
Ask HN: How much would you pay for a beautiful IRC client for Mac? - ryeguy_24
(GUI-based)
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latitude
One man’s “beautiful” is another man’s “flat and bare” :)

That said - $20 feels right for this sort of thing. Gotta be light, polished
and snappy though, truly exceptional. Not of an Electron variety. The fee is
basically a pat on a back for the developer for a job well done.

Certainly not more, because it’s a goodwill purchase. But if it’s less, then
it’ll look like a temp side project with a limited life expectancy.

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ryeguy_24
Haven't ever seen Electron until now. What's wrong with Electron?

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ancarda
Programs built with Electron are written in HTML 5 packaged by wrapping
Chromium around it. People's main beef with Electron is size (of the binary)
and memory usage. Since you're technically running a whole webbrowser (just
with 1 "tab"), it's quite heavy. Think of a simple calculator app taking 50 MB
of disk space and using 150 MB of RAM

A lot of programs these days are built using Electron, or similar techniques
(packaged HTML 5 app) partly as it's a quick way to build an app that's cross
platform and has a lot of functionality

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ancarda
Maybe $100? I suppose it would depend on features. Honestly though, something
open source where I make a recurring donation (i.e. Patreon, GitHub Sponsor)
might be better, since that may mean development over a longer period of time

I'd be willing to pay for a native (not Electron) macOS app that can connect
to IRCCloud[1]

[1] [https://github.com/irccloud/irccloud-tools/wiki/API-
Overview](https://github.com/irccloud/irccloud-tools/wiki/API-Overview)

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buffaloo
How does this app add value? Is it that it’s pretty looking or superior
function in some way? I would not pay anything until I understood the benefit.

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uniacid
There are already quite a few options but I would want to pay as little as
possible (under $10 or $9.99 max)

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mtmail
I paid 8.99 USD for Textual 7 (MacOS) a couple of months ago. You only see the
price ater you install the free app (1 month free trial if I remember
correctly). It has more features than I possibly use (I don't use IRC much)
and isn't ugly. 19.99 USD would've been my limit.

