Hacker News Reader

Comment by thomassmith65 | Hacker News Reader

I kept waiting for the post to mention the German company who make Things.app (culturedcode.com). It seems like a good example of the ethos.

View on HN

Dollar for dollar, Things is probably the single best app I’ve ever used. I can’t recommend it enough.

It's a company that seems to care more about craftsmanship than becoming the next big thing.

It might also be a successful recipe- you let a startup become the next big thing, then it ruins it as a mega cooperation- and you just cook up the same thing with paid for quality and slowly hover up there fleeing customers. Slow and steady wins the race?

They're very successful, but, unless they change their ethos, they never will have success on the scale of a tech giant.

They have been Apple-only for 15 years.

If they wanted to rule the world, they would have transitioned Things to the web and to Windows.

To do that, they would have had to hire three times as many people.

It's easy to imagine an alternate timeline in which CulturedCode had spent the past decade 'enshittifying' Things.app to rake in more money.

> They're very successful, but, unless they change their ethos, they never will have success on the scale of a tech giant.

Exactly why they're still great. It takes courage and conviction to not grow.

It's a one time cost and not a subscription service? If so, amazing.

Correct: https://culturedcode.com/things/

Looks like the different apps (desktop, mobile, iPad) have different prices, but all are one-time payments of $10-$50.

I bought it years ago and IIRC it was just $50 for everything then.

The drawback of this model is that now that Things 3 has been out for a long time, and you have no idea when Things 4 will come out, it makes new customers think twice before buying.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com