Cheddar for Mac Public Beta

[lukifer]

Rule #1 of a release announcement: don't assume we already know what your product is. Every time you fail to give a 1-sentence elevator pitch in your blog post, hundreds of potential customers say "meh" and hit the back button, taking their thousands of friends, family and colleagues with them.

[harisenbon]

I was actually coming to HN to say the exact same thing. I assumed the link to "Cheddar" in the blog post would give me some information -- also assumed that the logo would take me a top page that would have information about the product.

What I have learned: * Cheddar is out for Mac * Cheddar is opensource for iOS * Sam is the creator of Cheddar * Archiving is not supported

What I have no learned: * What Cheddar is * Why I should care

[jentulman]

And also I think it would be a good idea to put an easy link to the main site at the top of your blog, and maybe that 1 sentence elevator pitch as the subtitle.

Your main site mentions nothing about pricing. I'm assuming it's all free at the moment, will it always be, are ads part of the plan or will premium features be turning up later?

[edited to be a little less abrupt]

[pivotal]

I was very frustrated by this. The feeling was only compounded when I couldn't easily find an "about us" link. Eventually I did, but that only made some vague hand waving about organizing life and syncing between devices. I'm still not sure what this is all about.

[_hnwo]

This.

I had to click through the blog and try really hard to find out WTF the app is/was.

[fredsted]

Also, screenshots.

[ianstormtaylor]

Yup. It would be trivial to add an explanation right between the first two sentences.

"I’m super happy to announce Cheddar for Mac is now in public beta. [Explanation Here] You can download it here."

[amishforkfight]

Another blog that talks about an ambiguously-named product and provides no links to or descriptions of said product. I had no idea what Cheddar was after a couple minutes of skimming the blog posts.

[dcope]

What's wrong with navigating to the product's homepage to learn more?

[gfodor]

For those wondering, and without comment, this is a release announcement for a orange to-do app with a unique font.

[smoody]

Does anyone know if the Mac app might be open-sourced in the same way the iOS app was open-sourced? I'm working on an OS X app that could benefit from both tight integration with their server-based service and I think I could learn a lot from their Mac app source code, as this will be my first Mac app.

[kickingvegas]

Ok, I'll just put this out here.

https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas

[alpb]

That's only available to Premium users, too bad. App is incomplete (no editing and archiving) and it wants me to be a premium user. Hah, not in this world.

[chrismetcalf]

@dcope - FYI, its really hard to figure out what you app is based on your blog. And there's no obvious link back to the site root to get more information.

[dcope]

It's not my product. I merely submitted the blog post here since I know there are people on HN that use this service.

[jgoney]

Cheddar Mac; I wish I had a bowl right about now.

[stevencorona]

I'm not a Cheddar user, but one thing I love about Sam is that he ships like crazy.

[nealyoung]

Is it a public beta if you have to pay for access?

[ApolloRising]

A better description of the app: https://cheddarapp.com/apps

[_b8r0]

I'm not entirely sure what this is, but from what I've seen so far it appears to be wunderlist in orange.

[frytaz]

You can click on dock icon to bring up Cheddar window before logging in ;)

[melvinram]

What is Cheddar? Todo list app that syncs across iOS, web and Mac app.

[ideavist]

Just listened to your podcast on Founders Talk. Great podcast!

[alpb]

Where is that talk?