

 Hacker News for iPhone ($3) app is insanely great - pclark
http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/?=awesome

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micheljansen
With the risk of sounding like a sour guy, I'm just going to say it: why do
people pay money for apps that are essentially web browsers in a shiny
package?

I am not against people making money by providing better access to content
that is available for free (who hasn't paid for the odd Twitter app), but just
take a look at the list of features on the app's promotion page:

    
    
      * View top submitted stories, optimized for iPhone
      * Explore comments and threads
      * Browse web links without quitting using the in-app browser
    

All of these things are true for browsing Hacker News in mobile Safari as
well. That's hardly enough to earn the predicate "insanely great" or the $3
price tag in my world.

Admittedly, using Hacker News on an iPhone is not the best mobile browser
experience (it could certainly use some css @media queries and perhaps a meta
viewport tag, essentially few minutes of work would do the trick), but that
hardly warrants a native app, especially if it's not free.

~~~
logic
"Admittedly, using Hacker News on an iPhone is not the best mobile browser
experience"

That's precisely why people are willing to buy an app like this: to improve
the experience. Yes, "fixing" HN is easy, if you're pg. If you're just a
reader, something like this offers a fix today, for three dollars.

(I agree with you, by the way: I won't pay money for a glorified web browsing
app. Just pointing out that I think there's a place for apps like these, if
only as a means of pointing out to site owners what they could improve.)

~~~
micheljansen
I agree, although I meant my comment to be taken in general (there are so many
of these apps, for so many different websites).

In the case of HN there actually has been another reader that fixed the mobile
experience for free (as mentioned in trimski's comment):
<http://toadjaw.com/hn>

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waffenklang
Well and why should I get this app?

HN is a really lightweight webpage, which looks good even on mobile browsers.
The app navigation is similiar to the browser nav and even commenting is
similiar as within browser. so why spend $3 to have a bookmark of HN?

~~~
nickyp
HN _looks_ decent on mobile browsers, but doesn't handle all that well on
them.

On iPhone: font sizes are really too small, voting arrows are practically not
hittable without zooming in and trying to zoom in on the articles list
confuses Safari (probably because of all the nested tables)

~~~
waffenklang
On my Iphone browsing HN in landscape just needs one time zooming to become
readable. I now switched to palm pre and there it is even much better in
landscape, i dont need to zoom.

yes, its a personal feling. but i think one time zooming is ok and not worth
buying an app.

~~~
nickyp
You're right, but I find that there are so many tap targets because of the
table rows and cells that one double-tap zoom ('auto-zoom') is a hit-or-miss
affair in mobile Safari . Even on the iPad, where the default font size is
less of a problem.

------
sokoloff
I'm surprised at the complaining about the $3 price. If something saves me 2
minutes of time, or makes my life the least bit more enjoyable, I'm more than
happy to pay $3 for it. That's less than adding bacon and cheese to 2
hamburgers, a coffee out, or a 6 pack of coke.

It's a truly trivial amount of money, and if you'd otherwise like the
application, not buying it because it's "too expensive" astounds me.

(I have no connection to this app, its author, or any iPhone authors for that
matter)

~~~
waffenklang
Well it is not the amount of money the complaints are about. It is the fact
that it is sold. The complaints are about the fact, that the app offers
service which you can get for free by just using your browser, with just one
(max. two) taps less than it. So it is just a HN related mini browser. And
imho this not really a justification for an app.

Even the argument "it saves me minutes of time" isnt an argument in my eyes as
these are truly trivial 2 minutes which you should be glad to spend on
something you like as the moment just before HN appears is the moment where
you can mentally prepare and calm yourself to enjoy the time you read HN. See
it as anticipation and spend the $3 on a coffee which you enjoy while reading.

------
pavlov
Insanely great? These Jobsian adjectives have suffered an inflation of
Zimbabwean proportions.

~~~
th0ma5
I thought insanely great was more of a Douglas Adams thing? Well, he really
liked Macs too.

------
nreece
One suggestion: make Readability the default option for the articles, with a
link to the original article.

~~~
bensummers
Or even better, run it through Google's mobile formatter and add a stylesheet,
so you download the article quicker.

[http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator....](http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com)

------
jeb
I spent like 3 minutes waiting for the video demo person to type some long
comment, so I could see the rest of the app.

~~~
veemjeem
Hah same here. He should have just stopped typing after "Wow."

------
pw
Actually, I've been a bit disappointed with it. I miss being able to send a
page to Instapaper, which is something that become standard in other apps
(like RSS readers).

------
Terretta
I won't buy an iPhone app that's using Flash inside the phone screen to demo
the app. Use of Flash suggests the author doesn't know how to do rich
interfaces without Flash, so the app itself can't be that good.

Granted, if I could see the demo, I might discover I was mistaken.

<http://imgur.com/VdUK2.png>

~~~
mattmillr
No, using Flash means the author might not know how to do rich interfaces with
Javascript/CSS/HTML or that he prefers to do rich interfaces for the web in
Flash. Or it could mean something else.

Since the iPhone app is written in Objective C, which isn't an option on the
web, his choice of Flash for the demo really doesn't tell us anything about
how good the app might be, does it?

------
allend
Suggestion: make the video on the website usable on the device the software is
meant for, or just put up a bunch of screenshots.

------
Sujan
Feedback to the owner: The screenshots are displayed behind the flash movie.
As this is a jquery fancybox I would propose you just visibility:hidden the
flash movie when someone clicks a screenshot (there are hooks in fancybox to
use) and make it visible again on close of the fancybox (also a hook for
this).

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robin_reala
Insanely great if you ignore logging in with OpenID. Apparently I was the
first person to ask for this, so chances of an implementation were low. Shame.

And yes, really HN just needs a mobile stylesheet. If I had time I’d make one,
but at the moment I don’t :/

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botsmack
There's also <http://www.icombinator.net> which is formatted to the iPhone. I
read Hacker News via RSS, so I'm not sure how the full experience is through
that site or compares with ToadJaw mentioned earlier.

------
pieter
I kinda like the app, but the comments get very laggy on older devices if
there are a few of them (like 100+).

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warrenmiller
free on android! (had to say it)

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nickpp
I've been waiting the iPad-compatible release since April...

