I bought it from the iTunes store directly, after seeing the post and reading the comments (specifically, $5 isn't much to support a fellow indie-dev trying to make his way through the app store, for an app that I'll probably use every dayish). Next time I was out, had my phone, and was bored, I looked for the $5 app, because it had to be yours. It's really well put together, and I really like the features you added. My only complaint is that it goes to comments first, not stories first, but that's easy to get used to.
I think a lot of Hacker News readers actually look at the comments first. I remember people mentioning that on HN and I know my wife and I usually do, presumably so does the app's developer.
Spot on. I often use the comments to quickly judge if a link is worth visiting. If so, I click through and then come back for more conversation if I'm still interested.
I think showing comments first was a great design decision.
Hey Grant, I saw your news:yc app in Installous and see that it was submitted by you (chpwn). Usually when app-authors submit their own apps to Installous, it's to deter pirates by shaming them and disabling the whole functionality of the app until it gets cracked by someone else, or to log who actually pirates.
I haven't gone the Installous route, so I'm wondering what you've decided to do with the version on filedude and fileape?
That's actually the full app. news:yc is open source, and I want anyone to be able to use it, even if they don't want to (or can't) pay. Since building the app yourself isn't always easy (or possible), I submitted it there so anyone could install it easily.
Your strategy involving submitting cracked versions of your app was quite interesting. It would be interesting to see the rate of the app store purchases vs. piracy for your app. I would expect your strategy would reduce the rate of piracy