Cheers. A tweetie-esque HN app is a great idea. I'll gladly put down $5 to help keep a promising high-schooler motivated and building cool stuff. Shame on you guys for trying to pressure him to change his price.
And I like you're approach of "well it's $5 in the app store but here's the source if you want to build it, fork it, and/or install it yourself for free." Jason Fried would be proud of your pricing (ha!).
Keep building. Good luck.
#downloaded
news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store
21–30 of 129 posts
Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store
#22People are complaining about $5? Really? Someone has put months of effort into this app, more than justifying the "high" price. If you think it's too expensive, just don't buy it. I just bought it and think it's great (nice icon too).
Completely agree. I really don't get why some people complain about being charged any money for months of work. Do they expect it to be free? Reminds me of the ridiculous comments on the app store.
Were this in any other context - an inane weekend project, or faux start-up that is just a website - as we've seen a billion times before, people would spout the same mantras about charging from the start, hustling, going for it, and what not.
I don't know if people are making a fuzz because it's about Hacker News, or if they just don't believe the mantra they keep repeating, when they finally have put their money where their mouth is.
Charging for this app means the developer's time is valuable; releasing it for free would suggest that s/he does it to get a job. It also means that traction will let the developer improve the app over time to the benefit of people who subscribe to the idea.
I am perfectly open to a discussing on pricing it 2.99 instead of 4.99, but I can't be bothered by the outcries to make it free.
EDIT: I just saw that the developer even released the source code on GitHub. That's about as good as it can get.
Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store
#23From the page [emphasis mine] > Why does news:yc cost $4.99? Isn't that too much for something already available online? Yes, it probably is. This is my first app in the App Store. I've never done this kind of pricing before, and I probably got it wrong. However, I do want to make sure anyone who wants to use news:yc can: feel free to build it from source or pirate it if you don't want to pay . Love this. I really wi…
Very true although I think in spirit with the general tune around HN it might make sense to say "Yes but pay $4.99 if you want me to sustain development" which I think is reasonable (and something I need to do more of).
Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store
#245 bucks ??? What's the value-add? Also why is there no iPad version? (replying from an iPad btw)
The value is in an interface for HN that actually makes sense for an iPhone: no tiny voting arrows that don't work with fingers, no comment box that you need to scroll back and forth to see what you're typing, comments that fit the screen's width at a hopefully-readable font size. Maybe it isn't worth five bucks, that's just where I decided to try out pricing to start. But I did try and make it as easy as possible to…
The value is in an interface for HN that actually makes
sense for an iPhone:
Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store
#25Cheers. A tweetie-esque HN app is a great idea. I'll gladly put down $5 to help keep a promising high-schooler motivated and building cool stuff. Shame on you guys for trying to pressure him to change his price. And I like you're approach of "well it's $5 in the app store but here's the source if you want to build it, fork it, and/or install it yourself for free." Jason Fried would be proud of your pricing (ha!). Kee…
And to follow up, really nice work. My favorite HN reader so far.
Comments:
- Would be nice to skip through the comments and go straight to the article
- $4.99 is the right price. I spent $2.99 on the "offline HN reader" and another one and this makes me regret ever buying those others.
Again to the price-haters: $5 a pop to help keep a hs kid from flipping burgers or mowing lawns this summer and keep him doing something that matters (and something he's shown to be pretty kickass at so early in his life)? Worth it.
Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store
#26People are complaining about $5? Really? Someone has put months of effort into this app, more than justifying the "high" price. If you think it's too expensive, just don't buy it. I just bought it and think it's great (nice icon too).
Completely agree. I really don't get why some people complain about being charged any money for months of work. Do they expect it to be free? Reminds me of the ridiculous comments on the app store.
I don't mind people not wanting to spend $5 on something if they don't [for whatever reason] feel it's worth it... but I sure don't care to see them whine about it, either.
Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store
#27I used this when it was in beta, and it's really really nice. I can't wait for iPad support!
Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store
#28Thanks for making the source code available (https://github.com/newsyc/newsyc/)!
Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store
#29Points are currently prioritized over replies, which doesn't make a lot of sense given that points are private and you're not displaying the contents of a threaded comment in the root article display page. Seems like those two things (points and replies) should be switched, and more attention should be paid to letting the user know a comment has replies.
Good start though, I've been enjoying browsing HN on it since seeing the news go up.
Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store
#30Wish there were an iPad version of this... Hacker News HD crashes a lot on mine, and I'd be willing to pay $4.99 for a nice interface with cacheing.