Everytime that comment is referenced, people forget that the rest of comments were mostly positive plus constructive criticism or challenges they'd face.
Yes, and BrandonM's comment was constructive criticism. He was trying to help Drew with his YC application (that's what "app" meant back then) and clearly wanted it to succeed ("I only hope that I was able to give you a sneak preview of some of the potential criticisms you may receive. Best of luck to you").
I think that example really exemplifies HN's biggest blindspot. A lot of successful companies are built around taking an existing technology, then packaging it in a way that drastically reduces the frictions for the user. The typical HN user doesn't understand those pain point, because they're technically sophisticated enough that they're mostly invisible.
So, you take something like Dropbox. Yeah, it pretty much is just mounted FTP. And the average HN is looking at that and thinking "I could do the same thing with a bash script, what's the big deal".
It is a blind spot of knowledge. Sure you can make a script that does it. But most people can not do that. Heck just yesterday something in my hacked up system did something odd. It spit out an error that I will now have to research (probably find nothing) and then have to dig out the code on. Then spend several days probably reverse engineering some tech API that I have never seen before, in a style that will be different than what I am used to. But if I had bought a product that did the same thing. More than likely 50 other people would have the same issue and a few dozen work arounds. If those failed I could have a shot at just taking it to whoever sold it to me and saying 'fix it'. But as I hacked together something on my own. I own it, warts and all. I enjoy doing that but most people have zero idea where to even begin in fixing something like that. Buying something that 'just works' solves so many issues (and creates others).
Probably the biggest one that sticks out in my mind was when the iPad came out and all the tech boards like this were down on it. But it was what most people wanted to use a computer for. Most people did not want a computer. They wanted a media device. For many years the only way to get that was to get a computer. Now you can get that media device without most of the headaches of a computer.
I think Dropbox is only a blind spot because it took a syncing tool and combined with running a user application with root privileges in the 2000's era of computer security applications and gamification for user acquisition.
> Jobs had been tracking a young software developer named Drew Houston, who blasted his way onto Apple ’s radar screen when he reverse-engineered Apple’s file system so that his startup’s logo, an unfolding box, appeared elegantly tucked inside. Not even an Apple SWAT team had been able to do that.
It’s not a blindspot for many people. It’s open source and open protocols vs closed source spyware. SCP is far better than Dropbox if you value privacy for instance.
A lot of resistance to things like Dropbox come from the experience of being screwed over by closed source software. If you look at the state of Dropbox today, those initial comments look pretty spot on.
Hacker News is good about surfacing new technology; Hacker News is bad about figuring out how that technology will be leveraged.