

Show HN: A free HN iPhone/iPad app I launched a few months ago - marketer
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news-reader-technology/id463699245?mt=8
I actually started it June 2011 to learn iOS, launched it in September, and have been steadily adding features and making improvements.<p>It's something I use every day and I hope other people find it useful. Enjoy!
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runjake
I'm using your app on the iPad. A few suggestions:

\- Let me see my comment history & other people's replies.

\- Get a new color scheme for the story list. It's very hard to read, maybe
that's just my colorblindness. The colors don't go together well. They're too
dark for my tastes. Use an app such as Instapaper or news:yc for examples of
good color flow.

\- List the number of comments for each story.

\- Option for bigger text -- at least in the main story list view.

\- Adjust the username/logout thingy in the upper right corner to something
more elegant. How it currently works is wonky and reminds me of the worst
examples of Android UX.

\- Most importantly, charge for your app. 99 cents or 1.99 or whatever. You
should gain from your work, however small. I'll be your first customer.

~~~
wdewind
As a counter point, I love the colors it makes it much easier on the eyes when
I'm reading in bed. I wish the rest of the pages (comments etc.) would be like
that as well.

And I too would buy your app if you started selling it.

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yusefnapora
I really enjoy your app; nice work! One thing that would greatly improve it
for me is a button to switch between the article view and the comments. I
usually want to read the comments directly after reading an article, and it's
a bit annoying to have to go back to the article list. Not a deal-breaker, but
it's something I've grown used to in Alien Blue (the reddit client) and I miss
it when I use your app. Also, I was initially confused by the back button in
the article view, as it is visible even when it's impossible to go back, so
the button did nothing when I first pressed it. Once I followed a link in the
article it was apparent what it was for. You can easily hide it based on the
result of UIWebView's -[canGoBack] method. Anyway, thanks for the app!

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maxgaudin
I've been using it for a while and love it. Thanks for the back button. Is it
possible to integrate the Reader function of Safari in iOS or is that only
possible within Safari? Also, I would pay for this especially given the other
attempts at the same app.

~~~
dustinrodrigues
I too am grateful for the back button update. The day before you released the
update, I followed some links and wanted to go back, only to be taken to the
front page of HN. Then I saw the update and it solved the exact problem I was
having.

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chetan51
I personally like the interface of news:yc better, except for the comments
page, which can be improved. Do take a look at it and see what you can learn
and improve on.

~~~
marketer
Do continue using the news:yc app.

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zeratul
Yes, I like it and I use it. Thank you for the app.

I wanted to ask, though, did you know that "upvote" and "save a story for
later" means same thing on HN? What was the reason for adding "star" button in
your app? Couldn't you use this instead
<http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=marketer> and have just the "upvote"
button?

~~~
marketer
That's a great idea, thanks. Right now the 'star' button just creates a local
bookmark, but if you're logged in, it should also send an upvote.

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davidjade
In general I like the app but the comment view text is too small for me on an
iPhone/iPod. I also wish that the comment view would allow for rotation (as
that usually increases the font size and improves readability of text layout).
These issues caused me to ultimately switch to another HN app (but I still
have yours installed in the hopes that this will change).

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mikeevans
Any plans to add Instapaper support? I like your app, and use it often, but
I'd like to read HN articles on the train sometimes.

~~~
marketer
Not yet, but I'll definitely look into it for the next release.

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mutagen
Thanks for the continued work on this, the navigation improvements are great.
I'll join the choir of users asking for rotation support for the HN
discussion. I can read the portrait view but at times the landscape
magnification would be nice.

~~~
marketer
Yeah that view should rotate. It'll be in the next update.

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switz
I've been using this for a month or so. It's great, but I wish it would show
the point value of each news story.

~~~
marketer
The latest version does that.

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Varun06
Any plan to put this app on Android?

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jlank
marketer, great app I use it daily.. my only wish is that it included more
sharing options instead of just email.. twitter would be nice, or at bare
minimum the ability to copy the url of the post so I could send it around.
Keep up the great work!

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pkamb
Why is it free?

~~~
marketer
This type of app is not particularly monetizable. Most people would use the
actual website instead of paying $0.99 cents for an app. Plus, it was a fun
project to learn iOS and it costs me very little to host or maintain.

~~~
Jimmie
How hard was it to interface with HN? Do they provide an API to work with?

Reddit has a very nice API, one of the killer features is that if you take any
reddit page and add ".json" to the address it'll spit out pure json at you.

For example: <http://www.reddit.com/r/all> becomes:
<http://www.reddit.com/r/all.json>

~~~
duck
There is an unofficial api at <http://api.ihackernews.com/>. It use to have a
lot of timeout issues, but seems to be running a lot better now.

~~~
joe_the_user
Having sampled it, I'm not sure of the value of a broken api that might
improve later.

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geuis
Looks good. One point though, the text color scheme is atrocious. Dark grey
and darker grey is nearly illegible. Try an off-white text to add some
contrast.

