Telegram app on ios & macos. One of the few near perfect consumers applications there are.
Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
831–840 of 994 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#832Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I would rank them near the bottom because they don't fit in my ears without causing significant pain within a few minutes.
Even with the 3 different tip sizes? The old EarPods/AirPods worked alright in my ears but never great. The Pros have been fantastic for me personally.
Not the OP, but I have the same issue. Tried the 3 original tip sizes as well as 3rd party foam tips - no use, they either hurt after a short while or don't seal properly, causing ANC to barely work at all and the headphones to fall out when jogging or doing exercise. Guess my ears are not shaped for the Pros, or any in-ear earbuds for that matter - it has always been the same story with any brand I tried over the years.
However, the 1st/2nd gen "base" AirPods are a perfect fit for me, so I just ordered a new pair to replace my 3 years old 1st gen with almost completely failed batteries. Would've used something like Podswap, but unfortunately no such service is available in my country that I could find.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#833Earlier quoted context omitted.
I must disagree with you on maps. Google maps is a fantastic geographic aware search. It is a horrific map. On any given screen there is an 80% chance that the major road I'm interested in is not labeled. Finding the name of a relevant cross street is a nightmare. I feel like it used to be better. Way better. I think the map aspect has been dropped entirely as a real feature now that they supply directions (search) p…
I have OSM and Google maps installed. If I'm trying to navigate to a specific town or street, I'll use OSM because it's "just a map" that isn't trying to sell me shit. But if I'm looking for a business (restaurant, shop etc) I'll always use Google Maps because they're trying to sell me shit, and because OSM is absolutely pitiful in this regard. I have tried to help out here by adding business in my area but the proce…
> I have tried to help out here by adding business in my area but the process of slow. Not sure who is in charge of approvals.
There are no approvals at all. After you submit your changeset, it's in the primary public database. Some relatively short time after that, the affected tiles are rerendered and the change is visible on the main map layer (Mapnik) on openstreetmap.org. But if you use an application (e.g. OsmAnd) or some third-party map rendering (e.g. by Mapbox), the changes might take quite some time to get there.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#834One example of quality design which I gleaned from reading Don Norman's "The Design Of Everyday Things" is the metal plate I've frequently seen on doors which are meant to be pushed. The only affordance of such a plate is its push-ability, and the fact that someone actively installed a metal plate (instead of just relying on the door's natural flatness), as well as its location at the point of maximum leverage (all t…
I use a similar example when explaining when to document code and when to write it so it is easy to understand. When coding, if you find yourself saying “I need to document this”, you should ask first if it is easily understandable by someone with no knowledge of the code and possibly rewrite it first. Only once you have exhausted how it is written should you document it.
Everyone always nods at this but often do something else in practice, so as an example I use the real-world example of glass doors that only open one way but have identical pull handles on both sides. Users always walk up and loudly and embarrassingly push/pull incorrectly. But instead of fixing the root problem, the people who put them in think, “I know, I will document them!” and put those plaques on each side that says “Push/Pull”. And true to nature, no one reads the signs and still loudly bangs the door the wrong way only then to look at the “documentation”.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#835Mahlkönig PEAK. It’s a coffee grinder, the build quality is really, really good. Super solid, and heavy.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#836Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, that's because most of that is untrue. It's not a simple system. Technically all you need is upnp to perform all those functions. A raspberry pi with a build of VLC that only always plays full screen and a slideshow of some kind in between use. However, with the google product specifically it is deliberately designed to handicap itself and require all kinds of extra software (google at services, the YouTube app…
I don’t think that’s a fair way to judge a product. It’s made and marketed for sending videos from android phones to your TV, and it does that well. It doesn’t handle tasks it wasn’t built for well? That’s fine.
Useability outside of a very narrow window is abysmal on a product. That's not fair to say? I think it is. Imagine a kitchen knife that only worked with a certain cutting board.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#837"Ever" is a tough one but .. Python is still the best-designed language I ever used, warts and all. It's often grouped with Javascript because they're both interpreted and "duck-typed", but imho the gap between them is huge. Svelte is amazing for UI logic. It makes hard things feel easy and simple, and really hard things to feel possible. QBasic was a horrible language, but its IDE (if you can call it that) was incre…
It feels pretty disingenuous to write off all real world design as trivial or impossible to make an impression. For instance, aluminum cans are a great example of quality design
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#838Earlier quoted context omitted.
Support in the browser would require the browser to stay on the whole time, along with the computer. Bittorrent clients are better run on small less power hungry boards (RPi, etc.) or on hardware that is meant to be running 24/7 anyway. For example, I run the Transmission daemon on my XigmaNAS home file server. The NAS is headless, but I can control the daemon through its remote GUI, so as soon as I click on a torren…
It doesn't require the browser to be always on, unless you want to download something (which is the same as a normal download). Do you mean it's better for the health of the swarm for a particular file? Otherwise I'm not sure I get your point.
> Do you mean it's better for the health of the swarm for a particular file?
That is one of the main points. Some files are shared by thousands users and can be downloaded in seconds, but others are much harder to find, so that I like to keep the client on to help other people getting it quickly. I usually am annoyed when a file with a single seed reaches like 97% then it dies until the following day because the seeder had to turn off the PC, so I try to avoid this, especially since it costs me nothing as broadband is flat and the client runs on a machine that is always on.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#839This may be a normie response - but Apple Airpods Pro are one of the best products I've used. After years of using several bluetooth headsets that get finicky (with connections that is), having a set that just connects and works every single time is refreshing. They really changed my behavior - I went from not liking phone conversations at all (getting agitated after a few minutes)to comfortably having long phone cal…
I bought Airpods soon after they came out, and got a pair of Airpods Pro just a couple of years ago as a gift for my girlfriend. I just switched back to a pair of $50 IEMs (Tin T2 Pros) with a replaceable MMCX cable and foam tips. Fortunately I use a phone that has a jack. The removal of the headphone jack is an absolute crime. Everyone I know struggles with Bluetooth regularly, but even the Apple models with special…
or/and Try something like FiiO BTR5.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#840The best thing I ever used was iPod shuffle mini. It was the perfect design, nothing could be added nor taken away to make it better. But apple being Apple they redesigned it to be crap then discontinued it. On the topic of designing great things and Apple …. Can I say that I hate Apples “minimalism above all else” approach to design. For example I want computers with lots of ports - what’s the point in buying a mini…
I was skeptical, I liked my ports. Now I plug in all my devices at once, through a dongle. I like that a lot. It works well for how I work: either at my desk, with everything plugged in, or away from my desk with nothing plugged in. They probably should've moved the ports to the power brick. That would've been ideal.
They did this for the new iMac, albeit only the ethernet port. It's the one that makes the most sense and doesn't appear to result in a larger brick, which I imagine would be considered a requirement by Apple.
I believe there's some third-party hubs available that provide power and ports galore via one or two thunderbolt cables, but you're looking at at least $200.