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Hyperspace

hypercritical.co

61–68 of 68 posts

Re: Hyperspace

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes it a (crystal clear IMO) dark pattern is that the purportedly "free" feature set gives the user no value whatsoever. It only exists to induce sales. Inducing a high-bar commit (the purchase) by first securing a low-bar commit (install + scan) is an old trick. Don't fall for it.

I think this is an outrageous abuse of the term “dark pattern” from people who want to be angry more than they want to think. The website mentions repeatedly what the pricing model is, and the operation is “we show you exactly how much value you would get from paying, and then you can decide whether it’s worth it to you.” That’s as honest and plain as business can get: Plenty of people don’t have many/any files which…

We used to call products like this trials or trialware. There was always clear verbiage on the site attesting to the fact that the product was not free but that you could download it for a trial to see if you liked it before paying for it. But I suppose this doesn't even really offer a trial as it doesn't do anything at all until you pay.

Here, the first mention of any kind of cost to this software is ~1/8th of the way down the page when you're met with Q: How do I pay for Hyperspace? which litteraly states that it's a free download that doesn't do anything unless you pay them, meaning that it is not free in any sense of the term.

Re: Hyperspace

#62
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would only be true if it didn't take your time before asking you to pay to not waste the time that it took.

It says it’s a paid app right on the linked page.

It doesn't mention being a paid app until after it says it a free download roughly 10k characters down the screen.

Re: Hyperspace

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a couple Q's in on the page: Q: How do I pay for Hyperspace? Hyperspace is a free download in the Mac App Store. Once downloaded, it’s free to scan an unlimited number of files. Scanning will let you know how much space is eligible to be reclaimed. If you decide you want to reclaim that space, you will need to pay for Hyperspace using the purchase button that appears after a successful scan or by selecting “Purc…

It's four pages below the fold. The fact this is a paid tool is deliberately obscured.

Not sure why you're being downvoted.

The fact that the payment is buried under 10k characters of text is deliberate. That it is not in the 'pricing' or 'buy' link in the menu where everyone has it is clearly a choice.

Re: Hyperspace

#64
post #6

It's quite the dark-pattern to allow you to download it and scan for free, without any clear indication that it's a paid product, and then ambush you with a purchase dangling the space savings in front of your face.

If anything, it's the opposite of a dark pattern: you get to see if it'll provide any value for you without paying a dime. It's a far better proposition than paying up only to find out that it won't free up any space for you. The linked site is very clear about how the pricing works.

> The linked site is very clear about how the pricing works.

Yes, it is.

It is also, very obviously, placed in such a way to reduce the bounce rate off the landing page and increase conversions.

When was the last time you were on a site that had meaningful content below its "releases" section?

Why is the answer to the "How do I pay?" FAQ question bend over backwards to first say >Hyperspace is a free download in the Mac App Store. Once downloaded, it’s free to scan an unlimited number of files. Scanning will let you know how much space is eligible to be reclaimed.

Why doesn't the app store description say which capabilities are free and which are paid?

One or two of these are innocuous, but there are are a dozen small choices like this that have been made here, all aligned to increase the likelihood of one thing: Put the user in the position where they've already installed the app, sunk some time into it, and are anticipating the benefit before making it clear that they have to pay money.

That the page technically contains the words "you will need to pay for Hyperspace" does not mean this isn't a dark pattern.

Re: Hyperspace

#65
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, it's the opposite of a dark pattern: you get to see if it'll provide any value for you without paying a dime. It's a far better proposition than paying up only to find out that it won't free up any space for you. The linked site is very clear about how the pricing works.

> The linked site is very clear about how the pricing works. Yes, it is. It is also, very obviously, placed in such a way to reduce the bounce rate off the landing page and increase conversions. When was the last time you were on a site that had meaningful content below its "releases" section? Why is the answer to the "How do I pay?" FAQ question bend over backwards to first say >Hyperspace is a free download in the…

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Re: Hyperspace

#66
post #47
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Struggling to find the effective difference between the two, other than it being Apple specific. Either way, neat - I can hopefully use this to provide faster layer unpacks on MacOS as well.

Yup that’s pretty much it, reflinks is Btrfs/XFS, clones is APFS, but the concept is the same (CoW in both cases).

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Re: Hyperspace

#68
post #38
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it sounds like it's more fine-grained than just the file-level. So even if you change part of one copy, the remaining unchanged subpieces are still shared, iiuc.

CoW deduplicates at the block level. Unless you rewrite the whole file, the untouched blocks will remain common between them and only different blocks will be allocated separately. Continuous block level deduplication is resource intensive and not a great fit unless space is at a high premium. Offline block deduping is interesting though, but only for solid state storage. For hard disks it’s a nightmare.

It sounds very much like a video encoder.
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