Hacker News Reader

Comment by shinratdr | Hacker News Reader

> In a similar vein, this is why Piriform cut them off from providing CCleaner via Ninite. Because automatic updating is a feature of CCleaner's business model, too. The paid version of CCleaner has automatic updates.

Maybe CCleaner should rethink that one, that is an awful business model. I wonder if they do the same thing with their OS X version too, because if so they might want to have a chat with the MacUpdate Desktop folks too.

IMO you can't blame app update tools for breaking a business model. That's a really idiotic business model to begin with. Charging for updates, fine. But charging for the ability to auto-check for updates? There is a reason nobody else in the industry does that. Because it's stupid.

View on HN

The big problem for me (and maybe Piriform?) is that now I don't have any of their products on my systems because I can't get them through Ninite. I used to religiously install their CCleaner, their defrag and system information tools. They're all very good, but I'm not going to walk through three separate installers for something that Ninite used to do in seconds.

When I bring up a new system, I just go to Ninite, check some stuff and I'm done. For most machines, there is nothing else to do.

I suppose this is sort of a cautionary tale... "Don't try to take your installer back from Ninite after they've showed everyone how it can be so much better."

I'd wager they are more concerned with preserving their paid revenue stream than losing a few free users. Any company offering a freemium product has to strike that balance.

Well, I did say "maybe"... I guess what I was trying to get at is that before I would enthusiastically recommend their products to other people. Now I don't use them, so I never mention them to anyone.

I don't seem to have a problem using separate installers for something like Blender, but the activation energy seems too high for installing "small" utilities[1].

That said, if I could get larger applications from Ninite, I'd pull from there in a heartbeat!

[1] Utilities may not /actually/ be small.

If you don't mind using the portable versions of the larger apps like Blender, you can install the PortableApps.com Platform on your local hard drive and install and update all of those apps in a couple clicks. (Our portable apps work just fine locally, they just won't appear in your start menu by default, you have to add a shortcut manually or launch them using the PA.c Platform) Apps like Blender, Inkscape, GIMP, LibreOffice, GnuCash, Scribus, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com