Octohub – The missing app for GitHub | Hacker News Reader

Octohub – The missing app for GitHub

octohubapp.com

29 pointshimhckr32 comments

The site lets you download the app, run the app, log in to GitHub, and _THEN_ asks you for a beta invite code. There's almost no info about it on it's homepage, so why post the link at all?

Came here to say this. I'm rather annoyed at the bait-and-switch here.

Is this a fully native app, or is it storing my stuff on your server?

Can I back up tags / whatever that I make, and will they sync between multiple devices?

Is the app open-sourced? Will it be? Are you planning to charge for the app? For premium features?

Most importantly, why are the features you're providing going to improve my experience with GitHub?

These are all questions I'd expect the landing page to answer.

I'm confused: GitHub already has an app for the Mac[0]. It's fast. It's compact & doesn't waste screen real estate. It's stable. And it's updated very frequently.

Sure, it may not have all the features that the site has but it excels at being that convenience bridge between what's on my filesystem and what's on the site.

[0] https://mac.github.com

No this seems to be a pointless replacement for the website browsing of repos. Utterly pointless

Huh? you can push from your local repo to the remote, and it makes partial commits and other stuff a lot easier

And another generic landing page completely missing the point by omitting the "Octohub is a ... which ... for ..."-thing.

Macsumption.

So also, if it's not for all platforms (web?) then please, platform should be in the title.

If pointless-ware is a thing, then this is it. Can anyone comment on the "missing" in the title? Missing by who?

This seems like it should be a dead simple chrome/safari extension. Not an app.

The only thing this app appears to do is let you "tag" repositories.

"Made for OSX 10.10 Yosemite"

Into the trash it goes...

What could this app possibly do that isn't possible on Mavericks?

Probably the (nonessential) frosted visual effect in the menu. Other than that, I have no idea.

how is this better than github.com?

I do like the idea of being able to tag repositories. This is something I wish GitHub would let me do.

Agreed, but still. I don't understand what this app exactly do.

It's not.

I havent tried the grandparent's software, but if I was going to use a native app I would probably try github's first.

https://windows.github.com/ https://mac.github.com/

I have shown the windows version to a few people and they grokked git a lot better than if I tried via the standard toolkit.

Github's app lets you push and pull and do some minor work on your repositories. the Octohub app lets you search projects and stalk people.

Alrighty then, a much more social aspect. I stand corrected!

Have you tried it?

No. Because, first, I'm a gnu/linux user nowadays, and second, even if I was a Mac user I would need more than 4 PNGs to convince me to use a software I encounter for the first time.

edit: ...and, as the app for Github is not missing, the third reason for not using the app is that its web page is shamelessly lieing* .

* One may well see this as «lying», but I reject to spell like that.

Seems like you lied too, given that you simply don't know if there are any ways in which it is better than the github app.

It would be lieing if I told I used it and in respect to Github's own software, that being the website and/or the client application, I found it worse. But in my first comment, which is simply «It's not.», I cannot see any indications of such statement. And I back what I state with my actual comment. On the website there is no link to information about the application, no documentation, no videos, no blog posts, nothing. Instead, I, and the software's target audience, are users of the Github.com already, and we know how to use github.com already, there is a plethora of docs, wikis, blog posts, videos which help us on using it on the web. Plus, the software is a third-party client to a service that already offers an official client. Out of this situation, the most obvious inference is that sticking to the website and/or the official application is better that using the OP's linked one. No lieing here, just reasoning.

If there was any sort of documentation or anything, a link to source on github, an end-user support possibility better than a twitter account that follows popular tech-news websites and tech celebs, I might have thought that it is promising and worth a try. But as it stands, no, it doesn't make me «step into the shop».

Nope. You made a statement you knew to be unsupported. Their lack of documentation doesn't change that at all. If you tried the app you would know that you are actually wrong.

OS X only...

I don't understand why so much hate. If you don't like it or feel the need for such an app no one is forcing you to use it.

Because it's essentially a "show HN" of an app that doesn't solve a problem (or at least doesn't explain how it does). HN is a place for healthy debate, no? Nobody said, "sucks" and moved on. In most comments, there's at least a reason stated for why this is either confusing, pointless, or unnecessary.

I like the functionality, but I'm not keen on the title of this post or the fact that it's an app only.

If you like the app, though, you might want to check out Astral (https://astralapp.com). Extremely similar functionality, but Astral runs in your browser.

I signed up for the beta because I always like trying out new stuff. But I'm lost on how this would be better than just opening github.com in my browser.

I guess the main value-add I could see would be notifications when people open issues, send PRs, or fork repos of mine. Does this app display them?

Two invite codes (for 2 users): 6B7DEA03-BB85-4392-8B5A-765458941175 4DF904EA-DC05-42EF-B7C5-B10A3E628F31

Where can we get beta invite links?

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