Hi, app developer here. I hope some of you may like my little app. To prevent too much ranting here are some quick answers to possible questions:<p>Q: The Hacker News website provides much more functionality than your app.<p>A: That's right. The app isn't made to replace the Hacker News website. It's made for frequent readers like me who want a quick and friendly-on-the-eye way to access the stories.<p>Q: I want your app but I don't want to pay for it.<p>A: No problem, Hacky is open source! Just get a copy of the source on GitHub and build it on your machine.<p>Q: Why are you then charging money for it in the first place?<p>A: Personally I like getting my apps via Mac App Store. It means easy updating and restoring. Unfortunately providing an app in the MAS isn't free for the developer as he has to purchase a Developer Certificate from Apple. (Additionally a developer likes to buy a beer from time to time)<p>Relevant Links:<p>Website: <a href="http://www.hackyapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.hackyapp.com</a><p>Mac App Store: <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacky/id584949645?ls=1&mt=12" rel="nofollow">https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacky/id584949645?ls=1&m...</a><p>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/eliaskg/Hacky" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/eliaskg/Hacky</a><p>Edit: Here, have some Promo Codes:<p><pre><code> NPLEWFH4PT6X
XNLHAXHPA3FN
FRAAR3RL797W
MHLW7MH9EYYP
KPM36X9KY4EN</code></pre>
Nice app. Just a few UI and code comments.<p>The titlebar is too big in my opinion. I'm writing an app with a thicker than usual titlebar and had a look around a number of apps before deciding on the exact height. I found the best height to be 36px. This allows for nicely a nicely spaced title and traffic lights, but isn't too large. Clear for Mac goes for a titlebar a bit bigger than this, but Hacky is far larger.<p>The bottom bar seems like it's only there to place the "Mark all as read" button. Could this button be instead placed on the titlebar? If not, I think it's the wrong type of button to use in this context. I believe the correct button style is "Round Textured" as listed in Interface Builder.<p>Despite these two comments, I actually really like the user interface. It looks good and is generally well thought out.<p>A few comments on the project, it might be worth using CocoaPods. This is entirely up to you, but I know for a fact that INAppStoreWindow and AFNetworking are in the database, and it might make handling dependency updates easier. Not using CocoaPods isn't necessarily a bad thing at all though.<p>Having had a quick look at the code, and having compiled it, there are a lot of compiler warnings! A few can be fixed just be configuring the project correctly, adding frameworks that AFNetworking wants for additional functionality, etc, but a few issues surrounding your mixed use of instance variables and properties that will generate their own.<p>There is also an issue with declaring a method as taking NSUInteger pointers, and yet using it for normal NSUIntegers, and then assigning to NSUInteger properties. It works, but it's an easy fix and pointer issues can be annoying to debug later on if they start to cause errors.
Nice Idea! Purchased in the MAS.<p>Since you seem to want to make it better, Let me give you a few suggestions. I like where you're going, but get the sense you want to improve it, so in that spirit-<p>It feels more like an RSS reader than a dedicated app.
Because it doesn't have deep API integration (or even write support), there's not much that I get that I don't get with a dedicated HN RSS reader.<p>Take a look at Envelope for Reddit for an example of how you might do a deeper integration. Beyond adding posting support, you could also build on the fact that it's a client-app, and add additional local-only feature, such as killfiles or filters, etc.<p>Low-hanging fruit would be to display comments inline, rather than just linking off to the website, and letting you read/reply/post to individual threads.<p>GL, I hope you keep going with it.
Looks great. I have a suggestion though: Beyond individually marking stories as read and the 'mark all as read' button, also offer a quick way to breeze through the list and mark lots of them as read. By 'read', I mean 'don't show them to me again next time'. I usually narrow down 5-8 articles from the home page I want to read and know that I don't care about the others.<p>Or, introduce a 'star' system where I can create a list of articles I want to check out later. I may not actually want to send them to Instapaper, so keeping a local 'to read' list via starring articles would come in handy.<p>Ideally, that should be synced to my iCloud account, since I read from multiple Macbooks.
A few more ideas:<p>- Growl/Notification center notices for new stories (optionally configurable by a certain points threshold).<p>- Subscribe to certain topics (keyword based searches). Only get notified when certain topics have stories.<p>- Ignore stories by user.<p>- Search (both locally and offer to use hnsearch.com)<p>- List new submissions (separate tab?).<p>- Comments/open hotkeys (previously mentioned here, I see).<p>- Minimize to Mac OS menu with an icon indicating new stories (follows your notification threshold and/or topic subscriptions).<p>- Tab to monitor your own submissions.
This post made my day. I've been after a Hacker News app for Mac for ages now.<p>Edit: have now bought it, it's fantastic. Really glad you made it open-source too. Are there any plans to integrate comments, upvoting, etc?<p>Edit 2: One more thing: it would be great if the app would show the number of unread stories even when closed. Reminders.app does this.
I just bought this -- it's really nice.<p>Maybe you'd consider doing a free app store version with ads, combined with a $2.99 (reslly, should be more like $5-10 once you add more features) version?<p>Random feature ideas:<p>Filtering based on keywords or a tagging system or poster id.<p>Doing something which tracks your own comments would be nice. i.e. if you upvote or comment on a story, it somehow marks it in Hacky as well and keeps tracking.<p>Also, "show new comments since I last read the article" might be nice.<p>I guess this might go against the "simple, doesn't need to be logged in" design philosophy so far.
Great little app.
Love the duo of Github and the Mac App Store. I also love my apps straight from the app store.<p>Maybe something little to add to the app are more key-bindings. I'm used to be able to open an url from Twitter apps just by using the right arrow. This would be great to be added to your app. With or without the option to open the website in the background.
Bought it... needs a bit more functionality, but it's a good start!<p>I'd be fascinated to hear how many downloads you got through the app store and other sources after this post. i.e. are such 'niche' apps sustainable, financially? And what percentage of people liked the convenience of the app store, or wanted to contribute, such that they actually bought the app?<p>RS
As a fellow Cocoa dev, may I ask why you're using PXListView? AppKit has a view-based table view now (since 10.7?) that covers the same feature set.<p>Moreover, PX has not been maintained since 2011, and there is a bunch of issues and pull requests that are being ignored. There are some forks that fix things, but no canonical one.<p>PS: Nice app, good work!
I just don't see the point, it's lacking in basic features and there's nothing wrong with a browser tab in my opinion. Best if luck, but I try not to replace perfectly functional web pages with apps.
You should have kept reader free so that people actually download the app and keep features like commenting and ranking from app paid. Anywayz great work I will be sticking to site itself.
Lovely interface,I am mostly on browser so happy with Chrome Extension.<p>I wish you all the best and yes, I loved the <i>license</i> you're offering. Eventually it's gonna help a <i>developer</i> anyway ;)
I wanted to say that I'm really overwhelmed by the love you guys are giving Hacky. I actually thought it would be either ignored completely or bashed to the ground. ;) You rock!
I'm going to take a look at the source but I am also buying it from the AppStore as there is no way that I can convince myself that you don't deserve $2.99 from me for this app.<p>Awesome work!
Any screenshots of the comment screen? As that is where I spend most of the time, would be nice to know how it works before making the decision to buy this.
Killer work! Major kudos for making it open source and releasing it on the App Store. I think that's the perfect solution for quality niche apps like yours.
What's up with the lack of contrast on the text?<p>I blame Apple for the trend, although you could tell apart sites and blogs developed by Mac using developers by that trademark gray on white text.<p><a href="http://contrastrebellion.com/" rel="nofollow">http://contrastrebellion.com/</a>