Live data from Hacker News

Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

kickstarter.com

1–10 of 58 posts

Re: Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

#4
I'm not sure I absorbed the message as it was supposed to be put across. The video showed a (seemingly) quite advanced prototype, and they expect to be able to ship before the end of the year. So what is the $200k for? Seemingly to "make it happen" but it appears to be happening already, so it's kickstarting a hefty salary?

If I did somehow miss the point and this seems like a cynical response then obviously I apologise in advance, but that's how it came across.

Edit, cancel the nicety... I just saw that it's retailing for $299. It all feels rather cynical. Perhaps I have too much of a rose-tinted view of the attraction of Kickstarter?

Re: Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

#7
Feedback on the Listr (ugh, that name) re-imagining: the little icons weren't particularly informative in the original, but at least there was some text to try and explain. Now I get to guess what each icon means, plus instead of everything fitting on one screen, you apparently must scroll down to select e.g. "Projects".

By the way, what is up with every project talking about "beautiful"? "Beautiful Javascript", "Beautiful native apps", "Beautiful text icons", etc. Is this just the Steve Jobs school of selling?

Re: Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

#8
I agree with all the current opinions, but I still donated, an iOS dev friend of mine really misses the three20 libraries ability to apply CSS.

I like the idea of doing it properly but to be honest I'd expect that someone would release an open source version that does something similar that I can contribute back to.

Re: Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

#9
post #4

I'm not sure I absorbed the message as it was supposed to be put across. The video showed a (seemingly) quite advanced prototype, and they expect to be able to ship before the end of the year. So what is the $200k for? Seemingly to "make it happen" but it appears to be happening already, so it's kickstarting a hefty salary? If I did somehow miss the point and this seems like a cynical response then obviously I apolog…

Kickstarter is being used, more and more, as a way to build interest and create revenue before the official "launch" of a product; even a product that would be produced anyway. It seems to be a rather effective way to get press coverage for a percentage of projects, and presents a clean interface on a trusted system for interested potential purchasers.

The risk, of course, is that a huge goal is less likely to be reached than a smaller goal. The ideal situation is that you have a reasonable goal that will actually help maybe some outsourcing or consulting costs or distribution set-up or what have you, blow away the goal early, and keep interest to drive revenue.

Personally, I don't find this kind of Kickstarter project very interesting, and I believe it's a suboptimal way to launch a product that could instead just be released as a MVP and iterated on based on user feedback.

Re: Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

#10
post #4

I'm not sure I absorbed the message as it was supposed to be put across. The video showed a (seemingly) quite advanced prototype, and they expect to be able to ship before the end of the year. So what is the $200k for? Seemingly to "make it happen" but it appears to be happening already, so it's kickstarting a hefty salary? If I did somehow miss the point and this seems like a cynical response then obviously I apolog…

Kickstarter is being used, more and more, as a way to build interest and create revenue before the official "launch" of a product; even a product that would be produced anyway. It seems to be a rather effective way to get press coverage for a percentage of projects, and presents a clean interface on a trusted system for interested potential purchasers. The risk, of course, is that a huge goal is less likely to be rea…

It feels like a lot of kickstarters are barely more than a "pre-order" mechanism. I'm not sure what happens if a project gets funded but then fails to deliver. It seems like when you give to a kickstarter, you should go into it fully prepared to never get your money back and never get the finished product.
Post reply on HN