Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed? • Hacker News Board

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

#521

Post by Eric_WVGG » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:43 PM UTC

milkytron wrote: post #181

WebOS. When I used it, I saw it as a blend between Android and iOS. It had the beauty, polish, and responsiveness that I loved on iPhones, but had the developer options and open community that Android had. It was a great product, and it's a shame that now we really only have two choices for smartphone operating system, WebOS being neither.

I miss PalmOS, or more specifically the Graffiti text input system. I’d love to have it on the iPhone, and it would work much better on Apple Watch than its existing writing recognition.

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

#522

Post by beefman » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:45 PM UTC

Mozilla Persona

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona

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

#523

Post by paul7986 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #492

viraptor wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it was written in Angular, that sounds about right.

Is Youtube written in Angular? I find myself having to refresh the page (Firefox is my default) to load the proper video fairly often; annoying UX.

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

#524

Post by ygra » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

jccalhoun wrote: post #117

maxxxxx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand how MS managed to mess up Windows Phone. My girlfriend had one for a while and it was excellent.

there were a lot of problems. One that hasn't been mentioned is that MS's idea of Windows Phone was that all the apps would match the OS's design. A lot of big companies did not want to do that.

As a user I have to say I did want that. Windows Phone peaked with WP8 though, IMHO. W10M has always been weirdly buggy, inconsistent and not performing as well.

I guess the two API and forced hardware changes did most to cement its demise.

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

#525

Post by icelancer » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

dswalter wrote: post #515

icelancer wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random people hate being watched, or at least they hate knowing they are being watched by another person. That being said, like someone else mentioned, Glass and AR-type products are very successful as productivity boosters in people who assemble products. We use Pupil Labs' glasses at our business to do gaze tracking. There's a lot of good use cases for this technology, but it's not cheap and it's pretty specific at…

It's not entirely clear what you're saying here. Does your business use these solutions as a way to enrich the information needed used by someone assembling your products, or do you use them to ensure everyone's eyes are looking in the correct direction while on the assembly line?

I don't run an assembly line myself - we use them for gaze tracking in sport science.

Mostly in industrial use they are used to identify parts quickly with AR overlays.

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

#526

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:56 PM UTC

derekp7 wrote: post #513

neuronic wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bring the linux desktop to the masses I am dumbfounded that people still see this happening at some point.

I saw a quote somewhere from Linus Torvalds that Chrome OS may end up being the future Linux desktop, once they finish polishing off their Linux app integration (Project Crostini). I'm able to actually get most of my work done now in that environment.

Was just about to post this. I was looking for my next laptop after I got so frustrated with the direction MacBook Pros we're heading, so I took the plunge and got the high end PixelBook.

I do all my development on it: VSCode, Postgres, docker, node, python, all works great. Importantly, the Crostini project is progressing rapidly and I get new functionality with each new ChromeOS release (e.g. shared files between Linux and ChromeOS, one-button container backup, etc.)

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

#527

Post by patrickg_zill » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

ksaj wrote: post #4

The Sun Ray was ahead of its time. After Oracle bought and killed it, "the cloud" kicked up and is exactly what the Sun Rays were built for in the first place. Oops!

The ability to pull out your smartcard, have the desktop go away, then plug your smartcard in somewhere else and have your desktop come back was pretty impressive.

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

#528

Post by Deivuh » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

jayalpha wrote: post #346

ldigas wrote: post #324

Google 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.

"I still think RSS was a better way" "I still think RSS is a better way", fixed that for you.

It was the best way for me until most of the sources I used to follow started to only put the description of the post or article and a “read more” link forcing you open a browser to read it. I know most rss clients now have a built-in browser but it was better when you could read the content right in the client without those intrusive ads or layout.

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

#529

Post by LeoPanthera » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #406

LeoPanthera wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a massive success everywhere except the USA. But because the USA defines history, it was a "failure". Wonderful video about the format: https://youtu.be/kU3BceoMuaA

Minidiscs were only popular in Japan. They had limited success everywhere else.

As someone who was living in the UK during the "minidisc era", I can confirm that this is extremely not true. Everyone I knew had a minidisc player, and they were ubiquitous while commuting on the tube.

I think the "it was only a success in Japan" meme is one of those things that people read on the internet and just assume is true because it sounds plausible. In reality they were very popular across Europe, wide parts of Asia, and Australia/NZ (to perhaps a slightly lesser extent) as well.

Anyway the YouTube video above covers all this better than I can.

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

#530

Post by patrickg_zill » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

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.

A "fully loaded and maxed out" NeXTStation Turbo was:

68040 at 33MHz

128MB RAM

4096 color, 1152x832 (or similar) display

that could do Display PostScript and had a relatively complete Unix subsystem under the covers.

The Turbo Cube (same CPU but with the 24/32 bit color NeXT display board) could do full color.

Current minimum specs to be happy on MacOS: dual core 2+ghz CPU, 8GB RAM, SSD drives

Failure or not of NeXT? Not sure.