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Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

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Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#221

Post by mcv »

Choo Choo Steam Trains, for iOS (http://www.apptism.com/lifestyle/chillingo-ltd/choo-choo-ste...)

This was a brilliant train game that vanished from the Earth. We used to have the paid version on an iPad, but I think it vanished after an iOS update. My dad has the limited free version on his old iPad that he doesn't update to preserve this game.

I think it's a shame that this game disappeared (also because I paid for it), and I've considered whether I might be able to make a clone of the game.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#223

Post by pmarin »

phaedrus wrote: post #103

VALDOCS. I had an Epson QX-10 with a Z-80 processor, 256K, and green monochrome screen when 486's were out and the 1st gen Pentium was coming out, but with VALDOCS I was able to do all of my homework the same as anyone using the Microsoft Office Suite. (VALDOCS could do word processing, spreadsheets, and charts and graphs.) It was more responsive on an 8-bit computer than modern bloated Office software, and so much e…

It looks similar to the Amstrad PCW. It become the most selled CP/M machine but most people bought it as a word proccesor running only LocoScript.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#224

Post by timthorn »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #124
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When getting directions, you could designate a number of areas on the map as “avoid area”. It's noteworthy, because I've only seen this feature in Rolls-Royce navigation in recent times.

It does seem somewhat paranoid. Might be useful to exclude certain routes with an easy interface, but tremendously harmful by seemingly legitimizing the myth of “no-go” areas that has recently become a favorite talking point of the alt-right in my (perfectly safe) country.

The ability to avoid an area is a useful and apolitical capability. I often want my satnav to exclude driving through cities as it's more relaxing and often faster to drive around, and when there are roadworks or large scale events it is really helpful to be able to exclude them.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#225

Post by iscrewyou »

detaro wrote: post #203
iscrewyou wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss google reader because it was simply lists and lists of news. Not these new readers that love to extract an image from the article and use it to cover quarter of the screen(exaggerating here). Then 4 more articles on the next page. Then so on. Google reader was perfect for skimming through 100 pieces of news in a short amount of time and just click the articles you want to read in a new tab and done. Any new re…

I can't think of a modern reader which doesn't have a view like this. Just a few examples: The Old Reader, Inoreader, Feedly all do.

Inoreader looks like flipboard or Feedly.

I didn’t know about The Old Reader and I will give it a try.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#227

Post by rincebrain »

stamina67 wrote: post #177
ilmiont wrote: post #122

Windows Phone. To this day no Android phone I've used ever as fast, reliable or plain refined as WP8 was. Unique design and many genuinely useful features, and it reflected a time when smartphones could have been vibrant and diverse, not our current two mega-platforms or nothing.

Why doesn't Microsoft just open-source the windows phone OS as an android alternative ?

In part, I would imagine, because IIRC they were trying to do the same concept that Apple did about shipping one OS built for desktop/phones with different flags, so that would require opening a large swathe of the Windows source tree.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#229

Post by twic »

Acta, an "outliner", which means a hierarchical text editor:

http://a-sharp.com/acta/

I ended up writing most of my school essays in it. You could start with a high-level outline and recursively flesh it out until you had a complete document. The tree structure made it really easy to reorder sections at any scale.

There is a successor called Opal - the last version of Acta was in 1993, and the last version of Opal was no later than 2007, so it's dead too.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#230

Post by jvagner »

Qmodem

Not really, except:

I was thinking the other day that massive communities like Facebook and Reddit suffer because EVERYONE's allowed in, to an unlimited degree. Everything reverts to the newbie state and every sh*t post can define the threads.

Remember dial-up? BBSes had limited lines and you'd have to set your (non-multi-tasking) computer to redial so you could visit your BBS. Moderators, paying members would get a smidge more time, but rarely unlimited.

Then you had 10/20/30 minutes and the BBS would hang up on you.

It might have been a civilizing force for communities, the sort we still could use in social...

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