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news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store

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Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store

#42

Post by troels »

richbradshaw wrote: post #15
michael_dorfman wrote: post #13

Another one? I have 3 iPhone HN clients already. What's your unique value proposition?

What's the best one in your opinion? I have been using an online one, but it's kind of rubbish!

I'm using the one from Michael Grinich. Simple and useful. I particularly like the integrated Readability function.

Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store

#44

Post by SeoxyS »

olivercameron wrote: post #16

People 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).

Yup, people need to stop being cheap. Bought the app immediately after opening the link, and I probably would have at any price.

Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store

#47

Post by adamt »

I've just happily paid for this app (congrats, nice app and makes my daily life easier/better)

I am always amused when people complain about paying $5 for an app like this.

Let's assume for a second that you are an IT/Internet professional, and you are read HN enough that you'd consider downloading an app. Maybe I am the exception, but I perhaps spend 30 mins per day on HN on my iphone. HN for me is great over breakfast, sitting on a train, lying in bed, taking a dump reading. The web experience on the iphone isn't great, and posting is hard, and lots of finger pinching. This makes that better.

Now lets do some rough maths. 30 mins per day, 365 days a year = a lot of hours (182.5 pa)

$5 = what an engineer earning US$100k for (220 days @ 8 hours/day earns in in 5 minutes (pre-tax). I've spent longer than that writing this post.

Obviously HN is international, salaries in some parts of the world are somewhat lower, but for those people in countries where iphones exist, and they own one, $5 is hardly that much.

The guy has even given away the source for free, if you would rather download it, and build it yourself.

Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store

#48

Post by whackedspinach »

As a high school student (well, graduate tomorrow!) who is interested in designing mobile applications, I would really be interested in reading about your experience building this app. Not only the design and code, but the release and launch, if you don't mind.

I just bought the app and it's great! Keep up the good work!

EDIT: Just one little quirk I've noticed. The comment test is really small (I'm visually impaired and already hold the phone a few inches from my face). While I can read it, could you give us an option to increase it at some point in the future?

Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store

#49

Post by michh »

olivercameron wrote: post #16

People 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).

Whether it's justified or not, it's about double the current market value for these kinds of apps in the iOS app store ecosystem. So yeah, people will complain, even though it's the amount of money you'd probably easily spend on a cup of coffee.

The reason people are complaining is not that people are not willing or not able to spend $5 on a HN reading app. The problem is that people simply aren't used to it.

$5 is what you pay for a game, for an app that piggybacks on someone else's content you usually either pay nothing or about a buck.

I wonder whether or not the author would make more money from it if the app was $2.50 or $1.

I'll gladly pay the $5 though.

Re: news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store

#50

Post by veyron »

news-yc wrote: post #4
veyron wrote: post #2

5 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…

As a defense (because the complaints about price are perceived as some intrinsic abhorrence to shell out money):

The price makes sense if there is some perceived added value that exceeds the price point. I am not afraid to spend money, but it needs to help me. For example, I spent money to buy issh because I found a need for using vnc on my phone.

It's nice to think that people should pay for your development time but that means nothing if you aren't providing any value.

So let's consider what makes HN (which is free in website form) inconvenient on iPhone in the first place:

1) typing very long responses and scrolling back. This is true, writing long responses on the iPhone is a pain because of the keyboard (which your app doesn't seem to solve) and because the iPhone text editor doesnt put scrollbars. That is true, but I genuinely wonder if people try to wrote really long responses on the iPhone, at least long enough to blow away the size of the box.

2) tiny arrows -- personally it's a nonissue for me because I would have to zoom in anyway to read the text. I could see how this is an issue for those who vote before reading the article.

3) Comments that fit the screen width -- I can appreciate the argument, given that you group conversations, but it's sometimes hard to see the full relationship between comments if you hide the sub replies. For example, some people reply to a comment of a comment with a new root comment, and that new comment doesn't make sense until you read the other tree.

I don't mean to be a negative Nancy it's always important to ask about the value add to the potential customers. And this is my opinion. Clearly others find value in your app. That being said, complaining about cost isn't s plea for a free app but rather is a query into how the author perceives the value-add of the application. And just to test, I wrote this on my 3GS

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