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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?

#481

Post by face_mcgace »

golergka wrote: post #463
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…

What it would take to built a similar product now? Ten years later, the tooling and ecosystem for such complicated SPAs is much better, so it should be at least a little bit less of an effort, right?

Yea I would have assumed so - tbh this is still a massive problem I face in each new org I join. Documents/communications are scattered across google docs, notion, slack, jira.

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

#482

Post by tomrod »

joshuamorton wrote: post #177
tomrod wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intake/ingestion.

Avenues for that already exist. But the signal from those kinds of things is so so low compared to the noise that you often need multiple layers of moderation and filtering before anything useful. A direct line from $random user to the on call is a recipe for disaster (ie your sres quitting) when you have many users. Engineers aren't first line tech support and those roles shouldn't be confused.

Of course. And my thinking when posting my first comment was the cliche critique that Google has no human tech support. I wrote it a bit tongue in cheek after trying to get a human at another tech firm for several weeks now.

I fully understand what you're saying and mostly agree. Thoughts on having registered users of certain products having access (e.g. Domain purchasers, Google app admins [office? What is that product suite called these days?])?

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

#483

Post by ignoramous »

WD-42 wrote: post #102

XMPP. The entire chat landscape is a damn travesty right now. First Facebook disappeared behind it’s own walls, then google... I really miss the days where I could use one client to chat with all my contacts. I honestly think Im in contact with less people now because everyone dropped support for open protocols.

Yeah, I've seen folks blog about how it's unfair that AWS profits from open-source software... WhatsApp took XMPP and walked away with $19bn without it helping the XMPP/Jabber ecosystem at all.

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

#484

Post by viraptor »

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…

It wasn't only marketing. Either the codebase was bad or the browsers at the time were not powerful enough for it. I remember using it for a uni project and after a few messages got into the history, it kept getting slower and slower. At some point it took seconds of lag between the key presses and the result.

As great as wave was, it didn't work very well either.

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

#487

Post by abacadaba »

gcb0 wrote: post #412
Lowkeyloki wrote: post #335

Ubuntu's Unity desktop. People really hated it because (IMHO) it had a really rocky launch. Ubuntu replaced a very usable GNOME 2.x desktop with an alpha-quality replacement. And Canonical was riding high from having "won" the Linux for desktop game and was pushing their weight around, giving the impression that they were ignoring the feedback from their users. Unity wasn't without its missteps. But it matured quite…

you only think you liked unity because now you despise gnome3. the sooner you accept the gnome legacy is dead and move on to kde the better. I know it will be difficult, but it's inevitable.

MATE will still be here waiting patiently when you're ready.

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

#488

Post by neuronic »

r3bl wrote: post #413
Razengan wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think the wearables market is really that valuable. Hasn't the Apple Watch been outselling Rolex etc.? https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-outsold-the-entire-swi...

Rolex is a terrible example. On top of their products aiming to last generations (nobody's going to leave Apple Watch to their grandchildren), they're also well known for not reporting any sales figures what so ever. Nobody can tell you how many Rolexes there are in total, let alone the sales figures of a specific model of a Rolex. That's partially what makes them so valuable. People usually don't change Rolexes ever…

Changing an Apple Watch/Android Wearable even once every 3-5 years must be the 7th circle of hell for someone like Dieter Rams.

It's incredible how normal it has become to switch out $500-$1200 products at such a cycle. Wasteful, next to no functional gain (certified electro-cardiography being exempt in my books), supporting narcissism...

It's consumerism to the max. We should all take a step back and think about what we are doing.

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

#489

Post by tgtweak »

Lowkeyloki wrote: post #335

Ubuntu's Unity desktop. People really hated it because (IMHO) it had a really rocky launch. Ubuntu replaced a very usable GNOME 2.x desktop with an alpha-quality replacement. And Canonical was riding high from having "won" the Linux for desktop game and was pushing their weight around, giving the impression that they were ignoring the feedback from their users. Unity wasn't without its missteps. But it matured quite…

Thanks for bringing my attention to pop! Looks pretty cool.

Trying it out in a VM for now.

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

#490

Post by neuronic »

franee wrote: post #420
Lowkeyloki wrote: post #335

Ubuntu's Unity desktop. People really hated it because (IMHO) it had a really rocky launch. Ubuntu replaced a very usable GNOME 2.x desktop with an alpha-quality replacement. And Canonical was riding high from having "won" the Linux for desktop game and was pushing their weight around, giving the impression that they were ignoring the feedback from their users. Unity wasn't without its missteps. But it matured quite…

Yup unity was what spelled the end for the Ubuntu wave. I think this has been the single biggest mistake they made. I think it will take at least a decade again to bring the linux desktop to the masses. Gnome 2 was perfect for people coming from windows moving over. Gnome 3 is like windows vista. Me personally, I was really disappointed (of course you can install gnome 2 etc). But at the end of the day you just want…

> bring the linux desktop to the masses

I am dumbfounded that people still see this happening at some point.

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