Ask HN: Which discontinued app or tool would you still like to use today?
Hi HN,
I asked a similar question a couple of days ago, but for some reason it didn't manage to get to 'Ask HN'. However, before it sunk into oblivion, I got some really interesting comments [1]. So I'd like to give my tiny research one last chance. ;-)
So the question is:
Which app or tool (if any!) that is no longer developed or supported — or perhaps so far from mainstream that it’s practically dead — you used to use a lot, like a lot and now miss a lot? Can be pro or personal.
Feel free to share more than one, if you like.
Thanks for any comment. :-)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31425990
73 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadIn the 20+ years since it came out, I still haven’t found an easier and more productive way to create a CRUD app, or to quickly put together a simple GUI.
It was such a well made, beautiful app. Microsoft bought it and shut it down. They asked existing users to export their data over to MS Todo. The export and MS account creation didn't work for me even after multiple tries. Plus, Microsoft ToDo just didn't have the same feature set and aesthetics as Wunderlist, so I just moved on to another app.
Other list apps have become more of a todo list app. Wunderlist encouraged all kinds of lists. - movies to watch. - packing list for weekend trip. - shopping list. - yardsale items.
I got the Handera with the add on cards and for a glorious afternoon I had my phone's sim card installed. Why it had to use AAA batteries for that.. oh yeah, batteries still sucked back then.
Google Inbox - neat interface for email (however Spike is an excellent alternative)
Also here: https://github.com/apache/incubator-retired-wave
One of the most surprising 'departures' imho. :-)
Heroku- see ample discussions from recent weeks on HN
SourceTree- last time I tried it a year or so ago it was in a sorry state. Most problematically: it had runaway CPU usage on macOS. Had to kill the whole app whenever it was idle or the fans would go nuts. Eventually I gave up; the bug had been there for a long time and they showed no interest in fixing it.
Whilst other products do similar things in terms of tracking accounts, I miss the forecast graph that would model how your money would perform over time.
Google Reader. I can't stand video or audio, and strongly prefer written materials so email subscriptions and RSS are how I keept up.
sourcetree
hackpad
dropbox pre-enterprise pre-electron
one-drive pre-Files-on-Demand
I don't care how many issues it has. It was the last tool that made creative web and game design possible without needing to be a full stack JS developer.
Part of the reason the web looks like a wasteland of responsive templates from 2012 is because the death of Flash changed how we wasted time on the Internet. Gone are the games and artistic experiences. In its place came content mills churning out GIF-laden quizzes, listicles and newsletters with a ton of ads littering every page. Buzzfeed is now a publicly traded company on the basis of how well it flattened Internet culture into it's one-size fits-all world.
I really wish I still had the HDD with the files on it to reminisce.
Thank you for the comment!
[0] https://www.openfl.org
These days, Windows has good file indexing out of the box... but I still miss the "recently changed files" pane.
I never heard of Ava Find and will enjoy learning more about its features if I get the chance.
Google Reader - RSS reader via the web
FTP - the protocol - why can't I download files from gnu's FTP site in Chrome?
Flash - if they just sandboxed it, and allowed no local file access, it would be ok.
Delicio.us - the social bookmark service
Edwin - Turbo Power Software - a nice macro recording text editor for DOS
Microsoft Office 2000 Professional, with Access
Visual Basic 6.0
This makes me really happy. VB6 was my start into programming.
I got my first computer at 16 (we were poor). I immediately found out how to download pirated VB6 (sorry Microsoft). It was almost the exact size of the available space on my 2GB HDD, which had nothing more than the bare windows install, AOL, and a download manager. It took like four weeks to download the ~1GB, because I could only run it surreptitiously overnight to keep my father happy, and it was dial-up 56k. It was difficult to write to cd because of buffer issues.
When I finally got it installed, I think I had something like 8mb of free space on the disk. I could work on one VB6 project and have like 2 mp3 files.
Eventually I got an ELN account and I was able to uninstall AOL, freeing up a lot of space.
Those were really good times.
<3 VB6
https://web.archive.org/web/20091125090955/http://pokebook.c...
The simplest, quickest, cleanest, and most efficient social networking site you've never used.
Do you want to buy/remake it and seek VC funding and exit before getting customers?
Asking for a friend!
Perhaps some answers to the future questions may lie in the past. Is the current/new toolstack always better than the old one? I'm just curious. :-)
To some extent, true, it is an exercise in validating, say, business hypotheses. I guess it's quite normal for founders. However, I’m already VC backed, so I’m not sure if your friend is really onto something. ;-)
Thanks!
Yes, I know about Vivaldi, but it's just not the same.
But yeah, I really miss Opera; still the best browser to date. I also really liked the Opera Dragonfly devtools.
I really miss the super-obvious read-read-read-read-read, map bad sectors and move data to good sectors process. With modern data recovery software, I can't always tell what it's doing (with mechanical drives).
-- Okay so after looking up Spinrite on Wikipedia, I'm confused. I thought it was long discontinued. It was last updated in 2014 but Steve Gibson still has it as a current product.
Either way, I'm skeptical it'll recreate the recovery experience of my MFM days.
SSDs, with their wear-levelling tech, prevents SpinRite from working correctly.
And unless you are dealing with large-volume, cool storage, or cold storage, who TF uses spinning-rust drives anymore?
I kept so much info on that app. Got a little tired of double-clicking to expand/collapse outline levels, tho.
Switched over to OmniOutliner until I missed an upgrade.
It's plugin system really made it the swiss army knife of one's multimedia ecosystem. My personal favorite was the iPod syncing, letting me bypass iTunes entirely.
Unfortunately it feels like streaming platforms, with their proprietary players and locked content, functionally kill any emergence of a phenomenon like winamp.