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Sunrise is shutting down

blog.sunrise.am

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Re: Sunrise is shutting down

#51

Post by afarrell »

zeveb wrote: post #25
johnatwork wrote: post #11

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?

> Can anyone commit to building a proper business? How about we users commit to building the tools we need, and forget about relying on businesses to do it for us? That's what free software is all about — head on over to the Free Software Foundation and pitch in today!

The problem is that there is a limited number of people who have enough free time to spend the effort to refine a user experience.

Re: Sunrise is shutting down

#52

Post by Mithaldu »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #50
Mithaldu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the landscape of startup "businesses" recently it is becoming more clear that the viability of the product is irrelevant, since the goal is to get noticed as good programmers/designers who made a "real" thing and get hired.

You have to be careful slipping into cynicism, I try to guard against it myself. Shipping something is a better indicator of execution than a degree and it does get people noticed, but it would be an overreach I think to suggest that the majority of businesses start out looking to be bought and acqui-hired. Sometimes the idea is bigger than that, and sometimes it isn't.

Honestly, you got a point.

Re: Sunrise is shutting down

#53

Post by kpil »

pessimizer wrote: post #42
zeveb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can anyone commit to building a proper business? How about we users commit to building the tools we need, and forget about relying on businesses to do it for us? That's what free software is all about — head on over to the Free Software Foundation and pitch in today!

I honestly don't think that Free software can keep up in the short term without a regular dues-paying membership organization behind it. Instead of concentrating on trying to expand interest in software rights, I think the only way forward is to consolidate the already converted. Also, it gives non-developers and non-technical people the ability to feel fully involved. I wish the Chicago FSF had two or three offices…

In the ancient times GNU and the free BSD programs provided a vastly better user experience than the native tools in just about every commercial Unix system.

Also the window managers were at least slightly less awkward to use and at least tweekable.

I think there are a lot of specialised software development tools and products that are free or open source that are generally better than their commercial alternatives.

Although it's complicated as a lot of large players are putting a lot of money into free or open alternatives while still convincing their customers to pay a lot of money for their enterprise alternatives. (I wonder how they do it. I am actually reluctant to use a free database server although it's not uncommon for the commercial database we use to have rather horrid bugs that won't even be fixed since its virtually impossible to reproduce the problem in another system, and we can't debug properly without the source.)

It's only mass market applications and games that gives you enough money to totally outcompete free, maybe a small reason is that typically only a small fraction of the audience can code. I guess the same is true to some extent also for specialised tools in other domains, like financial or medical software, were the users typically can't code and there might be legislation and regulations too.

Re: Sunrise is shutting down

#54

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #33
harlanlewis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I've found Outlook to be the best iOS email client these days Aside from being a massive security risk.

In what sense?

Re: Sunrise is shutting down

#55

Post by ranndino »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #50
Mithaldu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the landscape of startup "businesses" recently it is becoming more clear that the viability of the product is irrelevant, since the goal is to get noticed as good programmers/designers who made a "real" thing and get hired.

You have to be careful slipping into cynicism, I try to guard against it myself. Shipping something is a better indicator of execution than a degree and it does get people noticed, but it would be an overreach I think to suggest that the majority of businesses start out looking to be bought and acqui-hired. Sometimes the idea is bigger than that, and sometimes it isn't.

I'm intimately familiar with the space, especially when it comes to Silicon Valley startups, and it's no cynicism, but reality that most of them do, in fact, start out looking to be bought. In fact, that's the #1 goal of VCs, angel investors & almost all founders.

Re: Sunrise is shutting down

#56

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #54
rayiner wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've found Outlook to be the best iOS email client these days Aside from being a massive security risk.

In what sense?

My understanding is that Outlook for iOS uses a cloud service that talks to the Exchange server and stores your credentials/data: https://blog.winkelmeyer.com/2015/01/warning-microsofts-outl.... So logging in involves giving Microsoft (and indirectly Amazon, since it runs on AWS), clear-text access to your information.

Re: Sunrise is shutting down

#57

Post by pavel_lishin »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #14
johnatwork wrote: post #11

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…

> Its a valid question, clearly they weren't making enough money to survive as a proper business.

Is that the case? They were bought by Microsoft, but does that mean they weren't making enough money before?

Re: Sunrise is shutting down

#58

Post by vendakka »

willwhitney wrote: post #6

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

Slightly shameless self promotion: If you're looking for an Android solution, we're working on TimeFerret, a calendar app that helps you reduce fragmented meeting schedules and track productivity. It's not released yet though. The iOS version will be out first, followed by Android.

[1] http://www.timeferret.com

Re: Sunrise is shutting down

#59

Post by Dirlewanger »

harlanlewis wrote: post #7
emdd wrote: post #2

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.

Their web application rewrite that they did last year though is hot disgusting garbage. I don't know how they managed to make something so slow and sluggish as the "new" Outlook. Downright embarrassing.

Re: Sunrise is shutting down

#60

Post by pavel_lishin »

Mithaldu wrote: post #48
untog wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who's to say that's what they intended at the start? They may well have entirely expected to make it a successful startup, only to find themselves unable to make the profit required to do so, so they got acquihired. If you wanted to use an app with open source and a permanent future you should have installed an open source app. Installing a closed source app created by a business and depending on them open sourci…

I don't even use it and keep away from software like this. I just recognize the morality involved. But hey, thanks for going the expected route. :)

> and keep away from software like this

Software like what?

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