BeOS, a modern operating system that supported SMP, preemptive multitasking, and a journaling file system waaaaay before Windows 95 was even released.
Check out Haiku OS: https://www.haiku-os.org/
Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
321–330 of 648 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#322Google Reader :-(
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#323Google Wave. At work we use Slack, Email, Google Docs, etc. We’re never quite happy with how things work - what should be email vs Slack, at what point should a a Slack conversation become an email conversation to be visible to more people, when should that turn into a doc for a more formal review process, etc. We’re trialling Notion for some things and it’s good. What should be a Wiki? Whenever we have any of these…
I agree! I think the reason Wave failed was due to poor marketing. I never truly understood what it was until it had already been killed off. I'll admit it was a hard sell when you boot into a blank page that looks like a word processor.
It was sadly ahead of its time and was probably pitched to the wrong audience from the start. Rather than trying to explain why Wave is better than email and chat to the internet at large, they probably should have pitched it as a business productivity tool. Oh, well. Hindsight is 20/20.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#324Google Reader. I still think RSS was a better way of aggregating news than many alternatives of today, all wrapped up in a solid and practical interface.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#325Steinberger guitars. They were brilliant to play, they were incredibly lightweight, they were near-indestructible, they could stay in tune for weeks, but they were just too weird to be anything more than a fad. It didn't help that Ned Steinberger had questionable business skills, they never really got manufacturing costs under control, but the basic design was utterly brilliant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steinber…
OMG yes! Possibly the best design of anything of any kind ever.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#326Pebble 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 bought a Time Round on clearance just after they got bought out - £80. Fantastic little watch.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#327Google Reader :-(
The saddest part, I think, is that it's not just Google Reader. It's a loss of the content. Google Reader was just the canary in the coal mine. RSS used to be a first class citizen on the web. Remember how browsers used to show the RSS logo in the address bar if the site you were at offered a feed? Now, if the feeds aren't gone completely, discoverability has at least become a huge problem.
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#328Nokia N9 and its OS: Meego. Imho this was in so many aspects "UX just done right".
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#329Google Wave. At work we use Slack, Email, Google Docs, etc. We’re never quite happy with how things work - what should be email vs Slack, at what point should a a Slack conversation become an email conversation to be visible to more people, when should that turn into a doc for a more formal review process, etc. We’re trialling Notion for some things and it’s good. What should be a Wiki? Whenever we have any of these…
I used Wave for handling projects with a remote team and it was fantastic once you got used to it.
We began project specs in ‘instant messaging ‘ type mode, and then back and fleshed out that conversation, editing the original posts to become full fledged documents. It was seamless.
Browser performance was a dog, bug I’m sure that could have been worked on.
Loved the ecosystem of apps and bots that was developing
Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?
#330Sega Dreamcast. All Sony had to say was "PS2 is coming next year" and everyone stopped listening to what they could get today .
Agreed. Although the PS2 was fantastic in its own right, the Dreamcast was way ahead of its time (especially with network connectivity) and wasn't given a fair shake.