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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?

#115

Post by Someone1234 »

asveikau wrote: post #108
Someone1234 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's monopolistic abuse is a very under-reported part of this story. No Google app suite, which Google is absolutely allowed not to make. So Microsoft made the apps for free for Google, google said no, then Microsoft released their own brand clients (e.g. Microsoft YouTube client, Maps, etc) and Google shut it down with lawyers. Can any platform survive without Google ecosystem support? If Windows Phone was the c…

I commented something like this last time I saw this sentiment on HN. You forget, or I forgive you if you never knew, that google made really good apps on the old Windows Mobile. Google Maps was especially good on WinCE. Then Microsoft declared all Win32 apps dead in favor of a very half baked Silverlight runtime that didn't have such luxury features as sockets or scrolling that actually works. So if I were calling t…

You likely have commented that multiple times, since it seems like a copy/paste to a completely different discussion. It isn't relevant here.

Microsoft made the apps for Google, then when that failed released them themselves with no expectation of Google taking over/paying for support. So your point isn't at all relevant to what happened in the Windows Phone situation.

As I said right at the start of my post: Google is fully entitled to refuse to produce apps for Windows Phone. That isn't the problem here, Google effectively blocked their API on that specific platform and their strong market position strangled the platform to death.

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

#116

Post by ajflores1604 »

arendtio wrote: post #42

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 was actually googling them this past week to see what happened to that company and the guy who started it. Looks like he's doing a computer vision AI company. But I remember seeing the first Notion Ink tablet ages ago at some online coverage for CES and thinking it was the coolest thing out at the time. A shame it had so many production issues. Even the second iteration had a clean design and a cool screen on the spine of the device.

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

#117

Post by jccalhoun »

maxxxxx wrote: post #27
belltaco wrote: post #16

Windows Phone Zune

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.
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