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dslyesterday at 9:28 PM3 repliesview on HN

Tailscale is really losing the plot to the movie.

It is an app that sits in the background and provides connectivity. Occasionally you need to change a setting. Absolutely nobody wants a rich windowed UI, or a menu bar widget that drops down a complex detail card.

I hope they can see this is exactly what killed desktop anti-virus: something that was supposed to be quietly doing its job in the background started getting in the users way. It needed to poke its head up and scream "hey remember me?" at the behest of some product managers or growth hackers. Eventually it got so bad Microsoft just baked it into the OS. Tailscale is on even worse footing here because Apple is even quicker to act when you destroy user experience.


Replies

likecarteryesterday at 9:32 PM

I feel like you don’t use tailscale. Because I use it every day - and I get confused when I can’t find it.

joshryandavisyesterday at 9:43 PM

You're the one losing the plot. It's optional, still closes to the system tray without you explicitly docking it. It doesn't emerge at random like McAfee.

> Eventually it got so bad Microsoft just baked it into the OS. Tailscale is on even worse footing here because Apple is even quicker to act when you destroy user experience.

So Apple are going to bake Tailscale into the OS? Also, read the blog. It's a response to Apple's bad user experience.

micromacrofootyesterday at 9:36 PM

I have too many toolbar icons, so I do actually want the window to switch to so I can copy and paste IP addresses. I already keep it open so I can just command-tab to the window, and it's way better this way.

I use tailscale every single day.