

Hacker news reader for iPhone - arh
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=333187163&mt=8

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mildweed
If I were to pay money for my HN, I'd want at least some of it to go to the
actual HN team.

~~~
shabda
I find it funny that a community of people who make their living off selling
software are so averse to paying for it. How much of your hourly rate is the
cost of buying this? How much time do you spend on HN daily? How much percent
better does reading HN does this app need to make, for you to be ROI positive
in a week?

~~~
javery
It's not the problem of spending $2, it's the question of if that $2 is going
to the right people.

~~~
mildweed
Indeed. This is the crux of our news organizations' current crisis. They
create and organize the content, yet everybody else is using the content for
profit. I choose to reward those who create and organize the content.

The delivery of content is extremely easy, especially for me since I'm a
developer myself.

~~~
ryanpetrich
When's your Hacker News iPhone app coming out then?

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Oompa
<http://www.icombinator.net/> works great for me, and costs nothing. Also has
nifty instapaper functionality which I've grown to live on.

~~~
SamAtt
I agree. I just bought the app and it offers an inferior experience to
icombinator from what I can see. This app doesn't have threading in the
comments (you can't see who replied to what), it doesn't have the instapaper
functionality, etc...

I expected an app to at least allow me to log in and post comments but it
doesn't even do that. Which makes me ask what the point of having a native app
even was.

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nirmal
See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=809181> for a discussion about other
HN on the iPhone solutions.

My version is at <http://mobilehackernews.appspot.com/>

It uses iUI for the list and if you click on a story link it uses arc90's
Readability to make the site you visit easier to read. The Readability script
also puts a button in the top left corner of the page to revert to the
original version.

<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

~~~
ique
That actually seemed awesome until i started getting this on pretty much every
page:

Traceback (most recent call last):

    
    
      File "/base/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/webapp/__init__.py", line 507, in __call__
        handler.get(*groups)
    
      File "/base/data/home/apps/mobilehackernews /1.336829969607358575/main.py", line 137, in get
        html.head.append(cssCode)
    
     AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'append'

~~~
nirmal
Odd, I saw that few times just now. But I can't reproduce it. The error
suggests that when BeautifulSoup parsed to the contents of the posted article,
it found a page with no head node in the HTML.

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grinich
Kevin, you should probably check this stuff too. Not because PG&Co will sue
you, but just to be a good dude.

<http://ycombinator.com/legal.html>

------
nikohl
I highly doubt the developer did this for money. At best he'll make $1000. I'm
guessing he developed the app for himself and just decided to release it. Why
not comment about how it could be better?

My suggestion has already been voiced: Need upvote capability.

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jwr
"The item you've requested is not currently available in the Polish Store"

Did the developers place geographical restrictions or is this a bug in the
iTunes store?

Dear developers, please make sure the app is available everywhere.

------
jasonlbaptiste
I think it's a bit high, but I bought it to give it a run. From the
screenshots, it seemed decently full featured. The only thing I wish it had
was AT least the upvote capabilities. I never really comment from the iphone,
since I know ill limit my comments. Give me a few days of waiting on line with
nothing to do and checking HN via my iPhone to give it a final verdict. .99
seems like a better price than 1.99

~~~
phil
> a bit high

Seriously?

It must have taken at least a couple weeks of work to write and polish up this
app. Then there's ongoing marketing, support, more dev if he adds the features
people are asking for here, etc. If the app sells 1000 copies its first month
(which would be pretty good!), the economics barely make sense at $1.99. At
$0.99 it's basically a community service project.

Games can be priced at a dollar because the audience is everyone with an
iPhone. For apps that are carefully tailored to the needs of a small group,
you must expect to pay more.

------
rbanffy
For those without iTunes: <http://www.kevintom.com/>

<http://www.kevintom.com/ycnews> didn't render properly in Safari or
Firefox...

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icefox
<sarcasm>Man I am glad I have this app now! HackerNews is a website with MB's
of flash and images that make browsing it _really_ slow. I mean it doesn't
even have rss!</sarcasm>

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smokey_the_bear
I bought it and it looks good. Though I mostly bought it because I noticed
that the author used to be my project manager. :) Best of luck with the app,
Kevin!

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davidivins
i installed it. i think it's pretty nice but still needs some work. for
example, i don't like that it opens the links in safari. i'd rather stay
within the application (like the reddit app). if i'm going to end up in safari
every time i want to read something, i'll probably just use
<http://www.icombinator.net/> instead:(

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rbanffy
You know... Not everybody has iTunes on the computer... Or even a computer
where iTunes is willing to run.

~~~
brk
In that case then, this app probably isn't targeted at you.

~~~
rbanffy
I do, however, have an iPod and an iMac. I just happen to use Linux for work.

~~~
brk
Seriously, I'm not sure what the point of your comments are.

Based on the devices you stated and your presence here, it would seem you are
astute enough to recognize that not every app is going to be applicable for
all people. This app especially seems to target a niche of a niche (iPhone
users reading HN), and is not even 100% necessary within that niche.

Most people would recognize that certain criteria must be met to be able to
download and use an App from iTunes.

I don't mean to be harsh, your comments just sort of seemed like statements of
the obvious.

~~~
chitchcock
I'm guessing he would have rather had a link to the website about the app
instead of the iTunes link.

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pclark
none of your screenshots actually show a story. does that mean it just shows
the webkit view?

~~~
vibhavs
Also, I couldn't tell from the screenshots if the app allowed users to view
comments on a submission. As we all know, the discussions can be as good as,
if not better, than the articles.

~~~
gcv
Indeed. I'd buy this instantly if it provided an iPhone-friendly interface for
reading the discussion, but I can't tell from the screenshots. Also, if there
is a story view --- reasonably sized up-down voting arrows alone would make it
worth paying for.

~~~
bvttf
It doesn't even seem to have a way to log in, getting to comments is awkward,
and threads are flattened to an iPhone list.

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peterbe
Installed!

~~~
mdemare
Me too! Thanks, much more readable than in Safari.

