompt app for iOS. Was happy to pay good money for it. It worked (still does) and was as simple and functional as it needed to be. Prompt 3 is a shocking one time purchase price, and has removed or hidden one of the most useful features which is the Shared Servers view which scanned the network for computers broadcasting their willingness to be contacted. I wish Panic was the company it used to be back in the late 1990s when I first started buying their products. When I saw Panic’s name on an app, I bought it right away because I knew I could trust it and it was good value. Sometime in the mid 2010s Panic lost its way (in my opinion only - please form your own). To me it feels a little like they focus on profits first, and users a distant second. Profits are great and necessary for businesses. Making products that customers are actually proud to own that make them feel special…well that seems to be an outdated focus these days when subscriptions now exists to squeeze the living daylights out of us all.

To be fair, Panic advertises Prompt 3 as an app for when you need to quickly SSH into a server, run a few commands, and log out. I can’t say it’s unfit for that purpose. And it obviously *looks* great. But if you spend all day on your Mac with a CLI open, you’ll notice just as quickly that Prompt has a lot more style than substance. It’s better than macOS’s built-in Terminal.app in many ways, but it’s literally years behind free products like iTerm2, kitty, or even Visual Studio Code’s integrated terminal(!). Prompt 3 is too flimsy for power users, and probably too expensive for most casual users, so who is it even for? I don’t know. But I’ve been paying for Panic software since 2006, and while I’m sorry to say it, this one definitely isn’t for me.

This keeps on happening every little while. App just crashes on start. Then maybe some combination of deleting or something may bring it back or not. Very frustrating. Prompt 2 was rock solid for me.

Control key on the keyboard UI gets out of sync with reality, doesn’t support native iOS caret movements, just crashes when you try to do certain operations… Not worth $100+!

1. I installed it to my Mac and set up Panic Sync but it did not sync servers from Panic Nova. Had to ad them manually from scratch. 2. I installed it to iPhone, it synced servers and keys from Mac, but it fails to connect to any of them, telling me that the server has rejected my credentials, even though they work perfectly on Mac.

I have used Prompt 1, Prompt 2 and paid for both. But it’s a big pill to swallow to pay for Prompt 3 (one time because subscriptions are dumb). What guarantee I won’t see prompt 4 come out tomorrow and invalidate yet another purchase. I’m sitting on it. Prompt 2 is fine … for now. I can deal with the white icon.

In order to add servers it requires a subscription.

I bought Prompt 2 and then they removed it from the App Store forcing everyone to buy it again. Really scummy move.

Fantastic terminal emulator! I use it when I have a thought and am away from my computer.