Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Would you buy a MacRumors App if one was created?

  • I'd buy that for a dollar! (or more)

    Votes: 67 55.8%
  • No way, get off my lawn!

    Votes: 53 44.2%

  • Total voters
    120

kwjohns

macrumors 6502a
Jul 4, 2007
700
12
No app needed. If anything, just an iPhone formatted version of the site would suffice.
 

Surely

Guest
Original poster
Oct 27, 2007
15,042
11
Los Angeles, CA
why would you buy it, when you can do it in safari for free?

You can get the weather for free in safari, yet there is a $14.99 weather app that people are buying. You can play various games for free in safari, yet many of them are now for sale as apps in the App Store.

I would buy it if it makes the MacRumors experience better somehow.

What would this app do? Why would it be better than simply accessing the site using the browser?

What wouldn't it do?

I'm not a big fan of the mobile version of MacRumors. At this point, I prefer the regular site on my iPhone.

How about ad-free. A friendlier, iPhone specific UI. A way to load photos directly to threads. The app can be faster than accessing the site. For example, the Facebook app loads much faster upon launch versus accessing the regular site in safari.

Just some thoughts for starters. It's not like I sat down and came up with a ten-point business plan for this idea. I just thought it would be something I would be interested in, and wanted to see if others would be as well.
 

Rojo

macrumors 65816
Sep 26, 2006
1,328
241
Barcelona
I would definitely download a MacRumors app (and I'm one that believes there should be one, even if it's viewable already in mobile Safari).

But not for a dollar. It should be free (unless it had some AMAZING functionality on it that you couldn't get on the regular site). Ads would be fine, even. I don't mind them so much on news sites (but hate them on games - even free ones!)
 

queshy

macrumors 68040
Apr 2, 2005
3,690
4
I'd probably buy it if the interface was really nice, more just to support MR though and less to actually "use" it since I don't mind going on Safari. I have a nice webclip on my home screen for MR.
 

skubish

macrumors 68030
Feb 2, 2005
2,663
0
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5A347 Safari/525.20)

kwjohns said:
No app needed. If anything, just an iPhone formatted version of the site would suffice.

already exists... mobile.Macrumors.com
 

Surely

Guest
Original poster
Oct 27, 2007
15,042
11
Los Angeles, CA
Dumb idea...

Best comment ever.

Another thought: it can alert you, on the homescreen icon, to new stories, comments in a thread that you are following, etc. Obviously that would have to wait until apps are allowed to run in the background.
 

GyozaKing

macrumors newbie
Jul 27, 2008
5
0
Mmm, don't think it's a great idea. Just another thing I would probably erase if it were free and I certainly wouldn't pay for it. I use NetNewsWire to check on MacRumors as part of my many feeds. Has badges and what not. I have a ton of message boards I post on, I'd like to see an app that can easily post on any board through the iPhone, not just this one. For the time being, boards are done through my desktop. To be honest, if MacRumors had a native app, I'd see it as crapware.
 

Telp

macrumors 68040
Feb 6, 2007
3,075
25
Best comment ever.

Another thought: it can alert you, on the homescreen icon, to new stories, comments in a thread that you are following, etc. Obviously that would have to wait until apps are allowed to run in the background.

I agree with you Surly, although I am not sure if I would pay for it either. I would, however, defintatly download and use it, the same way i downloaded and use the iPhone version of Facebook. Your alert ideas are good ones too, and I think you should PM arn about this. :)
 

Silver-Fox

macrumors 65816
Jan 8, 2007
1,091
2
England
I would like to see how it comes out before i purchased it, but what would it be used for, i mean you can just use safari to navigate the site, what about a web app?
 

nomar383

macrumors 65816
Jan 29, 2008
1,310
0
Rexburg, ID
I'd pay at least 5 bucks for a macrumors app that was hand tailored for the iphone. The full website can be a little cumbersome to navigate on a little screen. I would love to be able to have the app just to check my User CP.

The facebook and eBay Mobile apps are good examples of how a full site can be scaled down for a native iPhone app.

To be honest an app should exist that worked with any vBulletin forum.

The amount of time I spend reading this one forum site makes 5 bucks seem like nothing lol :)
 

kangle

macrumors newbie
Jun 10, 2008
10
0
Miami, FL
Yes, yes, and yes.

1.) Yes, I'd buy a MacRumors App, plus...

2.) I'd also buy an app that would turn on/off WiFi access depending on set times of day or geographic location perhaps accessing Core Location and/or the Calendar App. Nice for prolonging battery life.

3.) And while your into App making mode, create another that would bypass the auto-locking Home Screen feature when I am connected to my home's WiFi. I'm not worried about someone finding and using my phone in my own home and am tired of always having to code in those 4 digits every time I go to use the phone. But I still want my phone to lock when I am away from home. Having to go into settings and change this manually each time I go into the world is too much hassle.

This would be a huge Triple Play in the App Store!
 

Niiro13

macrumors 68000
Feb 12, 2008
1,719
0
Illinois
I'd pay at least 5 bucks for a macrumors app that was hand tailored for the iphone. The full website can be a little cumbersome to navigate on a little screen. I would love to be able to have the app just to check my User CP.

The facebook and eBay Mobile apps are good examples of how a full site can be scaled down for a native iPhone app.

To be honest an app should exist that worked with any vBulletin forum.

The amount of time I spend reading this one forum site makes 5 bucks seem like nothing lol :)

To be very honest, there's a reason why eBay and Facebook work.

eBay can send notifications (well, in September)...it's nice to condense the site too, but the real feature is notifications.

Facebook has chat (which is flawed, but oh well). Coupled with the fact that the site loads up slower than it's supposed to because of all the javascript...but mainly for chat.
 

Rojo

macrumors 65816
Sep 26, 2006
1,328
241
Barcelona
It's topics like these that remind me that there are still millions of people who haven't discovered RSS.

Uh, I'm VERY aware of RSS, feeds, and readers.

*I* just don't want to access macrumors (or most sites I visit) that way. It might be great for YOUR needs, but not for mine. I find RSS feeds/readers very impersonal, frustrating, not as flexible as I want them to be, and not interactive.

When I go to macrumors, I want to be able to easily go to the particular topics I want to read about (at that moment) with a couple of clicks, without sorting through a bunch of other stuff I might not want to read then. Some days I'm only interested in the APPS section. Other times I might just want to read the main headlines. Other times I'll just be in the mood for the community discussions. In every case, I want the ability to post my own comments immediately, if I so desire. I don't want to have to click on a link, which then takes me to mobile Safari, and THEN I can post. I want the ability to look up a user on a whim, and check that person's other posts. Sometimes I want to look up my own previous posts. Sometimes I want to send a private message to someone. Many times I'll want to search for a specific type of discussion for an answer on something. All of this stuff I can do on the regular macrumors site (and, I would hope, an iPhone app, if there ever was one) -- but not stuff I can easily do with an RSS reader. In addition, I would hope an iPhone app had other useful features, like an integrated chat (user-to-user or group room, whatever), and more community stuff.

I understand RSS is a very useful tool for people who like that kind of thing. *I* don't. I hate RSS.
 

admanimal

macrumors 68040
Apr 22, 2005
3,531
2
1.) Yes, I'd buy a MacRumors App, plus...

2.) I'd also buy an app that would turn on/off WiFi access depending on set times of day or geographic location perhaps accessing Core Location and/or the Calendar App. Nice for prolonging battery life.

3.) And while your into App making mode, create another that would bypass the auto-locking Home Screen feature when I am connected to my home's WiFi. I'm not worried about someone finding and using my phone in my own home and am tired of always having to code in those 4 digits every time I go to use the phone. But I still want my phone to lock when I am away from home. Having to go into settings and change this manually each time I go into the world is too much hassle.

This would be a huge Triple Play in the App Store!

Neither of these apps can be made using the official SDK, so they won't be appearing in the store any time soon.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.