BeOS, a modern operating system that supported SMP, preemptive multitasking, and a journaling file system waaaaay before Windows 95 was even released.
Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
251–260 of 648 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#252Google glass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass A pure ingenious effort to turn humans into cyborg by adding the 4th dimension of computing to their lives in a non intrusive and seamless way. I can never understand why google couldn't make it popular given that wearable tech like watches and fitness band is catching up so quickly.
Wearing another pair of glasses is pretty intrusive. The value added (if any) by Google Glass clearly wasn't enough over the phone for how much more intrusive it was.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#253BeOS, a modern operating system that supported SMP, preemptive multitasking, and a journaling file system waaaaay before Windows 95 was even released.
BeOS was indeed great, but its first version was released a few months after Win95.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#254Pebble 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'…
My wife loves the crap out of her several Pebbles, and she didn't even get them until after the acquisition and shutdown plans were announced. She still gets speech-to-text thanks to rebble. If there were something comparable still being manufactured, I'm sure she would jump on it in a heartbeat.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#255WebOS
I'll hopelessly upvote and/or comment any positive mentions of WebOS. I still miss the Palm Pre.
I have tried to get rid of old unused tech stuff, but can't get rid of my old Pre. The feel of it even without turning it on is a thing of beautiful design.
Combined with WebOS which was the best at the time and for a while after. Palm built a better mouse trap but still died.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#256WebOS. 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.
WebOS is the Snapcaht of operating systems (course Snapchat still lives, but doesn't get anywhere near the reward of all it pioneered).
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#257Swype. 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!
Swiping input yes, but the implementation of Swype was superior to the others like Swiftkey.
I can't really describe, but it was better at capturing the words I swiped and also handled multiple languages better.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#258BeOS and BeBox, made BeOS for PowerMacs until Apple stopped providing support for new boxes. Was going to be bought out by Apple to make the new MacOSX but they bought out Next and got Steve Jobs back.
HaikuOS tries to open source BeOS: https://www.haiku-os.org/
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#259WebOS. 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.
https://www.webosnation.com/
Some how this still ambles along even though over a decade has passed since the Pre.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#260BeOS, a modern operating system that supported SMP, preemptive multitasking, and a journaling file system waaaaay before Windows 95 was even released.
BeOS was indeed great, but its first version was released a few months after Win95.
The release was after Windows 95, but I thought they had those modern OS features already working long before that?