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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?

#501

Post by 80386 »

culot wrote: post #252
bhauer wrote: post #156

* Windows Phone. We need a third viable option in the mobile space. This week we are concerned about the loss of a browser engine, recognizing this is unhealthy for the market. Windows Phone was terrific in many ways and recent concepts by fans such as @boxnwhisker (Harry Dohyun Kim) [1] show how beautiful the Metro design could be today. * Microsoft Image Composer. A little known sprite-oriented graphic arts program…

Windyws Phone's tile setup is still the best home screen setup for mobile. As I peep at my Android home with pretty wallpaper with acres of bhank space and uninformative icons, I pine for the informative, intelligent WP tiles. Ms Image Composer was unbeatable for digital and web stuff back then. Photoshop was rather clumsy in comparison. As for email clients, I do keep wondering how Thunderbird can be so slow , how i…

>As for email clients, I do keep wondering how Thunderbird can be so slow, how its rendering system can be so shite.

I leave Thunderbird open in the background and come back to a notification that some component or other crashed. Happens all the time, no clue why. Email is common enough that I'd expect there to be a half-decent client for it, but I don't know of one...

(IRC is also common, at least among people who write code, but I don't know of a free client that isn't worse than running irssi in cygwin.)

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

#503

Post by pvg »

zmix wrote: post #485
marktangotango wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder why/how xulrunner has descended into obscurity while electron has blossomed. Anyone have input on that?

In the early 2000's there many people, who'd want to develop with XUL (especially Intranet solutions were often done this way by people, who wanted an alternative to Microsoft technologies). Several people started creating IDEs or addons for Eclipse. Mozilla Inc. never showed any interest (or support) in this. There never has been an official schema or DTD for XUL, for example. I don't know the reasons, Mozilla Inc.…

The CEO, back then, was a female lawyer.

Really?

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

#504

Post by detaro »

iscrewyou wrote: post #388
detaro wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Inoreader looks like flipboard How is this (random screenshot found via image search) not basically the same as Google Reader? http://kingofgng.com/media/20150116_inoreader.png And that's not even the densest display option.

I looked at their App Store page and saw this: https://imgur.com/a/GJQ4hEu

Yeah, maybe not use one or two screenshots to decide if a product has or hasn't a feature that's not shown in the screenshots.

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

#505

Post by 80386 »

eldavido wrote: post #363
bhauer wrote: post #156

* Windows Phone. We need a third viable option in the mobile space. This week we are concerned about the loss of a browser engine, recognizing this is unhealthy for the market. Windows Phone was terrific in many ways and recent concepts by fans such as @boxnwhisker (Harry Dohyun Kim) [1] show how beautiful the Metro design could be today. * Microsoft Image Composer. A little known sprite-oriented graphic arts program…

> As a broader concept, a return to prevailing use of on-device processing and computation I don't think anyone ever liked developing for the web. It solved three problems pretty well: - Data portability: log in from anywhere, have your data at your fingertips. - App model: no broken installations of programs into desktop environments, dependency problems, DLL hell - No concern about the mostly broken Windows desktop…

>Everyone has a phone but if you aren't in tech circles, it's surprising to see how many people barely use computers at all, especially those who don't work in offices, older folks, and the less well-off.

I work in a warehouse, and the specific thing I do requires a laptop. They've tried to train backups for me, but they have a hard time finding people who know how to use a computer. Most people don't - they only have a smartphone.

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

#506

Post by markonen »

tptacek wrote: post #354

Knox, the macOS menu-bar encrypted DMG manager.

Hey–the original maker of Knox here. Thank you for this trip down the memory lane. We launched the app in 2005 and sold it to AgileBits (makers of 1Password) in 2010. I just had a look and people are still discussing Knox on the AgileBits forums today!

Here's what has changed since 2010:

– Apple introduced FileVault 2 in late 2010, making full disk encryption of both internal and external drives simple and straightforward. Knox was always about convenience over the built-in tools in the OS, and for the simplest cases, the OS finally caught up.

- It was a time when a small menu bar utility could go for $34.99…

Before the AgileBits sale we were exploring some cool new stuff for Knox:

- App Vaults: swizzle some NSFileManager calls and have apps such as Mail or Safari direct all their reads and writes (including for preferences and Keychain access) to a vault. Multiple independent, encrypted, secret app instances.

- Online Backups: Knox Vaults were already encrypted and block-based, so many of the hard parts of backups were already taken care of. Backing up incremental Vault changes to an online block storage seemed straightforward enough, but in 2010 we just couldn't make the math work. (for example, in early 2010, S3 was $0.15/GB/mo and AWS still charged for inbound data transfer at $0.10/GB.)

In the end, it just wasn't sustainable. 2010 saw the launch of iPad and iPhone 4, and demand for Cocoa devs was becoming red hot. The opportunity cost of working on a niche Mac product like Knox was just too high.

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

#507

Post by robocat »

eldavido wrote: post #368
nicolapede wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to windows phone, I really miss the tiles, the consistency of the metro style gui and other little details, like automatic do not disturb mode while driving or face recognition well before it became mainstream.

I completely agree and I used to work at Microsoft. Microsoft lost because they didn't have the users or the apps. It's an instructive story of how an inferior product can win. I'm not saying that happens all the time or that it's inevitable, but I think it's safe to say that's sort of what happened here.

> Microsoft lost because they didn't have the users or the apps

I wonder how much of it was because they had a sorry arse mobile browser? Not supporting ontouchstart etc events must have been a killer. MSPointerEvent was awfully buggy in the initial release, and what dev wants to rewrite their web app/page to use PointerEvent?

Why wouldn't you make sure Hybrid apps (Cordova etc) work well? Why not just copy WKWebView (20/20 hindsight now!).

Their equivalent of WKWebView is some sort of zombie IE11 version (not edge, with different features and flaws than IE11 desktop). Hideous.

Disclosure: we developed a Hybrid app for Windows Phone (based on Xamarin).

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

#508

Post by haneefmubarak »

mvkel wrote: post #429
sheepybloke wrote: post #176

Is no one going to mention Pebble? It's the only smartwatch I've ever wanted, and I was so sad that it got bought and died right when I had enough money to spend some on a smart watch. It just had the perfect combo of good design, long battery life, and usability.

I have one sitting in my drawer; happy to send to you for free if you're interested in owning one. Just drop me a line.

Hey dude I'd be really happy to snag that from you, but I think it'd only be fair if I paid for shipping.

I couldn't find an email address for you, mine is HANEEF at PDX dot EDU. I've never actually had a smart watch before, but hearing all these people talking about the pebble is making me really interested to try this one.

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

#509

Post by aasasd »

copperx wrote: post #154
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…

The video in that article is great!

I'm only five minutes in, and the vid has everything: vague sense of hype typical for television and supported with random imagery, nonspecific glorification of tech, first-rate new-agey babble mixed with self-righteous entrepreneurship, confusion of the two sorts of magic, padded shoulders that make a businesswoman look like a bouncer.

My brain is additionally confused by the appearance of one of Nino Rota's themes from “Amarcord.” For the circusey feel, you know.

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

#510

Post by 80386 »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #289
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a neighborhood along my drive home that Waze will often try to navigate through to save a few minutes of driving. This rarely actually saves the time it claims, and is disruptive enough to people living in the neighborhood that entrances to the neighborhood now have signs excluding non-local traffic from entering. Waze still tries to navigate me through this neighborhood all the time. It makes the app nearly…

Some roads were shut down for construction near where I work a few months ago. Uber and Lyft don't seem to take data like that into account, so I had a hell of a time getting home from work - I'd have two or three canceled rides before I got one that happened not to be routed through any closed roads.
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