All the interesting cutlery has also already been made, but people still design new forks and knives. It would be pretty unpleasant if there were only two fork manufacturers in existence.
Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?
21–30 of 107 posts
Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?
#22NO. All the interesting desktop software has NOT already been written. Short example: there aren't many - if any - desktop word processing software with word or phrase completion, so that's one thing you could still do and sell if you wanted to. Another example: you could port the majority of desktop software from Windows to Linux and sell that to companies who want to lower their costs with Linux. Even if windows wa…
I like the idea of a word processor with many of the features we expect in text editors. I've figured out how to make Vim (+pandoc) do what I want, mostly, but I don't expect non-programmers to do that. Word completion, version control, better image integration than Word or Latex...
Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?
#23I'm still always wishing that there would be some really good way to manage my information/media consumption in a simple, centralized way. I find Pocket unsatisfactory. I'm talking particularly about books, videos (movies, youtube vids, netflix series, etc) and news articles online. My current system is ridiculously scattered.
Apple really, really wants you to use iTunes for this. (Well, eventually, they decided that iTunes manages everything but books, so now we have iBooks, which doesn't even let you manage your own library.) In case you haven't used it, take my word for it that it's a disaster and you probably don't really want that.
Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?
#24This is a bit like asking "Have all good books already been written?" Maybe all the trivial/obvious/easy ones have but certainly not all the interesting ones.
Books are so mid-age..
Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?
#25VR, AR, AI. Three two letter buzzwords. All of them have massive unexplored potential on the desktop.
> It's actually shocking how difficult I'm finding it to answer this question.
You are asking the wrong question, because you are looking at the existing market. You need to analyze trends, news and cutting edge science, have imagination, vision and forward thinking. That's obviously also hard, but it's not like looking for an empty field in the forest where you want to plant your trees.
You might find "Blue ocean strategy" a good book.
Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?
#26Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?
#27This is a bit like asking "Have all good books already been written?" Maybe all the trivial/obvious/easy ones have but certainly not all the interesting ones.
Now I'm pondering what a trivial/obvious/easy book is... ;)
Goodnight Moon combines very short length, repetitive format, relatively straight-forward subject matter choice, and a cross-cultural emotional goal. Maybe the book that would have been written wouldn't be word-for-word the same, but if there wasn't Goodnight Moon someone would have written something nearly indistinguishable.
Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?
#28Any space that lacks competitors is probably lacking competitors because there's no money in it, or because it takes a huge amount of work. The bar is high, but we're certainly not "done" with desktop software. For example, if you can create a text editor that's as snappy as Sublime and as extensible as Atom, you have my money.
Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?
#29I'm still always wishing that there would be some really good way to manage my information/media consumption in a simple, centralized way. I find Pocket unsatisfactory. I'm talking particularly about books, videos (movies, youtube vids, netflix series, etc) and news articles online. My current system is ridiculously scattered.
Apple really, really wants you to use iTunes for this. (Well, eventually, they decided that iTunes manages everything but books, so now we have iBooks, which doesn't even let you manage your own library.) In case you haven't used it, take my word for it that it's a disaster and you probably don't really want that.
Hahahaha yeah. I've tried a lot of different systems and tools and combinations, but I've never even gone near iTunes. I'm not sure why, I think I just have a subconscious intuition that it would be terrible.
Goodreads is surprisingly frustrating to use, I wonder why nobody's made a better version yet.
Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?
#30Desktop is for sure at the end of the hype cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle but that does not mean that you cannot make money or not be successful when you write a very good software or you hit a particular niche. And I would not fear Google or Apple, I cannot remember when Google did the last time a rich and good desktop app for end consumers (was it Picasa, the last one?) and the only big professional…
Funnily, Google [itself] has discountinued its "desktop search engine", which is a great pity, as there have been no decent alternatives and then, what do you do when you need to search, say, a document database, consisting of some .xlsx and .docx files (which are essentially compressed XML files, as I get it)?