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Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by pseingatl on Monday August 16, 2021 @09:16AM (#28197666)
No Linux? No Windows? No 32-bit? No thank you.
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by cassianoleal on Monday August 16, 2021 @09:23AM (#28197746)
No source code? No tech details? No reason to trust you with my browsing? For all I know, this could be MITM'ing my sessions and exfiltrating my data.

Being a paid product gives me exactly one guarantee: that I will be that much poorer. It doesn't increase my trust in the product in any way, it doesn't say anything about what the product is doing for my privacy or security.

This is a very poor marketing piece.

> Wondering why browsers are usually free?

Let's say I am. Care to answer the question rather than passive-aggressively hurting my choice of browser?

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by freediver on Monday August 16, 2021 @03:09PM (#28201650)
> No source code? No tech details? No reason to trust you with my browsing? For all I know, this could be MITM'ing my sessions and exfiltrating my data.

If open-source is what instills trust, then Chromium would be the most trusted browser. Instead, in practice, we should look at actual 'phoning home' habits and browser's business model to tell us what it real agenda is.

Luckily we do need source code at all to check if any browser is sending data anywhere. A simple network proxy will do and is much easier and more accurate than supposedly going through millions(?) lines of code.

In case of SigmaOS, at least the business model is more likely to not create privacy-related friction. I haven't checked it with network proxy, but somebody pointed out that crash logs are automatically sent to Microsoft which is not a good sign. Those are the things I would focus on.

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by sauravmitra on Monday August 16, 2021 @09:38AM (#28197893)
Can't change your mind on that.

I can only tell you that your session data is yours alone, and that we will never monetise our users' data.

Free browsers typically make their money from search engine royalties.

Users will only pay us if they think the value we're giving them is worth it, and that will keep us developing the product towards what users will benefit from, faster than traditional browsers.

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by threatofrain on Monday August 16, 2021 @09:47AM (#28197996)
But it appears that Apple already stole your thunder on consumer privacy, and that they will be Very Hard to catch up to; private relay is basically TOR lite for grandma, private email is email aliases that ordinary users can use, etc.

Plus no discussion on ad blocking extensions or password management?

If this is a browser that is launching on Apple’s ecosystem while charging $$, then you have to swing harder than just vaguely insinuating that other companies are sellouts on privacy.

And is there any plan to open source so that communities can actually vet anything?

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by cassianoleal on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:39AM (#28198648)
> Free browsers typically make their money from search engine royalties.

Please name names and map them to that.

I know that Chrome is owned by Google. I also know that Firefox makes money from Google for having it as the default search engine. I configure my browser to use DDG. How is your product any better in terms of preserving my data?

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by Cthulhu_ on Monday August 16, 2021 @09:52AM (#28198063)
> and that we will never monetise our users' data.

This is already telling; you're admitting that you gather user's data. Is there a clear consent form for that in place? Does your application and your company's data handling conform to GDPR rules?

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by sauravmitra on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:15AM (#28198364)
We actually don’t gather our users’ data.

But if you want to sync your data across devices, you’d have to upload your data (though we’re trying to move to iCloud for this so we don’t have to keep it).

Our privacy policy is available on our website and on the app before you login/signup, and we make sure to handle the data according to GDPR rules (though parts of GDPR are a bit lax, so I’d like to say better), considering it’s illegal not to :P

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by smoldesu on Monday August 16, 2021 @11:10AM (#28199002)
iCloud synchronization is a security risk at my organization, are there options to sync using secure clouds?
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by sauravmitra on Monday August 16, 2021 @12:27PM (#28199882)
Hmm, I'm not sure how we'd go about allowing that at the moment without having to integrate each solution ourselves.

How about the sync generating a file where you want it to, and you can sync that file using your current cloud storage solution? Would that work for you?

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by qwerty456127 on Monday August 16, 2021 @09:45AM (#28197971)
This makes me feel rickrolled. I clicked and only see a Mac version download link. The title should mention the platform if it's single-platform.

In fact I even have a Mac but it's High Sierra and I'm not updating to Big Sur with all the questionable changes just to try a new browser.

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by sauravmitra on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:22AM (#28198449)
Oh, sorry about that!

Hopefully you give it a try when you update eventually :)

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by qwerty456127 on Monday August 16, 2021 @11:44AM (#28199393)
I will. Thank you for doing a great job anyway. I don't actually feel angry or demand anything from you, although I might sound this way. I just expressed my thoughts which many people obviously share.

May I, however, ask if there is a serious reason to require Big Sur instead of supporting Catalina, Mojave and High Sierra also? I understand you probably don't want to waste resources on actually supporting them but perhaps you could just build against them and let users use it on their own risk?

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by sauravmitra on Monday August 16, 2021 @11:52AM (#28199479)
We're using SwiftUI and WebKit features that were added quite recently (MacOS doesn't get nearly as much love from Apple as iOS). This keeps our product iteration cycle quite high, and the worry is having to implement cumbersome solutions if supporting previous OSs.

I'll have to look into it again to see if I can go back just a bit maybe and assess how much time it would take to support those versions.

We're a pretty small team :)

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by oidar on Monday August 16, 2021 @12:12PM (#28199724)
I would have lobed to try this out as well, but I'm stuck in 32 bit land for the foreseeable future - so I am staying with Mojave.
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by sauravmitra on Monday August 16, 2021 @12:18PM (#28199795)
Ah, what a shame. Hopefully I figure out a workaround to support Mojave :D
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by qwerty456127 on Monday August 16, 2021 @12:07PM (#28199657)
I see. Thank you for your time.
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by sauravmitra on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:44AM (#28198727)
Changed the title!
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by qwerty456127 on Monday August 16, 2021 @12:12PM (#28199728)
I can speculate this can actually attract even more of the target audience to you. Mac people probably feel more enthusiastic about Mac-specific software announcements and are steadier to go and take a look at something Mac-specific than at yet another generic browser. And for the conversion rate - this probably even is a serious boost.
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by sauravmitra on Monday August 16, 2021 @12:31PM (#28199923)
We have been getting slightly more constructive comments since changing the title, so thanks :D
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by freediver on Monday August 16, 2021 @03:18PM (#28201753)
And those enthusiastic about Mac, also care about things like how 'macOS' is written. Attention to detail matters and shows your own level of dilligence.
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by sauravmitra on Monday August 16, 2021 @03:32PM (#28201883)
Interesting. I typically write it as macOS in conversation, but wasn't aware it was seen as correct to capitalise the M.

Thanks!

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by janus24 on Monday August 16, 2021 @09:23AM (#28197747)
> No 32-bit?

What's the market share for this one ?

Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by Cthulhu_ on Monday August 16, 2021 @09:53AM (#28198074)
At the moment, older model Raspberry Pi's and other ARM-based devices - everything else has moved on to 64 bits already. I don't think 32 bits needs to be supported anymore for consumer applications.
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by Narishma on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:06AM (#28198247)
I still use a couple of 32-bit netbooks.
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by sauravmitra on Monday August 16, 2021 @09:18AM (#28197698)
We're a small team, and we've focused on MacOS for now. But we'll start building for other operating systems as soon as we can!
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by mwcampbell on Monday August 16, 2021 @09:25AM (#28197768)
Try not to let the shallow dismissal get you down. While this product is not for me, as I'm not a routine Mac user, I appreciate that you went with a native app (presumably based on WebKit) rather than Electron or CEF. I do wonder what you'll do when/if you decide to do a Windows port, since WebKit on Windows isn't a popular combination.
Re:Launch HN: SigmaOS (YC S21) – A MacOS web browser designe... by sauravmitra on Monday August 16, 2021 @09:27AM (#28197786)
Thanks! Yes, we're full native using SwiftUI and WebKit :D

Windows port will be a problem for future me, both fortunately and unfortunately.