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onmydesk

90 karma · joined January 3, 2014

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onmydesk··on The Majority of Today’s App Businesses Are Not Sustainable
The apps themselves are marketing channels of their own with cross promotion, social network sharing etc and word of mouth.

Paid advertising is not possible when you make 70 cents per sale. It costs more to advertise a copy than you make from a sale.

A way around this is to increase your lifetime income per download, which is where IAP comes in, which is where candy crush etc show the way.

If Apple don't want the store to only be that, they've got some work to do.

onmydesk··on The Majority of Today’s App Businesses Are Not Sustainable
The app store that came with iOS6 totally destroyed the income of developers on iOS. Many developers pointed out the problems, many left the platform. With iOS7 apple plainly ignored the problem. With iOS8 some changes are coming which might help.

Apple did it. They had better undo it if they don't want their iOS devices to be nothing but ad display machines or in app purchase tricks.

onmydesk··on Diversity and Startups
I started watching 'Portlandia' for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Its basically the HN readership. Funny stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IfOKeZ-MWI

onmydesk··on BBC staff ordered to stop giving equal airtime to climate deniers
I expect no more religious output from the bbc
onmydesk··on Commencement address by Bill and Melinda Gates
No, my point was plainly that I was embarrassed to watch people who until they took on these valuable roles were so unaware of what most of the world is like.

If it was news to me too Id be as amazed by these observations as they seemed to be.

This place can be painfully self righteous, no-one is seriously suggesting the work they do isn't important etc etc.

Kids eh! :)

onmydesk··on Commencement address by Bill and Melinda Gates
Im going to be down voted for this.

To me, the speech was fairly embarrassing. Its as though some rich people saw some poor people on a poor person safari. Now they come back to tell of what they saw, as if everyone in their audience would be just as amazed at such things as they were.

Perhaps for a stanford graduate audience that is true?

Theres suffering in the world!? :O

Thats what I was left with. No-one rational could disagree with their points, the validity of the foundations purpose, etc etc and all of that.

But the speech made me cringe a little.

onmydesk··on The Brutal Ageism of Tech
When you get old enough you realise you wouldn't do what they do now not because you can't, but because it was pretty dumb.
onmydesk··on Show HN: A text adventure for developers
Blurry text is worse than the real life equivalent!

Sorry can't play it, makes my eyes go funny. Can you turn that text blur off or down?

onmydesk··on What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs?
My favourite part of the article.

A few meanings I think are possible, I like the explanation that the observers were wrong to assume they knew where the target was ; It was after all his shot to take, he wasn't conforming to the expectation of the group.

Reminds me of "A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to".

onmydesk··on Apple Design Awards 2014
40 minutes for a couple of bucks, you ever been to an amusement arcade?

Not good value for money!! AN APP!!! And on HN as well. Unbelievable

onmydesk··on iCloud for Developers
iOS only. Parse it is then.
onmydesk··on I quit my job. Today is Day #2.
And the first thing I did was write a blog post
onmydesk··on Why is 80 characters the 'standard' limit for code width?
> It's funny to start seeing more and more questions from people who started using computers with Windows 95.

I don't know why they stuck with it!

C64s and amigas.. when computers were cool before microsoft ruined it! Now we've been saved by apple, hurah

onmydesk··on Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics
Maybe Im just old, but HN seems pervaded with this kind of 'right on' ness, or competitive self righteousness, i don't even know what to call it. Sort of a che guevera hat wearing teenager kind of flavour. Makes my eyes roll.

If you're young you probably don't know what I mean.

No over analysis of this reply please, my eyes might not come down again if I keep doing it. :)

onmydesk··on The Future of Apps
The point was the drag is from user adoption. No-one is doing this.
onmydesk··on The Future of Apps
Users use apps on phones. They don't want to open a browser and navigate to an 'app'.

They go to the app store to get apps. They don't open a browser and google for a web page and expect it to operate like an app. Also you need to have an internet connection to even use an app, who wants that.

Technology improves but the drag comes from user adoption. You'll need to change behaviour.

onmydesk··on What Do Animals See in a Mirror?
Maybe humans are wrong about mirrors and the animals know it isn't them.

Humans can be arrogant in their assumptions about animals.

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.” - Douglas Adams, hitchhikers

onmydesk··on App Links: Link Anywhere on Mobile
"It looks like it supports a long-time pain of being able to direct someone to download an app and then open a specific location within the app. You could now have a QR code that when scanned from a shop didn't just download the right app for the phone, but the applink would also describe what to open once the app is installed."

Is that what it actually does? If I have an iTunes url to my app can I imbed an argument to send to the app once it runs after being downloaded? I would have thought a standard requires implementation by apple for that to be the case.

Ive read the fb post, saw the f8 section and watched their video and I still don't know what it does. Maybe Im dim.

onmydesk··on An Update on HN Comments
Downvoted already! hilarious!
onmydesk··on An Update on HN Comments
"We believe this has made the comment scores and rankings better reflect the community."

Is that desirable? A better debate surely entails more than one opinion. I also don't know what a 'jerk' is, someone that disagrees with the group think?

I just don't think its that big a problem. But thats just one opinion that might differ from the collective and therefore must have no merit? An odd place. Over engineering! To be expected I suppose.

onmydesk··on App.io Ads – Your game becomes the mobile ad, with try-before-install
My bad, skimmed it a lot. Thats interesting, why am I making android versions?
onmydesk··on App.io Ads – Your game becomes the mobile ad, with try-before-install
Relies on the app running in a browser? what about native apps?
onmydesk··on Jony Ive shakes up Apple’s software design group
Outside of the valley bubble skeuomorphism is what people require in order to use the devices. A button needs to look like a button or people are confused. Im talking about customers. Not the people that designed it and live the technology and are bored with it after a few short years. 7 is a travesty, the beginning of the end.
onmydesk··on Jony Ive shakes up Apple’s software design group
The box is the box. The box is supposed to be subtle. The software is the point. Design the software like the box and you have ios7.
onmydesk··on Jony Ive shakes up Apple’s software design group
Agree completely, I still can't believe ios7 made it to the market. I am embarrassed to ship software that conforms to their new look. The man makes beautiful boxes, but they are blowing it.

" "We saw Apple with Steve Jobs," Ellison purred, drawing the shape of an upwards graph with his finger.

"We saw Apple without Steve Jobs," the Oracle continued, pointing his finger down to the ground "

onmydesk··on The Secret Shame of an Unacquired Tech Worker
> "'Their attitude was, We can leave you with nothing because you’re a girl and you have a rich boyfriend,' she said

She wasn't an engineer. Perhaps they wanted engineers. Whats wrong with pointing out she happens to be cared for financially so won't have that to worry about? Its not the reason, its a fortunate circumstance.

Playing the sexism card is in rather poor taste. Did she complain when they took her on board because she suspected there was positive discrimination at play?

Doing 'the logo' and 'all that stuff' is suitably vague. Is she not fortunate to have got away with coining 60k for a lowly role in the first place?

onmydesk··on Internal Apple document: FY'14 Planning Offsite
Its dated only a year ago.. Id have hoped they would have been working on this obvious problem for a lot longer
onmydesk··on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) Final Beta released
who?
onmydesk··on Ask HN: Is it me or ...?
This is not unique to startups. I have never worked anywhere where I thought everything was done well. Such a place likely doesn't exist. But guess what.. the owner is making money, the employees get paid and get to work in more interesting roles than many alternatives. Its not an ideal world.

Thats phase 1.

Phase 2 begins when you decide damn it Im going to start my own company, it can't be that hard, look at these clowns Ive been making rich all this time. Customers are clearly accepting of any old rubbish and I know I'm better. How hard can it be?

Phase 3 is when you start your own. Then you see it from the other side. And you were right! But can you do any better now you're in their shoes? Does it matter if you can't? You'll only have to deal with the occasional grumpy developer, hey those guys come and go all the time.

Reality is hard to change. Perspectives, less so.

onmydesk··on What You Can't Say (2004)
What you get a reaction to is not sexism is bad. It is that sexism in favour of women is bad. You're not allowed to say that.
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