I am the developer of HACK, hacker news app for iOS, android and MacOS. I have been working on a decentralized link + text sharing site called AvocadoReader for last few weeks. I am hoping to have an extremely early beta next week. I shared some implementation details here if people want to read more:
Not commenting on your app, but I think the real reason mobile clients are needed for Reddit is that they intentionally try to break the mobile web experience to force their app down your throat. In contrast, HN.. doesn't. The mobile website is pleasant to use, if you are okay with the rather small text buttons.
That's a perfectly fair point. I personally think HN is one of the best designed sites out there. Being extremely minimal is one of the best designs. I hope that never changes.
I built HACK specifically to be able to be notified when people reply to me. That's one of my selling points.
Commenting this from HACK. The default HN interface does have problems. The buttons are indeed too small. The comments indentation is a little too small. Lack of notifications. A separate page on clicking reply, etc.
I was spoiled by Apollo for Reddit and HACK has done the same thing for HN. Thank you!
Hey I’ve never been on HN before but have seen good articles pop up on Reddit. A few minutes ago I searched for hacker news in the App Store, scrolled a bit, and downloaded HACK because it looked the most promising :)
And now I’m posting my first HN comment on this app to the dev hahah.
message me at (my username) at gmail dot com. I'm the creator of Touchbase (www.touchbase.id) that lets users share all their online platforms in 1 profile, and I want to speak on possibly integrating HACK as a platform that users can share their account of.
Yeah it's a bizarre claim. I've described HN as a single, usually really good, subreddit before but it's absolutely not a replacement for the entire site.
Indeed. And it even has the same features (centralized, ultimately beholden to commercial interests) that destroyed Reddit!
But don't worry, that's not going to happen here. You don't need a decentralized non-profit community, trust me. It's going to work out this time. Really.
I'm not sure if you're being entirely serious but I disagree. HN is special because while it's a popular (relatively speaking) social media site, it's also run by a company that isn't in the social media business. YC is not concerned with how to make HN revenue generating, they just want to push people to where the real money is made for them: their startup accelerator.
With that said it's in YC's best interest to keep users happy, only change what is requested and generally keep the status quo. Unfortunately for a company like Reddit that is a social media site and has to make money with their social media product, keeping users happy at all costs is not in their best interest (though that has yet to be seen).
