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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?

#681
post #666

Browsers that did not have to reload the page when you hit the back button. Webpages designed to use the least bandwidth, load fast and be accessible. Companies that had older staff who had enough experience to not make the same mistakes over and over again.

When a site has a redesign nowadays, I can almost always count on them breaking "Open Link in new Tab". Most recent example was Chase bank and I think Google's account security page. Same with a redesign project I just joined at work....

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

#682

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.

Former Fireworks user; now happily using Sketch.

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

#683

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…

If you want 32gb of RAM, it's not an option, but I recently bought a Lenovo Carbon X1 laptop and it's really great [1]. I used to develop on a 2015 Macbook Pro, which was a fantastic computer, but I don't like the new ones as much. I've also used a 2017 Dell XPS 13 and it was good, but the Lenovo feels better to me.

Things that make it great:

1) Slightly larger screen at 14" is very nice, but the overall computer is still lighter than a MBP.

2) Keyboard is fantastic

3) Build quality feels like it can hold up to more abuse than MBP or Dell XPS

4) Has USB-C ports, but also has old USB-A style ports, so no need for adapters.

I dual boot with Windows and Linux. For better or worse, I still need to use Excel sometimes and LibreOffice's version doesn't cut it. The only thing I miss about macOS over Ubuntu is the ability to install Microsoft Office (without using Wine).

[1] plug for Costco who sells a nicely loaded (i7 processor, 16gb RAM, 512GB hard drive) version for $1500, or $1400 on sale.

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

#684

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.

There's some attempts, but it's gimmicky - more cameras, foldable phones, etc. Nothing that really causes a revolution.

Oh, indentations like Apple did for the iphone x are apparently a design element now. :/

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

#686

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…

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…

I am really excited about crostini on Chromebooks. I think a year from now a lot of us 2012 MBP users will find a new home in the Chromebook world.

ChromeOS + Android Emulation covers a lot of ground for UI needs in the developer workflow. For everything else, you have Linux via Crostini.

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

#687
post #71

Altavista. I miss it every single day. Searching for technical (unix, programming, etc.) content is so much easier when you can use nested parens and proper boolean language. This is in contrast to google where searches return things that don't even contain your keywords. This is in contrast to google where the modifiers like allinsite: and '+' and "quotes" are not respected or change their behavior over time. Man I…

I wasn't coding when Altavista was around, but I totally agree that Google is terrible for searching code snippets etc.

Fortunately, there's SymbolHound [0], which is designed for just that! Check it out

[0] http://symbolhound.com/

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

#688

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…

You should give Ubuntu an experimental try. I have only ever used Windows most my life, but for hobby projects I use Ubuntu/PopOS!. If you are doing Web development I highly recommend that over Windows. Just last night I tried to setup a Phoenix project on a fresh install of windows and after 5 hours I was still installing C++ build tools, setting up path variables etc etc. It honestly is a world of pain. I remember…

Good joke.

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

#689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should give Ubuntu an experimental try. I have only ever used Windows most my life, but for hobby projects I use Ubuntu/PopOS!. If you are doing Web development I highly recommend that over Windows. Just last night I tried to setup a Phoenix project on a fresh install of windows and after 5 hours I was still installing C++ build tools, setting up path variables etc etc. It honestly is a world of pain. I remember…

I just built me a new pc. First one in 15 years. I used to tinker with Linux a lot at that time. Ubuntu 18.4: Hangouts screen share doesn't work, WiFi dies after resuming from sleep, and other minor things. It has been 15 years and it still feels clumsy ... I was not impressed.

I had a similar experience with Ubuntu ten years ago. But now I have been using PopOS!_os https://system76.com/pop which is an Ubuntu distro, which has been the totally opposite experience. After the install I kept expecting everything to go wrong, and wifi not to work etc, but honestly "everything just works" seems to be the fitting description.

I still predominantly use Windows 10 due to gaming and doing a lot of .Net development, but I am changing jobs soon and I might just run Linux for a while. See what happens. Honestly my experience in Windows these days is one of pain and confusion. The file system is even annoying me quite a bit. Anyway, I probably just hit the hardware configuration sweet spot that mean't my Pop!_os installation wasn't riddled with driver issues.

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

#690

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…

I will say I understand the benefits of standardization, but the MagSafe has saved me so many times. I wish all companies would have adopted that. I have kids and a dog, and many times my power outlets are not in the most convenient of places meaning I need to connect to them using an extension cord, etc. That thing has been pulled out of my machine more times than I can count, and I fear even thinking about how many times my laptop would have been pulled on the floor, port broken etc. without it. It is absolutely one of my favorite features.
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