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Ask HN: Products that suck but you still use?

33 points by albertgudl ↗ HN
Hi, I'm a full stack developer who really wants to build something.

What are products you use frequently but still hate/they suck? What are products you use frequently but think they could be done better?

81 comments

[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 133 ms ] thread
limw
I think ,win 10 is the only product,which sucks,but have to use it.
psyclobe
Logitech harmony universal remotes
mattrp
Or any kind of remote
adperry
I actually like mine and get super upset when mine is misplaced and have to use my phone.
sandov
Cell phones.
kochikame
To this day, typing on a smartphone still annoys the crap out of me on a daily basis

Dumbphones were better in this regard

tehlike
There must be a t9 keyboard for android.
sgillen
I really don’t like most pdf viewers. Adobe acrobat and preview are the two I go between and I don’t really love either.
pinewurst
Acrobat bites but I actually like Preview. Okular (on Linux) is the other one I use but don’t think it’s any better than Preview.
sgillen
I actually usually like preview but for very large files (1000+ pages) and for some form fillables I’ve had a lot of issues. Unfortunately those are two situations I run into a lot!
JoshuaRLi
On Linux, give qpdfview a shot. It's quite lightweight and snappy.
kochikame
I know the reason why, but I still get annoyed when basically everything I want to do with a PDF can never be done with Acrobat
byproxy
Try Sumatra PDF, if your system supports it. It's very light-weight. Since web-browsers have basically become PDF readers, I've kind of abandoned it, but I may go back to it once Microsoft deprecates their version of Edge.
philonoist
The whole corporate world in my experience uses Foxit.
iron0013
I also dislike most pdf viewers. I got a little obsessive about it and eventually concluded that the best options are PDF-Xchange on Windows and PDF Expert on MacOS and iOS
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pinewurst
iTunes
kochikame
I was so happy when I ditched iTunes a few years back

It's entirely replaceable with other services and software now

shakna
Ffmpeg.

The results don't suck. They're awesome.

However, the insane number of combinations of flags, the fact order of flags can change things, and the "defaults aren't best" are all issues that make it a true pain to use.

... Yet the GUIs and wrappers that exist to make it friendlier inevitably either make it slower (Handbrake's thread limitations) or don't support about half of the filters it can provide.

true_religion
I always felt that ffmpeg should give up on the config flags except for basic presets, and use Lua scripting to allow any deeper modification of the workflow.
Aearnus
Then you end up with something that has the usability of `wpa_supplicant`: confusing command line arguments _and_ strange, hard to parse input files.
Ultramanoid
Hah. Let's combine your pain and mine. I actually use FFmpeg daily in Android. Terminal, indeed.
RandomBacon
My vehicle's infotainment system.
mattrp
Agreed... I know I have 39.5% oil life but I have no clue how many remaining miles of gas I have left. Thank you to Honda for messing up their trip computer in 2016... oh and the disappearing USB ports, dc ports and cup holders vs the prior gen Honda’s.
ericpauley
Are you aren't just on the wrong screen? I have a current gen civic and oil life is one of the info screens, you can use a button on the left side of the steering wheel to cycle through them (stacked pages with an "i"). The mpg page also shows remaining miles on current tank.
mattrp
Yes there is a screen for mpg/remaining but oil life is always displayed by default. If it were me I would have maybe implemented a timer on oil life so maybe you see it at startup but then it rolls to fuel stat later. But ask me why I can’t see the bottom of the analog fuel gauge... that’s where my wife stacks a bunch of crap. So it’s a combo of user error and rigid design! :)
millergaston
Asana.

Switched to Quire but since they dont have the Gantt chart, still need to use Asana.

chendragon
Facebook Messenger.

They keep moving the buttons and the UI every once in a while, hiding message requests in some new place every once in a while. They never talk about the changes and the Messenger Web app is slow to load and often has UI bugs.

true_religion
Gmail.

It's wildly slow going from one mail to another, but I still gravitate towards it because I don't want to install an actual app.

mattrp
Heh, Mac mail because I don’t like using a web browser for mail.
dzhiurgis
Yeah but that still slow. If you scroll while it loads your 8k of emails, you end up in a weird scroll position. Working with received attachments is always a mistery.

Plus it's the only Mac app that loads it's main window instead of your draft letter when clicking on app icon.

Oh and no cmd+(+/-) for zoom while composing emails.

And it occasionally opens while I watch YouTube in full screen

csixty4
Amazon Music. I paid for it because I could intermingle my Bandcamp music and obscure CD rips and then they took that feature away.

I should switch to Google Music but that doesn't work with my Echo very well.

The state of online music sucks.

brickmort
What's not to like about Amazon Music? I use it for streaming music and have been pretty happy with it.
csixty4
I want all my music in one place. If I want to hear the new Janelle Monae, I want it there. If I want to hear Braindead Sound Machine's cover of Walking After Midnight that I ripped off the EP I bought in 1996, I want it right there. I want my voice assistant to be able to find any of it without me having to know if it's something in the streaming library or if it's something I ripped.

There's only two streaming services left that let you do that: Apple and Google. And I'm not letting Apple anywhere near my music collection after what that iTunes Match bug did to my mp3s.

That leaves Google. So now I'll have to upload my music to yet another service until they too decide not to allow uploads anymore and then I'm screwed.

lifehacked
I had my bank cancel all amazon music subscription charges after paying for it for almost a year after I stopped using it. Turns out they cancelled ALL charges from amazon. Am I a bad person?
billfruit
Windows 10: its update process is broken it randomly cuts of in the middle of doing my work. Then it spends hours rebooting, doing its update etc, all the time, the pc remains unusable.
lifehacked
This is configurable.
lstamour
And in the most recent version, it appeared to install more of an update behind the scenes, so there was less waiting if a reboot was required. As to why it’s more visible than Apple updates, I blame the lack of good, settled power management strategies for overnight wake-from-sleep use cases that Apple can specifically include parts and driver tuning for but that Microsoft seems to have a hard time with... oh and they refused to break legacy apps by introducing new APIs that restore app state after a reboot, which Apple introduced back in 10.7 Lion if I recall correctly.
scarface74
Roku. I have three Roku TVs and a Roku stick. My main one also has an AppleTV 4K attached.

Why do I hate it?

The remote has hardcoded buttons that went to the highest bidder.

Half the home screen is an ad and even the screensaver has an ad.

Corrado
As a rider on this comment, I would like to add Plex. Plex used to have plugins, which were super useful. However, in the latest version they removed the plugins in favor of their own options. Instead of being able to stream local news from the local news station's website, we now have the opportunity to pay for this stream instead.
scarface74
That sucks. I haven’t used Plex in about three months and didn’t realize it. The Plex channels had the benefit of being able to watch supported video on websites like the CW without commercials.
xfitm3
Yes plex is slowly eroding away - but it’s still the best option IMO.
rgovostes
Anki's interface really discourages me from using it. Quizlet seems like a much better alternative (though spaced repetition requires a subscription).

A while back I was looking for something that would index my external hard drives so I could browse them and view file metadata. None of the options seemed appealing.

I really want a personal, locally-hosted wiki that lets me write in Markdown, keep revision history, link between documents, and attach files. Having inline-executable code like Jupyter would be cool also. I've bought a few versions of VoodooPad only to be disappointed by how basic it is.

audiometry
Yeah. I use it, but I don’t feel like I have any facility with it. Flash cards sound simple, but there is a lot of subtlety to more advanced use cases. The problem is they cannot communicate the ideas very clearly,quickly. Thus the interface feels pretty awful because I am not entirely sure what everything does. I think it has a lot of power, just a difficult learning curve. The shared decks online are hit and miss too. (From a learning Japanese person’s view)
ccffph
I have been looking for something similar and settled on using notion.so

I dont like how self host is not an option but its very clean, supports markdown, has an awesome interface as a personal wiki, and the free tier has plenty of space.

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makz
Macbook Pro 13" nTB 2016

Sucks, but for me the alternatives suck even more.

billfruit
Ubisofts Uplay: they have serious problems with user accounts and log in. They hoisted a 2factor authentication on it, but some thing's not right with it: fails to accept the 2 factor codes for many users saying code is wrong, locking people out from there accounts and purchased games, even locking out their access to support which may be the only way of resolving these issues.

So frustrating that something as fundamental as user login is botched up by a major software company.

gesman
1. BMW infotainment screen/menus.

3,500+ variations of menus and multiple ways to accomplish the same thing via combinations of push-button and turn-knobs. This is becoming such a nonsense.

I ended up using my phone as GPS device and ignoring BMW anything-navigation wise.

While mechanically almost perfect car - my next car is going to be another brand just because of this bad design decisions.

2. BMW steering wheel. With weird bulges on sides and no space to rest the hand at it's lowest point.

Corrado
Apple iCloud.

    * Sharing photos is super difficult, much more so than it should be.
    * We have multiple devices spread across multiple family members and its not clear what belongs to whom.
    * Pricing seems to be a bit out of line: 3/month for 200GB; 10/month for 2TB.
yakkers
As someone who uses iCloud Photo Library extensively, sharing an album of photos is horrible.

You can’t just instantly share an existing photo album, you have to select the contents of the album, then share it to a shared album. Even worse is that the photos will then have a copy uploaded into the shared album, even if the album was already on iCloud Photo Library.

ncmncm
Every. Single. Thing.

It would be more meaningful to get a list of the two or three things that don't suck.

Bananas. LEDs. Maybe cats, on a good day.

zxcmx
With you on the bananas but I’ve had to put darkeners on all the superbright LEDs in the house :/

Not the fault of the LEDs themselves I guess.