The Atari 800. Beautiful design, but initially overbuilt and too expensive for the market; I suspect two different home gaming machines from the same company also confused consumers; later, when a lower-cost version was released, Commodore had already started gobbling up market share.
Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
91–100 of 648 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#92Pebble smart-watches. I had them from the original kickstarter, and eventually had a Pebble Time Round which I loved. Whilst I now would never buy a smartwatch, I think that theirs were by far the best. Slimline, with a great UI, and nice functionality, and also not locked into either mobile ecosystem. I'm not entirely sure what caused their death, but my personal view is that they tried to become too big, and I don'…
I still wear my Pebble every day and am not looking forward to the day when it conks out.
The thing that blows me away is no one has really swooped in to replace it. I got a Pebble because I wanted an always-on screen with high battery life (I charge mine roughly once every 5 days), and I have no idea where I'm going to find one when the time comes.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#93Amiga: born a champion, but Commodore fucked it up.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#94Chevy Volt. I wouldn't necessarily say it wasn't successful, but GM is killing it, and to me the irony is that I think it is a much better option for 90% of people than an all-electric vehicle.
Yes, all-electric is the future, but right now being able to be on battery 95% of the time, but never having range anxiety because I can always get gas when needed, is wonderful. I can go on long trips and never worry about having to pre-plan where I will charge up. Also, I didn't have to do any special electrical work because I can get a full 40 mile charge overnight on 12 amps.
I think it's really a great car and due to the electric motor it's fun to drive for someone who doesn't generally like driving.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well OS/2 v3.0 became Windows NT so sort of succeeded, just not for IBM or in name (unless you count cash registers).
That's not particularly accurate. Windows NT was based on VMS. OS/2 is quite different. The interfaces are related, but the same is true for all Windows variants on the grand timeline. The good news is that if you are feeling particularly nostalgic and have a 16 or 32 bit processor (or emulator), you can relive the OS/2 glory days with ArcaOS from https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos/ It'll cost you about $130 for a perso…
Dave Cutler (one of the designers of VMS at DEC) led the development of WNT at MS. While some ideas may have trickled down, WNT isn't "based" on VMS. If it was, it would be a lot better :D
(Still waiting for the x86-64 VMS port to be completed... https://www.vmssoftware.com/products_roadmap.html)
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#96Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#97NeXT.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#98Segway. They managed to keep it secret until the official announcement, and at the time you wouldn’t have believed it if you hadn’t actually seen it (video of it on network news, that is).
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#99Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#100Swype. It disappeared from my phone this week and I'm in shambles.
Isn't this integrated in all modern keyboards? At least Google keyboard does it now!
If I use the default keyboard instead of swiftkey on my iphone I can't swipe for words and have to peck at the screen like its 1860. So unless there's a setting I'm missing somewhere, no.