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Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

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Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#281

Post by alexis_fr »

anyfoo wrote: post #157
jccalhoun wrote: post #120

minidisc didn't exactly flop but it should have been a lot bigger than it was. Great hardware. If Sony hadn't insisted on their ATRAC and drmed it to hell it would have been much more competitive.

Reading how MiniDisc flopped is always a bit confusing to Europeans (and, presumably, Japanese), as it was actually relatively popular over there. It‘s true that prerecorded media never gained any traction, but for recording your own media from CDs or radios (or later MP3s) it was reasonably common. People especially liked how compact the portable players were. Then Sony pretty much messed it up with NetMD.

I bought a Sony MD player. They had « A USB device to transfer CDs onto MDs ». The USB device was a simple USB-to-jack, to which you’d plug the MD’s line-in. So disappointing. It transfers CDs to MDs at speed exactly 1x and without song separation, because you just press play on one side, record on the other.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#283

Post by taurath »

_s wrote: post #202
rbritton wrote: post #164

iPod Nano (6th gen) and to a lesser extent, the iPod Shuffle. It’s the best clip-on music player I’ve ever used, and there’s a void now with it being fully discontinued. I’m not a fan of their intended replacement (iPhone + Bluetooth headphones) due to weight and the headphone options available.

The replacement is more likely the Apple Watch and wireless head / earphones.

That works pretty well for me. Wish the watch worked better as a stand-alone device though - it does enough but if you need to reconfigure it you have to do it through the phone

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#284

Post by icelancer »

egypturnash wrote: post #93

Amiga: born a champion, but Commodore fucked it up.

IBM and the clones were destined to run them over from the beginning, though. IBM's penetration into the home market as take-home business machines meant it was only a matter of time before multimedia got to the wide deployment of an already-accepted platform with much, much better software.

I loved Amiga. I still wear Amiga shirts to work, and it was massively influential (I owned a modern-day Video Toaster for streaming, even!) - but IBM was gonna win, especially since they split the marketshare with Atari ST and then Macintosh.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#285

Post by drdrey »

taurath wrote: post #274
lukifer wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love my ‘11 Volt, averages 62mpg, including several road trips. Super smooth to drive and nearly zero maintenance; I’ll never go back to a combustion drive train or gears if I can help it.

Idk that puts it too close to Prius territory for me. I’d expect the mileage to be a lot higher!

It really depends heavily on your driving habits. Mine had a lifetime mpg of 220, because I was able to do all of my commutes on the battery.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#286

Post by zubairq »

jmalicki wrote: post #110
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #97

NeXT.

How did NeXT fail? Apple bought them, and then released NeXT-based designs with Apple branding, down to the APIs! I only use a MacBook today because it's a NeXT derivative.

Yes good point. Many people forget that all Apple stuff is really NeXT

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#289

Post by borgel »

closeparen wrote: post #215
stewbrew wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a slightly different story: There were claims they would revolutionize urban traffic. Then they came up with a rather ridiculous solution, especially in consideration of the price point. What's left are tourist tours for people who don't want to walk and who would rather prefer sitting in front of a TV set.

The Segway was predicted to become what the electric scooter has instead.

An ironic twist that the company that bought the Segway brand makes nearly every one of those scooters. I guess it sort of worked out after all?
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