Hacker News Reader

Comment by charles_f | Hacker News Reader

I love it!

I hate that most of these apps are subscription based for no good reason. This is so clean and nice...

One thing that would be awesome would be an option to preload and cache the noises. I regularly use white noise machines in offline situations (planes, remote camp ground), offline mode would make it the ultimate machine!

View on HN

Great suggestion. I'm testing a PWA version at the moment (https://test.ambiph.one) and PWAs do allow offline caching of resources but I'm not sure if I'll bump up against any cache size limits. I seem to remember reading that Safari is particularly stingy unfortunately.

This would be so sick!

Awesome! Maybe a toggle to select those you want to preload?

Yeah, once I've implemented saved mixes prioritising those sounds would be good too

I believe this is adjacent, but I quite like https://asoftmurmur.com/. I’m not sure if it’s able to run offline.

> I hate that most of these apps are subscription based for no good reason.

The developer earning a living?

If there are continued costs associated with running the service, sure, I’ll pay a subscription if it’s good enough. A subscription for static content is a complete and total grift. Such content should be a one-time payment, which I will happily pay if it’s good enough

I have considered adding a subscription tier called Ambiphone Minus which gets you absolutely nothing extra and may even take features away

I think I would do a donation if I use it

I love it haha

> A subscription for static content is a complete and total grift.

You're here so I'll charitably assume you've managed a web server ever.

There is no such thing as 'static'.

Yes there is. And I am the admin of multiple webservers. What you are right about is that the content being static does not mean the work load is zero

If you're building a mobile app with a few noises, then it's static. You might get updates to the OS API once in a while, but there's no ongoing work. I'm fine giving you a fixed fee, as we've always done until everybody became crazy about subscriptions.

I have side projects as well but I'm pretty sure most developers have a day job. I don't earn anything from my side projects and don't want to. I'm afraid money would "change the equation" and might damage the user experience and awaken the low-key greed in me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com