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Comment by tpmx | Hacker News Reader

> For our team of just 13 people

In the 1990s, 2000s, or heck even early 2010s this would have been an open source utility that someone had spent a few months building as a passion project. And then 5-10 people from around the world would have pitched in a work week here and there to make it work really well and lots of people using it would be really happy from using it.

Now, because everything that possibly can be monetized needs to be monetized.. it has to be monetized. And everything needs to be made into a company, with programmers, product management, marketing, HR, legal etc etc.

I hate to defend Apple here, because I think they are beginning to halt progress rather than bring it forward, but.. meh. It's just a goddamn feature. You can't call dibs on obvious features. (And in terms of obviousness, I think this one is a lot more obvious than Sherlock.)

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The creators of this tool chose to create a company and try to actually make a living off of their idea. I don't see why this should count against them; in fact with the open-source tools of the 2000s now experiencing "license regret" over cloud services product-izing their software (e.g. MongoDB), it probably makes sense to stake out the commercial territory yourself before someone else does.

And the author isn't calling "dibs" at all; her company's product hit the market first, but she isn't claiming any right to that market.

Maybe I'm just being old here, but MongoDB (initial release 2009) doesn't really feel like the old guard of open source to me.

Not calling dibs: fair enough.

Edit: Just noticed the pronoun you used and was confused. I vaguely remember these people (the creators of this product) from when they launched the product as, well, male.

Turns out they still are: Here's their separate blog post btw:

https://blog.astropad.com/a-message-from-astropads-founders/

The founders are male, but the author of the post isn't one of the founders. I edited my previous comment to reflect the authorship.

> And the author isn't calling "dibs" at all; her company's product hit the market first, but she isn't claiming any right to that market.

Did it? I remember hearing about Duet Display first, but maybe I just missed it.

That's irrelevant because you can use AGPL if you don't want your software exploited by a cloud Corp.

The AGPL is exactly the thing that MongoDB dropped because their software was being monetized by cloud providers without adequate benefit to themselves.

Same surprise, why are 13 people needed for a shareware utility. Maybe that was their mistake: if they made the app free, everyone would use it and apple would acquire them.

I think the creators also probably agree(d) that 13 people aren't needed to build this thing. However, to get funding you need to have a head count...

Basically it's the fault of the bizarre SV venture capital funding model.

That is not how VC funding works at all.

And in fact YC CEO Michael Seibel has said on many, many occasions that the number one reason YC companies fail is because they hire too many people, too quickly.

VC companies push you to grow efficiently not just grow at any cost (unless of course you have unique unit economics).

> You can't call dibs on obvious features.

I wish that was the case. Unfortunately, patents exist and they enable exactly that sort of thing.

I have no problems with their choice to sell a commercial product, but their pricing was /extremely/ high and an ongoing subscription to boot. I never even entertained the idea of paying.

That does not obviate their point, of course. Getting Sherlocked by your platform sucks.

On the "obviousness" judgment - maybe, maybe not. A lot of people claim post-hoc that something was "obvious" but it's usually Monday-morning quarterbacking. If something was so "obvious" then why wasn't it done before? Food for thought.

What I will say is that I think - despite the harm to the specific developer of the competing product - that adding new features to the OS for free is a net positive for consumers. It's one less thing they have to pay for out of their own pockets, and enhances the overall value of the product and its ecosystem.

Step 1: Allow iOS apps to use AirPlay to create a separate display from an iOS device.

Step 2: Allow Macs to use AirPlay to create a separate display from a Mac.

Step 3: “We have this nice beatific light display call the iPad and we already have the capability of low latency AirPlay”.....

Is that not obviously the next step?

It wasn’t to me. Was it to you? Even if it was, how would you prove such a thing?

iPad -> AirPlay -> AppleTV -> TV

iPad -> AirPlay -> 5KPlayerr -> Windows

Mac -> AirPlay -> AppleTV -> TV

Mac -> iDisplay (2010) -> iPad (https://gizmodo.com/review-idisplay-turns-your-ipad-into-a-s...)

Seeing that every combination between iPad/Windows/Mac/Airplay has been done for between 6-8 years. Why isn’t this obvious?

There was also a way you could hack around with VNC to do it early on.

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