OpenSolaris from Sun. It was a joy to use it.
Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
631–640 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#632Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple has ditched so many cool things in the MacBook line. 1) MagSafe. I know they really want to go all in on USB-C, but the original MagSafe connector was awesome. Even the weaker 2.0 version was nice. There were two instances where that connector saved my laptop. 2) The laser-drilled power indicator. That was so cool. It looked like the light magically appeared through the aluminum. Now there's no indication whats…
While I also love MagSafe and its features, wouldn't having a more standard port is much better? iPhones are constantly bashed by a group of users because of not having USB-C connectors. Having four USB-C ports with identical capabilities on a MacBook pro is a more pragmatic and flexible solution to have, when compared to MagSafe. On the power level and power button issue, Apple changes its features to shape customer…
I might love my iPhone even more with a MagSafe lightning port connector. Especially with a light to tell me if it’s charging or won’t take power because I forgot to unlock the phone.
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#633I miss variety in smartphone design. Everything looks the same these days. Samsung and Apple endlessly copy each other and virtually every smartphone has the same phablet aesthetic now. I miss the variety in shapes, sizes, physical keyboards, gaming features, operating systems, etc.
While the variety was nice, I think the phablet aesthetic is most popular for good reason - the sheer amount of screen real-estate and convenience is really unparalleled.
What I could see in the future is built-in ways to expand functionality without loss of the current usability - imagine a phone with the ability to project images and a keyboard on a table, and recognize keystrokes, while still being just as good of a handheld device.
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#634Screenhero used to be great for remote pair programming, but as its gone to premium slack only I haven't been able to use it since. I'm surprised there haven't been any copycats made since it was acquired
https://tuple.app/ is aiming to fill this gap
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#635Black Isle Studios (Fallout 2, Planescape:Torment, Icewind Dale) and Troika Games (Arcanum, Vampire the Masquerade)
Don't forget Baldur's Gate?
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#636Pebble, they we're hands down the best watch I owned. The Apple watch needs a constant charge and really is it's own phone outright. Pebble was the watch that worked with the phone and the design seemed to understand (especially the Pebble time steel), that the watch needs to be an assistant, not the main thing.
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#637SimCity up until SC4. EA really dropped the ball there, completely destroying a classic. No one ever asked for a multiplayer version. And most just want to build a big city, not the tiny sh th les it only lets you build now.
If they would've iterated carefully on the fundamentals and religiously focused on optimizing the code to allow for absolutely enormous sprawling cities, people would've loved it and kept buying new versions.
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#638Surprised nobody mentioned them yet: Borland and their approach to UI development. I know some of their products live on, but I am nostalgic towards the wysiwyg days of old without being forced to use MS. I of course am aware of modern equivalents, but sadly the market/users moved.
We still exist. Look up Embarcadero: Delphi and C++Builder live on. We see increasing interest - I think there is some disillusion with some other dev tools. There's a new version coming out soon. -- David. (I work there.)
Sorry, but it's no good anymore.
I cut my programming teeth on Turbo Pascal and Delphi 20 years ago, so I thought I'd help a friends daughter with her homework assignment.
Could not even figure out how to create a project. I mean honestly, as a professional SW dev I could not even create a project to contain her working files, so was unable to open and close delphi and still run the files we were working on.
No info tips to help figure out what all the GUI widgets do. Had to google all the stupid things. No decent property inspection of the resulting widgets. No layout managers, still uses pixel position layouts.
I was originally in favour of our education system continuining to use it, now I'm solidly in favour of switching to Python.
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#639The Graffiti shorthand for Palm PDAs [1]. It still far outshines any handwriting recognition systems available on modern devices both in terms of speed and usability.
Also, not really an individual product, but I miss durable consumer devices - I used a flipphone that had survived being run over by a tractor for years after the fact, and my old laptop could probably stop a bullet. If we could develop touchscreen glass that didn't break on a strong sneeze, I would be delighted (though the phone repair industry, perhaps less-so).
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#640Google Reader. Now I have a mix of HN, Reddit and GMail, and none of them work really how I like.
check out theoldreader.com. They suck at marketing but it's essentially a clone of Google Reader. Really surprised it is not as well known as the other guys.