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Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

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Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#781

Post by morshu9001 »

al_borland wrote: post #754
morshu9001 wrote: post #696

- Apple AirPort. Took a long time for advanced wifi solutions that "just work" to fill its place, and those are the Nest/Google things that have bs attached like mic+assistant. Unifi is too hard for consumers. - Gnome2 dropped from Ubuntu in favor of Unity - Ford Crown Victoria

> Took a long time for advanced wifi solutions that "just work" to fill its place What is the modern-day successor? You only mentioned what isn't good. I loved the AirPort routers. I found it odd that Apple exited the market just as everyone else entered. I ended up getting a Linksys as a troubleshooting step when I was having internet issues. I don't think the AirPort was the issue, but after migrating, it didn't se…

Wish I had an answer. I never ended up buying an easy replacement. When I was in college years back, I set up Unifi for my parents, which did work well but had a weird setup that they had 0 chance of handling if I wasn't visiting home.

Now I just have a single basic wifi+router, no mesh. It doesn't really cover my whole house, but one more AP would do. My parents' house needs more APs to the point where management is a concern.

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#782

Post by piskov »

tjpnz wrote: post #437
piskov wrote: post #117

Microsoft Silverlight. Full C# instead of god forbidden js. Full vector dpi aware UI, with grid, complex animation, and all other stuff that html5/css didn’t have in 2018 but silverlight had even in 2010 (probable even earlier). MVVM pattern, two-way bindings. Expression Blend (basically figma) that allowed designers create UI that was XAML, had sample data, and could be used be devs as is with maybe some cleanup. Ex…

Back in the day Microsoft sent someone to our university to demo all of their new and upcoming products. I remember Vista (then named Longhorn) and Silverlight being among them. I also remember people being particularly impressed by the demo they gave of the latter, but everything swiftly falling apart when someone queried whether it worked in other browsers. This was at a time when IE was being increasingly challeng…

Are you sure? Even at launch, Silverlight 1.0 supported IE, Firefox, and Safari

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#783

Post by morshu9001 »

sedawkgrep wrote: post #725
morshu9001 wrote: post #696

- Apple AirPort. Took a long time for advanced wifi solutions that "just work" to fill its place, and those are the Nest/Google things that have bs attached like mic+assistant. Unifi is too hard for consumers. - Gnome2 dropped from Ubuntu in favor of Unity - Ford Crown Victoria

> - Ford Crown Victoria You can't just drop that and not say why...

Haha true. Well I've got an ex-cop one and love how it drives. There was probably a legit reason for ending it, just too bad they never refreshed such a cool, iconic, reliable car with a better powertrain. By 2010, an old NA V8 with 4-speed slushbox was no longer viable whether it was meant for performance or efficiency. Needed ESC by law too. I don't care if it'd be turbo-4 or EV, it'd be awesome.

Some people claim that EPA standards killed large sedans because of how SUVs have a lower bar. I don't know, maybe people want the room. But maybe an updated Vic would've sold well to fleets based on reputation. Dodge kept selling the Charger to civilians and police.

Also, insert usual spiel about new cars having overcomplicated controls and hard to replace parts. Hot/cold knob doesn't take my eyes off the road.

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#784

Post by castillar76 »

eszed wrote: post #666
kesor wrote: post #310

ICQ ; It was the first instant messenger, the technology could have adopted voice (and not get disrupted by Skype) and mobile (and not get disrupted by whatsapp) and group chat (and not get disrupted by slack/discord). But they didn't even try and put up a fight.

The last time ICQ was mentioned on HN I could still remember my ICQ number. It's a benchmark for how much my memory has deteriorated in the last five years. I do still remember it fondly, though.

Side note that not remembering it has nothing to do with memory deterioration. Neurons that fire together wire together: if you haven’t used that particular piece of information in a while, your brain gradually clears out links to it to make room for stuff you are currently referencing. So not remembering it is really more a demonstration of how much ICQ use has deteriorated. :)

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#785

Post by castillar76 »

daxfohl wrote: post #769

Blackberry. Back in the Blackberry days I never pined for anything resembling a smartphone. Other than built-in GPS, I'm not sure my life is improved or worsened by having a computer on my person 24/7. That wasn't the case pre-internet or pre-cellphone, when I remember pining for something resembling those technologies.

Agreed, and it’s not just the hardware keyboard (on which I could comfortably have written an entire novel) that I miss. It had just enough access to email that I could reply to things when necessary, even if it required a bit of typing (something very uncomfortable on a screen keyboard), and later on it had access to maps and enough web browsing to be able to look something up quickly. But the lack of an enormous app ecosystem and limited Internet access meant it didn’t become a doom-scrolling device to nearly the extent my current smartphone has, so I was more inclined to either pick up a laptop and do something deliberate or put it down and go do something useful like reading.

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#786

Post by 1-more »

BirAdam wrote: post #68

Google Wave. Edit: you asked why. I first saw it at SELF where Chris DiBona showed it to me and a close friend. It was awesome. Real time translation, integration of various types of messaging, tons of cool capabilities, and it was fully open source. What made it out of Google was a stripped down version of what I was shown, the market rejected it, and it was a sad day. Now, I am left with JIRA, Slack, and email. It…

Studied for some CS/EE final with my class on Google Wave. It absolutely rocked for making a study guide together. I can't even really remember how it worked, just that I was blown away by it.

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#787

Post by skoskie »

kmoser wrote: post #642

Prodigy (the online service). I'm not saying I wish it was still alive, but it contained some amazing technology for the time (mid- to late 1980s), much of which is now present in web tech: - Client software that ran a VM which received "objects" from a central server (complete with versioning so it would intelligently download new objects when necessary). Versions were available for IBM (DOS), Windows, and Mac. Thin…

Good times. I used to fire it up, go eat breakfast, and come back just in time to see the weather forecast.

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#788

Post by smashah »

symlinkk wrote: post #735
smashah wrote: post #433

Theranos

Have to agree. This whole procedure of booking an appointment with a GP who then books you an appointment with a lab who then takes your blood is a huge waste of time. The technology is largely there for people to continuously monitor their health in real time, you see this in smartwatches as feature by feature slowly trickles in.

Their offering is inevitable, at least on a less bombastic scale (e.g a few drops instead of just one).

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#790

Post by chadcmulligan »

sph wrote: post #698
chadcmulligan wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delphi isn't dead - ver 13 was recently released - https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi . It's even cross platform, uses Skia as its graphics engine, its all very nice.

Delphi is like jazz - not dead, but it just smells funny.

I'll take the like Jazz part
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