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Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?

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Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?

#41

Post by jdgiese »

nkobeissi wrote: post #35
clarry wrote: post #32

I don't think all the interesting stuff has been written. But more importantly, I think a lot of the existing software is just terrible. Big old monsters that can be time consuming to learn, and which kinda lock you in for numerous reasons. Horribly inefficient cluttered user interfaces, with old paradigms that aren't necessarily a great way to interact with the computer... I think there's a lot of innovation to be m…

> Money? That's harder, unfortunately. It's hard to innovate when people want to cling on to what they already know. This is a core element of my questions that other answers are unfortunately not addressing. Even if you make software that's less clunky than legacy-grade Adobe Kamatsu-tractor like offerings, how do you make make switching lucrative to the point of achieving self-sustainability?

I definitely agree that people are slow to switch from what they know, but I don't think it is impossible to build software that will make people jump ship on the old stuff.

Take Sketch for example (http://www.sketchapp.com). Everyone on our team used to use Adobe Illustrator, and now everyone uses Sketch instead, because for what we do, it is simpler and better.

Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?

#42

Post by halisaurus »

SilasX wrote: post #34
kowdermeister wrote: post #25

VR, 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 look…

Augmented reality has potential on the desktop? It kind of depends on being able to move around and look at arbitrary things in arbitrary directions and places.

AR content creation tools will likely be desktop apps similar to video editing software. Not that web-based is impossible, but these are probably going to want stand alone apps.

Also, enterprise AR ad placement, buying, and management software could be desktop software.

Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?

#43

Post by avmich »

There is a systematic, though still hard in practice, approach to answering this question. You can enumerate what software could possibly be needed, as automation tools for what tasks can possibly be required to complete and methods which are available for them.

Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?

#44

Post by kowdermeister »

SilasX wrote: post #34
kowdermeister wrote: post #25

VR, 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 look…

Augmented reality has potential on the desktop? It kind of depends on being able to move around and look at arbitrary things in arbitrary directions and places.

I don't know, but I can imagine a wireless headset that talks to a powerful machine. Remember also that by desktop we don't really mean a huge crate anymore. Laptops are still hard to miss out of daily work. I spend most of my day sitting next to one so I wouldn't say AR is not a desktop category.

Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?

#45

Post by cJ0th »

therealmarv wrote: post #9

Desktop 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…

> TL;DR Desktop will not die and there will never be a time were you can say "Everything is done".

Generally I'd agree with that. However, from a business point of view I am not sure whether writing desktop software is still generating good profits. I guess there is room for industry specific software. But I doubt there is much money in the end consumer market. Especially since piracy is probably still a big problem. I once contemplated whether adonation based model might encourage more people to pay for software but according to my web research it is not a good idea. Apart from Tarn Adams (The developer of Dwarf Fortress), who makes a living off donations (but he's working crazy hours iirc) there's not much reason for hope out there. Wavosaur, for instance, is a great wave editor. However, the money people donate is just enough to pay for webspace. [0]

[0]http://www.wavosaur.com/donation.php ; yes, there is also audacity which is free but in my experience it is still very prone to crashing and thus imo not as good.

Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?

#46

Post by selamtux »

You can delevop new softwares like cloud management (aws or/and google compute engine) or really working docker management ui, or something similar.

Or flash to html5 converter (convert all games example)

So you have keep eye on technical changes around the world.

Also softwares reaaly depending local env. Yes maybe photoshop or ms office is big products bu these is lot of local area to develop new apps. (When i said local think as countrys) for doing that you must travel the world.

Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?

#47

Post by urbannomad »

erehweb wrote: post #19

There is a need for something that makes it easy to build and display pivot tables on the web. Tableau attempts to fill this, but it is not as easy and does not have as much functionality as Excel.

Have you tried PowerBI?

Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?

#48

Post by protomyth »

Have all the great songs been written? I get the feeling the answer is the same probably for similar reasons.

I honestly think it was easier for me (located in ND / MN) to find good pop bands in the UK in the 90's than finding good software now. There is so much noise and I cannot easily keep track of what people I follow on various networks are using. We have a huge amount of information, but search just doesn't work anymore and the filters on various networks are horrible. I get the feeling the ad model is to blame.

Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?

#49

Post by DonHopkins »

SilasX wrote: post #34
kowdermeister wrote: post #25

VR, 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 look…

Augmented reality has potential on the desktop? It kind of depends on being able to move around and look at arbitrary things in arbitrary directions and places.

Pantomime is a networked augmented/virtual reality system that supports desktop, laptop, as well as mobile and tablet devices.

It's great to run the server on the powerful desktop, and use it to display an overall view of the world.

https://vimeo.com/149319403

Re: Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written?

#50

Post by hyperpallium »

> money management software, to code editors, vector image editors, remote storage, news readers

Is that really true? e.g. for code editors: vim, emacs and several IDEs.

There's usually only a very brief period between when an idea gets maket validation, and competitors appear.

In effect, your question asks us to predict the next successful idea, before it's successful.

That said, creative people tend to be attracted to newer platforms - web, mobile - which generally have more user convenience and features than desktop apps, and are "powerful enough" these days.

Something that requires even more power - simulation, VR, games - and/or requires keyboard and mouse could win on desktop.

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