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Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

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Re: Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being mac-only does not really affect the pricing. Most mac users only use mac, and so for them it wouldn't be worth more if it was also available for PC. HAving said that, the price is ridiculous.

They probably have phones, though. Or tablets. Or smart watches. Or home assistants. Mac and PC haven’t been the only two platforms in a long time.

Only desktop OS:es have menu bars though.

Re: Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

#184
post #21

Let me get this straight. $10 a month of a calendar widget that's only available for a single platform? Plus, these quotes don't really help. > “No more looking for the Google calendar tab in Chrome.” Maybe use the native calendar app then? Or make an app shortcut for Google Calendar in Chrome? > “I just joined a meeting 3 minutes late instead of 5 because of Superpowered, which is a resounding success in my book.” U…

Thanks for the feedback on those quotes! We'll look into changing them. > Maybe use the native calendar app then? Or make an app shortcut for Google Calendar in Chrome? I myself used to be an Apple Calendar user. Eventually I had to switch to Google Calendar for work. Plenty of our users are in the same boat and Google Calendar doesn't support native functionality. You definitely could make a shortcut or find another…

> I myself used to be an Apple Calendar user. Eventually I had to switch to Google Calendar for work.

Why didn’t you just connect your Google calendar to Apple Calendar and keep using Apple Calendar?

Re: Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that’s the problem: I don’t want to use apps written in frameworks that let the developer style the basic controls. If I’m ok a Mac, I want to see Mac buttons, dropdowns, etc. and I want them to be provided by the OS so I can rely on OS services working: the Cocoa input system is pretty sophisticated and I inevitably run into edge cases with attempts to emulate it in electron apps.

I see. I take it you never use a browser either then? Because most of the web apps don't have Mac styling, AFAIK.

To be fair, OP was clearly talking about native apps. My 2c: an Electron app looks "alien" (for lack of a better word) on every platform that supports it. Especially so when it implements deep integration like a menu bar widget. One would expect it to obey the operating system human interface guidelines. This in itself makes it unsuited for the task. Even more so when the main reason to use electron (code reuse and ease of porting to other platforms) is not fully realized (as this appears to be mac-only).

Re: Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

#186
At first glance, yea, this company is trying to do something that could be done as a side project. The fact that they "are new to the productivity space" doesn't bode well either, and this pitch isn't helping the problem. However, there is one line of the post that grabbed my attention:

"We’re now looking to bring Slack and GitHub into a unified notification inbox in the menu bar"

I've had this exact problem (too many notification from too many sources) and don't have a tool to give myself good control over what notifications get my attention now, and what notification I can read in a digest later. Right now I have to use N app's setting to set N notification policies, and toggle a "master-switch" silent mode, only be be deluged when I turn silent mode off. The tricky thing, IMO, is that they'll be creating an application that competes with iOS functionality, and you can probably guess who wins in those situations.

The idea, "manage notification and free peoples attention" is a good one, and I wish the founders luck.

Re: Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

#187

I'm sorry for being negative, but paying $10 per month for what is essentially a calendar widget is blowing my mind. The fact that this is even in YC and not just a side project is taking what's left of my brain and blowing it into the stratosphere. > We’ve only solved a small part of a bigger problem. The SaaS platforms we use for work don't work well together. It shouldn’t take cycling through ten different apps an…

It's just a MVP... version 0.01 of their vision. The fact that they have paying users who use them daily is a very, very good signal - that's a hard thing to do! It's so much easier to add additional features to that group of users later. I see so many negative comments and can't help but think of this (first comment on DropBox's HN launch): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

The V in MVP stands for viable. Things that aren’t viable aren’t MVPs they are steps getting to an MVP. Part of the value of testing stuff is to check and see if what I think is an MVP is, actually is. When it clearly isn’t, if I call it an MVP then I’m either insane or a marketing person.

Prototypes are perfectly cool as long as expectations are met. Of course, charging $10 for a prototype doesn’t frequently work

Re: Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

#188

At first glance, yea, this company is trying to do something that could be done as a side project. The fact that they "are new to the productivity space" doesn't bode well either, and this pitch isn't helping the problem. However, there is one line of the post that grabbed my attention: "We’re now looking to bring Slack and GitHub into a unified notification inbox in the menu bar" I've had this exact problem (too man…

Also, the pricing on this is pretty far off base (obnoxiously so). IMO a "fair price" for the value should be something like $10 for a site license, a price I've observed people pay countless times for similar tools[1] I don't get why this would be selling at such a premium, especially in the growth phase, and couldn't imagine how expensive this would get when they try to improve revenue/user in later iterations!

[1] https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

Re: Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

#189
post #36

Trying to be constructive, but why would it even be a subscription model? Although it looks nice, I would think twice even spending 10$ once for it (mostly due to our currency's value). Also, since it's an Electron based widget, is the memory overhead considerable for just a calendar widget? Also, how does this YC Launch work? Does not seem related at all with your original idea (not sure if it's a deal-breaker thoug…

Thanks for the feedback. We'd like to fall into the category of other consumer SaaS products like Superhuman and Vimcal. > since it's an Electron based widget, is the memory overhead considerable for just a calendar widget? Great question. In my menu bar right now, the app's using ~150MB. > Also, how does this YC Launch work? Every startup in YC gets one YC Launch where they're featured on the front page for the day.…

No offensive, but using a subscription model because of how your company wants to be categorized is an awful justification to make a product decision at such an early stage. Instead of "we want to be company X, so we build Y", it should be, "the problem is Z, so we build Y to solve it".
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