Hacker news reader for iPhone

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=333187163&mt=8

by arh • 17 years ago

27 36 17 years ago

itunes.apple.com

nirmal2• 17 years ago

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=809181 for a discussion about other HN on the iPhone solutions.

My version is at http://mobilehackernews.appspot.com/

It uses iUI for the list and if you click on a story link it uses arc90's Readability to make the site you visit easier to read. The Readability script also puts a button in the top left corner of the page to revert to the original version.

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

ique• 17 years ago

That actually seemed awesome until i started getting this on pretty much every page:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/base/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/webapp/__init__.py", line 507, in __call__
    handler.get(*groups)

  File "/base/data/home/apps/mobilehackernews /1.336829969607358575/main.py", line 137, in get
    html.head.append(cssCode)

 AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'append'

nirmal2• 17 years ago

Odd, I saw that few times just now. But I can't reproduce it. The error suggests that when BeautifulSoup parsed to the contents of the posted article, it found a page with no head node in the HTML.

mildweed2• 17 years ago

If I were to pay money for my HN, I'd want at least some of it to go to the actual HN team.

Torn• 17 years ago

Yeah, £1.19 seems a bit too steep when I can instantly fire up Safari on my iPhone and view the full hn for free.

peterbe2• 17 years ago

How many sips of beer is that? 1.5?

shabda2• 17 years ago

I find it funny that a community of people who make their living off selling software are so averse to paying for it. How much of your hourly rate is the cost of buying this? How much time do you spend on HN daily? How much percent better does reading HN does this app need to make, for you to be ROI positive in a week?

javery• 17 years ago

It's not the problem of spending $2, it's the question of if that $2 is going to the right people.

jasonlbaptiste• 17 years ago

I think it's a bit high, but I bought it to give it a run. From the screenshots, it seemed decently full featured. The only thing I wish it had was AT least the upvote capabilities. I never really comment from the iphone, since I know ill limit my comments. Give me a few days of waiting on line with nothing to do and checking HN via my iPhone to give it a final verdict. .99 seems like a better price than 1.99

phil• 17 years ago

> a bit high

Seriously?

It must have taken at least a couple weeks of work to write and polish up this app. Then there's ongoing marketing, support, more dev if he adds the features people are asking for here, etc. If the app sells 1000 copies its first month (which would be pretty good!), the economics barely make sense at $1.99. At $0.99 it's basically a community service project.

Games can be priced at a dollar because the audience is everyone with an iPhone. For apps that are carefully tailored to the needs of a small group, you must expect to pay more.

rbanffy3• 17 years ago

You know... Not everybody has iTunes on the computer... Or even a computer where iTunes is willing to run.

brk2• 17 years ago

In that case then, this app probably isn't targeted at you.

rbanffy3• 17 years ago

I do, however, have an iPod and an iMac. I just happen to use Linux for work.

pclark• 17 years ago

none of your screenshots actually show a story. does that mean it just shows the webkit view?

vibhavs• 17 years ago

Also, I couldn't tell from the screenshots if the app allowed users to view comments on a submission. As we all know, the discussions can be as good as, if not better, than the articles.

gcv• 17 years ago

Indeed. I'd buy this instantly if it provided an iPhone-friendly interface for reading the discussion, but I can't tell from the screenshots. Also, if there is a story view --- reasonably sized up-down voting arrows alone would make it worth paying for.

Oompa• 17 years ago

http://www.icombinator.net/ works great for me, and costs nothing. Also has nifty instapaper functionality which I've grown to live on.

towndrunk• 17 years ago

Very cool. Thanks for the link!

SamAtt• 17 years ago

I agree. I just bought the app and it offers an inferior experience to icombinator from what I can see. This app doesn't have threading in the comments (you can't see who replied to what), it doesn't have the instapaper functionality, etc...

I expected an app to at least allow me to log in and post comments but it doesn't even do that. Which makes me ask what the point of having a native app even was.

peterbe2• 17 years ago

Installed!

mdemare• 17 years ago

Me too! Thanks, much more readable than in Safari.

smokey_the_bear• 17 years ago

I bought it and it looks good. Though I mostly bought it because I noticed that the author used to be my project manager. :) Best of luck with the app, Kevin!

jwr• 17 years ago

"The item you've requested is not currently available in the Polish Store"

Did the developers place geographical restrictions or is this a bug in the iTunes store?

Dear developers, please make sure the app is available everywhere.

davidivins• 17 years ago

i installed it. i think it's pretty nice but still needs some work. for example, i don't like that it opens the links in safari. i'd rather stay within the application (like the reddit app). if i'm going to end up in safari every time i want to read something, i'll probably just use http://www.icombinator.net/ instead:(

rbanffy3• 17 years ago

For those without iTunes: http://www.kevintom.com/

http://www.kevintom.com/ycnews didn't render properly in Safari or Firefox...

grinich• 17 years ago

Kevin, you should probably check this stuff too. Not because PG&Co will sue you, but just to be a good dude.

http://ycombinator.com/legal.html

icefox• 17 years ago

<sarcasm>Man I am glad I have this app now! HackerNews is a website with MB's of flash and images that make browsing it _really_ slow. I mean it doesn't even have rss!</sarcasm>

nikohl• 17 years ago

I highly doubt the developer did this for money. At best he'll make $1000. I'm guessing he developed the app for himself and just decided to release it. Why not comment about how it could be better?

My suggestion has already been voiced: Need upvote capability.

Hacker news reader for iPhone

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