Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed? • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by danpalmer » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:29 AM UTC

Lowkeyloki wrote: post #323

danpalmer wrote: post #306

Google Wave. At work we use Slack, Email, Google Docs, etc. We’re never quite happy with how things work - what should be email vs Slack, at what point should a a Slack conversation become an email conversation to be visible to more people, when should that turn into a doc for a more formal review process, etc. We’re trialling Notion for some things and it’s good. What should be a Wiki? Whenever we have any of these…

I agree! I think the reason Wave failed was due to poor marketing. I never truly understood what it was until it had already been killed off. I'll admit it was a hard sell when you boot into a blank page that looks like a word processor. It was sadly ahead of its time and was probably pitched to the wrong audience from the start. Rather than trying to explain why Wave is better than email and chat to the internet at…

Yeah I'm not even sure that pitching it for business productivity would have been enough. The reasons it shines: chat, collaborative editing, blurred lines between documents, emails, and chat – those are built on concepts that didn't exist back then. We can see the value of it now precisely because we've had the intermediate stage of Slack/Docs/Gmail/etc. If that doesn't mean "ahead of its time" I don't know what does.

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

#412

Post by gcb0 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:30 AM UTC

Lowkeyloki wrote: post #335

Ubuntu's Unity desktop. People really hated it because (IMHO) it had a really rocky launch. Ubuntu replaced a very usable GNOME 2.x desktop with an alpha-quality replacement. And Canonical was riding high from having "won" the Linux for desktop game and was pushing their weight around, giving the impression that they were ignoring the feedback from their users. Unity wasn't without its missteps. But it matured quite…

you only think you liked unity because now you despise gnome3.

the sooner you accept the gnome legacy is dead and move on to kde the better. I know it will be difficult, but it's inevitable.

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

#413

Post by r3bl » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:30 AM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #392

gtf21 wrote: post #58

Pebble smart-watches. I had them from the original kickstarter, and eventually had a Pebble Time Round which I loved. Whilst I now would never buy a smartwatch, I think that theirs were by far the best. Slimline, with a great UI, and nice functionality, and also not locked into either mobile ecosystem. I'm not entirely sure what caused their death, but my personal view is that they tried to become too big, and I don'…

> I don't think the wearables market is really that valuable. Hasn't the Apple Watch been outselling Rolex etc.? https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-outsold-the-entire-swi...

Rolex is a terrible example. On top of their products aiming to last generations (nobody's going to leave Apple Watch to their grandchildren), they're also well known for not reporting any sales figures what so ever.

Nobody can tell you how many Rolexes there are in total, let alone the sales figures of a specific model of a Rolex. That's partially what makes them so valuable. People usually don't change Rolexes every year when the new model is out.

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

#414

Post by Liron » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:30 AM UTC

sorum wrote: post #394

jonas21 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, which features are you bitter about? I was a long-time Inbox user and was dreading the day I'd have to switch back to Gmail. But now that I've done it, I've found that I don't really miss Inbox at all.

Apart from what’s already been mentioned (bundles, general UI, speed etc), the killer feature for me was how Reminders were integrated into the email itself. When an email came in that I couldn’t quickly resolve and move on, I’d write the short ToDo to myself about what I specifically need to do. Back in Gmail I go to my flagged/starred emails and I know I’m supposed to do something about the email, but many times I’…

Maybe you can add a Draft to the thread with a note to yourself about what the next action should be.

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

#415

Post by parenthesis » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:36 AM UTC

throwaway8879 wrote: post #158

jdietrich wrote: post #154

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…

I own several. I'd trust any gear used by Allan Holdsworth. Not that it will help sound like him! I'm digging the recent explosion of headless guitars, Strandberg et al. I started playing on a Strat-shaped body so anything different throws me off. Even the bridge position on a Les Paul type body spooks me. I guess one of the reasons headless/compact guitars don't go outside of the niche of progressive/fusion circles…

I don't know whether this counts as `cool' or not (David Bowie's Tin Machine):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEtOjC0NLFw

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

#416

Post by raverbashing » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:36 AM UTC

k_sze wrote: post #251

BeOS, a modern operating system that supported SMP, preemptive multitasking, and a journaling file system waaaaay before Windows 95 was even released.

Killed by MS anticompetitive practices

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

#417

Post by jinjiang » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:37 AM UTC

Ericsson T28 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson_T28 It has an awesome feature: quickly press the power button when it's off, and then you can see what time it is now. I really love this feature because with it I could quickly see the time without turning it on or waiting, for example when I am falling asleep or on the plane. But haven't seen this similar feature any more. So sorry for that.

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

#418

Post by znpy » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:37 AM UTC

mkhpalm wrote: post #234

com2kid wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xmpp is a disaster, I have otp enabled and all too often messages are delivered to the wrong machine, but encrypted with a different key, so it is pure garbage and lost forever. That is on the off chance that the message is actually delivered. Trying to get omemo up and running, but some clients (pidgin) have next to no support for it, while others only support it, and it seems it is only supported on ejabberd as of…

> Xmpp is a disaster, I have otp enabled and all too often messages are delivered to the wrong machine, but encrypted with a different key, so it is pure garbage and lost forever. What part of XMPP is doing that? I think you're talking about a bug in an implementation of XMPP not the protocol itself. Its like saying you go to an address and get the wrong website. Hard to blame an issue like that on HTTP rather than a…

> I think you're talking about a bug in an implementation of XMPP not the protocol itself.

Is a protocol worth anything without an implementation?

Is a protocol good even if it only has poor implementations?

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

#419

Post by gcb0 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:37 AM UTC

inferiorhuman wrote: post #353

milkytron wrote: post #181

WebOS. When I used it, I saw it as a blend between Android and iOS. It had the beauty, polish, and responsiveness that I loved on iPhones, but had the developer options and open community that Android had. It was a great product, and it's a shame that now we really only have two choices for smartphone operating system, WebOS being neither.

I always felt that for a product called webOS, Palm had one of the worst mobile browsers. The big missing feature I remember was lack of support for downloadable fonts. I don't remember the Touchpad itself being particularly polished (although the corded charger itself is supposed to be very high quality). Some of the touch stuff was pretty slick (the rubber band effect in particular), but a lot of it was pretty infu…

I don't know if I want to value your opinion on browsers of the top feature for you is custom font download.

it was the mobile browser I could access more sites' content with at the time. even flash content, for better or worse! also I could download anything and open any local file, not just what apple allowed me.

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

#420

Post by franee » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:38 AM UTC

Lowkeyloki wrote: post #335

Ubuntu's Unity desktop. People really hated it because (IMHO) it had a really rocky launch. Ubuntu replaced a very usable GNOME 2.x desktop with an alpha-quality replacement. And Canonical was riding high from having "won" the Linux for desktop game and was pushing their weight around, giving the impression that they were ignoring the feedback from their users. Unity wasn't without its missteps. But it matured quite…

Yup unity was what spelled the end for the Ubuntu wave. I think this has been the single biggest mistake they made. I think it will take at least a decade again to bring the linux desktop to the masses.

Gnome 2 was perfect for people coming from windows moving over. Gnome 3 is like windows vista.

Me personally, I was really disappointed (of course you can install gnome 2 etc). But at the end of the day you just want something that works out of the box.