31–40 of 139 posts
This is becoming a tiring pattern. I've just gotten used to the UI. Can anyone commit to building a proper business? Is Sustainability no longer a virtue of creating a service/application?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without their users they wouldn't have gotten this nice cushy acquihire.
So, everybody wins. The users got a free product for a few years, Sunrise got acquihired.
Well, this is disappointing. I was late to the Sunrise party, so I've barely been able to use it. I'm not thrilled about heavily integrating Outlook into my future work, so I guess it's off to find another solution.
It's a bit unexpected, but I've found Outlook to be the best iOS email client these days. It's bloated and has quite a few rendering bugs, but for the basic email-as-task-list workflow pioneered by Mailbox et al I haven't come across any current players that are better. Kind of sad that the explosion of clever email and calendar apps a few years ago has collapsed into a handful that aren't as good as we used to have.
Aside from being a massive security risk.
This is becoming a tiring pattern. I've just gotten used to the UI. Can anyone commit to building a proper business? Is Sustainability no longer a virtue of creating a service/application?
Its a valid question, clearly they weren't making enough money to survive as a proper business. Would you have paid more for their service? And if so enough more that the reduction in users covered the cost of operations? One of the things that that comes up a lot with new ventures is that they don't know the answer to those questions when they start, but they do when they either die or succeed. In this case it seems…
Once a startup gets bought, I look for alternatives. If they don't shut down, I still learned something new! But usually they do. In this case, I landed on Fantastical [1] — it's a little pricy but completely worth it. (Mac/iOS only.) [1]: https://flexibits.com/fantastical
Sometimes there are no great alternatives :( I still use Sparrow for email on Mac. Would use it on iOS too, but it's quite buggy in iOS9. Spark is _almost_ as good as Sparrow on iOS, but it's free which makes me wonder whether they're doing some kind of data mining for revenue and how long they will be around. P.S. +1 for fantastical, it's great!
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So, everybody wins. The users got a free product for a few years, Sunrise got acquihired.
"Everybody wins" would involve everyone walking away with equal or more than they had at the time of parting, which could be done by opening the source of the product instead of letting it die of bitrot.
I get what you're saying here, but the Sunrise team owe their users nothing.
This is becoming a tiring pattern. I've just gotten used to the UI. Can anyone commit to building a proper business? Is Sustainability no longer a virtue of creating a service/application?
Unfortunately, I realize this attitude might make it harder to actually make a sustainable business around solving a non-trivial problem, but as a user I've been burned too many times by companies suddenly getting acquired and then ceasing to exist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Everybody wins" would involve everyone walking away with equal or more than they had at the time of parting, which could be done by opening the source of the product instead of letting it die of bitrot.
Sunrise walked away with an acquihire, users walked away with several years of free service of an app they liked. I get what you're saying here, but the Sunrise team owe their users nothing.
"We never intend to make this an actual product. This is only here to get us attention and hired. If you use this, be aware we'll kill it as soon as anyone hires us."
The overarching lesson I'm slowly learning is to not get too comfy with any saas products. Who knows how long they'll stick around, regardless of if they're great / popular / profitable.
You'd choose some available times, it gives you a link which you send to whoever you want to meet with, and the recipient books a time slot with a couple of clicks. It updates in real time so if you book something new, the slot disappears. It even has a little iOS keyboard to generate these links.
Does anyone know a similar replacement service? Nothing beats just pasting someone a link and letting them pick one of three times you chose.