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

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

#551

Post by inferiorhuman » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

gcb0 wrote: post #419

inferiorhuman wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always felt that for a product called webOS, Palm had one of the worst mobile browsers. The big missing feature I remember was lack of support for downloadable fonts. I don't remember the Touchpad itself being particularly polished (although the corded charger itself is supposed to be very high quality). Some of the touch stuff was pretty slick (the rubber band effect in particular), but a lot of it was pretty infu…

I don't know if I want to value your opinion on browsers of the top feature for you is custom font download. it was the mobile browser I could access more sites' content with at the time. even flash content, for better or worse! also I could download anything and open any local file, not just what apple allowed me.

I don't know if I want to value your opinion on browsers of the top feature for you is custom font download.

Not the top feature, but one of the most glaring. At the time I was working on a site that used TypeKit and the only platform I was using that TypeKit didn't support was webOS. The whole thing seemed quite odd as they essentially yanked out a working feature of WebKit when making the browser. Flash, OTOH, was something that didn't die soon enough. I'd've much rather seen support for actual standards than Flash, but HP made a bunch of odd decisions with webOS and the Touchpad. There's some pretty delicious irony in a platform with web in the name having a mediocre web browser.

I also had a bear of a time getting email and WiFi set up for whatever reason, I relegated my Touchpad to paperweight status pretty quickly though. Even basic UI things like scrolling and copy-and-paste just didn't work all that well. Here's a review I found that highlights the distinct lack of polish that webOS had.

https://shawnblanc.net/2011/07/hp-touchpad-review/

Overall I thought RIMM/BlackBerry did a much better job with BB10 than Palm/HP did with webOS.

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

#552

Post by kabdib » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

The Apple Newton. Tons of really interesting stuff under the hood (a scripting language inspired by Self, an object store with transactions, a micro-kernel inspired by Mach that supported threading, virtual memory and fine-grained permissions, etc., etc.). Pretty whizzy for 1992.

The hardware was too expensive and bulky, and the software tooling was never really there (I remember someone on the team comparing our dev tools with the newly released Visual Basic).

The first release of the Newton was plagued with bugs (it shipped maybe 4-6 months too early) and had a hardware issue -- noise in the digitizer -- that made its handwriting recognition system perform very badly. Early consumer experience with it wasn't great, and that painted the product with fail and derision; the Doonesbury cartoon was accurate at the time.

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

#553

Post by aasasd » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #92

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'…

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.

Might want to stock up on used ones.

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

#554

Post by steQ » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

OS/2 warp. A great operating system.

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

#555

Post by jon-wood » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

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'…

If you miss the Pebble pick up a Fitbit Versa - it’s the same form factor, and the OS is the one Fitbit acquired from the Pebble fire sale. Unfortunately the display isn’t quite as good, but it definitely feels like a Pebble 3.

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

#556

Post by zanny » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

arendtio wrote: post #506

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…

Why not try KDE? I am a long-time KDE user and very happy with it. The flexible Plasma desktop might give you what you are missing from unity. There seem to be some tutorials on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kde+unity+like

Theres even a page on the KDE wiki about making Plasma look and act like Unity: https://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/How_to_create_a_Unity-like_l...

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

#557

Post by Teslazar » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

znpy wrote: post #435

StumbleUpon.com - It proposed links and webpages to read, and as you liked/disliked them it used to learn what you like in order to propose other, better-fitting stuff. Apparently it now has "joined" mix.com, where you can only join via Facebook, twitter or google authentication. Thanks but no thanks.

I know it's not the same, but using the "related" feature in Google can be very effective. example: "related:news.ycombinator.com"

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

#558

Post by zanny » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

Deivuh wrote: post #528

jayalpha wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Which is why providers all added those click through links. They write articles for ad money, and RSS readers don't get the ads.

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

#559

Post by sergiotapia » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

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.

kde was a meme and the red haired step child of linux even back in 2011 dude.

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

#560

Post by kyrra » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

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…

Also, I think if you swipe left from the home screen, there is a button at the top next to the ... menu (that's the Updates menu). This brings up your coming up next, weather, and other cards like that. It's always been there since they started showing need by default.