Wow, thought the guy would be a MSFT OG but this looks like it sucks? Vibed, closed source, paid extensions.. Why on earth would anyone use this?
bobsmooth · 2026-08-28 19:57:09 UTC
Too colorful for you?
DetroitThrow · 2026-08-28 19:59:44 UTC
I don't mind color, the glow effects just hurt the ability to read what's there (this reminds me of the gaming setups teenagers are drawn to)...but there's no reason a utility like a task manager should be closed source or have a pro version.
mikestew · 2026-08-28 20:07:22 UTC
Why on earth would anyone use this?
Because they use a screen reader and don't know any better.
And remember, the state of Washington sued the author for some very good reasons. I wouldn't let his stuff anywhere near my machines.
ndiddy · 2026-08-28 20:11:39 UTC
He kind of fell off. He left Microsoft to found a scam company called "SoftwareOnline.com" that used ads to trick people into downloading fake anti-virus software. The software didn't do anything besides show the user nag messages about fictional security threats that could only be addressed by buying the full version, and could not be fully uninstalled. See https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s...
walrus01 · 2026-08-28 20:19:01 UTC
Meanwhile, the creators and maintainers of linux 'btop' haven't scammed anyone or been sued by any state AGs. Shocking, I know! It's almost as if you can write a system status monitor application without doing anything shady.
tavavex · 2026-08-28 21:35:28 UTC
Being the Task Manager Guy became his whole brand. Any time he's brought up, the Task Manager topic is sure to follow. No wonder he's doing more Task Managers. It's so pervasive it's kind of funny.
deepthaw · 2026-08-28 19:58:07 UTC
an appimage to get a too complicated version of top?
bigyabai · 2026-08-28 20:11:30 UTC
Seems like a gaudier version of Resources[0] with a paid Pro version. It's times like this where I'm grateful for FOSS.
"Plummer left Microsoft in 2003[10] to start his own company, SoftwareOnline LLC, a software vendor. Plummer claimed that the company went on to sell millions of copies of first and third party utilities software for Windows.[16]
In 2006, SoftwareOnline was sued by The Washington State Attorney General's Office for alleged violations of the Consumer Protection Act after complaints were made about two products called "Registry Cleaner" and "InternetShield". SoftwareOnline agreed to pay $150,000 in civil penalties, plus $250,000 that was ultimately suspended following compliance with all terms in the settlement, as well as $40,000 in legal fees.[6] He also founded Xeriton Corporation during this period, whose major product was the Blue Phone technical support service.[17] In December 2009, Xeriton was sold to Support.com for $8.5 million.[18]"
jordand · 2026-08-28 20:11:30 UTC
For working with processes and software development on Windows, this replacement looks useless. I use Sysinternals Process Explorer daily at work, and that'll continue being immensely useful.
john_strinlai · 2026-08-28 20:12:11 UTC
"Every core, honestly", "Not just used. Accounted for.", "More signal. Less hunting.", "Your machine. Your phosphor."
anyways, after scrolling through all of that stuff, it is not clear to me what the benefit of using this over normal task manager (or sysinternals tools) is, other than themes i guess?
perhaps it is better than whatever the native task management program is on mac?
"lots of words. not much substance".
mikestew · 2026-08-28 20:23:41 UTC
perhaps it is better than whatever the native task management program is on Mac?
Activity Monitor works well enough for me. But, damn, I'd rather visually parse top all day before I'd resign myself to gaze upon that hideous mess.
walrus01 · 2026-08-28 20:28:35 UTC
Macports also provides htop , for the CLI folks.
timeoperator · 2026-08-28 20:13:01 UTC
It’s so ugly that it looks like one of those fake antivirus interfaces.
xattt · 2026-08-28 20:18:29 UTC
It doesn’t even have a photo of Peter Norton with folder arms.
walrus01 · 2026-08-28 20:25:02 UTC
Best we can do is neon vector art of John McAfee holding a crack pipe
john_strinlai · 2026-08-28 20:21:28 UTC
funny you should say that, given the history of the creator (dave plummer)
nilsherzig · 2026-08-28 20:21:37 UTC
checks out:
> In 2006, SoftwareOnline was sued by The Washington State Attorney General's Office for alleged violations of the Consumer Protection Act after complaints were made about two products called "Registry Cleaner" and "InternetShield".
Metaphorically, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
EricFrost · 2026-08-28 20:23:58 UTC
This seems like a good place for me to share TaskPilot, which shows you and lets you manage everything running in the background on Linux. Services, SystemD timers, cron, autostart, ports in use, snaps, containers, mounts, and more
Would love to see this as a signed Debian package in stable, testing and unstable. Looks very useful.
dundarious · 2026-08-28 20:27:03 UTC
I don't use Windows at the moment, but have heard good things about this alternative, which is "Handmade" affiliated: https://taskslinger.net/
pivo · 2026-08-28 20:31:49 UTC
Looks like it supports macOS and Linux as well.
yannoninator · 2026-08-28 20:27:08 UTC
Saved you a click, it is AI slop garbage.
Why do we need to tolerate this vibe coded slop?
We need a marker on posts which are complete AI generated rubbish.
What happened to the profession of software engineering? The craft and quality has been thrown out of the window in pursuit of slop.
We are disrespecting our own profession by turning the software we build into fast food junk where nobody wants anything we make and nobody cares about the quality and craft of creating software.
We are just building the same things repeatedly over and over again with nothing inventive or new, wasting engineering and the users time in the process.
AI has just shown how unimaginative some engineers are in choosing what problems in software to build and solve.
We need to do way better.
walrus01 · 2026-08-28 20:29:33 UTC
Feature suggestion to dang for a [slop] clickable next to [flag].
yipinwong · 2026-08-28 20:27:37 UTC
I don't see a single compelling reason to use this over built-in one.
KronisLV · 2026-08-28 20:37:04 UTC
It would be okay if it were a bit less AI slop in regards to prose, had more conventional fonts and also removed the obnoxious glow effects. Then again, personal opinion.
MistaIA · 2026-08-28 21:25:57 UTC
Not being anti-supportive, I wanted to try it, but...
My laptop just crashed after launching it.
Comments
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows/dave-plumme...
Linux is also available
Because they use a screen reader and don't know any better.
And remember, the state of Washington sued the author for some very good reasons. I wouldn't let his stuff anywhere near my machines.
[0] https://apps.gnome.org/Resources/
Real men visually parse /proc/ output in realtime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Plummer
"Plummer left Microsoft in 2003[10] to start his own company, SoftwareOnline LLC, a software vendor. Plummer claimed that the company went on to sell millions of copies of first and third party utilities software for Windows.[16]
In 2006, SoftwareOnline was sued by The Washington State Attorney General's Office for alleged violations of the Consumer Protection Act after complaints were made about two products called "Registry Cleaner" and "InternetShield". SoftwareOnline agreed to pay $150,000 in civil penalties, plus $250,000 that was ultimately suspended following compliance with all terms in the settlement, as well as $40,000 in legal fees.[6] He also founded Xeriton Corporation during this period, whose major product was the Blue Phone technical support service.[17] In December 2009, Xeriton was sold to Support.com for $8.5 million.[18]"
anyways, after scrolling through all of that stuff, it is not clear to me what the benefit of using this over normal task manager (or sysinternals tools) is, other than themes i guess?
perhaps it is better than whatever the native task management program is on mac?
"lots of words. not much substance".
Activity Monitor works well enough for me. But, damn, I'd rather visually parse top all day before I'd resign myself to gaze upon that hideous mess.
> In 2006, SoftwareOnline was sued by The Washington State Attorney General's Office for alleged violations of the Consumer Protection Act after complaints were made about two products called "Registry Cleaner" and "InternetShield".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Plummer#:~:text=16%5D-,In...
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/windows-vetera...
https://github.com/eric-frost/taskpilot
Why do we need to tolerate this vibe coded slop?
We need a marker on posts which are complete AI generated rubbish.
What happened to the profession of software engineering? The craft and quality has been thrown out of the window in pursuit of slop.
We are disrespecting our own profession by turning the software we build into fast food junk where nobody wants anything we make and nobody cares about the quality and craft of creating software.
We are just building the same things repeatedly over and over again with nothing inventive or new, wasting engineering and the users time in the process.
AI has just shown how unimaginative some engineers are in choosing what problems in software to build and solve.
We need to do way better.