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Comment by nobodysfool | Hacker News Reader

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nobodysfool·

You can just go here to get the information for free:

http://www.coastal.ca.gov/access/BroadBeachCoastalAccess.pdf

They are just providing a better user experience and advertising, but it is public information and it is free.

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And moreover, the person who contributed to making the app was a significant force in getting the document you link to, to be written in the first place.

She's been working for a decade on clarifying public accessibility to the Malibu beaches.

I'm asking why the "better user experience" can't be accessible to people without an iPhone or Android device.

Probably due to cost. Can't really afford a whole lot of development on just $30k (minus any applicable fees)

Which is why a website makes far more sense. You could do it for a couple hundred bucks.

That gets you ~90% of users right there. Make it cheap to port apps to Windows Phone or Blackberry and I'm sure they will.

Because perfection is the enemy of the "good enough," and iPhone + Android covers an enormous share of the market. Should they support Lynx on SunOS 5, too? No? Why? Because a vanishingly small number of people use that platform.

The app is simple enough that it seems within the realm of possibility that it would take less time to build it using the web thereby getting support for many more operating systems for free.

But that is backwards for this case. They are trying for "perfection" by writing a mobile app so it looks just so and the ui is just the way they want it, when "good enough" would be a simple web site that took a couple hours to make and have online.

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