[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Which discontinued app or tool would you sti...
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       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
        
       Author : leszekzawadzki
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2022-05-26 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
       | brundolf wrote:
       | Both are still technically available but on life-support:
       | 
       | 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.
        
         | noloblo wrote:
         | +1 sourcetree
        
         | lomex2000 wrote:
         | I'm still using SourceTree on a daily basis. No issues for me.
         | Really surprised why it got mentioned here a couple of times.
        
       | pskinner wrote:
       | Comic chat
        
       | ComradePhil wrote:
       | Ava Find - It was a Windows-only file indexing and search
       | software. You could find any files instantly by name and pattern
       | matching. It also had a window with recently changed files which
       | it actively monitored to update indexes.
       | 
       | These days, Windows has good file indexing out of the box... but
       | I still miss the "recently changed files" pane.
        
       | buescher wrote:
       | I don't have much use for such a thing anymore, and I don't know
       | what people use instead of Spyglass/Fortner Transform anymore,
       | but it was really nice in its era.
        
       | ffhhj wrote:
       | Flash
        
       | boyka wrote:
       | Google Reader
        
       | RattlesnakeJake wrote:
       | Gotta' be one of the various Palm OS devices I used to carry. The
       | OS and its apps were so simple, fast, and graceful. And it came
       | from the era when devices tried to differentiate in weird and
       | creative ways (My favorite: The CLIE NR70 and its successors).
        
       | mikewarot wrote:
       | Picassa, the offline photo management tool with pretty good face
       | recognition
       | 
       | 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
        
       | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
       | Visual Basic 6.0
       | 
       | In 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.
        
         | mikewarot wrote:
         | Lazarus, based on Free Pascal, is close to that easy. The
         | documentation isn't as good. It is cross platform, which is a
         | big plus.
        
       | Shadonototra wrote:
       | Why do you care?
       | 
       | Do you want to buy/remake it and seek VC funding and exit before
       | getting customers?
       | 
       | Asking for a friend!
        
       | copperx wrote:
       | SawStudio. A DAW written in x86 assembly with 64 bit integer
       | computations throughout and excellent but non-standard UX. It's
       | not dead, but the community using it seems smaller everyday. It's
       | an impressive technical achievement. Practically bug-free (the
       | only bugs that I ever encountered were due to external plugins).
        
       | kactus wrote:
       | Opera 12, with its insanely fast Presto engine and tab grouping
       | that Chromium-based browsers only recently emulated.
       | 
       | Yes, I know about Vivaldi, but it's just not the same.
        
       | nickmyersdt wrote:
       | Microsoft Money.
       | 
       | 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.
        
         | DanitaBaires wrote:
         | I use kMyMoney as a replacement, it's not exactly the same but
         | it gets the job done for me.
        
       | ArekDymalski wrote:
       | Corel Rave - amazing tool for animations and simple, interactive
       | stuff exported as Shockwave Flash.
       | 
       | Google Inbox - neat interface for email (however Spike is an
       | excellent alternative)
        
       | kaffeeringe wrote:
       | Google Wave
        
         | mikewarot wrote:
         | Google wave could have been amazing, had they not forced all
         | those boxes into it, and just made things one big fluid
         | document people could collaboratively edit.
        
         | jeffkeen wrote:
         | Lol, did you use this for something practical and useful? I
         | remember it being kind of mind blowing tech wise at the time,
         | but past that I can't remember getting a ton of use out of it?
         | Remind me of the highlights?
        
         | Schinken_ wrote:
         | FWIW iirc it was continued for some time by apache
         | (https://incubator.apache.org/projects/wave.html) but is also
         | discontinued now. (I hope thats the correct project, but I'm
         | pretty sure).
         | 
         | Also here: https://github.com/apache/incubator-retired-wave
        
       | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
       | SpinRite
       | 
       | 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.
        
       | scioto wrote:
       | ECCO Pro PIM/Outliner.
       | 
       | 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.
        
       | Gordonjcp wrote:
       | Pokebook.
       | 
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20091125090955/http://pokebook.c...
       | 
       | The simplest, quickest, cleanest, and most efficient social
       | networking site you've never used.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | noloblo wrote:
       | mailbox/astro ios/mac apps
       | 
       | sourcetree
       | 
       | hackpad
       | 
       | dropbox pre-enterprise pre-electron
       | 
       | one-drive pre-Files-on-Demand
        
       | nicolashahn wrote:
       | I still use https://github.com/nefarius/ScpToolkit to let me use
       | my PS3 controller with my computer. It's the only way I've found
       | but the driver has a bug that bluescreens my computer after it
       | comes out of sleep, if the controller has been used before it
       | went to sleep. If someone has an alternate driver please lmk!
        
       | harshalizee wrote:
       | Wunderlist
       | 
       | 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.
        
         | InsOp wrote:
         | What would keep me from recreating Wunderlist?
        
           | prash_ant wrote:
           | I can imagine the costs of supporting users and data sync
           | over web, desktop apps, mobile apps on all platforms.
           | Wunderlist had paid accounts which allowed more themes, but I
           | remember most of the other features were on-par with free
           | accounts.
           | 
           | 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.
        
         | kactus wrote:
         | Some of the people who worked on Wunderlist are working on a
         | new todo app, Superlist. https://superlistapp.com
        
       | rchaud wrote:
       | Adobe Flash.
       | 
       | 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.
        
         | iAm25626 wrote:
         | When you feel nostalgic: check out Chrome extension Ruffle. It
         | reanimate those dead flash web app/game
        
         | sjcoles wrote:
         | Actionscript was the catalyst for me going from script kiddie
         | to SWE. I made a decent living from 17-20 doing medical show
         | kiosks and complex Flash sites for said medical providers. By
         | the end of it I had a nice little data loading and UI component
         | library akin to what you would see in Qt or GTK.
         | 
         | I really wish I still had the HDD with the files on it to
         | reminisce.
        
       | Finnucane wrote:
       | Kodachrome 25
        
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       (page generated 2022-05-26 23:02 UTC)