schammy

Yes, someone on our blog raised a similar point.

The reason we are asking for advice is because we have zero experience running an app in a cloud environment. Well, we did build our own custom CDN using DynDNS and vps.net, but that's just a small part of our service. I'm scared of the cloud for running everything, so just asking for anyone with experience to tell us what they think of the idea.

There are three reasons. You mentioned two of them - word of mouth, and potential conversion to paying in the future. But there's another one too, and that's just the total size of your userbase. Either for bragging rights (we're bigger than competitor X) or for future sale value (the more users you have, the more money you will likely make from a sale/acquisition of your service, even if a lot of them aren't paying for your service) - both are good reasons to offer a free, dumbed down version of your pay service.

I was talking about this conversation thread, not my posting history in general. Yeah I don't like Apple, but in this particular thread, I said nothing negative about them at all. That's what I meant. I was just asking a question, "why is this relevant to HN", and now have lost almost 100 points of karma.

What does that say about this community? Nothing good in my opinion. But obviously, anyone who doesn't drink the Apple kool-aid doesn't have a valid opinion around these parts.

I expect to lose another 20 points of karma from this post. Have at it, sheeple.

Edit: Ya know what, after all this, I just don't see the purpose of participating in this site anymore. I was asking a perfectly valid question and received almost nothing but hate in response. Obviously I'm not welcome around here. I will send an email to HN to have my account deleted.

So long.

What would be actual news is Apple suddenly doing bad. At this point it's a given that they're crushing it, so having a big circlejerk every time they release insane quarterly numbers every quarter serves no purpose.

The Pre is a good example of corporate results being interesting, but that's because they were the huge underdog. Reporting that the top dog keeps getting more toppy is not interesting.

I know I can ignore stories I don't find interesting, but I usually read almost all of the top 10 stories on HN every day and Apple's quarterly results always gets in there (typically #1 for a while), so it's hard to ignore.

Yes, but everyone knows that Apple is crushing it. What would be actual news is if they suddenly lost this crazy momentum. Hence, there is no need to have a story every quarter about Apple's insane revenue. It's a given.

> Mobile is still growing like crazy

So if you didn't get a top-story post on Apple's revenue from HN every quarter, you would have no idea how fast mobile is growing?

> People are willing to pay a premium for quality even in tougher economic times

So? Unless you're in the business of selling expensive hardware - and my guess is that you are not - this is irrelevant.

> Digital distribution of Music and Software is the future

We're already living in this future. The last time I bought a hard-copy retail version of software was in the 90's, and for music, at least 5 years.

I'm not hating on Apple. Re-read my posts and tell me one place where I said anything negative about Apple.

I'm simply asking a question - why is this news relevant to this community and why do we have to have a top-story post on it every quarter? What use is that to anyone here?

And for this simple question, I have lost almost 40 points of karma in the last hour.

Thanks everyone. What a great community.

> I, for one, would rather have a place that just has "Hacker News."

Amen, brother.

It's just the fanboys voting it up. Nothing wrong with being a fanboy, I'm just saying. This news is of no interest to the general community here, except the people who love Apple more than themselves. And apparently, there are quite a few of these people here.

I come here to read news about startups, not to indulge in Apple lovefests. If I wanted to do that, I'd be over at TechCrunch.

I see no connection between Apple's revenue and emerging/sustaining trends.

And how does Apple's revenue apply to that exactly? Why does it need to be posted to HN every quarter and make top story? Everyone knows they're doing well. No one but the fanboys and shareholders care about their actual revenue/profits.

Can anyone tell me why this matters? In the context of "hacker" "news", I mean.

It's still going to be sold at retail outlets. Just because they're not selling it directly anymore - so what? Can anyone tell me why this matters?

Heh... agreed.

Oh come on. Apple's response to this issue has been absolutely disgusting. Apple has a gigantic ego and everytime there's some kind of serious hardware issue with one of their products, all you get from Apple is denial. It's disgraceful.

Yeah, this issue isn't affecting everyone, and I agree it's gotten a bit more buzz than it probably should, but the fact of the matter is that the issue does exist and it's affecting a lot of people and Apple will simply NOT admit to it. This is one reason among many why I will never give Apple another cent of my money. They make good products for the most part, but I can't stand their ego/attitude. When they fuck up, they need to own up to it.

Wow, that is really cool. The quotes in the article explain exactly why software patents are absolutely horrible for innovation. Pretty much every idea ever that can be written as software has been patented at this point. Any code you write is probably violating some fucking patent, and if you're making money from software you write, it's only a matter of time before the patent trolls come knocking. It absolutely disgusts me. Maybe I'll move to NZ. I'm really impressed by this, seriously.

I agree for the most part, but as the "only" problem, it's a seriously gigantic one. CSS is cool but this limitation is so frustrating, especially once your style sheets start getting really big.

Mmm.... a lot of those are basically the exact same, and almost all of them focus on the new page elements like "header", "nav", "footer", etc - which are by far the least interesting aspects of HTML5. Sorry, I just didn't find any of them that informative.

That's certainly part of the reason, but I also have the POV of someone who runs many web sites, and I know how annoying it would be to lose search analytics. This is for the greater good of anyone who owns a site. Knowing what searches people are doing to get to your site is extremely important.

I meant no offense. I'm an HN hipster myself. I can see how it could be offensive, so I'll remove it. I really didn't mean anything by it though. I also wasn't expecting a HN post but within 30 minutes of hitting 'publish' it was the #1 story on HN, so... yeah.

Interesting link. Ignoring 9/11, the last 10 years the safety has clearly gone up very much compared the previous 20 years. 23 crashes in the 80's, 15 in the 90's, and just 7 in the last decade (again, ignoring 9/11).

On the flipside, every crash except 1 in the last 10 years has been 100% fatal, whereas the previous 20 years there are quite a number of crashes with a lot of survivors.

I dunno, I just find that interesting. :P

Well that's a jinx if I ever saw one. Nice going!

I agree, but I also think that just getting your driver's license in general (in the US) is way too easy. The test is a complete and utter joke. You could be fucking blind and still pass it. It's pretty depressing. I also think you should be required to take a driving test every time you renew your license (which is every 8 years in most states, I think).

There are way too many really terrible drivers out there, and the government is doing nothing to keep them off the road. It's scary.

Apple has such a stick up their ass. Every day I read a story about them, like this one, that makes me cringe. WTF is wrong with this company?

I really disapprove of what Facebook has done in the past year or two with privacy. It's disgusting.

However, I don't really "use" Facebook. I have an account but I rarely post anything on it, and I don't use any of the apps. I just use it to see what my real life friends are up to, including many that I don't actually see anymore because they have moved away.

So, their new privacy stuff doesn't really affect me, since I really only use Facebook on a passive level. So I am not deleting my account. But I still strongly disapprove of what they are doing.

Congratulations to John. He has definitely made a huge impact on the web. I hated Javascript before jQuery came along. Now it's probably my favorite language to work with, and a big part of that is because of jQuery!

You think Adobe software is frustrating? How about proper character encoding on your damn blog?

PS: I assume this was posted to HN by an angry Apple fan boy, upset at all the anti-Apple backlash today from Steve Jobs' bullshit hypocritical post. Color me shocked! (Yes, I realize the actual blog post is from 2008).

I didn't see this so much as "working when I feel it" but more as "wow I sure am productive after a nice relaxing break".

I agree that a nice break from the daily grind can be very good for you. I as well find myself quite productive after being away from the grind for a day or two. But that doesn't mean I despise what I do!

> In the end, Jobs provided a very hypocritical argument

FTFY

You didn't actually read the article, did you? It makes a lot of very good and perfectly valid points.

Let me also guess - you own a Mac and an iPhone, and are mad because someone is saying bad things about your precious Apple. Correct?