Apple Aperture.
Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
821–830 of 891 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#822Jasc Paint Shop Pro. This tool had the useful half of Illustrator's features and the useful half of Photoshop's, it was blazing fast, and it combined them in a single program so you could mix vector and raster layers. This made it absolutely perfect for web-targeted graphics work. It was the first software I legally bought because it was so good and still affordable (a fraction of the price of Adobe's stuff - somethi…
What's your opinion on Krita?
Isn't Krita more for drawing?
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#823* IBM ThinkPad T41p/60. Lenovo T410/X210 where still somewhat fine. But these newer ultrabooks nowadays have less powerful specs than 5 year old notebooks. The Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon isn't bad, but a far cry given it's ultrabook less powerful specs than an 5 year old high end notebook. And these shitty keyboard nowadays, give me back the old keyboard layout like grouped F1-F12 key, better placed Home/PgUp/PgDn/End…
Not only have they hosed the reputation of the brands they've bought, but they're diminishing their own as well. I know it's nowhere as popular as the ThinkPad, but I have been a ThinkStation fan for years. I bought my first one in 2005. I bought another in 2014 and the new one was an identical case with different components inside and a few different labels outside. I was blown away by this because it's exactly what I've always wanted -- I don't care at all about the gimmicky chassis updates -- and I told everyone about it, probably resulting in a couple other people getting one. Unfortunately, I won't have a chance to reproduce this experience as they discontinued the model and no longer seem to have a comparable machine.
I started out building my own machines because that was how you did it to save money and get good components, then vendors eventually became good enough where that wasn't necessary or desirable, and now we've come full circle and it seems likely I'll build my next machine, whenever this one finally gives up the ghost.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#824Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Lenovo keyboards aren't bad? I actually like them. Well aside from the bottom left key being FN instead of Ctrl...that part is retarded. The trackpads on them are beyond redemption though. How that made it past well any kind of user testing is beyond me.
> Well aside from the bottom left key being FN instead of Ctrl...that part is retarded. There's a BIOS option to swap Fn and Ctrl, at least on the X250.
I believe the BIOS option to change them was introduced in the xy10 series, I actually loaded a hacked BIOS on a W500 I was given to "recycle" to do the same swap.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#825Earlier quoted context omitted.
> E-Mail before we lost the "text should be text and not goddamn HTML" war. Keep fighting the good fight. I still use Mutt and haven't gotten around to finding a way to handle Office365 meeting invites and such. I'm also the only one in the company that connects to Slack via an IRC client (irssi).
Programmers ought to get together and create CLI versions of clients of popular protocols (Exchange, for one).
Check out Davmail (http://davmail.sourceforge.net/). I use this with offlineimap to run mutt with an Exchange installation; apart from calendar invitations, it works quite well.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#826* IBM ThinkPad T41p/60. Lenovo T410/X210 where still somewhat fine. But these newer ultrabooks nowadays have less powerful specs than 5 year old notebooks. The Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon isn't bad, but a far cry given it's ultrabook less powerful specs than an 5 year old high end notebook. And these shitty keyboard nowadays, give me back the old keyboard layout like grouped F1-F12 key, better placed Home/PgUp/PgDn/End…
Lenovo destroyed the Thinkpad legacy. I gave up on them a few years ago when they dropped the 7 row keyboard. The 7 row keyboard was leagues ahead of any other laptop keyboard, ever. The replacement keyboard is awful. I hate the loss of web forward/back keys too. I hate chicklet keys. I hate pgup/dn placed as though I'll almost never use them. I still prefer the trackpoint over any touchpad. I'd buy a retro Thinkpad,…
I love my Lenovo Carbon X1 3rd Gen, and I know a few friends who have them too and love it.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#827A few things: Everything not being 4:3 screens. I found it better for programming than everything being cinematic screens. Back when monitor manufacturers were racing to make better / higher resolution monitors, instead of just leaving it at 1080p / 4k / whatever the current standard good enough for movies is. The GMail interface before it started auto-converting the textarea to HTML when edited externally. Console g…
I still use a Dell FP2007 20" 1600x1200 monitor [1] as a second monitor. I remember making sure the serial numbers matched the IPS version too. I've been using it full time for 8 years and it still runs flawlessly. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Ultrasharp-1600x1200-Monitor-Heig...
6 months ago I bought 6 of these off ebay for ~$300 and a cheap 3x2 monitor stand. It's a pretty awesome, if tenuous, setup.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#828Q-BASIC. Just basic programming without any bloat or garbage. I feel sorry for kids now. Foisted on to Python or Java right away even the modern basics are bloated.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#829Google Hello
Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
#830A phone with a proper SSH client and a real keyboard; I have owned and loved (in this order) the Nokia E71 and N900, HTC Desire Z, Motorola Droid 4 and Photon Q. But now I am out of options, as there are no worthy successors to any of these devices. Modern phones and tablets are not about production, but only about consuming. A lot of thought goes into the output devices, but the only input device - the touchscreen -…
Prompt for iOS works very well: https://panic.com/prompt/
Yup, having that has definitely saved my ass more than once.