

 news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store - news-yc
http://newsyc.me/?post=accepted

======
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.

~~~
palish
$100k/yr in the USA? I guess if you're in Silicon Valley...

~~~
pchristensen
Silicon Valley not required to make $100K. LA, NY, DC, Chicago, Boston and
probably more it is very doable to get $100K with several years under your
belt.

~~~
davepeck
Seattle too.

------
ot
From the page [emphasis mine]

> Why does news:yc cost $4.99? Isn't that too much for something already
> available online? Yes, it probably is. This is my first app in the App
> Store. I've never done this kind of pricing before, and I probably got it
> wrong. However, I do want to make sure anyone who wants to use news:yc can:
> _feel free to build it from source or pirate it if you don't want to pay_.

Love this. I really wish this candor was the rule, not the exception. I'm
buying the app right away.

~~~
swombat
Actually, I think there'd be less bitching about the price if he removed the
paragraph.

Many things that are sold can be had for free if you're willing to put in the
effort, but it's a poor salesman who starts his pitch by saying "You really
don't need to pay me".

~~~
news-yc
I actually added that _after_ most of the price discussion (which now seems to
have been voted to the bottom of the thread). I would really like to be able
to say "pay as much as you want", but unfortunately the App Store doesn't
support that. Overall, my goal is not to make a ton of money here. I just want
to make as much as people want to give me, with other ways to get it if I
don't.

(Again, though, I'm new to this: I'll definitely take your advice for the
future, if I do another "open source but paid" app.)

~~~
MaysonL
I wonder: would Apple allow you to submit a few different copies of the app,
with different prices?

~~~
wahnfrieden
No. Not unless they had different feature sets.

~~~
ralfd
They did at least once. I used to use an App called Zuginfo which was splitted
into a normal free and a "Donation" version which was advertised to further
development. (This app by an Indie was later killed by Deutsche Bahn.)

------
olivercameron
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).

~~~
ConceitedCode
Completely agree. I really don't get why some people complain about being
charged any money for months of work. Do they expect it to be free? Reminds me
of the ridiculous comments on the app store.

~~~
kmfrk
Were this in any other context - an inane weekend project, or faux start-up
that is just a website - as we've seen a billion times before, people would
spout the same mantras about charging from the start, hustling, going for it,
and what not.

I don't know if people are making a fuzz because it's about Hacker News, or if
they just don't believe the mantra they keep repeating, when they finally have
put their money where their mouth is.

Charging for this app means the developer's time is valuable; releasing it for
free would suggest that s/he does it to get a job. It also means that traction
will let the developer improve the app over time to the benefit of people who
subscribe to the idea.

I am perfectly open to a discussing on pricing it 2.99 instead of 4.99, but I
can't be bothered by the outcries to make it free.

EDIT: I just saw that the developer even released the source code on GitHub.
That's about as good as it can get.

~~~
veyron
Note: a complaint about price isn't a plea to make it free -- I wrote a longer
response on another reply. It's opening a conversation about why the app
deserves ____'s money

~~~
kmfrk
Both our arguments can be generalized to a straw man; I haven't read your
specific comment, but I am sure we agree with each other. I am saying that
people are being jerks, when they would have sung the developer's praises in
another context, and you are saying that it's fine to ask a developer about
why their product is desirable and worth someone's money.

It's fine to ask a person about what sets the app apart, and how it works,
when they pay for it, and because it's fun to have a developer pitch their
product, as is our wont on HN. What bothers me is the immense hypocrisy when
people get downright hostile like this - like _some_ do in this thread.

If the hostile people could get their head out of their ass, they could
discuss the app on the basis of whether it was a sustainable _business model_
\- not an affront to their delicate, incongruous sensibilities.

------
chetan51
It's a well made app, good job. Do keep us posted on how the price point
worked out for sales.

Here are some suggestions:

1\. It would be great to have an option when opening an article to
automatically apply Readability when it loads (maybe you can choose that
option by long-touching the title of the article or something). This would
reduce waiting time on reading the article.

2\. An article queue would improve multitasking. If the user could select a
bunch of articles and have them load in the background, that would be awesome.

3\. A setting to show the full text of every comment in the list view of all
comments. I don't want to have to click a comment to read it fully, and I
don't have to do that on the HN website.

Good luck!

------
g0atbutt
Reading the default HN website from my iPhone sucks (small voting arrows,
table layout doesn't degrade gracefully to a small screen, etc.) I'm glad to
see that you stepped up to the plate and solved a problem that many of us have
experienced. I'm more than happy to shoot you $5 for your solution.

I do UI/UX work and would love to point out a few quirks I've noticed if
you're interested. You can find my email in my profile.

By the way, releasing the source code was a classy move!

------
kgutteridge
Niche product for niche audience therefore keep the price high, if you reduce
to 0.99 you will have to sell 4 times as many. As the niche audience has had
the source code made available to them they can compile it for themselves if
they require!

------
Johngibb
Interesting thought - since this is released with a BSD style license [1],
couldn't someone else theoretically submit it to the Apple store at a lower
cost?

1: <https://github.com/newsyc/newsyc/raw/HEAD/LICENSE>

~~~
jarin
Yes, if they are an asshole.

~~~
extension
Why would they be an asshole? The license is fairly explicit in permitting it.

What if someone were to improve the app significantly and then submit it?

------
briggsbio
Cheers. A tweetie-esque HN app is a great idea. I'll gladly put down $5 to
help keep a promising high-schooler motivated and building cool stuff. Shame
on you guys for trying to pressure him to change his price. And I like you're
approach of "well it's $5 in the app store but here's the source if you want
to build it, fork it, and/or install it yourself for free." Jason Fried would
be proud of your pricing (ha!). Keep building. Good luck. #downloaded

~~~
briggsbio
Bug report: sometimes the pull-down refresh element is overlain on the
headlines. Not sure what could be causing it.

~~~
news-yc
Yeah, I've seen that too. I really don't know what causes it, but I'm
definitely going to investigate for the next release.

------
MarkMc
Well done, there's a lot other hackers can learn from this:

1\. Release it - too many programmers have a half-baked idea, or end up with a
half-baked implementation. They start out all fired up, but don't have the
stamina to see the product released to market.

2\. Building stuff is great for job hunting. I can almost guarantee that this
guy will get an internship out of this. He clearly has two features in great
demand: programming ability, and gets stuff done. This product is far more
attractive than a resume full of IT buzzwords. As long as he's not a prick in
the interview, he'll get hired.

3\. Focus your product on a niche. This minimises the work needed to get to
market, and makes it easy to position your product as number one in the eyes
of your potential customer. I haven't installed this app, but I bet it is
better - and seen to be better - than any other app for browsing Hacker News
(Safari included).

4\. Charge a price for your product. This is where the rubber meets the road,
where you discover that software development is much more than programming.
Ignore the people wanting it for free and cater to those willing to pay. Play
around and see how price changes affect revenue. Even if you later decide to
make it free, a product that goes from $5 to zero 'feels' like a better
product than something that started out free - classic 'anchoring' psychology.

------
jcsalterego
Thanks for making the source code available
(<https://github.com/newsyc/newsyc/>)!

------
BenSS
Congrats! You had similar logic to why I made an App specifically to read HN
on the iPad. It's very odd that you initially had trouble getting it accepted,
as mine didn't have an issue at all with the initial version. With more screen
space on the iPad, I opted to leave mine free with an adbar. I'll probably
provide iAP to remove the ads enough people end up interested in it.

(If you're interested, mine is at: [http://itunes.apple.com/app/hacker-news-
padreader/id42833141...](http://itunes.apple.com/app/hacker-news-
padreader/id428331410?mt=8))

------
raganwald
There will always be people who think your app should be cheaper or free. How
many of them will write their own app and sell it for less? How many will put
in the same number of hours of work and give it away?

My message to them is to pay or don't pay, but stop with the whining
masquerading as "advice." If someone has a strong opinion about why the author
will make more money at a lower price, they should walk their talk and _write
their own damn software._

------
ja2ke
Points are currently prioritized over replies, which doesn't make a lot of
sense given that points are private and you're not displaying the contents of
a threaded comment in the root article display page. Seems like those two
things (points and replies) should be switched, and more attention should be
paid to letting the user know a comment has replies.

Good start though, I've been enjoying browsing HN on it since seeing the news
go up.

------
high5ths
Wish there were an iPad version of this... Hacker News HD crashes a lot on
mine, and I'd be willing to pay $4.99 for a nice interface with cacheing.

------
paulr
Wow what a lot of complaining. App developers are free to charge what they
want and users are free to purchase or not. You would think that the readers
of a site as focused on entrepreneurs as HN is, would realize that.

Very few apps in the App Store are also available open source on Github. I'm
buying it just because of that and I hope the developer keeps working on it.

------
kloncks
I love the app and idea...but I log-on with my OpenId (Google email).

Does the app support me logging in like that? I remember it didn't when we
looked at beta screenshots a few weeks/months back.

Looking great otherwise though!

------
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?

------
thecabinet
I don't like it; I'll be sticking with Michael Grinich's "Hacker News",
although it has plenty of faults too. In particular: * I don't like the
threading. * I don't like the partial view of the comments.

------
mcs
Just bought it. Checking it out.

I want push notifications for replies, though :). Premium feature? Could make
something to poll myself but I'm cool with spending a few monies for it.

~~~
chetan51
+1 Push notifications for replies

Or even just an extra tab to see replies within the app would be much
appreciated.

------
ikono
You should consider taking donations. It'd be a good way for people that can
build it themselves to show their appreciation without having to give 30% to
Apple.

------
nikcub
Nice work - just installed it. I would sorta agree with everybody else and say
lower the price - $1 or $2 is "dont even think about the price" range whereas
atm seems most of the conversation is about the price being high

Edit: thanks for putting the code up. let us all know how this works out in
terms of numbers etc. if you can

------
zoowar
I can read HN on all mobile devices with a web browser. What value does a
platform specific app provide?

~~~
news-yc
The HN website _works_ on a phone... but it's hardly where you would _want_ to
read it. If you are trying to read the comments, once you're zoomed out enough
to see the whole width, the font is usually too tiny to read. And then, to
vote on one, you have little tiny buttons that even at the max zoom levels are
hard to tap (I've seen quite a few comments apologizing for tapping the wrong
arrow on the iPhone).

Now, a platform-neutral website can do what news:yc does too:
<http://ihackernews.com/> is a good one. But, for the same reason that Twitter
clients are popular, some people just like to have one that's built native for
their platform.

~~~
zoowar
Agreed, but HN could upgrade to html5 and do what nytimes did. Compare
nytimes.com to nytimes.com/chrome (requires a web kit browser)

------
chrishenn
I would love a send to readability function (read later.) Other then that it's
great! It's so nice when readability view is integrated into applications
meant for reading things. Reeder did this and I love it—it's even more useful
on the Reeder mac app.

~~~
gedaxiang
There is a button for readability view when you are browsing a link. Click the
R.

------
atlbeer
One thing that's a required feature for me is the "show more" feature.

I don't get to read enough and I only get bursts to consume and I need more
than the default number of displayed links.

~~~
news-yc
It's on the todo list for 1.1, the relevant issue is here[0] if you want to
follow the progress.

[0]: <https://github.com/newsyc/newsyc/issues/17>

------
JackHerrick
Fantastic. I do 90% of my hacker news reading from a mobile. Can't stress how
worth $5 this app was for me. Nice job! And thanks also for releasing it under
the free BSD license too.

------
rossover
Using it now. $5 well spent. Great job on this - very intuitive and clean.
Very impressive at such a young age - you should have your pick of internship
opportunities!

------
fdiotalevi
I'm using it right now and I like it a lot.

Instapaper integration is handy, but I'd like to be able to bookmark
conversations, so I can go back and see new comments.

------
marcc
Live it. Posting from the app now in fact. Only suggestion so far is to
include rotation support. Sort of a pain being portrait only, many people like
landscape mode.

~~~
mindhunter
But please only with an option to fix it to portrait mode - iPods don't allow
to lock the mode.

------
brianpan
Will it support comment scores[1]? :D

[1]<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2568453>

------
omaranto
Has anyone used this app as well as Michael Grinich's app (I'm posting from
that) and iHackerNews.com in Mobile Safari? Which do you prefer?

~~~
steevdave
I just bought the app. The one I was previously using cost 2.99 and has many
many issues, like not showing usernames of comments as well as once I've
logged in to the app I can no longer see comment counts on the stories.

I'm still getting used to the differences between the way stories and
commenting works but my initial impression is that I like it a lot more.

~~~
omaranto
It does seem a lot faster more functional than Michael Grinich's app. I'm not
sure I really like the 3 line comment previews and having no indication of how
many replies a comment has. EDIT: it does show the number of replies, I don't
know how I hadn't noticed.

------
MaxGabriel
I'm not sure if its true but one of the commenters said the creator is in high
school. What resources did you use learning Objective C?

------
rawsyntax
This is a really polished app. I've noticed a lot of the other hacker news
readers in the app store lack features or have weird UI

------
rglover
Exactly what I was looking for. Nothing more, nothing less. Beautiful work.
The readability add-on was an unexpected gem.

------
jimisir
This is great. would totally pay for this. and I love love love that you put
your source code up. Open source is so cool.

------
lightyrs
Love the app but I'm dying for sharing features in an HN app. Please add
Facebook and Twitter support.

~~~
news-yc
I only added the most basic sharing option — copying the link — for 1.0, since
it works for everything. But, I'll definitely look into more sharing options
for the future, Facebook and Twitter would probably be at the top of those
lists.

------
peterhajas
I used this when it was in beta, and it's really really nice. I can't wait for
iPad support!

------
michael_dorfman
Another one? I have 3 iPhone HN clients already.

What's your unique value proposition?

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

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

~~~
omaranto
I used Grinich's app before the one this thread is about and I have to say
this new one is much better: it also has readability and Instapaper support,
so you won't miss that; it works a lot better: you can see user names on
submissions and comments, and scores on submissions; and has more
functionality: it has the new stories page, your profile, let's you submit,
etc.

------
briggsbio
Feature request: full size comments (not short preview) and nested comments.

------
alexknight
I'm glad they approved the app. I just bought it and it's fantastic.

------
noahhs
I would have bought it if it were $1.99. Just a data point for you.

------
GreySyntax
Well worth the money, loving the RIL support :)

------
angryasian
how is it in comparison to the mobile web site

<http://ihackernews.com/>

------
antirez
Cool app, please honor newlines in quoted text

------
riskish
curious, how many downloads have you got so far?

------
matmann2001
Not for $5. Opera Mini gives me the same thing for free.

------
spolu
4.99 ????

------
unwantedLetters
A suggestion:

Have you seen the tweetbot app (<http://tapbots.com/software/tweetbot/>)? A
recommended download. Swipe left, Swipe right on a tweet perform actions. This
sort of thing is perfect for this app.

Swipe left: Comments

Swipe right: Article in browser

Double click article: Read Later in Instapaper

Great app, and congrats. First time I've taken the plunge on an iOS HN app,
and not disappointed so far (a little afraid though, due to potential drop in
productivity).

~~~
news-yc
I was thinking about something similar to this, more like the swipe-for-
options menu in Twitter for iPhone, and showing the same toolbar that you get
on the details page.

I also really like the idea of double tapping -- maybe (instead of Instapaper)
for the article directly, as a shortcut to avoid loading the comments if
that's not what you want.

~~~
loganlinn
Swiping for options for voting on comments would be cleaner than tapping the
comment and being taken to a separate screen for voting controls.

Nonetheless, the app is a great start. Glad to see it on the AppStore.

------
J3L2404
ihackernews.com by HN'er ronnier works very well for reading HackerNews on a
mobile, although it seems that voting has been borked recently due to some log
on discrepancies. Why pg doesn't have a simple mobile version is mind
boggling.

------
iphoneedbot
Free Vs. Paid (Iphone)HN Access? I dont think its fair for people to Poo-Poo
on outcries of making it free. To be fair, HN now is freely accessible, and a
part of me cringes at the notion of charging folks for an "iphone-wrapper"
(pardon the term) to free HN community content.

Though, it is commendable that great effort has been put forth by the
developer/mastermind of the app -- and certainly that should also be rewarded.
(cool points for putting it on GitHub)

Perhaps, something in between? _Tip Jar_ ; or KickStarter or Ads? I dont know.
__It would be interesting to see what kind of revenue and overall reception
the app and developer gets! (would love to see a 'post-launch' write up)

------
KC8ZKF
Requires iOS 4.0 or later. [edit: Is this untrue?]

~~~
news-yc
No, it's true, but iOS 4 has been out for almost a year, and is available for
almost all devices (and required on the iPhone 4 and newer). I think the
downvotes might be because it's just not important information anymore, almost
everyone is on iOS 4.0 or later.

------
bcrawl
I own an Android phone and I have a Hacker news App made by Ronnie Roller
which is ad free.

Is this news-yc Iphone app in anyways different from the one I have installed
as far as the features go? Just curious...

Also the ronnieroller Android app gets installed in phone harddrive instead of
sdcard. Though it only takes uo 200KB, I cant move it for some reason, I dont
really like that. There are other apps for HN on android market which I need
to check.

------
veyron
5 bucks ??? What's the value-add? Also why is there no iPad version? (replying
from an iPad btw)

~~~
news-yc
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 use if you
don't want to pay: it's free if you build it yourself. (I even submitted it to
the pirate sites so those without a dev certificate can install it too.)

Edit, iPad version: I am planning on making one, but Hacker News is usable as
it is on the iPad in the browser, there's much less of an advantage for a
native client.

~~~
veyron
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

------
prodigal_erik
The audience for this is ... us? I'm dismayed at the idea HN readers are
voluntarily choosing this hostile platform for _their own_ use, rather than
merely holding their nose and developing for hapless consumers, while
personally using a platform that _likes_ hackers.

~~~
tlrobinson
I pick my battles carefully. I think actually working on making ther platforms
better will do much more than choosing not to use a platform out of principle.

e.x. I believe if RMS were able to make free software more approachable /
competitive with commercial software that would do much more for his cause
than inventing silly names for DRM and alienating people.

Not that RMS hasn't done excellent work in the past, he has. But his current
approach is awful.

------
creativityhurts
Charging $5 for HN app - that's giving back to the community? Don't think so.
Quite much just for a different interface.

~~~
hubb
agreed. to the dev: make it free, man. with this app you should have no
problem getting that internship you're looking for

~~~
ugh
How is making it free going to land him an internship?

Do you have any good reasons for lowering the price? Making it free seems like
an absolutely crazy suggestion. Why would he? To appease entitled brats?

