That's what I'm struggling to wrap my head around. If you're a business that wants to pay for official support, you'd probably buy a Docker business license. If you're opposed to that behavior, you'll probably reach for Lima or Rancher Desktop.
It looks like a quality tool, but I feel like most tenured Docker users will see a 'Pricing' page and close the window with their muscle-memory.
Im a veteran paid-up Docker Desktop for Mac user... and I instantly paid for Orbstack.dev as soon as it was released. It's so so much better than Docker Desktop For Mac. Literally no reason to use slow bulky docker desktop when orbstack exceeds every expectation, and instant support from the solo developer who has put so much effort into this (and is still a teenager Im lead to believe!)
Fair enough, like I said it looks like quality software.
Again though, I think the majority of users will either reach for something like Lima, Podman or Rancher given the history of the space. Relying on a subscription-service UI layer to use Docker is kinda redundant when everything inside is also freely available. If I was still evaluating Docker clients at-scale, I'm not sure this would make the cut.
I'll fully believe that Orbstack is superior to Docker on Mac. It's just hard to understand 'the sell' when there are so many high-quality Free alternatives. Then again, I'm the sort of Mac user who CMD+Q's whenever I read "buy me a coffee" or the like.
You failed at thinking that orbstack is nothing but a UI-layer to docker.
It's certainly not that. In fact you don't even need to have the app running in order to use docker!
Ive lost the link now but somewhere @Danny explains the different layers (like networking, file sharing, domains etc) that he had to write from scratch that are not part of Docker (the engine)
For example. One of the longest bugs in Docker for Mac has been file-sharing/bind mounts... Orbstack performance over Docker for Mac in this respect is incredible. Also Docker for Mac (still) doesnt have ipv6 whereas Orbstack enables this out of the box seamlessly.
Thinking of Orbstack as "just another UI for docker" is completely wrong.
All of that sounds very impressive, I won't deny the effort that goes into making that from scratch. My point is that most of this also exists elsewhere, in non-Docker alternative implementations (like Lima + Podman).
For most businesses looking at something like this, they will either want a comprehensive support contract or comprehensive ownership. Orbstack will struggle here, especially considering how it has basically nothing to do with the deployed product at most companies. You're not going to run production on Orbstack, so the value of it is pretty dubious relative to even a bad product like Docker Desktop.
I swear I'm not trying to be too harsh here, I used Docker Desktop on Mac at my last job too. My team was researching alternatives to it, and given what we were looking at I don't think Orbstack would be compelling. The FOSS alternatives worked just fine for testing and development.
The goal is that OrbStack is just a lot nicer to use. Better performance, lower resource usage, and many DX features (several of which are covered) that go together to create a delightful experience.
It's also a lot cheaper than the Docker Business rate (at least according to their pricing page), and the saved developer time should pay for itself quickly. It could even mean that companies can ditch expensive EC2 cloud dev environments, for example.
A responsive developer who knows his product inside out, who replies daily to GitHub issues, values reports and resolves issues reported and releases fixes for reported issues in hours/days instead of months/years(if at all) - That alone is priceless and beats "official" Docker for Mac any day!
You're paying a premium because it's designed specifically for MacOS systems. Docker desktop is terrible on Mac, but Orbstack is awesome for this group of users.
It looks like a quality tool, but I feel like most tenured Docker users will see a 'Pricing' page and close the window with their muscle-memory.