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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?

#561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spiritually maybe. The lineage between the two isn't official.

Windows NT is what the project Microsoft was working on as their planned next version of OS/2 got renamed after Microsoft and IBM broke off their partnership and IBM kept OS/2.

True. I was working with OS/2 pre-releases at the time.

https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/OS%2f2+NT

Also, Wikipedia "OS/2 NT" redirects to Windows NT.

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

#562
I still have and use my Zune HD. It works relatively well, is very small, has a long battery life and headphone jack, and most importantly I get the ironic hipster cred for using a Zune in 2019 ;)

The "Metro" design language of the Zune devices, including the HD, influenced the Windows Phone and other Microsoft products. The Zune was the first device to have the tile layout many miss from the Windows Phone.

Zune Music Pass, an all-you-can-listen monthly music subscription service à la Spotify, was way before its time. I think it was the first such offering ever.

Unfortunately its "app store" had a total of 47 apps. On the plus side, you can install every Zune app ever at once :P

It also runs IE5, I think? Maybe IE6? It barely supported CSS at all.

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

#563
post #202

iPod Nano (6th gen) and to a lesser extent, the iPod Shuffle. It’s the best clip-on music player I’ve ever used, and there’s a void now with it being fully discontinued. I’m not a fan of their intended replacement (iPhone + Bluetooth headphones) due to weight and the headphone options available.

The replacement is more likely the Apple Watch and wireless head / earphones.

Much more expensive in comparison.

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

#564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still hope in this front

technically it wouldn't take much (or anything really) for people to transition to a v6 overlay network and get this back again. but i'm afraid that the value of an intermediary-free internet isn't really perceptible enough to drive adoption, even if you made it completely painless. I meet an awful lot of people, even in tech, that are surprised and shocked that you can use a computer thats not sitting right in front…

More relevantly its also largely out of the power of citizens to make the transition. Especially in the US where you often have no choice in ISP, if they don't provide static IPv6 addresses theres nothing you can do.

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

#566
post #137

Google's Nexus 7 might qualify. A really great tablet at an affordable price that got one minor refresh then was cancelled. I see Palm already mentioned. Neo Geo. Obviously everything I have done was great--too advanced for its time to succeed.

I still use my Nexus 7 almost daily! I have the refreshed model with the 1080p screen, and it's still going strong. Not the fastest or most up to date tablet, but internet browsing, email, and basic things all still work flawlessly. Great product, competitive sector.

Somehow my 6 year old second gen Nexus 7's battery still works reasonably well and I have no idea how. I've been through dozens of batteries on Galaxy phones in that time.

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

#567
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've an amazfit bip; battery lasts about a month...

I second the Amazfit Bip. Mine lasts around 40 days per charge as a watch, heart rate, and step tracker. I leave notifications off.

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

#568
post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

technically it wouldn't take much (or anything really) for people to transition to a v6 overlay network and get this back again. but i'm afraid that the value of an intermediary-free internet isn't really perceptible enough to drive adoption, even if you made it completely painless. I meet an awful lot of people, even in tech, that are surprised and shocked that you can use a computer thats not sitting right in front…

More relevantly its also largely out of the power of citizens to make the transition. Especially in the US where you often have no choice in ISP, if they don't provide static IPv6 addresses theres nothing you can do.

all you need is someone to broker a tunnel for you. i'm assuming both that such a broker would be an easily managed cost and it that would be relatively cheap and easy to be assigned global blocks.

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

#569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could have held it's own technologically, except that SEGA were complete dumbshits and their console supported burned CDRs out of the box. That was a coup de grace.

I had a friend with a Dreamcast he had to mod it to play CDRs as the Dreamcast had a different CD format to hold more info. They had to reduce the CD to fit in a 700M CDR. Most games didn't use the full CD. Google mod chips some time they had them for the Playstation and XBox to use CDRs.

You didn't have to physically mod the Dreamcast console.

An exploit was found due to the console support for CD's with multimedia support, called MIL CDs. Initially a bootdisc was needed which you swapped with a CD-R, later all dumps of games were done in such a way that the exploit was bundled.

You are correct though in that some games used the full 1GB+ capacity of the GD-ROM format and assets had to be removed/compressed in some cases.

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

#570
post #25

Nokia linux tablets/phones n800x series and their Maemo OS

Maemo was great. I still have an N770 and N810 kicking around.

I still have mine but its literally a brick . The screen broke many years ago , so I used it back in the day to hack the ps3. Someone coded the geohotz hack into a payload in the kernel on boot up. Oh memories.
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