ruswick

"Downloading" is a fairly specific verb that generally doesn't involve money, which is why it feels so jarring when I see it used in relation to making a purchase.

Does anyone else feel as though "purchase" would be a more appropriate verb for their copy?

Grocery stores are fairly abundant in cities. Within a four-block radius from my house, there is a Jewel, a Whole Foods, four corner stores, and a Trader Joe's under construction. I honestly don't know how Instacart maintains business in San Francisco proper.

This is why I'm not as infatuated with crowdfunding as everyone else. Because individual customers are supposed to supplant traditional investors, initial costs are much higher for customers because we have to subsidize research, cost-of-living, etc. Moreover, we also incur all of the risk (which is formidable, considering the volume of failed projects and the ubiquity of scams on many crowdfunding sites).

I don't understand why I, as a consumer, would prefer a system where all of the cost and all of the risk are precipitated onto me, instead of onto the country's investment apparatus.

Better all these guys spend some rich VC's money than spend mine.

This phenomenon, where people wait until the last minute to go in on a product, is already pervasive on Kickstarter. (I'm not entirely sure why, but the most obvious reason is that people want to ensure that the project will definitely be funded or will attain some sort of stretch-reward before buying). Dynamic price-lowering will only exacerbate this trend, discourage initial purchases, and likely produce more failed projects.

There are better ways to allocate development time than reimplementing an already-fine OS.

No one is arguing that this sort of copying is wrong. Instead, they are merely identifying the inherent hypocrisy and irony in Apple's actions over the past year.

I agree that patents are imbecilic and Apple v. Samsung was one of the lowest points in the industry's history, but it just seems absurd that Apple can lament how other's have "copied" them, only to turn around months later and "copy" wholesale many features from other platforms.

Can Apple take elements from Windows Phone and Android? Yes, that is reasonable and benefits the industry as a whole. Do I, as a current Apple user, benefit from this process? Yes; good design trends make for a better experience. Does it seem dickish? Yes.

This sort of lag has been a common artifact throughout the iPhone's history. Crashing apps, lag, and outright unresponsiveness are daily occurrences on my iPhone 5. It's honestly gotten to the point where, if I didn't have an astronomical amount of money tied up in their ecosystem, I'd switch to a Nexus 4 tonight.

The human condition also necessitates expression, realization, aspiration, etc. In many cases, sitting on a couch will bring the most instantaneous pleasure, but it is ultimately empty and ephemeral. Things that are difficult, though instantaneously distressing, are more likely to be fulfilling in the long term.

If people pay for indefinite use, the company has an obligation to provide for such use so long as they are capable of doing so.

The service is fixing a non-issue, if not exacerbating a real one.

The first is that the premise is trivial at best and detrimental at worst. Let's evaluate my current mail situation. Considering that I'm a junior in high school, I receive a substantial amount of college-related junk mail (between five and ten pieces per day), in addition to perhaps three other items. I don't understand why it is preferable to sort though my mail digitally. It is already trivial to remove my mail, quickly glance through it, and toss the junk mail into the recycling bin in my foyer. Being able to do this via a web interface means nothing to me, and certainly isn't worth my money. In fact, I would argue that this worsens my mail-reading experience inasmuch as it creates a level of abstraction that increases the time necessary to deliver the mail I do care about, like The New Yorker. Our mail system is already a travesty. I'm certainly not going to do anything to make it even slower.

The second issue, as mentioned before, is trust. I simply don't trust a startup to open my mail.

I agree that reviews need to be fixed, but isolating app developers is not the way to go about it. This seems absurd.

That just doesn't seem true. He consistently goes out of his way to engage in trivial arguments with people, especially on Twitter. Literally days after the sale, he called out Anil Dash in a needlessly confrontational way about some minute error in his history of Tumblr (http://dashes.com/anil/2013/05/seven-years-ago-my-wife.html). Not to mention the time when got in some squabble with a writer for one of the Apple rumor sites, then blacklisted said site from every Instapaper account.

As far as I'm concerned, he's made a jerk of himself in public innumerable times already. He just seems like an abrasive guy. That's not to say that his work is inferior (certainly assholes have created incredible work before), but any fear of looking like a jerk is moot. He has been a jerk forever.

The whole point of HN is that nothing has to be strictly topical. Everyone is free to throw whatever the fuck they want into it, and the readership will identify and promote the best content.

This succinctly demonstrates everything that is wrong with the entry-level labor market, especially in fields dominated by overabundant cohorts like political science and english majors. There are a deluge of incompetent graduates competing for a negligible number of jobs. They are either forced into menial shift jobs for years or, if they're fortunate, will have the privilege working 70 hours per week in an unpaid internship before taking a jobs marginally above the poverty line.