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Magic+

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Re: Magic+

#381

Post by georgespencer »

Splines wrote: post #340
toddmorey wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a decent amount of innovation that can make the assistants more efficient, so you can improve profitability without driving down wages. But there's also something else: Since a high percentage of services will likely end in a transaction, there's a huge opportunity to become the Amazon-scale retailer of services. I find I don't even google products I want to buy anymore, I just immediately search Amazon. Amaz…

Personally, Amazon's UI has a long way to go and doesn't look like it's going to get better anytime soon. If you know what you're looking for, it's fine, but as soon as you try to comparison shop it falls apart fairly quickly. I've gotten into the habit of looking for experts on other sites that do hands-on comparisons for the thing I want to buy (some recent examples: rain jackets and fitness meters). Amazon is hone…

That's exactly the reason I'd use a service like Magic. Finding stuff on Amazon takes dozens of clicks.

Re: Magic+

#382

Post by BookmarkSaver »

puranjay wrote: post #372
dingo_bat wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Consider an example on their website: >User: Can you get me an Ipad pro tonight? >M+: Sure. I'm assuming you want the best model - 128GB with LTE in Space gray? >U: Yeah This process of comparing available options against prices, data plans, and features would have taken at least half an hour for me. Right now, they can just disregard the price completely and offer whatever is the easiest to do/get/access.

Not just that, the guy wants to buy TWO! This is a purchase normal people would spend hours agonizing over. Should I get the 64GB model or the 128GB? Should I get the latest one, or one generation older? Should I get the slightly more expensive gray/white one, or stick with black? But that's okay. It's not meant for everyone, and that's perfectly fine with me

Ok, so why is this so unbelievably interesting to everyone here? I mean, seriously, its been ten hours and this thing is still at the top of the page, and that is very long time for a HN story. For something that doesn't seem particularly innovative nor useful for a typical person, it has a huge amount of support here. Which is especially confusing because this indicates that somehow there is a massive number of price insensitive people people on this site that somehow do consider this useful, a fact that doesn't seem born out at all by the usual activity. It seems like this is a massive attempt to make an enormously overpriced service seem reasonable to people that can afford it but normally wouldn't even consider it.

Re: Magic+

#383

Post by BookmarkSaver »

rand1012 wrote: post #369
BookmarkSaver wrote: post #353

Ok. I must seriously be missing something here. I'm usually the last person to complain about shilling, because even on the very rare occasions that I am confident that some sort of "astroturf" operation is going on I usually find it to be a somewhat valid or at least entertaining form of promotion and don't care that it is clearly just advertising. But seriously, this thread is absurd. I truly do not understand how…

A lot of VCs read HackerNews...

Enough to dominate the top of the front page for 10 hours? And populate the comment section with numerous high ranked glowing/apologetic comments? This is the sort of activity that usually accompanies massive news that rallies wide community interest or support, not a niche service that only a handful of extremely rich people should seriously be interested in, even on a site like HN.

Re: Magic+

#384

Post by BookmarkSaver »

_yosefk wrote: post #378
BookmarkSaver wrote: post #353

Ok. I must seriously be missing something here. I'm usually the last person to complain about shilling, because even on the very rare occasions that I am confident that some sort of "astroturf" operation is going on I usually find it to be a somewhat valid or at least entertaining form of promotion and don't care that it is clearly just advertising. But seriously, this thread is absurd. I truly do not understand how…

Perhaps someone sent a request to Magic+ along the lines of "I want Magic+ to become the number one item on HN"? It's legal, it's possible - and they're on it. It'd make a decent demo!

Hah that would be a pretty impressive demonstration of their abilities.

Re: Magic+

#385

Post by BookmarkSaver »

cthalupa wrote: post #358
BookmarkSaver wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. I'm not "rich", but I'm a single guy making an great salary and my purchasing power is probably in the 95% of the the US. I don't even really think twice about purchases of anything that costs less than 3 digits if I have any desire for it. But $300 dollars for a meal as a gift to a friend? And not even that great of a meal? The fuck? That is absurd. I wouldn't even be above buying someone an xbox if I felt…

He used regular Magic, which is not Magic+. Magic is significantly cheaper. (Drop the plus from the URL). You submit a request, they give you the total, you confirm it, that's what you're charged. I wouldn't consider myself rich either, but I do fairly well for myself as an unmarried guy in his 20s, and there are some friends that in some situations I wouldn't hesitate at all to spend a few hundred dollars on them. S…

Well for one thing I did point out that I'd be fine dropping an xbox on a friend if I felt like it, just not a moderately expensive meal with a $100+ dollar markup on it. Especially considering there are countless delivery services easily accessible that do that sort of thing already; 30 seconds of googling isn't worth dropping an extra $100-200 because I couldn't be bothered to find the name of a cheaper service.

>If you don't think twice about buying things under three digits, depending on frequency, just not doing that for frivolous things for a few weeks could afford you the ability to do something that might ultimately be a much more valuable memory. There's plenty of crap I've bought and barely used that would have been much better used taking a good friend out to an extravagant meal or event.

I mean, that's what I'm talking about. I've never felt like my ability to splurge massively (e.g. buying a ticket at an airport to go on a suddenly planned trip) was impaired by my frivolous $50 purchases whenever I felt like it. I may not buy moderately expensive stuff without even considering whether I actually will use it (so maybe I'm not as rich as I think) but I don't have to even consider stuff like expensive taxi rides or bullshit novelty experiences when I'm bored.

Re: Magic+

#386

Post by mosselman »

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #380
puranjay wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider this: if you use Magic for 40 hours a month, you end up wiht a bill of $4,000. That's the salary of a full-time assistant who would be on call only 8-12 hours a day. If you are the kind of guy who is rich enough for a personal assistant, I'm pretty sure $100/hour isn't unreasonable

What? A personal assistant is someone that you know, that you vet, that you can gauge the skills and reliability of, and that you can hold genuinely accountable. And you are comparing hiring this person on a full time basis to an ad hoc and in many cases inferior "assistant" who is only available for a fraction of that time with no guarantee or indication of quality ahead of time. And not just that, but only extremel…

You completely hit the hammer on the head with both this comment and the parent. I just assume that a big amount of 20-25-ish developers here that make $180.000 are excited at the prospect of having a personal assistant to match their other unreasonable status enhancing purchases.

As if any 'rich person' would spend any amount of time texting some random employee and give them access to his e-mails. If I were rich and would deem myself in need of a PA I would want to know them very well before allowing them access to my personal information and I would expect them to take care of certain things without me having to tell them what to do all the time, let alone text them.

Re: Magic+

#388

Post by aestetix »

"Magic, here is a list of social security numbers for people I do not like. Can you share them with scam artists?"

"Magic, can you get me HIV test results for my wife?"

"Magic, what is my boss's salary?"

Yeah, no issues coming up with this...

Re: Magic+

#389

Post by venomsnake »

nlh wrote: post #352

I'm trying to figure out why I (too) am having a strong negative reaction to this. Let me think out loud: I'm fortunate enough to have a real personal assistant. She's amazing, she knows me, she does fantastic work, and I pay her a fair and reasonable wage (including health care) that's far less than $100/hour. So let's put me in the category of "people who can afford a personal assistant" but not quite in the catego…

Lets see - depending on your rich-ness status there are 3 people that know everything about you:

1. Your sysadmin 2. Your secretary 3. Your head of security

These are people you have to have to trust. And they must be loyal and you must be loyal to them.

Re: Magic+

#390

Post by reitoei »

_yosefk wrote: post #378
BookmarkSaver wrote: post #353

Ok. I must seriously be missing something here. I'm usually the last person to complain about shilling, because even on the very rare occasions that I am confident that some sort of "astroturf" operation is going on I usually find it to be a somewhat valid or at least entertaining form of promotion and don't care that it is clearly just advertising. But seriously, this thread is absurd. I truly do not understand how…

Perhaps someone sent a request to Magic+ along the lines of "I want Magic+ to become the number one item on HN"? It's legal, it's possible - and they're on it. It'd make a decent demo!

This is genius.
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