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Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

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Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#611

Post by CosmicShadow »

renegadesensei wrote: post #512

I miss variety in smartphone design. Everything looks the same these days. Samsung and Apple endlessly copy each other and virtually every smartphone has the same phablet aesthetic now. I miss the variety in shapes, sizes, physical keyboards, gaming features, operating systems, etc.

I agree, I own a BlackBerry Passport which my wife just stopped using and every time I touch it I fall back in love with the design, it's just so damn cool, I wish more phones were weird and comfortable like that. I had a Priv, which was a bit different, but now that I have an S9+ I see every 2nd person with the same fucking phone I have, when before I was so much more unique and different.

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#612

Post by tallanvor »

sz4kerto wrote: post #477
CiaranMcNulty wrote: post #445

Pebble - they created a series of smart watches that had: - long battery life (2-7 days depending on model) - e-ink colour screens, that were always on - an extensive app/watchface ecosystem - actual attractive watches I had a series of them and was all-in on the new models announced via kickstarter, when they suddenly disappeared and were bought by Fitbit. All forthcoming products were killed off. They've been prett…

I have a Garmin sport/smart watch, it lasts for weeks and it has always-on color display. Smart watches from other brands also last for many days or weeks.

The Fenix 3 is still going strong for me after two years with it. I don't usually use GPS on it, so I charge it about once a week when it's around 50% charge (sometimes I forget to check, which is why I plan for about weekly charging).

Also, the edge is slightly raised above the face on it, so while there are a couple of nicks on the bezel, there are no scratches on the glass. The sapphire glass may also be part of that.

App ecosystem is minimal, but I honestly don't need any apps anyway.

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#614

Post by chaosbutters314 »

aerovistae wrote: post #83

Ensemble Studios, makers of Age of Empires, Age of Empires 2, and Age of Mythology, some of the best RTSs ever made. There are other great RTSs, but they're all great in different ways from the Age series, which nothing else resembles. Microsoft bought them, and shut them down not long after for insufficient profits. Sigh. Age of Empires IV is being made now since they noticed there's demand, but the studio they chos…

You know aoe2 is pretty big on steam and voobly right now, right?

They are even having a $60k tourney (I think sponsored by MS).

It is still a pretty big and active community and easy to get a game.

Plus, there have been a bunch of great DLCs in the past few years

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#615

Post by dep_b »

ivanmaeder wrote: post #437

Adobe Fireworks. Easy, intuitive vector-based editor with bitmap support. Ideal for creating/editing images for UIs. It worked the way I expected an image editing tool to work. The complete opposite of Photoshop and Gimp (I don't understand the mental model there). Sketch is a decent replacement—although there are some UI decisions I don't agree with—and I believe Figma is also very similar.

Director was amazing as well

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#617

Post by nosjwshere »

vintagedave wrote: post #519
kodablah wrote: post #270

Surprised nobody mentioned them yet: Borland and their approach to UI development. I know some of their products live on, but I am nostalgic towards the wysiwyg days of old without being forced to use MS. I of course am aware of modern equivalents, but sadly the market/users moved.

We still exist. Look up Embarcadero: Delphi and C++Builder live on. We see increasing interest - I think there is some disillusion with some other dev tools. There's a new version coming out soon. -- David. (I work there.)

Borland never followed into the web space, people still use vim and tweak css.

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#618

Post by RandomGuyDTB »

bayindirh wrote: post #472
function_seven wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has ditched so many cool things in the MacBook line. 1) MagSafe. I know they really want to go all in on USB-C, but the original MagSafe connector was awesome. Even the weaker 2.0 version was nice. There were two instances where that connector saved my laptop. 2) The laser-drilled power indicator. That was so cool. It looked like the light magically appeared through the aluminum. Now there's no indication whats…

While I also love MagSafe and its features, wouldn't having a more standard port is much better? iPhones are constantly bashed by a group of users because of not having USB-C connectors. Having four USB-C ports with identical capabilities on a MacBook pro is a more pragmatic and flexible solution to have, when compared to MagSafe. On the power level and power button issue, Apple changes its features to shape customer…

Fun fact: While the later (PSP3000) models could, early models (PSP1000) couldn't charge via mini USB. Not too relevant but it's a common misconception.

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#619

Post by nailer »

wishinghand wrote: post #202

The Macbook Pro chassis before the OLED touchstrip. I'm a web developer and learned on MBPs. The touchpad was the right size, the keys had the right amount of travel, the form factor and weight were perfect. Right now I'm considering moving to developing on a Galaga Pro and using Windows/WSL. I've got most things setup on my desktop how I like using HyperTerm (I had too much trouble with Cmder), VS Code, and ZSH. I c…

> Right now I'm considering moving to developing on a Galaga Pro and using Windows/WSL. I've got most things setup on my desktop how I like using HyperTerm (I had too much trouble with Cmder)

Hyper's got a few critical bugs, and Cmd is just ConEmu). If you want iTerm2 like functionality on Windows, Terminus destroys Hyper, ConEmu, Alaciritty and everything else.

https://github.com/mikemaccana/powershell-profile

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#620

Post by rocky1138 »

schizoidboy wrote: post #528
chrisparton1991 wrote: post #206

Old-school Winamp. I use Spotify these days, but man it was fun to customise skins and play with the awesome visualisers. Half-Life 3 would also be nice, but I guess it was never "around" to begin with.

WINAMP, WINamp, winamp... it really... Still works. Winamp is still my main music player (with classic skin, of course). I run it through Wine on Fedora 28. Some things cause crashes, but the only things I really care about are MilkDrop, the media library, and playlists and they all work fine. I've never been able to find something that comes close to MilkDrop. Here are my installation instructions (after installing…

I used to do this, too, but it eats up a lot of CPU for just a music player. For Linux music, I've moved onto cmus.
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