Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 648 posts

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

#381

Post by Nition »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #338
geddy wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a dedicated, it’s a hybrid.

I use mine 90% handheld and it works wonderfully as a portable console. There's nothing hybrid about the portable experience, it's just an extra option that you can safely ignore. There's also rumors of a Switch Mini coming.

I think the earlier comment is just saying that it's not a dedicated handheld in the sense that you can only use something as a handheld. A major feature is that it can do more than just be a handheld device.

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

#383

Post by 0-_-0 »

Lowkeyloki wrote: post #323
danpalmer wrote: post #306

Google 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…

> 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 wonder why Google didn't put a Wave section into Gmail, or a "take your email conversation to Wave" button for inter-Gmail conversations.

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

#384

Post by jobigoud »

apexkid wrote: post #240

Oculus and other VR headset. VR as a technology is fascinating and almost Sci-Fi when it came in but people quickly realized that there are still no practical applications for the technology other than mild gaming and entertainment purposes. Companies invested heavily in VR but the ROI is poor till today. VR is mostly a one time experience for people and not something they spend time with everyday.

It's because most people are only associating it with gaming. And media outlets measure its success by checking if it is capturing the gaming market. But VR has applications beyond that.

I mean, there is a new art form that let you paint in mid air. How are artists not all over this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUW49IKs1kE

A technology doesn't have to be something you spend time with everyday to be successful.

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

#385

Post by greenice »

jonas21 wrote: post #89
mephitix wrote: post #24

Google Inbox. And I don’t “find my favorite Inbox features in Gmail”. If you can’t tell I’m still bitter about it :(

Just curious, which features are you bitter about? I was a long-time Inbox user and was dreading the day I'd have to switch back to Gmail. But now that I've done it, I've found that I don't really miss Inbox at all.

I miss snoozing emails right from notifications on Android a lot. With Gmail I need to open the app to snooze more than two hours.

Inbox: drag&drop a screenshot, then make it an attachment. Gmail: save it as an image in a folder, then select the attachments and browse to the file.

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

#386

Post by tgb »

The best feature of recent years was when Google started showing you information from your emails on the Android smart home screen (swiping to the left). It was brilliant: have a flight tomorrow? It would show you the information, including gate information which is never on boarding passes anymore. It would show you package tracking info. Estimated traffic coming back from work today. Weather. It had really everything I wanted to know about the next couple days, pulled together in one place. It actually felt like the "virtual assistant" we were promised.

It completely disappeared a year or two and was replaced by a crappy news feed that is so poorly displayed you often can't even read the entire headline. Please tell me Google just his this feature and it still exists.

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

#388

Post by chpmrc »

tgb wrote: post #386

The best feature of recent years was when Google started showing you information from your emails on the Android smart home screen (swiping to the left). It was brilliant: have a flight tomorrow? It would show you the information, including gate information which is never on boarding passes anymore. It would show you package tracking info. Estimated traffic coming back from work today. Weather. It had really everythi…

You can still access it by opening the Google app and tapping on "Updates".

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

#389

Post by macspoofing »

gtf21 wrote: post #58

Pebble 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'…

>Pebble smart-watches.

I'm still looking for a smartwatch that hits all the beats of Pebble.

Post reply on HN