an alternative to common spreadsheet software, which I mentioned before at [1]
Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
291–300 of 648 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#292Earlier 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.
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Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#293Canonical Bazaar Microsoft Encarta
> Microsoft Encarta
This was replaced by Wikipedia for me, but I really enjoyed reading about stuff without any distraction (read: Internet access at home)
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#294[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#295Google's Nexus 7 might qualify. A really great tablet at an affordable price that got one minor refresh then was cancelled. I see Palm already mentioned. Neo Geo. Obviously everything I have done was great--too advanced for its time to succeed.
And the Nexus 5 phone. Lightweight, durable plastic body, good hardware, not ridiculously large... I still havent seen a spiritual successor
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#296Segway. 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).
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.
And people realized cities aren'r barrier-free. There are lots of stairs and similar obstacles that not only cannot be navigated on a Segway, but the Segway is much too heavy too easily carry it over those.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#297Parse (although it lives on as open source and other providers, see. https://buddy.com/blog/parse-buddy-forever-free-full-feature... for example) Microsoft's WPF
WPF is horrible architecture. It's most important purpose is a to serve as case study in how not to design software.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks that. Creating a WPF application feels like wading through treacle to me.
I remember the delight I had when I started using VB4, the immediacy and productivity. WPF is the polar opposite to that.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you used an optical connection track breaks would make it into the copy. At least that’s what mine did, but it was still slow (real time).
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
WPF is still pretty much the standard on Windows but it definitely could be much better. They just abandoned it and then went on these weird detours with Silverlight, WinRT and now UWP.
I suspect the actual standard on Windows today, as hated as it is here on HN, is now Electron. The HTML based UI ecosystem is just so much richer and better supported than WPF that any theoretical advantages WPF might have are dwarfed by the practical considerations of just build it in Electron and be done with it.
No, Eclipse. Just think about how many "enterprise grade" applications are built on Eclipse.
OT: At one of my former employers we were building a PLC. The sister team was building the IDE to program the PLC, and the compiler.
All of us were behind schedule. But our colleagues from IDE world staged a presentation for the whole project including top management (owner, CEO etc.) where they showed how far they were.
They showed how they have multiple windows inside the main application window, minimizing and maximizing those. Syntax highlighting. Basically everything Eclipse is giving you for free. Actual business logic: none to be seen.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#300Pebble 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.
Garmin watches have a week battery life and an always on display!