Some of the original Palm devices. I had a Palm IV or V and later a Palm Zire. Bought the former from Malaysia and the latter on a trip to the US. Both were great devices, considering both hardware and software. Instant booting back into the app you were last using after a shutdown, good bundled set of productivity / PIM apps, many third-party apps (I even tried Pippy, a port of Python for my Palm IV/V, but while it worked some, sadly, it crashed a lot), great-looking bright colorful screen (in the case of the Zire; the IV/V was black and white), light weight, the Graffiti handwriting recognition system, etc. One not so good thing was that net connectivity was via separate add-ons like small modems. This was before wireless Internet access became ubiquitous. Unfortunately, as often happens, later changes of biz and tech direction led to changes in products and to the company later closing or being sold, don't remember which. There was also a similar product company started later, called Handspring, IIRC by one or more of the founders of Palm. They too may have had a good product, one might have been called the Treo. Didn't get to try it. Lost track of what happened in that product field after that. Later there was Palm OS, which I think HP bought and then sold off, the usual corporate buy-keep-sell sort of story that happens a lot.
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?
#892Aardvark was the best Q&A system I've ever seen, felt like the most miraculous thing I've seen in my life. Sadly I've only learnt about it from the news when Google bought it and in just about a year Google closed it. It worked like this: you just write (on the website or in ICQ) an question (in whatever a form on whatever a subject, no limitations or rules, just avoid offence), it gets routed to a number of semi-ran…
What was their business model?
I dunno. Maybe they could scan a question for keywords and show some targeted ads but I can't remember any (my brain has already got trained to always ignore ads so I can't even remember if there were ads or if there were no ads, there were not too many if there were).
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#893Atchison topeka & santa fe railway passenger service
I wish I had gotten the chance. I got to ride the Southern Pacific and Rock Island from Tucson to Topeka, but I was only four at the time, so I don't remember too much about it.
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#894I remember... Google Reader - Dont even have to explain why :-) Kuro5hin - Site similar to slashdot Windows Phone UI - The phone didn't work but has changed mobile interfaces a lot. Specially remember the black UI and readability, which is now known as Night mode. Nokia Phones - Now back, bright colors and good camera. I have accidentally drop tested it many times, once from a 2nd floor, which landed on pebbled surfa…
You can use https://theoldreader.com, which is supposed to be similar.
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#895Gorillas.bas
BZFlag on networked SGIs.
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#896My first iPod Nano with a scroll wheel. I could adjust the volume and scrub back/forward through a podcast without looking at the device. All it did was play music and podcasts, and it did it very well.
Now I have an iPod Touch. It's heavier than I want in my pocket for running. It has a bunch of apps besides music which I don't need, and which necessitate it having a lock screen. And ironically, because it has a "touch screen", you can't use it solely by touch.
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#897I miss Umano. It was an app that collated a feed of human-read articles. It’s one of the few iPhone apps that I was willing to pay for a yearly subscription in order to unlock some premium features like offline listening.
Great UI and all of the readers were top-notch with new content every day. Haven’t found a replacement that works as well or where the voices used are as good. Sadly, Dropbox acquired them and then shut them down - really wish I knew why they wanted them in the first place. Just hope the founders got some decent $$$ from the deal for their excellent product.
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#898Pebble - they created a series of smart watches that had: - long battery life (2-7 days depending on model) - e-ink colour screens, that were always on - an extensive app/watchface ecosystem - actual attractive watches I had a series of them and was all-in on the new models announced via kickstarter, when they suddenly disappeared and were bought by Fitbit. All forthcoming products were killed off. They've been prett…
I'm still wearing my Kickstarter Pebble daily!
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#899A diverse CPU collection. For a while we had some good alternatives to Intel x86. Alpha, Sparc, Motorola 68k, PowerPC, MIPS. Now we just have 32 and 64 variants of x86 and ARM. I guess powerpc is technically not dead yet (which is good!) although the new 64 bit powerpc is little endian I think... As for companies, Sun Microsystems. I'd like to think that Sun, if they were still around, would be handling Java better t…
It's a real shame we lost Sun. It was such an innovative company when it came to technology - one of the few examples of really engineering led software teams where management had no say in technical decisions. Unfortunately, the market doesn't really reward world class technical solutions/expertise. I'm still not sure what it rewards. Predatory business practices a la Oracle?
I'm not sure if "rewards" is the correct verb for what is going on.
Rather, I would say that the market "is succeptible to near-permanent exploitation by businesses like Oracle whose services cost way more than the value they deliver"
Re: Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?
#900I remember... Google Reader - Dont even have to explain why :-) Kuro5hin - Site similar to slashdot Windows Phone UI - The phone didn't work but has changed mobile interfaces a lot. Specially remember the black UI and readability, which is now known as Night mode. Nokia Phones - Now back, bright colors and good camera. I have accidentally drop tested it many times, once from a 2nd floor, which landed on pebbled surfa…
Surprised more people haven't named Google Reader - I wonder if it's because we wouldn't choose to use it again, after having been burned before.
Several of the alternatives have gotten pretty good in the meantime. I wish it wasn't dead, but I don't miss it.