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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?

#681

Post by shaklee3 »

dcminter wrote: post #31

Picasa (desktop app). It hit a sweet spot for me - linux compatible, very easy to do the majority of simple edits (crop, rotate, colour tweaks), and a few other nice features. The only significant failing was that it couldn't handle removable media at all well. Shotwell is the best I've found so far, but it's not quite the right feature balance for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

Google photos is much better. There's not really any reason to continue using Picasa anymore. Most of the features it had were extremely primitive, like the facial recognition.

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

#682

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

jimmaswell wrote: post #609
eldavido wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The Windows desktop is "mostly broken"? That's news to me.

It’s broken insofar as there isn’t a complete and coherent “developer story” for building a Windows desktop application that doesn’t look like it came from the 1990s.

I call it “the Photoshop test”: Pretend you’re Adobe and you just invented Photoshop in 2018. How do you build the GUI for each desktop operating system?

...considering you need to do things like OpenGL hardware acceleration, 30-bit color, support binary plugins, and access certain low-level hardware features (e.g. supporting TWAIN, Pro-level broadcast media devices and interfaces, etc).

On Windows it’s an unfortunate situation because all of the “new” application frameworks since 1998 are unsuitable: WPF is .NET only, UWP requires your application to run in a sandbox, you can’t even use MFC because it’s tightly coupled to User32 with its lack of support for 30-bit color. The only choice is the long hard road of doing almost everything by yourself through low-level interfaces with the DWM. Not pretty.

The sad thing is that UWP is very capable - if it weren’t for the sandboxing then it would be perfect (that, and you would need to build your own widget library as UWP’s stock set is almost entirely touch-first controls that are utterly inappropriate for a mouse-first desktop UI)

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

#683

Post by badsectoracula »

fwguru wrote: post #552

Edit.com - Windows command promt text editor I also wish linux had such an editor.

It isn't exactly the same, but mcedit tends to be very dos editor-like (and as a sidenote, i always find it weird that Linux/Unix console programs look so primitive compared to similar programs for DOS).

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

#684

Post by shaklee3 »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #111

Microsoft Money. I didn't have to give access to all my accounts to some website, or pay an annual subscription for upgrades. I got keyboard shortcuts and reports and I could search for things to find out how old my computer is or when I went to Vegas. It seems like in the physical economy, if you create something of value and you aren't making money off it, you will sell it and someone else can make money off it. Wi…

I know it's not going to be popular, but mint.com has far more features and is a much better package all together. Yes, you need to give your bank login info.

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

#685

Post by DDR0 »

lewiscollard wrote: post #29

WinAmp 2. I still use Audacity in "classic" mode to make it feel like WinAmp.. Old habits die hard :) Going further back, I think Symantec JustWrite was an extremely fine piece of software; I remember it being blazingly fast on the 486 monster I had at work. But my glasses may be rose-tinted :)

You're not the only one - check out https://getwacup.com/ for a more modern version. The new offering from https://winamp.com/ is - I think - going to be mobile-focussed? A new codebase entirely?

Webamp can also do Milkdrop visualizations, which is pretty crazy - eg https://webamp.org/?butterchurnPresetUrl=https%3A%2F%2Funpkg... I had a link I've since lost to one which was a shader-skin, which mirrored milkdrop back into the rest of the UI. It was pretty trippy, and wholly unexpected!

Both projects have good Discord servers, as well. :) See https://discord.gg/XuJPJEm and https://discord.gg/248Z7QA, respectively.

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

#686

Post by lucb1e »

ioman wrote: post #46

Microsoft MapPoint. This was a phenomenal piece of mapping software and had features I haven’t been able to find in any of the online map replacements. When getting directions, you could designate a number of areas on the map as “avoid area”. You could map all sorts of census data. Want to colorize the map based on crime rate divided by median home price? No problem. You could import lots of data from a spreadsheet a…

Isochrone is the word you're looking for, for the distance time feature. Openrouteservice can do that, based on osm data (of course; what other source could they use really).

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

#687

Post by jlu »

nicoburns wrote: post #411

Adobe fireworks. There's still nothing that comes close to it's ergonomics and power for working with both vector and bitmap graphics while also allowing you to do layout reasonably effectively.

Came here just to say this! If anyone knows any app that could replace fireworks, please shed a light!

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

#688

Post by ekianjo »

squarefoot wrote: post #611
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…

"High-performance lightweight desktop email clients" https://www.claws-mail.org/ Don't dismiss it because of the lack of bells and whistles on its web page, it runs circles around everything else. Outlook mail folders also can be imported through an external utility. Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Windows and reportedly can be built on MacOSX.

Evolution is also OK. Not sure how it compared to claws-mail feature wise but they both have a long history.

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

#689

Post by octorian »

cpcallen wrote: post #30

Aperture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_(software) I would happily pay for an update that fixed outstanding bugs and ensured compatibility with future versions of macOS. It would be nice to have some new features, too, but it is basically "good enough" as it is and I dread the day I can no longer run it. I'm really not sure what I will do. The claim that Photos was going to be a meaningful replacement for Ape…

Many years ago, when I was first getting into digital photography, I was faced with the Aperture-vs-Lightroom decision. Both seemed promising, with Aperture even having some advantages. What ultimately made me choose Lightroom, however, was the multi-platform support (I've always liked MacOSX laptops, but prefer to use Windows and/or Linux on the desktop).

Several months later, something happened that basically reaffirmed my decision. Nikon released a new camera, which I bought at launch. Lightroom added support for its RAW format in a minor patch almost immediately. Meanwhile, Aperture couldn't be bothered to add support until 6 months later and a major version update.

Flash-forward, I really wish Adobe didn't become so obsessed with their subscription models. While cloud storage/backup definitely has its advantages, I'd much rather simply own my software and use my own servers. (But since the "run it yourself" options are always grossly inferior, I just put up with their new approach and make sure I have a local copy.)

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

#690

Post by lucb1e »

linguae wrote: post #87

I have a few software packages in mind: 1. The Genera operating system for Symbolics Lisp machines. Ever since I've gotten bitten by the Smalltalk and Lisp machine bugs, I've been wanting to use Genera, but I was born at the beginning of the last AI winter, and unfortunately the operating system is still proprietary, with no word about whether or not it will become open sourced. It's regrettable that the proverbial b…

Number three sounds really cool. Command line interfaces is what I eat and breathe all day because there's no replacement for it, and I've often thought how that is stuck in time. I'm not sure what the proper solution would be, otherwise I'd have made it, but it sounds like this might be worth a shot.
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