I know a few private charter pilots who are massively excited this morning. The iPad Mini is the only iOS device that is big enough to use at arms length, small enough to fit in a cramped cockpit, and approved by the FAA. They use a handful of apps during flight for planning, weather, approach data and whatnot. There has been a lot of fear among the local pilot community that the Mini would be discontinued. While the device might not be mainstream, for their admittedly specialized use-case, no other computer will do.
Yes, the use of iPads has had a huge impact on aviation. Fancy built-in devices that cost $25k-80k to implement in the cockpit can be replicated on an iPad, and the mini is the best fit. A lot of pilots were really bummed when it appeared that Apple had given up on the mini.
Of course, it can't be used as a primary instrument since it's not certified, but it's amazing paired with ForeFlight so you can see synthetic visualized terrain (you're stuck in clouds, and want to see where the ground is), you can see where other planes are in the airspace, their altitude and direction via ADSB-in, you can do flight planning on it and easily pull approach plates or pull up airport diagrams, it allows you to see the terrain profile of a planned trip much more easily than referencing the charts, and it can serve as a backup to your primary instruments if you have an electrical or vacuum failure in the plane.
Similarly, in the medical field, there have been some areas where the mini was a perfect fit for a doctor's pocket or certain devices, and they had a lot of custom apps and mounts so they could replace a lot of other types of devices.
Oh, hey, that reminds me. I also use mine with an external GPS (Dual XGPS) for charts while sailing and for topo maps with Gaia GPS when I need that kind of thing.
I appreciate the use of Discourse for this project, but unless the community is substantially similar to HN I don't see the value. A nontrivial number of links on HN deal with health (I'm thinking about recent stories related to dietary habits, sleep quality, and depression). And while these also appear elsewhere (Reddit, Twitter e.g), what I really value are the comments from this community that are well-moderated and on-point. Without the HN community the links on their own yield little value.
> taking hours to explain how web hosting works, and that no, we can build a custom ERP system on your godaddy account that you prepaid for 4 years in advance last week when you bought your domain name, and that if this really is a "million dollar idea", you will need to spend more than $200 for an MVP.
You joke, but I was in this exact position on Wednesday. It's natural to think that web consulting is dying or that there's a race to the bottom on pricing, until you come face-to-face with the level of ignorance many business owners (even successful ones!) have about technology. The world of business software is mysterious to many people. And while it's easier than ever to build a solution that replaces clunky .xls files or (worse) paper -- that can still be a major hurdle for someone not familiar with it.
I think the solution to OP's question is to see yourself as not just a developer but also a tour guide. Educate your customers without judgement. Teach them why what you do matters (translation: market to them!) Lots of people won't see the value and will never pay $100+/hour. But some of their competition will. And that's how you build a consultancy of your own.
Well... I don't joke :) The $200/MVP is a slight exaggeration, but not much. I've been approached by people about MVP, but they only focus on the M, not the V or P.
Right. A common thought among small business owners is "I should have a website because everyone else does." The details
like content freshness, design aesthetic, or site speed don't even matter. So long as my-business-name.com goes somewhere familiar. But this line of thinking escapes the opportunity to drive business over the web.
In my experience, there's plenty of money for the consultant who teaches a business how to stop settling for their website as a commodity and start seeing it as an extension of their "brand".
