GoPro warned it may not survive • Hacker News Board

Re: GoPro warned it may not survive

#61

Post by coldtea » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 11:35 PM UTC

camillomiller wrote: post #29

nikisweeting wrote: post #18

Good riddance, GoPro squandered their market lead for many years and shipped bafflingly mediocre software that seemed to add more bugs with every generation. I hope Insta360, DJI, and many more competitors spring up out of their ashes. Assuming fast microsd cards for writes, how much DDR RAM do they really need to buffer videos during recording? 4gb? 8gb?

So US Ai schizophrenia kills an American company and you’re hoping two Chinese companies (one of which the US has banned on fabricated accusations) take its place. Man, what a timeline

Not everybody on HN is from US or takes patriotic loyalty over tech. Purely on tech, those are better. In 2015 GoPro was better - for a while the only real game it town. But they did stupid moves, and missed obvious plays.

Re: GoPro warned it may not survive

#62

Post by coldtea » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 11:39 PM UTC

gonzalohm wrote: post #47

ink_13 wrote: post #21

Curious parallel to iRobot (Roomba): first mover in new product segment, became genericized name for things in that segment, in the end, (possibly in GoPro's case) could not compete in that segment

It's interesting because in software it's usually the opposite. First to market is the winner even with an inferior product. See whatsapp and telegram

>First to market is the winner even with an inferior product. See whatsapp and telegram

I don't think so. We use Excel not Lotus 1-2-3. iOS and Android, not Palm and Blackberry OSes or whatever mobile shit MS had first. We use Gmail not AOL. Google not Lycos or Altavista. Chrome not Netscape. Facebook and co, not Friendster or MySpace. Word not WordPerfect. Access not dBase. And regarding WhatsApp it's not ICQ or MSN Messenger that we use.

Re: GoPro warned it may not survive

#63

Post by rconti » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 12:34 AM UTC

bsimpson wrote: post #46

rconti wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GoPro has been squandering their lead for like 15 years.

I feel like I heard this same rumor a decade+ ago. Not a rumor when announced on a public market, but it's not the first time they've been perceived as a precarious has-been.

They can be a precarious has-been without being actually bankrupt.

Re: GoPro warned it may not survive

#64

Post by JimmyAustin » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 1:04 AM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #20

No sympathy from me. I have a GoPro Hero11 Black and it's easily the worst camera product I've ever used. Damn thing overheats constantly . 4K60 never works for more than 15-or-so minutes even with an AC vent aimed directly at it. 1080p60 is its limit for any long-duration recording, and even then it still overheats from time to time if I'm in a particularly hot environment. Made me realize why so much of their marke…

As a diver, if you jump into moderately warm water (the Great Barrier Reef for instance), that won't save you either. Mine overheats and dies after 15-20 minutes. It took diving near Seattle to keep it going continuously.

Re: GoPro warned it may not survive

#65

Post by minebreaker » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 2:06 AM UTC

ge96 wrote: post #37

ink_13 wrote: post #21

Curious parallel to iRobot (Roomba): first mover in new product segment, became genericized name for things in that segment, in the end, (possibly in GoPro's case) could not compete in that segment

I got a Insta 360 go 3S camera recently and damn the tech is amazing. What's sus is the mandatory phone activation/allowing permissions. Once I activated the camera I deleted the app.

Yes, I have X4. It has amazing hardware, but the activation thing is such a shame. I really wish it were illegal.

And the proprietary video format. I want an open source converter but chances are unlikely.

Re: GoPro warned it may not survive

#66

Post by anonomousename » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 2:11 AM UTC

minebreaker wrote: post #65

ge96 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a Insta 360 go 3S camera recently and damn the tech is amazing. What's sus is the mandatory phone activation/allowing permissions. Once I activated the camera I deleted the app.

Yes, I have X4. It has amazing hardware, but the activation thing is such a shame. I really wish it were illegal. And the proprietary video format. I want an open source converter but chances are unlikely.

insv files? there are plenty of tools on github that can interact with these files and convert them to standard formats

Re: GoPro warned it may not survive

#67

Post by badc0ffee » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 3:07 AM UTC

ge96 wrote: post #37

ink_13 wrote: post #21

Curious parallel to iRobot (Roomba): first mover in new product segment, became genericized name for things in that segment, in the end, (possibly in GoPro's case) could not compete in that segment

I got a Insta 360 go 3S camera recently and damn the tech is amazing. What's sus is the mandatory phone activation/allowing permissions. Once I activated the camera I deleted the app.

Did more or less this with my mother-in-law and her Echo Dot.

Re: GoPro warned it may not survive

#68

Post by FerretFred » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 6:30 AM UTC

plantain wrote: post #57

Weird case of the software letting the hardware down. You did the hard part guys!

Quik is an abomination. I have 3 cameras including the Mission 1 Pro and am satisfied with them. I go on long mucky country dog walks and they've never let me down. Getting the content off the cameras is horrible though: no, I don't want to upload 16Gb of data to your cloud using a poor, 2-bar 4G intermittent phone connection. No. I don't want special editing effects that an only be done in app. Ultimately I pop the card out and use a USB adapter to transfer for editing, but what a pain: surely they could have produced something more user friendly?!

Re: GoPro warned it may not survive

#69

Post by MrDresden » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 6:58 AM UTC

Yeah well as soon as I started seeing it reported that GoPro's were requiring a mobile phone to be used (or at least making it inconvenient to use a camera without one) I lost all interest in getting one.

Re: GoPro warned it may not survive

#70

Post by nikisweeting » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 7:12 AM UTC

camillomiller wrote: post #29

nikisweeting wrote: post #18

Good riddance, GoPro squandered their market lead for many years and shipped bafflingly mediocre software that seemed to add more bugs with every generation. I hope Insta360, DJI, and many more competitors spring up out of their ashes. Assuming fast microsd cards for writes, how much DDR RAM do they really need to buffer videos during recording? 4gb? 8gb?

So US Ai schizophrenia kills an American company and you’re hoping two Chinese companies (one of which the US has banned on fabricated accusations) take its place. Man, what a timeline

I don't care what country they are from if after 15 years they cant figure out how to make a camera that doesn't reset its clock every time you recharge it.