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Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

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581–590 of 648 posts

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

#581

Steinberger guitars. They were brilliant to play, they were incredibly lightweight, they were near-indestructible, they could stay in tune for weeks, but they were just too weird to be anything more than a fad. It didn't help that Ned Steinberger had questionable business skills, they never really got manufacturing costs under control, but the basic design was utterly brilliant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steinber…

Are they really gone? Still for sale in Europe: https://www.bax-shop.nl/elektrische-gitaren/steinberger-spir...

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

#582

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

anyone switched to an entirely different email provider as a result of this? have success, and which ones? starting to use gmail again and it's pretty annoying.

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

#583

Notion Ink Adam Tablet [1] Pixel Qi Display [2] Altogether not a truly great tablet, but I loved the idea of the Pixel Qi display. Normal colored LCD when being used indoors with backlight enabled. But outdoors in the bright sun, the colors faded away and it became some e-paper like reflective display. That way you could use it for watching movies in the dark and reading books on the beach ;-) Sadly the tablet had a…

I have an OLPC laptop, and I still love that screen.

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

#586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Totally illegal business model It was no different to YouTube’s...

Are you referring to VEVO? Because VEVO is entirely legal

No, I think they are referring to YouTube's early days, where the company allowed/encouraged (and even participated in) the upload of huge amount of unlicensed content.

It's a fair comparison, but I suppose YouTube had:

(a) the veneer of being a platform to "upload/share your own videos" (c.f. Grooveshark, which was solely for copyrighted music)

(b) savvier management (?) who knew how to play the media/copyright business.

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

#587
post #426
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.

Actually, I am working an RSS reader app with built-in discussions and Google Reader was a great inspiration for me. I still use RSS readers as a primary way of aggregating content. Leave your email if it'd like to be notified once I have a beta version: https://forms.gle/Xp47FqQXKwcJakSW8

Could you please share a link or few screenshots that could tell about what its UI looks like.

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

#589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thirded. I get about a month between charges with everything turned on (notifications - the main purpose of the device for me, as well as heart rate monitoring, step and sleep tracking). Its no Pebble in terms of functionality or third party development, but I had Pebbles since the initial Kickstarter and while initially I installed every app I could find and tried to use it for anything and everything, eventually I worked out that (for me at least) it worked best as a extension of my phone display, not a replacement.

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

#590

Android touchscreen phones with physical slide-out qwerty (though I would have preferred Colemak ;)) keyboards like the Sony Xperia Mini Pro. So much quicker and more comfortable to touch-type on (ironic, no? :)), I barely ever made any typos.

This. I really miss my HTC Dream and Desire Z.
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