Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

741–750 of 837 posts

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

#741

Post by lostgame »

cgsmith wrote: post #521
anonu wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old school. I don't think theres enough demand out there to bring it back tbh. Even though there are still many passionate ex-users - and maybe current users. Touch screens have proven to be far superior as they serve both input and output purposes.

I agree that touchscreens are more prevalent but disagree that they are superior. Having something tactile for a phone is useful and should be brought back. I was discussing the same thing with how cars are moving to only touchscreens. The problem ends up being you don't know where to touch without looking at it. Imagine having a touchscreen keyboard on your laptop. You'd have to look down to verify where you were.

If you’re as unlucky as me to use a Touch Bar MacBook Pro, you already at least partially have this problem.

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

#742

Post by jvagner »

armitron wrote: post #378
jvagner wrote: post #230

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…

I think what you describe has more to do with the population in general than the artificial limits of the various mediums. In BBS and early Internet days (pre-95 or so), people who were using computers were highly intelligent. Certainly above average. These days, everyone and their dog is on the Internet. The masses have moved in and thus the medium shifted to accommodate them, by dumbing itself down to the lowest co…

To this degree I definitely agree with you: NextDoor is unbearable. The internet has trained everyone, and they carry that into their micro-local communities. Early days had a qualification element.

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

#744

Post by zapzupnz »

DanBC wrote: post #610
zapzupnz wrote: post #602

ZZT. I think a modern ZZT would make for a great educational tool to teach coding. A lot of existing, popular tools exist at either end of the spectrum of difficulty: too easy or too hard. ZZT was simple to design, fun to draw in, and the coding wasn't too complex. Megazeux, a spiritual sequel by another lot of people, I always found far too complicated. It's not that different to ZZT, it just manages to be fiddly wi…

I posted a link about ZZT a while ago, and I learned some stuff from people: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17656822 And a friendly person emailed me this link: https://github.com/jdque/char

Neat to see how many fellow coders cut their teeth on ZZT.

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

#745

Post by swlkr »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #743
swlkr wrote: post #700

1password before the cloud only version

You can still buy it. The cloud version is optional.

Is this true?! I bought 1password 4 for $99 and I upgraded to 6, but from the website I can’t tell if I now have to pay $2.99/mo or I can download the next version for $99 again...

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

#746

Post by bredren »

afturner wrote: post #667
bredren wrote: post #109

Carmen Sandiego

I've always wanted to write an grown-ups disney musical about her. A few years ago I even called up the IPO and said that if I had the money and the right team, he'd consider it. I have neither. Alas.

That would be a smash hit.

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

#748

Post by lostgame »

iscrewyou wrote: post #159

Oh geez. I can’t remember the name of the browser. It was portable/usb based. I think it actually came with my usb back in 2008 or 2009? Any page you went to, it would show you the media of the page on the right hand side in a column and you could simply click and download it. It essentially kept a running tally of media elements on the right side.

The Web Inspector in Safari or Chrome can do this - it’s not a simple feature as it takes a couple clicks to get to, but it works a treat!

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

#749

Post by armitron »

mepian wrote: post #693
armitron wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t think Brad Parker is involved. You can email Reti for more information.

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

#750

Post by mtgx »

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.

An inferior product can win because this inferior product you talked about had already won by the time this superior product came along. Microsoft just didn't want to admit it.
Post reply on HN