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Ask HN: Successful products that (in)famously lacked "table stakes" features?

3 points by ohong ↗ HN
The first iPhone didn't have copy/paste.

X still doesn't have functional search.

What are other great examples of hardware or software products that succeeded despite missing seemingly "table stakes" features at first / for a while?

Inspired by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42257324

3 comments

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082349872349872
Early LLMS just make shit up and don't double check

Early Facebook had no provision for sharing different things with different people

Early HTML had (and current HTML still has) hyperlinks to nowhere

Early Oracle would occasionally lose your data

Early Macs and Windows* lacked preemptive multiprocessing

Early Unix made no provision to keep a process from overwriting its own code

Early business computers didn't process lowercase alphabetics; early scientific computers didn't process alphabetics at all.

Early desk calculators would just go into an infinite loop if you were foolish enough to divide by 0

Early telephone calls had to be manually routed

Early steam engines were only economically feasible because the mines they were pumping out were coal mines

Early saddles didn't have stirrups

Early alphabets didn't have vowels

etc, etc

* there was even folk wisdom at the time that any sub-3.0 microsoft product was bound to be woefully lacking in at least one area

ohong
This is a very good list! Curious if all of them just came top-of-mind (if so, very impressive haha) or if you did any research / AI assist. Thank you!
082349872349872
All off the top of my head, but if I were to do any research, the first place I'd look would be Burke, Connections (1995)

FWIW, having spent nearly 4 decades in tech, I agree with Buchheit.

EDIT: there may also be relevant case studies in Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (1962) and Moore, Crossing the Chasm (1991)

[in the language of the latter: great products are for the innovators and early adopters market segments; good products are for the early majority and lagging adopter segments]