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Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

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121–130 of 648 posts

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#121

Palm/HP Pre. Coming up on a decade since it was released, and it's still the best phone I've ever owned. Too bad about Palm and HP, though.

Agreed, WebOS was the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread. And I agree about the Pre, I loved that thing.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#122
post #107
post #20

Usenet, IRC, RSS, XMPP, ... Well, still rockin'

Fun fact, Google uses IRC as a communication channel for incidents[0]. IRC is stable, simple to host and connect to, and easy to log. So all of Google could be on fire, but the incident responders have a simple tool to use to communicate that likely won't die. [0] https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/managing-in...

Is this something folks outside Google can access to get a human being in Google?

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#123

Windows Phone Zune

The UI/UX design on the Zune HD is one of the best I've ever used on a handheld device. I also loved the contextual information that would be loaded on to the device for each artist. There'd be a short bio with links to different artists that were strong influences, and you could journey down a rabbit hole of discovery. The hardware was also extremely satisfying for the time. I think it was the first oled screen I ever laid eyes on, and I was a big fan of the sharp angled metal body. The only thing I wasn't a fan of was the volume controls that couldn't be easily controlled while the device was inside your pocket. But other than that, the zune hd as a whole is one of the few pieces of tech that I felt joy interacting with every time I picked it up.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#124
post #89

Google Inbox. And I don’t “find my favorite Inbox features in Gmail”. If you can’t tell I’m still bitter about it :(

Just curious, which features are you bitter about? I was a long-time Inbox user and was dreading the day I'd have to switch back to Gmail. But now that I've done it, I've found that I don't really miss Inbox at all.

Personally it's the bundles and pinning. The bundles just worked more consistently than Gmail's tabs and made it feels fast (and safe!) to quickly archive a bunch of promo emails you weren't currently interested in.

Stars can be made to work like pinned e-mails, sort of, but it not consistent across the mobile app and the website and the UX just feels unresponsive in comparison. Pinned emails were much better separated than starred emails are today.

I think a bonus aspect was just design. Inbox didn't have to support as much legacy as Gmail and its design ended up being really sleek. Inbox overall just felt faster than using Gmail.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#125
post #23
post #8

Rdio. Music Streaming service. Not sure what happened after they closed up shop but the UI was beautiful and they had great performance.

Venture backed, took a big bet on Vdio that the market didn't care for, probably couldn't meet growth goals compared to their burn.

Failing cause of taking vc money seems to be a recurring theme..

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#126
BlackBerry.

You would get your mail instantly, and could effectively IM on it.

I'm still not even sure how often my iPhone polls or updates, that said it's been a while.

The 'absolute connectivity' of the BB I don't think has been repeated since.

I'm getting sick of features, and honestly I think that's what I want now - a black and white BlackBerry. Just smaller.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I commented something like this last time I saw this sentiment on HN. You forget, or I forgive you if you never knew, that google made really good apps on the old Windows Mobile. Google Maps was especially good on WinCE. Then Microsoft declared all Win32 apps dead in favor of a very half baked Silverlight runtime that didn't have such luxury features as sockets or scrolling that actually works. So if I were calling t…

You likely have commented that multiple times, since it seems like a copy/paste to a completely different discussion. It isn't relevant here. Microsoft made the apps for Google, then when that failed released them themselves with no expectation of Google taking over/paying for support. So your point isn't at all relevant to what happened in the Windows Phone situation. As I said right at the start of my post: Google…

You missed that they had Google apps, then MS threw out the platform and replaced it with something non-competitive and very confused about what an app was or could be.

The apps that MS made for third parties were rush jobs and poorly maintained over time, and because the Silverlight runtime was not up to the job, performed poorly. They did not well represent their respective brands. They were nowhere near the quality of Google Maps for WinCE circa 2009, to say nothing of how they stood against their contemporary equivalents on iOS and Android.

Would you really want a bad app, that cannot do what your real offerings do, out there representing you, with your name and logo?

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#130
post #122
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, Google uses IRC as a communication channel for incidents[0]. IRC is stable, simple to host and connect to, and easy to log. So all of Google could be on fire, but the incident responders have a simple tool to use to communicate that likely won't die. [0] https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/managing-in...

Is this something folks outside Google can access to get a human being in Google?

Lord no. In what universe would it make sense to let random people spam a channel you're using to coordinate an emergency response.
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