I clicked because I wanted to try this, but it looks like you built your thing inside a particular device manufacturer's closed ecosystem which I do not use, so I cannot try it.
Would love to see more web forward tech, or otherwise platform agnostic tech.
What you say definitely makes sense, but honestly the overwhelming majority of their customers would come from that ecosystem even if it was cross-platform or web-based, so why should they bother? It is hard to imagine many people out of that ecosystem would pay for something like that, which is also why a lot of similarly oriented stuff are restricted there. The whole concept sounds like a kind of "luxury good" equivalent for an app.
> Oh God it’s even got a subscription for it. This app is literally garbage.
Can you elaborate on why you think it’s “garbage” when an indie dev is trying to make money off something they created? May I ask what you do for a living? (Just curious.)
First off, great job misrepresenting my point! Secondly, let me ask you this: did you spend the money on the app? I’m going to assume no, just for the sake of argument, since obviously you’ve bought it and will pay for many years to come since you want to support an indie dev.
But again, for sake of argument let’s say you didn’t, why not? Because at its core you didn’t find it valuable. But they deserve to make money off their creations right? So by your logic everyone should buy this, regardless of value, because they deserve the money. Except they don’t. They have a right to charge $20/yr for an app they made in a weekend, and I have every right as a consumer to refuse that and even mock it. Especially when they make poor business decisions such as taking on unnecessary fixed costs and limiting themselves to ~50% of the market. This is what they call the free market, and I suggest you go back to Econ 101 if you don’t understand.
As for what I do for a living: I provide value to others and receive monetary compensation in return, something this app fails to do.
Personally, I think the pricing issue is related to the web app issue from the parent comment.
Even as a free iOS app, there is the $99/year Apple Developer fee, on top of any server costs.
Meanwhile, a web app can be used by anyone on any device, and if designed properly, can be hosted for free on a number of platforms.
If the goal is to make money from casual users, an indie iOS app is the move.
... But that would not fly for what I presume to be a very large fraction of the HN audience that lives and breathes code. What could have been an interesting and tweakable open source project built in a weekend, sold as a closed untweakable app at a $20/year subscription, only for iPhones? That would certainly be quite a bold sell.
I'd love to have spent more on Alexa, but having trust in the quality and pricing was critical to me so I stopped ordering after they messed it up a few times. I now verify my purchases on the website to ensure the bulk facial tissues (or whatever) are actually the cheapest and most legitimate listing for the brand I want.
Our company was acquired by Amazon in 2017 to help power Alexa's general knowledge / informational answers, and that's pretty much what we did. I only stayed for 15 months after acquisition though.
Not sure how much or if this had influence from Guava at all, but I wanted to share the link since we've been around about 3 years and Guava is both free to track and seemingly a superset, except for explicit streak tracking: guavahealth.com
Streak tracking seemed more of a vanity non-health-related aspect so we've left it out so far.
Computing statistical insights based on arbitrary pairings of lifestyle habits is a big feature for many people
Despite a minor grievance about not making HN mobile friendly sooner, I have extreme respect for long lasting high quality things, and this is one of them.
It's so disheartening to see news like this. I just recently switched to Spotify to try it as my primary music service for the first time, and it has such a fundamental flaw with multiple devices not being supported that it feels like a prank. My family using my home devices interrupts my laptop music and they won't even allow me to pay to fix it, I would need to create a whole new account that doesn't have all my saved settings. My friend who has used spotify a long time said he made a new account in his dog's name to get around this. Really??? On top of that, the radio is still only built for basic short term listeners because it only plays the top 50 songs over and over, even in niche genres like symphonic power metal (as opposed to, say, electronic music as a whole). It's disheartening because our world economy somehow perpetuates so much of the wrong things that are trivial to fix if one genuinely asks "is this a good experience?"
If those were already electronic records, your provider broke federal law by declining and trying to charge you that much. You can submit information blocking reports here: https://www.healthit.gov/topic/information-blocking.
This isn't totally a legal problem, it's also an adherence problem. I'd estimate about half of providers don't know what exactly they are required to do and at what cost. Our company helped patients request their own records and half the time we had to call and talk to the provider about the legal requirements and ask them to comply or reduce the price.
Even before October 6 and the Cures Act, HIPAA law already required very cheap access to your own medical records. It's something like a base maximum cost of $6.50 plus a per-page printing fee but ONLY if you request paper format. HIPAA law directly states that the format requested by the patient MUST be given if readily available. Digital format doesn't require printing.
Ah yes. I phrase this as wanting to duplicate myself many times over. Much to do, little time.
I'm attempting to put a dent into increasing our timelines (longevity) with my current project, Guava. The other way to get more time is to experience more in the same time, and for this we need improved brains and interfaces. I'll be ambitious and put my effort into these things because it will allow me to do more if successful.
Would love to see more web forward tech, or otherwise platform agnostic tech.