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Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

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Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#722
Soluto - it profiled your Windows boot time and did some other performance monitoring. There are alternatives (e.g. Task Manager's Startup tab), but I feel like they lack some of its killer features:

  - Option to defer process start, rather than disable it entirely.

  - Aggregated statistics on what other people did, and recommendations for a curated set of processes (e.g. Spotify, Steam).

  - Generally nice UI design.

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#723

The Macbook Pro chassis before the OLED touchstrip. I'm a web developer and learned on MBPs. The touchpad was the right size, the keys had the right amount of travel, the form factor and weight were perfect. Right now I'm considering moving to developing on a Galaga Pro and using Windows/WSL. I've got most things setup on my desktop how I like using HyperTerm (I had too much trouble with Cmder), VS Code, and ZSH. I c…

My recommendation would be a ThinkPad with Fedora. I have 32GB of RAM in mine and they are easy to open, service and upgrade :). I use both and the last year has been the single best year I've had with Linux in terms of 'it just works', before that I used Ubuntu and while it was generally fine I prefer Fedora. The cinnamon spin is superb and it makes windows 10 feel clunky by comparison on the daily usability.

How much money did you spend on it? I've looking for a Lenovo with 32GB for a while but always find just customized versions by third-party sellers

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has ditched so many cool things in the MacBook line. 1) MagSafe. I know they really want to go all in on USB-C, but the original MagSafe connector was awesome. Even the weaker 2.0 version was nice. There were two instances where that connector saved my laptop. 2) The laser-drilled power indicator. That was so cool. It looked like the light magically appeared through the aluminum. Now there's no indication whats…

While I also love MagSafe and its features, wouldn't having a more standard port is much better? iPhones are constantly bashed by a group of users because of not having USB-C connectors. Having four USB-C ports with identical capabilities on a MacBook pro is a more pragmatic and flexible solution to have, when compared to MagSafe. On the power level and power button issue, Apple changes its features to shape customer…

nope. i've had my usb-c mbp for 1.5 years and the usb ports are already wearing out. the power cable slips out of 2 of the ports just from gravity.

my last magsafe macbook air lasted 5 years as a daily driver. i doubt this piece of shit will last another year. i've already had to send it in once for a logic board replacement once.

the keyboard on this one is starting to go as of this week (one key not registering), so i think i'm gonna have to send it in again.

not to mention the pain in the ass of carrying dongles everywhere

I honestly consider buying a 2015 mbp and selling my newer one at least once a month. That was the last good laptop apple made.

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has ditched so many cool things in the MacBook line. 1) MagSafe. I know they really want to go all in on USB-C, but the original MagSafe connector was awesome. Even the weaker 2.0 version was nice. There were two instances where that connector saved my laptop. 2) The laser-drilled power indicator. That was so cool. It looked like the light magically appeared through the aluminum. Now there's no indication whats…

While I also love MagSafe and its features, wouldn't having a more standard port is much better? iPhones are constantly bashed by a group of users because of not having USB-C connectors. Having four USB-C ports with identical capabilities on a MacBook pro is a more pragmatic and flexible solution to have, when compared to MagSafe. On the power level and power button issue, Apple changes its features to shape customer…

>While I also love MagSafe and its features, wouldn't having a more standard port is much better?

And to piggyback off of this, I imagine the future will be wireless charging in this realm, so in theory you wouldn't need to worry about charger cables plugged into your laptop at all.

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#727
post #713

The Graffiti shorthand for Palm PDAs [1]. It still far outshines any handwriting recognition systems available on modern devices both in terms of speed and usability. Also, not really an individual product, but I miss durable consumer devices - I used a flipphone that had survived being run over by a tractor for years after the fact, and my old laptop could probably stop a bullet. If we could develop touchscreen glas…

For the keyboard, see: https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/a/42032

Alas, it seems to have been removed from the Google Play Store. I'll have to see if I can find it elsewhere, preferably malware-free.

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#728
post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recommendation would be a ThinkPad with Fedora. I have 32GB of RAM in mine and they are easy to open, service and upgrade :). I use both and the last year has been the single best year I've had with Linux in terms of 'it just works', before that I used Ubuntu and while it was generally fine I prefer Fedora. The cinnamon spin is superb and it makes windows 10 feel clunky by comparison on the daily usability.

How much money did you spend on it? I've looking for a Lenovo with 32GB for a while but always find just customized versions by third-party sellers

Why not add the RAM yourself?

Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

#729
post #194

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_text Back in the day, to chat with a coworker you and him would connect into the same unix box and do `talk `[0]. You didn't have to press Enter to send a message, the other person could see what you were typing on every keystroke. Like in Google Docs. I probably only like this idea because it's different. The wikipedia article mentions that older versions of the ICQ messenger…

Not only could you chat in real time, you could also share parts of each others console. When I was in school, this was very useful as most of my friends were older than me. A couple of them effectively tutored me over ytalk (this was before we had learned what screen could do, then we switched to that). ytalk was great for ad hoc chatting and sharing, though.
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