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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?

#691

Post by ekianjo »

imhoguy wrote: post #48
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…

I have found Pix to be the good replacement of Picasa. https://github.com/linuxmint/pix

Never heard about it before. How did you find out about that one?

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

#692

Post by lucb1e »

ptbello wrote: post #678

Interesting how the top comments are about Microsoft products discontinued years ago. Nowadays google's the one shutting down products people love (reader, inbox...). Looks like an inevitable phase in the unicorn lifecycle.

It is an awful lot of Microsoft stuff, now that you mention it. Kind of surprising on hacker news, but then I guess the open source stuff can't ever be called discontinued.

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

#693

Post by mepian »

armitron wrote: post #361
mietek wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your sentiments. With regards to Genera, have you seen this? https://static.loomcom.com/genera/genera-install.html

This runs off of an unofficial emulator that is a monstrous hack. There are lots of gotchas, bugs and so on. On the other hand, an official emulator is in the works and should be released at some point.

Wait, what do you mean? The current owner of Symbolics authorized the development of a new I-Machine emulator? Who is working on it, Kalman Reti and Brad Parker? This is very interesting news, please elaborate.

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

#694

Post by rovr138 »

bootlooped wrote: post #373
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…

I would resurrect Microsoft Streets and Trips. I have never used it, but my father still does, and swears it is better than any online mapping software. Part of the reason I would like to resurrect it is that then I would no longer have to figure out how to install his ancient CD copy of it on whatever netbook he buys every 2-3 years.

Take the time and create an iso of that and throw it on GDrive/OneDrive/Dropbox.

Will be a lot easier in the future.

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

#695

Post by mepian »

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…

OpenDoc is unnecessary on Lisp machines, in Genera you can already build applications by combining any CLOS classes that exist in the system. There is no rigid "application" black box that needs to be broken down into OpenDoc components, everything is an object that calls methods of other objects.

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

#696

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

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…

>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.

So download widgets to show what you want?

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

#697

Post by mepian »

scottlocklin wrote: post #615

I'd pay for a copy of Macsyma. Not the open source Maxima version, which is based on its development stage in 1982. The latter is all right, but Macsyma was extremely good. I can still buy a copy ... for WinXP... http://www.symbolics-dks.com/Macsyma-1.htm For a while you couldn't even get that. Macsyma was one of those things where proprietary software can end tragically. Otherwise, I'd pay for a J compiler that coul…

You can also get the version of Macsyma that runs on Lisp machines, and it's possible to run it without owning a Lisp machine.

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

#698

Post by StavrosK »

jvagner wrote: post #245
ixwt wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy crap, I've been looking for something to replace my pebble... This product can't be real... 30 day battery life?!

Me and my girlfriend been using the Bip for a month now. We run every day. The battery life is pretty phenomenal, the step counter and weather bits are handy, the GPS just works, you need the AmazTools app if you want to share your runs to Strava (but it works great), I have an alarm set to shake my wrist every morning at 7am, and if I destroy the watch.. it was all of $70. The continuous heart rate monitoring is als…

I just preordered the Amazfit Verge. I've tried smart watches in the past, and I never could find any use for them, as I'm the type of person who silences all notifications, but now I play tennis and maybe it'll be useful there. It was mostly just an impulse purchase, but I hope I don't regret it.

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

#699

Post by darkmighty »

IshKebab wrote: post #666
AdamGibbins wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can find on the internet, it does support notifications, even says so on their official site. So not sure what your comment is referring to.

Ah yes. The pictures I found made it look like it didn't have a proper display but it actually does. Definitely not e-ink though.

I believe it's transflective LCD display
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