Comment by librasteve

Open in a window
Comment

Comment by librasteve

ok … I’ll play ball. I really like your idea and the demo is very convincing. I already use Apple Notes as my daily driver over Obsidian, Bear and the others because I do not want to pay $$ per month just to sync notes between iPhone and Mac. However, I would much prefer a native md option over whatever proprietary rtf stuff that Notes does. So I am your perfect target user.

Show me a well designed md centric notes taker that uses my own drive, syncs between Apple devices, has no subscription and I am listening.

So I scrolled (and scrolled) through your website to find the pricing section, and finally unearthed your very cryptic note about paying for the power option that allows me to sync. This raises three red flags to me:

  1. it is hidden and is similar to typical trick clauses that many software products vendors play … you reserve the right to hold back a key feature and make it payable

  2. it is cryptic - as you say your product is free on my devices and on web and it is shareable … maybe I can use dropbox to sync, but maybe not … now I have to invest effort to test the limits

  3. nothing prevents you from drawing the line quite high for now, but then playing more and more stuff behind your paywall over time, forgive me but (1) has already lowered my trust in you
Now - thank you for offering me a free subscription for one year … but I don’t want to strand a years’ worth of my notes behind a proprietary paywall. This tells me that (i) your intent is to take my money and (ii) you don’t understand my objection. So no thanks for the free puppy.

So here now, I am out. To get me in, you need to win back my trust. Not easy. But your product is very cool. So I make you a counter offer:

  1. make your product free for ever including synching across the Apple ecosystem to all personal users

  2. look at a product like BBEdit and adopt their freemium model where business users must pay a fair fee and it is enforced via a self declaration or maybe where folk want to collaborate with 3+ colleagues or something (I want you to make money, but I will not pay a subscription for device synching a text editor)

  3. open source your code so I can fork and build myself if you go under a bus

  4. make your policy clear and upfront (a pricing section with free vs paid comparison would be good)
Replies librasteve · 3d
Open on HN
Loading the discussion…

Domain filters

Stories from these domains are hidden from every list. Subdomains match too: blocking substack.com also hides danluu.substack.com. The list is kept in this browser only.

Help

Keyboard

j / k
Move down and up the story list. The arrow keys scroll whatever has focus.
Enter
Open the marked story in a window.
]
Open the next story in the list in place of the one in front. Back returns to it.
p
Pin or unpin the marked story, which keeps it in Pinned.
n / N
Move to the next or previous top-level comment in the window in front.
c
Collapse or expand that comment.
f
Hide or show the story list.
Esc
Close a menu or this help.
Access key m
Go to the menu bar. Most browsers take it with Alt on Windows and Linux, and Safari with Control and Option.
?
Show this help.

Windows

Each story opens in a window holding its article above its discussion; drag the bar between them to share the room differently. A window can be moved by its title bar, resized from any edge, snapped to a half or a corner by dragging it there, maximised, or minimised to the bar at the foot of the page. Open several stories to compare them, and switch between them from that bar. A window's Next story link reads on down the list in the same window.

A link in a comment or an article to another Hacker News or Lobsters thread opens that thread in a window too. A link to a single HN comment opens the comment above its replies.

While a story's window is in front, the Story and Discussion menus in the menu bar hold its commands: pinning, Next story, sorting, collapsing every thread, jumping to the first new comment. Each window also remembers where you were in its article and discussion, so a reload, or Back to a story that Next took you past, finds your place again. Closing a window forgets it.

The whole arrangement lives in the address, so a bookmark or a shared link brings it back, and Back undoes the last change. Moving between Hacker News, Lobsters, their lists, Pinned and Find changes only the list, and leaves the windows open.

The list

The pin at the start of a row keeps the story in Pinned, and the cross at its end hides it. Pinned can be narrowed by words in the title, site or author, by source, and to the stories you haven't opened yet, and ordered by when you pinned them, by points or by comments; the filters are part of the address, so a filtered view can be bookmarked. Scroll past the end of the list to load more. Domain filters, in the View menu, hide every story from a site.

Applets

The Applets menu in the menu bar holds three tools, each a window of its own. Replies to me takes your Hacker News user name and lists the replies to your last thirty comments and stories, checking again every three minutes while it is open, and marking what is new since you last marked them read. Look up a user opens a profile on Hacker News or Lobsters, with their submissions and recent comments, as a commenter's name in any discussion does; the bar at the top of a profile looks up someone else in the same window, and Back returns to the one before. Who is hiring? filters the posts of HN's monthly hiring threads by the words you type.

They read only what the sites publish to everyone, so none of them asks for a login, and your user name stays in this browser.

Find

Find takes any link and lists every time it was submitted to Hacker News and Lobsters, so you can read each discussion of it.

About

YAVCHN never sees your Hacker News or Lobsters login. The discussion is fetched from each site's public API; to vote or reply, follow the link above the discussion, or the arrow beside a comment, to the source's own site. Pins, hidden stories, filters and layout are kept in this browser only.

Open source: github.com/paulmooreparks/yavchn. Built with PUDL.