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Comment by jakobegger | Hacker News Reader

And 10 years later, sharing stuff with people nearby still kinda sucks.

1. Instant Messaging Apps work for photos and contacts, but it's stupid that you need to transfer things via cloud (makes everything hellish slow when the network isn't fast)

2. Airdrop works only between Apple Devices, and when the stars are aligned just right. Other devices might appear, or they might not. If it works, it's fast.

3. USB drives are still the easiest way to share anything between computers. (SMB / AFS / NFS / SCP / rsync are all annoying to set up and always seem to fail for hard to debug reasons)

I think the opportunity for something like Bump is still there, but it seems that most people just don't care enough about the inconvenience....

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I totally agree. Especially for "micro-interactions" between people while remaining anonymous (i.e. not needing to exchange phone numbers, email addresses etc.). E.g.:

- receiving appointment info at a doctor's office (in lieu of a physical appointment card)

- exchanging links/addresses/numbers with strangers in any kind of conversational interaction ("call this number", "go to this address", "here's a brochure" etc.) without divulging personal identifiers

Phone-to-phone, anonymous, exchange-and-forget type interactions. Can use bluetooth, wifi, or data connections (or even just qrcodes). I've always thought that there would be usefulness for something like this (key being simplicity and anonymity).

I've had a lot of luck with Airdrop, then. Regularly use it to send files/URLs in the office and also from my iDevices to the Mac (or across the devices). The star alignment bit may be due to Bluetooth issues, it's where the device discovery takes place (I think). And well, we all know how good Bluetooth can be...

I wish Android Beam had been pushed harder - it was an OS-level solution, and I understood it as playing really well with the Intent-centric API on Android, which meant basic functionality was essentially "free" to implement.

Between Android/Linux/Windows, I'm quite happy with Superbeam. QRCode for setting it up, then Wifi for transfer. I even use it between laptops, not just with smartphones.

Says it works for Mac too. I may give it a shot.

It's galling to see the app developer list "get rid of annoying ads" as a feature of the pro app.

Is there a libre alternative?

Just seems honest to me.

I would also prefer a libre alternative, but I could never find one. Some file managers have transfer, but none use Wifi direct or provide a simple way to connect, from what I've tried.

>Just seems honest to me.

It is honest, but the developer is the one who put the "annoying" ads in in the first place.

That feels like a real slap in the face.

The developer put them in because the developer needs money to live. I don't think the economic reality of needing money to live is a slap in the face. One alternative would be to only have the pro version, not the free version. But that seems worse.

Only having a paid version seems more honest to me. An adware version that purposely annoys your users seems like a fuck-you move.

It's not doing anything to be annoying on purpose. It's just a fact of life that ads are annoying. If they could use non-annoying ads, I'm sure they would.

Tried to download Superbeam. The iOS version is only available in the US store, can't download it in Austria. The Mac version requires me to download and install an old version of Java first. Not going to bother with that.

> And 10 years later, sharing stuff with people nearby still kinda sucks.

It does still suck, and once every few years I feel that. But that's a problem. Solving a minor, "kinda" pain point that people experience once in a while isn't that big of a win. I'm sure that other people want to do this more often than I do, but I'm also sure that this case is a small subset of the need to share stuff with others generally. I.e., you're always needing to share stuff, with people in Boston, LA, or Singapore, or your manager on another floor of the building, or wherever. You know how to do that. So while it seems silly that you can't share something more easily with someone sitting across the table from you, the methods you already use do work.

Doesn’t SHAREit help with transferring between iOS, android and even PCs.

I just tried downloading Shareit, and it's such a crappy, ad-infested app that I'm not going to bother with it.

What's wrong with using Bluetooth?

Bump was such a silly idea. It's a miracle that they were able to get so many users. It's one of those ideas that sounds good at first glance but after thinking about it for a couple of minutes, you understand that it's actually a very bad idea. Maybe it picked up because of all the YC hype.

I don't see how the act of physically bumping phones together to share content adds any value at all.

It's disturbing that the founder would then go on and write an article about the whole experience. This represents everything that's wrong with startup accelerators.

It took off because back then having an iPhone was an exclusive thing and Apple promoted it in one of their early app commercials. Being able to 'bump' was a mark of status and one which had a special "handshake".

Not sure why you're picking on the accelerators.

>> It took off because back then having an iPhone was an exclusive thing and Apple promoted it in one of their early app commercials.

I can guarantee 100% that if Bump was not associated with Y Combinator, they would not have been mentioned by Apple. It has more to do with business connections and network effects than actual usefulness to the consumer.

>> Not sure why you're picking on the accelerators.

Because often they create hype around products which aren't actually useful. In doing so, they take attention and funding away from other products that are actually useful.

There's still credit for the app being a visual marketing gimmick which executives like, which doesn't transfer to usefulness.

Nobody would have considered “bumping” as a status signal then or now. And iPhones were anything but exclusive.

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