Comment by jasongullickson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasongullickson | Hacker News Reader

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jasongullickson

"A couple of gripes though. First, when you send pictures or videos to your Posterous blog, it’s impossible to add any kind of text or link from within the app (something I was able to do when I simply e-mailed in photos I took with my iPhone camera using the mail application)."

So what you're saying is, it doesn't do something that you could already do using something else?

I've seen this logic applied to many software projects and while there are many justifications, I don't see the point of duplicating functionality unless it's done in a way that is substantially better or more elegant that the original method. I doubt that the developers at Posterous (who I have great respect for) can justify the resources to write a better tool for assembling multimedia messages than the one Apple provides with the iPhone, the Mail app.

There is certainly room for varying opinions on this, but given Posterous's design philosophy so far, I think duplicating functionality would be non-consistent with the work they have already done.

If you're making an app, you ought to be making an entire portal to your product. It's bad design to want users to use two separate, different-in-intent applications if they want full functionality.

I think that's just a different mentality. You're both right.

The grandparent is thinking "Every application should do one thing really really well, and everyone should have a bunch of applications".

You're thinking "Every application should be full featured and do everything relating to a specific goal. You only need a single application for every task you do."

Here here!

If this was the Facebook iPhone app, then by all means everything you can do in Facebook should be in there, but given how Posterous goes the opposite direction (in regard to complexity), a "do everything" app would be out of character, don't you think?

But their competitor, Tumblr (I think that's their closest competitor), offers a very simple way to post audio, video, links, text, photos, and chats from their iPhone interface. Looking at the picture of Posterous's app, furthermore, I don't think it would be tough for them to add more functionality without sacrificing the integrity of their app design.

Here here!

If this was the Facebook iPhone app, then by all means everything you can do in Facebook should be in there, but given how Posterous goes the opposite direction (in regard to complexity), a "do everything" app would be out of character, don't you think?

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