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.
I'm an iOS developer, and I think $5 is a bit steep to simply try it out. I'm going to build from source and then buy it if I like it, but you may want to consider making some sort of free version that people could use to evaluate it.
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
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.
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.
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?
Long live native apps + robust APIs. Apps that do one thing, and do it well. Apps that are beautifully tailored to the single experience they were created to provide.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
I don't mind people not wanting to spend $5 on something if they don't [for whatever reason] feel it's worth it... but I sure don't care to see them whine about it, either.
Whether it's justified or not, it's about double the current market value for these kinds of apps in the iOS app store ecosystem. So yeah, people will complain, even though it's the amount of money you'd probably easily spend on a cup of coffee.
The reason people are complaining is not that people are not willing or not able to spend $5 on a HN reading app. The problem is that people simply aren't used to it.
$5 is what you pay for a game, for an app that piggybacks on someone else's content you usually either pay nothing or about a buck.
I wonder whether or not the author would make more money from it if the app was $2.50 or $1.
I'm surprised that people are making this argument here on HN. Pricing has nothing to do with how many months a developer spent on an app. The consumer doesn't and shouldn't care about it anymore than a developer should care about how much effort someone took to earn and spend those five bucks.
FWIW, I think five dollars is ok for a niche app like this but "he spent a lot of time on it" doesn't sound like a legitimate justification for it (or for any pricing).
Why is that not a legitimate justification? The vast majority of the world's population charge a monetary fee for their time, so why is this any different? The guy put a lot of effort into making an app, as such, if you like the app, you now reward him for that time by paying him.
You have a good point. Only thing I can say is that products are typically priced on what the market for it will bear. That's why enterprise crud apps or office productivity apps may sell for more than a game which may have required more effort from more skilled people.
Suppose that it turns out that he had outsourced the development of the app - as long as you get the same app, should he charge less?
What if has still written it but was using a special compiler which compiled Lisp to Objective-C and had only spent two hours doing it, would you still feel that it was fair you paid the same?
Yes, it's only $5. A good cup of coffee is only slightly less than that, and it takes all of minutes to create. It's not like we are talking about $1000 enterprise software here.
People decide to buy things based on the value it has to them. The value it has to the producer is irrelevant. The right price is the one that will bring in the highest total revenue. If it's priced too high or too low then the producer is being deprived of his hard earned cash.
Failure to grasp this simple concept is costing some industries a lot of money right now.
> 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.
Very true although I think in spirit with the general tune around HN it might make sense to say "Yes but pay $4.99 if you want me to sustain development" which I think is reasonable (and something I need to do more of).
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".
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.)
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.)
Maybe you could do this with in-app purchases. Make the app free and include different items that people can buy for different prices. I'm not sure what that items should be, but I'm sure you can figure out something.
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
And to follow up, really nice work. My favorite HN reader so far.
Comments:
- Would be nice to skip through the comments and go straight to the article
- $4.99 is the right price. I spent $2.99 on the "offline HN reader" and another one and this makes me regret ever buying those others.
Again to the price-haters: $5 a pop to help keep a hs kid from flipping burgers or mowing lawns this summer and keep him doing something that matters (and something he's shown to be pretty kickass at so early in his life)? Worth it.
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.
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)
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
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!
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.
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.
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!
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!
128 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 199 ms ] threadMaybe 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.
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
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.
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?
Long live native apps + robust APIs. Apps that do one thing, and do it well. Apps that are beautifully tailored to the single experience they were created to provide.
Good riddance, Web.
What's your unique value proposition?
I just bought it and think it's great (nice icon too).
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.
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.
The reason people are complaining is not that people are not willing or not able to spend $5 on a HN reading app. The problem is that people simply aren't used to it.
$5 is what you pay for a game, for an app that piggybacks on someone else's content you usually either pay nothing or about a buck.
I wonder whether or not the author would make more money from it if the app was $2.50 or $1.
I'll gladly pay the $5 though.
FWIW, I think five dollars is ok for a niche app like this but "he spent a lot of time on it" doesn't sound like a legitimate justification for it (or for any pricing).
What if has still written it but was using a special compiler which compiled Lisp to Objective-C and had only spent two hours doing it, would you still feel that it was fair you paid the same?
Failure to grasp this simple concept is costing some industries a lot of money right now.
> 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.
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".
(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.)
Haters will be hatin'.
The usual way to do this is to release the app for free and put a (PayPal) donate button on your page...
Again to the price-haters: $5 a pop to help keep a hs kid from flipping burgers or mowing lawns this summer and keep him doing something that matters (and something he's shown to be pretty kickass at so early in his life)? Worth it.
Good start though, I've been enjoying browsing HN on it since seeing the news go up.
Instapaper integration is handy, but I'd like to be able to bookmark conversations, so I can go back and see new comments.
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)
Edit: thanks for putting the code up. let us all know how this works out in terms of numbers etc. if you can
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.
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!