PS vita. Powerful handheld. Dual analog sticks. Great hardware. Lots of good games but it could never compete with the smart phones. 3DS didn't do too well either as compared to DS. I don't think we'll see a dedicated handheld gaming device any time soon. I'm sad because I don't really enjoy playing games on my mobile phone.
Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
191–200 of 648 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#192Pebble 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.
I'm still getting by with my Pebble Time Steel, and I've been watching (no pun intended) Fitbit's releases to see if they're yet up to snuff. It looks like the most recent revision of their smartwatches would work OK for me (and add HR sensor). Don't know if they'll be sufficiently reliable, since this has been a weak spot for Fitbit in years past.
If I'm able to eke out another 2-3 years, I might get an Apple Watch, which would presumably have 3-4 day battery life by then.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#193Aereo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo The Supreme Court decision that killed the company is an excellent example of what happens when jurists don't understand technology... And don't want to, either.
The Supreme Court decision wasn't at all a failure to understand technology... their ruling basically said "the technology here doesn't matter, it's what the technology does that we are ruling on." Aereo brought arguments around the implementation and the Supreme Court said basically that they didn't care about the implementation.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#194WebOS. When I used it, I saw it as a blend between Android and iOS. It had the beauty, polish, and responsiveness that I loved on iPhones, but had the developer options and open community that Android had. It was a great product, and it's a shame that now we really only have two choices for smartphone operating system, WebOS being neither.
I recently helped a friend wall mount a new smart TV and when the boot animation displayed WebOS, it made me incredibly disappointed about how far it had fallen.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#195Google Inbox. And I don’t “find my favorite Inbox features in Gmail”. If you can’t tell I’m still bitter about it :(
Mailbox suffered the same death after dropbox acquired it.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#196OS/2
A better DOS than DOS
A better Windows than Windows
Microsoft used the OEM tax to force Windows preinstalled than OS/2. Then development dwindled and Microsoft made Visual Studio for Windows.
It is still a good OS and OSFree is trying to open source it.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m a Linux die hard fan, but the Windows Phone was indeed a great product. I liked mine!
Never owned one, but interested about what made it great?
Here are some examples of what I liked about using Windows Phone (7, 8):
- The default keyboard is great.
- Jump Lists: Alphabetical list navigation. (e.g. list of contacts, list of installed apps). For quickly getting to letter 'r', you tap one of the letters to bring up a grid with all the letters, then can easily tap which letter you want to get to. Whereas, iOS has a tiny list of letters on the side. Android sometimes has this tiny list of letters, too. I prefer "1 easy tap, 1 easy tap" is nicer to "1 fine/precise tap".
- Icon-buttons would have labelled text. To save space (I guess), the text was omitted but was still accessible by expanding the menu.
- IIRC, older WP models had a hardware camera button (on the side, for taking pictures or opening the camera app). Later on, the cheaper WP models dropped this.
That said, the lack of apps is what really kills it. :/ e.g. you might only need 2 or 3 apps which you can find on Android or iOS, but not on WP.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#198WebOS. When I used it, I saw it as a blend between Android and iOS. It had the beauty, polish, and responsiveness that I loved on iPhones, but had the developer options and open community that Android had. It was a great product, and it's a shame that now we really only have two choices for smartphone operating system, WebOS being neither.
So many great things about modern smartphones came from webOS — the card metaphor, universal search, swipeable notifications. The way they integrated third-party services into the OS was so seamless; I still miss the messaging app that combined texts and conversations from other services into one thread per contact.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#199Sega Dreamcast. All Sony had to say was "PS2 is coming next year" and everyone stopped listening to what they could get today .
Sony tried to do the same in 2005 when Microsoft released the XBox 360, only they kept pushing back the release date. Thankfully their E3 2006 press conference was such a flop that in a bit of karmic justice it forced them to stop resting on their laurels and compete for marketshare again.
There was precedent. Sony destroyed the SEGA Saturn's USA launch by simply walking up to the microphone at E3 in 1995 by saying just one word: $299.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#200PS vita. Powerful handheld. Dual analog sticks. Great hardware. Lots of good games but it could never compete with the smart phones. 3DS didn't do too well either as compared to DS. I don't think we'll see a dedicated handheld gaming device any time soon. I'm sad because I don't really enjoy playing games on my mobile phone.
> I don't think we'll see a dedicated handheld gaming device any time soon.
What about the Nintendo Switch?