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Comment by input_sh | Hacker News Reader

I'm a Linux user myself, but if I were building a product for commercial purposes, I'd prioritize building it for the platforms where the majority of the users are. Unfortunately, that majority isn't on Linux.

"Mac & Linux coming soon" is good enough for me for now.

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I understand not prioritizing Linux for commercial purposes but Mac? General assumptions about people with Macs: 1. have disposable income 2. more likely to care about privacy.

I think they're literally just prioritizing by how many firefox users they have on each platform.

1) Market share for Mac is probably on a similar scale to that on Linux. In this case being low single digits. Of those users, a significant market share are likely not to be using Mozilla's products over Safari. Unlike Linux platforms where Mozilla products are the typical default.

2) Anyone on any of these platforms can likely afford 5 dollars a month. I don't even think platform plays a variable in this at all. It isn't like the unique iOS apps which bring value/features and are the only mechanism for attaining those given features.

In this case, there is plenty of competition already in play, and users can already pick a VPN provider if they want. Same can't be said for say a video editing app that is the only thing available on the iOS store.

3) Mac users care about privacy less than Linux users. A few weeks ago it was found that Catalina was sending a hash of every single program you run to Apple.

https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/catalina-executables.htm...

Yep, Apple likely knows everything you could potentially be doing on your Mac. Not very private I would say.

I don't really agree with any of your assumptions in this case.

My message was ambiguous, I meant more likely to care about privacy than Windows and Android users not Linux users. 1 and 2 of what you said are good points tho.

How did you find that Mac users care more about privacy?

stronger privacy restrictions are part of the value proposition of the Apple ecosystem. For at least some part of the market that is what draws them to purchase Apple products.

It really isn't that much different or extra work to create a cross-platform app. They are rebranding a solution that already has Linux support. Besides, if larger companies started releasing on Linux first I'm sure those numbers would shift dramatically. Linux really is a superior desktop for developers and engineers.

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