
Peach’s Most Interesting Feature, the Hybrid Command Line - ascertain
http://nymag.com/following/2016/01/how-the-command-line-became-mainstream-again.html
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munificent
The idea that command-line applications could have some sort of Renaissance
_on devices which do not have a keyboard_ seems completely insane to me.

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rcthompson
There's no fundamental reason that command line applications can't work with
input from voice recognition.

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noobermin
On a old slashdot flame thread on GUI vs. CLI back in the day, I pointed out
that calling CLIs less familiar and less intuitive when compared to GUIs
wasn't fair because CLI's _do_ have a very familiar, non-virtual analog:
speech. CLI, of course, it just a very specific and rigid language, just like
programming languages.

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tudorw
I've worked with many first time users over 20 years and have never witnessed
any of them intuitively understand either CLI or GUI, both are artificial,
contrived and unique and need to be learnt. I don't essentially see one as a
better choice than the other for a new user, maybe in some ways the CLI has
less abstractions which can be a help, I've witnessed much confusion over the
many many ways you can enact the same result using different methods in a GUI.

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Gys
I think 'intuitively' actually means less having to think about all possible
options at any moment or stage of an action. If its clear how to accomplish
the next step, it is considered intuitive.

GUI are considered more intuitively because options in general are visible as
menus and buttons. On a CLI adding parameters to a command can get complicated
if you are halfway and forgot if it was '-l' or '-L'.

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tudorw
Intuitive is defined as without conscious reasoning, so no, Menus and Buttons
do need you to think, take chrome, up there, top right, for starters I need to
click on three horizontal lines then;

New tab New window

What could anyone infer from the terms 'tab' or 'window' without some prior
knowledge, these interfaces succeed because the cost of failure is low and the
level of feedback and reward is high, so we persevere, an intuitive interface
would require a whole new conceptual model of how we interact with data. No, I
don't have one to show you, I am fairly certain that existing approaches will
appear draconian to our children's children though :)

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_kst_
The home page is [http://peach.cool/](http://peach.cool/)

It looks like the app is available only for iOS.

It's a pity that the article doesn't mention either of those things.

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Maxious
Having tested it, it seems you can only find friends with a US phone number...
or that whole feature just doesn't work.

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dabeeeenster
Yeah my uk number doesn't work which is sort of amazing given plivo/twilio etc
exist...

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lesdeuxmagots
This feels incredibly Silicon Valley centric. Hybrid Command Line only serves
to increase friction in the messaging process, particularly for normal users.
Press reviews have already noted that there is a learning curve, that the
experience is better with a smaller friends list. This sounds like it is set
up to fail to get broader adoption.

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ksar
Agreed. The Slack-esque hybrid command line is a bit of a bait and switch to
get the tech community interested. The average user by no means is going to
memorize more than 1-2 commands, if any at all. I barely use anything other
than Giphy on Slack. At the end of the day content and network effects will
determine whether it survives.

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kovacs
^^ this. The commands are great but why not bring up a dialog of the commands
represented by an icon that you tap to use the given command? Much better
discoverability than having to type "help" and get popped out to a web page
with the list.

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0xCMP
To me, this app is perfect. Here is why:

Social to me today is very scary and over commercialized. It feels like more
people are trying to convince everyone else to buy something or watch them
eventually parade products in their posts than being social. Great for them,
but I'm not really using social media for that. I post my life, but posting my
life has serious implications if made public. "Oh hey I'm traveling" could get
my home broken in to. OR I say something as a joke, but just like with
texting, gets misread and now I'm an asshole to people who don't know me.
Worse, all this can happen years after with little to no warning.

The chilling effect on sharing and keeping up with your friends who are hard
to keep up with, the supposed point of social media, is enormous.

I like it. I love the magic words, I think they're cute and everyone thinks
that is the killer feature of the app, but I don't think it is.

I think the killer features are:

* The snapchat like single-button camera and easy photo sharing (personally, the only reason I use snapchat is the camera and save the photos)

* The individual snapchat-story-like feeds you post to (also nice, love they go away)

* The lack of a central feed or RTs or easy way to get viral that can happen in places like twitter.

Obviously, I'm not going to be sharing ssh private keys or passwords over it,
but for the most part it's secure against the casual online lurker. It's a
great mix of the point of snapchat with the power of slack and twitter. I can
come up with so many more ways I love the idea, but I can tell I'm already not
doing it justice so I'll stop, but I think this is something worth looking at
if nothing else as a launching point for someone else. I'm not saying it'll be
the next snapchat/facebook/instagram/twitter, and I'm comfortable knowing its
more gonna be like Ello and Merkat, but I like the possibilities with it for
doing what I always imagined social media could and should be after seeing the
exodus of quality content from friends being replaced with fake updates and
perfectly posed photos.

Anything that inspires spontaneity like this, snapchat, or beme is in my
opinion what social media needs to deliver for me to use it and feel
comfortable sharing.

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jobu
Am I missing something? This looks like they bundled a subset of Slack's
features and called it a social network.

 _Typing "GIF," for instance, lets users search for the appropriate media to
post_

Seems a lot like /giphy

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pbreit
You're missing the whole thing. For starters, Slack is for work and Peach is
for personal. But I think before you dismiss something as "isn't it just x
plus y?" you need to take a little bit more time and thinking to try and
figure out what the product designers are trying to achieve and how.

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thwarted
Maybe the product designers and product providers should be more explicit
about how their product should be used and who their target demographic is, if
they want a successful product, rather than making everyone "figure out" what
they are trying to achieve and how.

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tyre
I would like to put this on a t-shirt and send it to every startup.

You cannot build an incredible product without a profound and nuanced
understanding of your market.

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bgraves
I've been using peach for a few days (@bgraves, add me!)

I'm liking it.

1\. It's different and disconnected. I have FB/IG for personal/family stuff,
LinkedIN/Twitter for biz stuff. Peach is more fun and more 'creative'.

2\. The magic words are a gimmick for sure. But it's a _fun_ gimmick.

3\. Kinda related to #1 it's a smaller 'community' now and folks are just
trying stuff out.

Overall I've found my self posting a quick update on Peach over the past 48
hours more than I have on "traditional" social media (can we call Twitter, et
al. traditional now?) over the past 2 weeks.

Yes, there's a novelty factor. And maybe that's it and it will die on the
Vine.

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ahmedfromtunis
An entire article about an application without a single screenshot of said
application. Ok.

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djsumdog
But they had a picture of a peach!

I really fucking hate this trend of requiring that an image be next to the
opening paragraph of an article. It's fucking asinine.

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zitterbewegung
I don't get how you can take its claim that a "hybrid command line" is
becoming popular. For one it only seemed like a different kind of user were
introduced to computers without being exposed to command lines.

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minimaxir
Are there any demos/screenshots of the Hybrid Command Line?

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lolptdr
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/peach-a-space-for-
friends/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/peach-a-space-for-
friends/id1067891186?mt=8)

A few images from the App Store. Not very good examples for the CLI-veteran.

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xedarius
Peach is pretty neat all in, seems like they've made social 'fun', something
that's been lost by the current crop of social media companies.

With regards to the command line, it's really clever, it frees up so much UI
space, the app appears uncluttered and inviting. If anyone has been near a
Bloomberg terminal you'll know this is how Bloomberh has worked for many
years, and the users love it.

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jtn_001
It's Yo messaging app but we can do more things using magic words.

"magic words" have endless possibilities, Interesting to see in future that,
peach keep inventing new magic words their own or allow to other third party
for creating own magic words?

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w1ntermute
_Death of Peach: An eerie echo of Meerkat’s collapse_ [0]

> A messaging app called Peach triggered a media maelstrom on Friday
> afternoon, peaked at No. 85 on the U.S. iPhone downloads chart on Saturday,
> and started declining on Sunday, slipping to No. 129 by Sunday at 1:00 p.m.
> The tepid peak performance and an early decline are vastly significant
> considering the heavy tech media coverage surrounding the app.

> Because modern tech media is a headless beast, you will no doubt be exposed
> to dozens of stories about how “hot” Peach is in coming days and weeks. Many
> tech reporters believe that if other tech reporters claim something is hot,
> it must be — regardless of whether there is any consumer interest.

> By now, it’s clear that Peach is a turkey, much as it was obvious that
> Meerkat was dead a month after its late February 2015 launch.

0: [http://bgr.com/2016/01/11/peach-messaging-app-iphone-
collaps...](http://bgr.com/2016/01/11/peach-messaging-app-iphone-collapse/)

~~~
pbreit
If you're gonna read stuff like that, understand that it probably makes you
dumber. At least, posting it makes you look dumber. Calling something a
"turkey" after a day is as dumb as calling it an "x killer". Things like
WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, etc take years to become successful.

~~~
numair
Your response is incredibly off-base. The author of the BGR article is pretty
spot-on in his analysis. If you look at the author's previous articles, he has
been critical, but accurate. In any case, even if his 16 years of experience
in the mobile industry (I looked him up) don't allow him to make accurate one-
day analyses, a different viewpoint is beneficial to everyone's thought
process.

There is absolutely nothing "dumb" about bringing up critical viewpoints.
Shooting them down without giving them any thought, however...

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dang
pbreit has a point. Dismissing something as a "turkey" after just one day is
unduly harsh, and to call that "bringing up critical viewpoints" is
euphemistic.

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numair
If that were the only comment the author made, sure. He did a pretty good job
of defending his view, I think, with lots of citations etc. It is a viewpoint
-- it's the opposite of looking at something and saying, "ooh, this is new and
cool!" Now, it's probably more productive in most circumstances to have an
open mind, but that is a matter of preference. Personally, I like to have my
childlike enthusiasm for new things balanced out by the voices of other, more
cynical people.

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kordless
Would be cool to do a Slack command for this that would post stuff to
Twitter/other social media sites.

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tmaly
I would like to see a geo location based network like in William Gibson's
Spook Country

