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Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

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Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#121

Post by ysleepy »

jasonjayr wrote: post #115
CodeGlitch wrote: post #81

Android. When holding my phone up to me ear after answering a call, the screen won't switch off and random buttons will then get pressed because you know, I'm holding it against my ear. Can't find any options in the seeing to fix this issue. My wife has exactly the same problem despite using a different make of phone. How can Android fail at the most fundamental task? The alternative of Apple is too expensive for me.…

What phone model? I had a moto z that used pogo pins to connect the top screen proximity sensors, that after the adhesive weakend holding the thing together, lost contact. That was the only time I had an android phone fail to block input when I was on a call...

Hahahaha, also had a moto z with the same problem. I think the sensor driver got confused when the pins bumped and stopped working until a reboot for me.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#122

Post by engineerDave »

JCWasmx86 wrote: post #7

MS Teams: What makes it bad: First of all, it uses Electron, thus it is laggy and wastes too much resources. Maybe it is just a pet peeve of mine, but I hate , if an application does not look native on my GNOME Desktop and does not follow any HIG. Another factor is the proprietary nature of MS Teams. If it was open, there would probably be some other client/some way to have a real native client. My preferred alternat…

The main reason Teams sucks has nothing to do with tech. It's the fundamental design vs Slack.

Slack is organic free flowing conversation, like a chat, that you can thread out of for expansion of a particular though via threading.

Teams is forced threading on each thought and then constrained followup with no ability to thread because you're already in the thread.

I can deal with the tech limitations it's the fundamental UX that makes it a huge garbage pile that is being forced on people because "we already pay for it and all our employees are in it. Also hard to build custom bots for if your organization limits admins.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#123

Post by riidom »

Discord. I basically don't use it, avery few months I'd say, but I still hate it, because it drains all the good Q&A's from the internet and puts it into its chatlogs, with a mediocre search ontop.

Discord for gaming ramblings and chitchat may be okay, but I hate when software projects misuse it as a support channel.

Give me some forum instead, I know many ppl here on HN dislike discourse, I don't get it though, for me it's a great way to do a forum in a modern way. Can't perceive any UX issues with it (I do know the arguments, I just think they are not true, or much less of a hassle than claimed).

Maybe we need something like discord, but it should have a way to group a question and the following conversation including asking back and answers, and send that to a website where it appears like a forum thread. Basically just select it with mouse, right-click, pick some option, select some keywords for taxonomy and good to go. Should be 5 seconds of work after the person with the problem is satisfied. Yea that is something I would not hate I guess.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#124

Post by captainmuon »

Outlook - Slow, buggy, cluttered UI. It loses mail, especially with shared mailboxes. The search function is slow and fails to find some mails.

There seems to be no real alternative though. All I want is a fast, native email client that supports conversation view and has a good search function. For work, I also require the calendar function, but I don't think implementing that is the hardest part. I know IMAP (or MS Exchange protocol) is a mess, but talking to the server is not the part that is broken for me in Outlook and most other clients. It is search and responsiveness of the UI. But isn't (instant) search basically a solved problem?

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#125

Post by bluedevil2k »

remus wrote: post #28
qsort wrote: post #12

Whatsapp. It's a garbage app, made by a garbage company running like garbage on a garbage protocol. There is no realistic alternative because friends and family expect you to have it.

Out of interest what do you not like about the whatsapp app? The core functionality seems pretty solid to me.

I meet someone. I want to send them a WhatsApp message. I should be able to type their number into the “To” field, type the message, and press “Send”. Instead, WhatsApp makes me create a new contact in my phone, going through the 4-5 button presses to do that. Then I can start a chat with this new contact. Massively inconvenient.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#127

Post by comprev »

theduemmer wrote: post #83

Rockwell Automation's Factory Talk software. It is used for developing GUIs for screens on industrial machines. Horribly expensive, laggy and broken. Versioning is a nightmare with crappy backwards compatibility (if it even decides to open the old project at all without crashing or locking up). God help you if it decides it doesn't want to deploy the screen programs over the network because then it becomes a song and…

Siemens software was also notoriously flakey and required patching workstations to involve a shamanistic ritual to improve the success rate.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#128

Post by riekus »

doubled112 wrote: post #51

Lastpass. I can't replace it because it is the corporate standard at work. The UI seems to work against me. Search? Don't even bother, better off with just your eyeballs. Refresh? No, try logging out and back in. There are better alternatives, both when it was chosen and now, but it wasn't my decision to make.

We use LastPass at work as well, don't understand why they perform search so poorly, the search you can do on the text field is really unusable, in the plugin it works better, but if I select an entry, en then instead of keeping the plugin open, it closes so I have to search it again for the OTP, such poor UX

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#129

Post by teetertater »

captainmuon wrote: post #124

Outlook - Slow, buggy, cluttered UI. It loses mail, especially with shared mailboxes. The search function is slow and fails to find some mails. There seems to be no real alternative though. All I want is a fast, native email client that supports conversation view and has a good search function. For work, I also require the calendar function, but I don't think implementing that is the hardest part. I know IMAP (or MS…

Have you tried outlook.com? I migrated from the desktop app and enabled a bunch of ublock filters to get rid of the ad pane, works pretty well for me. Haven't used shared mailboxes though so can't speak to that.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#130

Post by convolvatron »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

C programming language for arduino. I could switch to AVR8 assembly but I want a better macro assembly plus the code would not be portable to more capable boards. I guess I could run a soft AVR8 on an fpga board and offload the heavy lifting to the fpga but talk about frying pan to the fire.

I do (did) all my AVR work in macro-asm

its really not bad. I guess at a certain size I'd regret al the inlining

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