Want a killer product? Become more opinionated • Hacker News Board

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#51

Post by bsenftner » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 1:48 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #43

>> Opinionated products are better than flexible products. But they will rub some users the wrong way, and that's OK. In the open source CAD world you see the distinction in Solvespace vs FreeCAD. One is loved by its users as an easy, highly productive tool, if a bit odd looking. The other is regarded as more capable and feature complete - which is true - but is considered bloated, annoying, and crash-prone by users…

This is there the Proctor & Gamble branding approach to products begins to make sense. In development, there is one code base, but multiple configurations of build. In the market the company has a "product line" of software, each opinionated towards a different work flow. Similar to being multi-lingual, this is multi-opinionazation to address different process styles.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#52

Post by thejosh » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #45

About a year ago I wrote a Mac application to strip formatting out of copy-pasted text. (Note: I was mostly interested in getting an application in the store as a learning exercise.) In general, copying formatted text is a mess on Mac. (I haven't tried an equivalent Windows app, although I'm primarily a Windows developer.) The problem is that many of the data structures for formatted text don't preserve context. IE,…

Isn’t that ctrl+shift+v? It is for Linux and I think windows too?

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#53

Post by cma » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

a4isms wrote: post #16

jhunter1016 wrote: post #8

If you are chasing RFPs, propose and build everything that checks all the boxes. If you are a product company and building for people who will hopefully love your product, it’s your job to understand the customers, understand the data, and build the right solution rather than building ALL the solutions.

Some where in the mythical “Business 101” course is the lesson that you can either find a customer and figure out what they need (customer-focus), or find a need and figure out which customers have that need (product-focus). This dynamic is everywhere: Apple has customers, they look at what their customers need, and do various product extensions (like streaming games) to fill their needs. Whereas many vendors on the…

It is more honest to say Apple breaks things like streaming games to fulfill business needs of locking out or taxing third party providers of it and making their own. Not to fulfill cusomer needs: blocking it hurt customers.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#54

Post by lotsofpulp » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 1:50 PM UTC

cma wrote: post #50

hermannj314 wrote: post #9

Amazon recently turned on support for Amazon Sidewalk on all of their hardware in my home (convention) and decided it was fine to do this because I could opt out (configuration). That decision was the final straw for me. Every Amazon device is now unplugged, Prime membership and Amazon music canceled, no longer shopping on their site. Doing what is "easy for the average user" is not sufficient for me, some configurat…

Can you opt out of Apple's similar thing for airtags?

Yes.

https://www.macworld.com/article/347243/how-to-opt-out-of-th...

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#55

Post by teekert » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

Dear chat clients, I never want any formatting on any pasted text, ever. Thank you. (That is destination theme matching indeed.)

And with respect to the Whatsapp - Signal comparison, Signal came to the stage (at least for me) when whatsapp was already huge (and also had a focus on privacy by the way!), so that comparison is unfair.

Other than this, I agree with the premise.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#56

Post by gwbas1c » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 1:53 PM UTC

thejosh wrote: post #52

gwbas1c wrote: post #45

About a year ago I wrote a Mac application to strip formatting out of copy-pasted text. (Note: I was mostly interested in getting an application in the store as a learning exercise.) In general, copying formatted text is a mess on Mac. (I haven't tried an equivalent Windows app, although I'm primarily a Windows developer.) The problem is that many of the data structures for formatted text don't preserve context. IE,…

Isn’t that ctrl+shift+v? It is for Linux and I think windows too?

Yeah, but who knows that? Apparently the author of the article doesn't know that.

Anyway, my app lets you see what's in the clipboard and adjust how much you want it cleaned.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#57

Post by ryandrake » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 1:57 PM UTC

thejosh wrote: post #52

gwbas1c wrote: post #45

About a year ago I wrote a Mac application to strip formatting out of copy-pasted text. (Note: I was mostly interested in getting an application in the store as a learning exercise.) In general, copying formatted text is a mess on Mac. (I haven't tried an equivalent Windows app, although I'm primarily a Windows developer.) The problem is that many of the data structures for formatted text don't preserve context. IE,…

Isn’t that ctrl+shift+v? It is for Linux and I think windows too?

The simpler keystroke should do the more common operation. My guess is 90-99% of the time, users want to paste text and match the format to the existing doc or app. Therefore, cmd+v should strip formatting if done according to that rule.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#58

Post by WesolyKubeczek » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

I understand where the author is coming from, and that it tends to work sometimes, blablabla, but if I saved a dollar every time an "opinionated" application, framework, library, or programming language appeared on Github, I would have likely saved for a slightly used Toyota by now.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#59

Post by cma » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #54

cma wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you opt out of Apple's similar thing for airtags?

Yes. https://www.macworld.com/article/347243/how-to-opt-out-of-th...

So both are opt out. Which one is worse?

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#60

Post by ghaff » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

Mauricebranagh wrote: post #23

MattGaiser wrote: post #5

> I will design it for the average user rather than the power user. But do power users or average users drive purchasing and ensure market share? I was at a company that tried to switch to Google Cloud over Office 365. Know what saved MSFT? The Excel and Word power users. Average users had no opinion, but the power users all wanted Office.

And that's a pretty low bar for power users BTW. Google cloud is ok for "formatting your Christmas card list in Norwegian" to use a literary allusion. But when you come to writing specs and reports used by multiple teams word /excel is still by far the best solution.

GSuite (and probably O365) are probably actually pretty good examples of opinionated vs. the all the options offline MS Office.

Personally, myself and people I work with mostly like GSuite. We're probably generally described as heavy users but not power users, i.e. we don't need the features that only a few percent of people do. I actually find GSuite much more streamlined for my uses and collaborative editing is such a win. I do create fairly long docs sometimes but they're not complicated docs.