

Prismatic for iPhone is now live in the App Store - w01fe
http://getprismatic.com/iphone

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allenbrunson
Welp, I am going to be the lone dissenter, I guess.

I didn't like that it wanted to link to an existing account. I don't trust
Facebook as far as I could throw the entire company, so that one is right out.
I don't have a Twitter account. That just leaves Google. Fine. I do that, and
it says that it maybe wants to fiddle with my Google Reader settings? If this
thing adds or removes items to my existing set of feeds, I am going to be
upset. And even after that, I have to create a Prismatic account, along with a
new password. Great, another password to remember. And I'll bet you ten bucks
I'll be forced to unsubscribe from the spam they start sending me in a few
days.

After that, it required what seemed like nearly endless setup. Pick interests.
Pick publishers. Now sit through seven or eight screens where we insist on
showing you how it all works, rather than letting you discover that for
yourself.

I bailed at about the second "help" screen, and deleted it. It's a very nice-
looking app, but I would have to want it really, really badly to go through
that much hassle. And I don't.

~~~
piggity
Thanks for the review - saved me from even going to their website.

I have the attention span of a 12 year old without their Ritalin for all these
"YC app du jour" sites these days.

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rabidsnail
Why not scroll continuously in the reading list? The gestureness of the
scrolling behavior seems jarring to me.

I'm also curious to see how many gestures new users are willing to learn. I
count five, which seems like an awful lot.

Very slick, though.

PS: I notice what you did with the first image in the app store screenshots
(having a slice of the second image on the side). Very clever. Shame there's
no way to measure whether that works.

~~~
wilder
I'm a big fan of this snapping, page down scroll style. It moves as fast as I
can scan yet never halts in position that renders one (or two) entries
unintelligible. Should I want to get to a totally different set of stories I
can swipe left.

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wilder
This app is phenomenal. Other readers (e.g. Flipboard) make too many
sacrifices at the altar of design. I enjoy playing with them at first but the
information density just isn't high enough for me. Prismatic gets the density
right without being overly utilitarian.

I only started using the web version this week so I can't speak to the
intelligence component yet.

~~~
illumin8
It seems pretty good, however, I have a major pet peeve with the reading
layout. At least on iPhone, they stick 3 random tweets about the article right
in the middle of the first paragraph. You just begin reading an article, and
have to scroll through a page of tweets before you can read the rest of it.
That is very annoying.

Also, how about pre-fetching the full article when I start to get close to the
end of the preview? Once I'm interested in the article, I have to click a
button and wait for the entire web page to load before I can read the full
thing. Also, to read the full article, I might as well be using Safari because
it's just a UIWebKit view. I lose all of the formatting and have to deal with
the site's native formatting, which is quite jarring.

Overall, a good first attempt, but please fix some of these issues.

~~~
wilder
I had not seen the tweet injection as I tend to read less popular stuff.
Having just looked at a nytimes article, would have to agree that it's quite
abrasive.

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martian
Am I the only one who wishes they would charge for this? I'd love to start
using it, but I don't know what their business model is or how they'll be
using my data, so I'm far less inclined to start. If it were 5 or 10$ (or even
more?) I'd honestly and happily give it a try.

~~~
rabidsnail
What will it cost you if it goes away? We're not talking about changing e-mail
hosts.

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SoftwareMaven
It's not just about Prismatic going away. You can learn a lot about me by what
I read. A popular way to make money is to sell that information. If I can't
see how you make money, I'm going to assume you _are_ selling my information.
I'm not necessarily against that, but I _really_ want to know what you are
selling.

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FPSDavid
Just curious, why does the app make me login to Facebook via a web browser
window, instead of just hopping over to the Facebook App, letting me hit
Approve (or whatever it says), then hopping back to Prismatic, like other apps
do?

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bjtitus
Prismatic is an awesome service. I've really enjoyed using it for the past few
months. It's nice to see a mobile application so I can be just as obsessed
with it on the go.

However, I agree with rabidsnail, I think the multitude of unique gestures are
too much for most users to take in and there are some odd choices like pull to
refresh even though the concept seems to be an infinite list, and jumping to
titles which makes the scrolling seem jerky.

Still, the core functionality is there and I will definitely use the app on a
daily (if not hourly) basis.

Great job!

~~~
w01fe
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback! We've put a lot of work into the gestures,
and during user testing most users seemed to find them intuitive. But if you
have suggestions or other ideas about them we'd love to hear them.

For pull to refresh specifically, you're right that it's not really necessary
-- the best way to use Prismatic is to just keep reading and scrolling down.
But it's something that many users seem to look for (both on the web and on
mobile), and so we decided to put it in to support this style of browsing for
people who want it.

~~~
rabidsnail
User testers (at least the kind you get on a site like usertesting.com) are
very highly motivated. A paid user tester will keep at it long after a real
user would bounce.

It might be a good idea to run experiments adding UI elements (and removing
the walkthrough steps) for some of the gestures when you start getting a
significant flow of new users.

~~~
w01fe
These users were mostly random people in coffee shops, on the street, etc. I'm
sure there's still a bias when someone is looking over their shoulder, but we
could get a pretty good idea of whether average users 'get it' right away or
floundered. We went through about 5 full redesigns of the walkthrough based on
this testing before we arrived at the current version. Of course, we'll keep
experimenting and improving in future versions.

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jakewalker
Looks fantastic. One thing that is confusing is how to add additional social
accounts. The startup process lets you link one (e.g., Facebook), but it is
not evident how to add another (e.g., Twitter).

~~~
w01fe
Thanks for the feedback. We're revamping this part in the next version -- for
now you can add Facebook or Twitter directly from the share box, or sign in on
the web to associate your Google account and get suggestions from Reader.

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watmough
Fantastic. I love the swipe for settings. Coincidentally, I just started on
adding almost the identical thing to an Android app I'm doing that needs very
simple gestures so it can be used in the car.

The only jarring note is that when selecting things, the cue from the orange
tick is removed and remains very faint. It's slightly hard to scan as the
visual difference between a tiny tick and a tiny plus is so small.

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unohoo
The app is great.I can easily see myself using it daily. One feedback though
-- while the ios app is incredibly fast and slick, some of the gestures and
menu is not intuitive enough. Like - where are my settings (twitter/fb etc.) ?
Can I change my email / password ? I guess others are providing similar
feedback below and I hope that some of these 'small' things improve in the
next version. Great app though !!

~~~
w01fe
Thanks for the feedback. On the web you can see those settings in your
profile, but unfortunately profile didn't make it into this first version. For
now you can configure this stuff on the web, but we plan to fix this omission
in the next version -- thanks for bearing with us.

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jensen2k
I am really left feeling like i have gone to deep into the forest when stacks
just keep piling up. Even if i press "Home" in the menu, it just ends up being
another page added to the stack.

It really feels like i've made a mess using this app. I can't take mess. And
it takes some time to clean it up. Why do you do this? It must be some memory
concerns to this as well?

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duckkg5
The intro is fantastic. It's actually quite fun to learn how to use the app.
Smooth, informative, and fairly entertaining. Bravo!

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sdqali
Congratulations for the launch. Prismatic has proved to be a great service for
me. I am waiting for an Android app.

~~~
JanaSF
Thank you! This was the first step towards amazing Prismatic clients for
different screen sizes and platforms.

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bitserf
I love the font they used, it's almost Helvetica, but I find it slightly more
readable - that may just be the fact that it's non standard. It's got a nice
density to it.

Running through Identifont, it appears to be AG Old Face BQ, is that correct?

Very similar to Basic Commercial as well, though.

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Groxx
<http://cl.ly/image/1v2238121W0l> "Manage your contacts" and "Perform these
operations when I'm not using the application" ? Why do you need access to my
contacts?

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alecdibble
I just loaded the app up. I really enjoyed the beginning animations and how
the gestures were taught. I personally feel the gestures are intuitive and
easy to pick up.

Congrats on the launch!

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mynegation
Is there a way to create an account and tell prismatic my interest without
logging in with any social network account? I would prefer to keep things
separate.

~~~
w01fe
Sure, you can create a "stealth" account that's not attached to any social
networks. You'll miss out on our automatic interest suggestions and the
ability to share out to your friends, but you can always attach those accounts
later.

If you create a stealth account you'll get a canned set of suggestions, but
you can still use search through our hundreds of thousands of topics and
publishers to tell us what you're interested in.

~~~
jmah
Uh, so I created a stealth account on my desktop, so I could easily generate a
random password. Then logged out, preparing to log back in so the browser
would remember my account. But I can't find any way to log back in, only
create another account. What am I missing?

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w01fe
What platform are you browsing from? There should be a login link at the top
right of the landing page.

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jmah
Oh, the main page seems broken in WebKit (I was using Safari, also broken in
Chrome). I can see the login link with Firefox.

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ThomPete
I like the idea but am confused about the interface.

Once i added the FB feed I can't figure out how to get back to find the
Twitter and G+ feed

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smlacy
Congrats! Hopefully Android is coming soon! :)

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JanaSF
Android app is on our roadmap. This app was the first step toward amazing
Prismatic clients for different screen sizes and platforms. We have a couple
of big changes to the core product before we become ubiquity focused.

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kanwisher
Awesome release, excited to read more now. Does it sync offline at all? It
appears to require a connection all the time.

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w01fe
Thanks! Offline didn't quite make it into the first version, but it's coming
soon.

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burnto
Congrats Bradford and team!

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JanaSF
Thank you! We hope you love the app.

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dmix
Finally! They teased this on twitter and dribbble for way too long.

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JanaSF
I'm so sorry we teased you guys for so long but you have to admit some of our
buzz videos were enjoyable. :-)<https://vimeo.com/47600364> We hope the wait
was worth it.

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carterschonwald
how do I tie a username into an account that already has the social accounts
plugged in? :) i tried to do that a while back, but it just created an orphan
account!

~~~
w01fe
you already have a username, you just may not know it (if you signed up long
ago it was automatically set to your twitter handle). Email
feedback@getprismatic.com with account details and we'll help you out.

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JanaSF
Prismatic for iPhone is now a featured app in the App Store.

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conikeec
Congrats on the launch

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JanaSF
Thank you! After months of slowly building and perfecting the iPhone app it
feels great to finally be able to share it with everyone.

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wallflower
Congratulations! What was the hardest and/or most rewarding part?

I am assuming you abandoned most of stock UIKit and built custom
implementations.

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w01fe
Thanks!

Hardest and most rewarding was all the serious engineering we did to make the
app and gestures fun and fast. Most of the components in the app are custom,
from the navigation controller to the story menu down to the scroll physics.
Aria just answered this Quora question that goes into some of the details.

[http://www.quora.com/Prismatic/What-were-the-techniques-
Pris...](http://www.quora.com/Prismatic/What-were-the-techniques-Prismatic-
used-to-achieve-such-snappy-performance-in-its-iOS-app)

If you have any particular things you'd like us to elaborate on, we'd be happy
to answer your questions.

