Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
What closed-source, proprietary software that you once loved is not being developed/enhanced any more? What more features would you like to have it in the future? Would you pay for it to be resurrected?
[+] [-] bhauer|7 years ago|reply
* Microsoft Image Composer. A little known sprite-oriented graphic arts program. Combining its sprite model with the necessary several years of modernization it would have enjoyed had it not been abandoned would be impressive and easy to use.
* High-performance lightweight desktop email clients. I was especially fond of one named AK-Mail in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Blisteringly fast on PCs of its era, a modern incarnation would seem incomprehensibly fast compared to today's bloated apps that have difficulty keeping up with keystrokes on 8-core 3.5 GHz monsters. Of course, back in the day, desktop apps were built in systems languages and not in JavaScript.
* As a broader concept, a return to prevailing use of on-device processing and computation. Today the too-facile argument that data must be shipped off-network to a third-party cloud in order to be processed efficiently means this happens all the time without users paying it any attention.
[1] https://twitter.com/boxnwhisker/ (scroll down to see a bunch of examples)
[+] [-] culot|7 years ago|reply
Ms Image Composer was unbeatable for digital and web stuff back then. Photoshop was rather clumsy in comparison.
As for email clients, I do keep wondering how Thunderbird can be so slow, how its rendering system can be so shite.
[+] [-] eldavido|7 years ago|reply
I don't think anyone ever liked developing for the web. It solved three problems pretty well:
- Data portability: log in from anywhere, have your data at your fingertips.
- App model: no broken installations of programs into desktop environments, dependency problems, DLL hell
- No concern about the mostly broken Windows desktop: viruses, etc.
(1) is mostly a solved problem even on desktop, the web just got there first. We have everything from Dropbox to various data APIs.
(2) is largely solved in mobile app development. It's instructive to consider how: very locked-down app APIs to the operating systems (e.g. no dumping files all over the place), standard packaging formats and distribution channels (.apk, .msi), etc
(3) is also mostly solved on mobile.
I would go as far as to say that in 2018, software should be native-first. And indeed it is, in mobile. The major shift is desktop->mobile. Mobile development has much more in common with native desktop development than web development. The reason desktop isn't likely to come back is because it's a niche market. Everyone has a phone but if you aren't in tech circles, it's surprising to see how many people barely use computers at all, especially those who don't work in offices, older folks, and the less well-off. A mobile device does about 99% of what they need -- most people aren't "creators", they don't author websites, write code, edit videos, design buildings, etc.
[+] [-] krackers|7 years ago|reply
In a similar vein, Palm webOS. I still maintain that it was several years ahead of its time with the whole "mobile apps using javascript" Enyo framework.
[+] [-] naasking|7 years ago|reply
Seriously, I recently had to disable Thunderbird's spellchecking so that typing emails wouldn't stall for 5+ seconds at a time on my 8-core machine. Ironically, my older dual core machine has no such problems, and the same email accounts, OS and extensions are at play.
[+] [-] AsyncAwait|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dukoid|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 87|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nojvek|7 years ago|reply
We have TypedArrays, WebAssembly, very smart JITs. With Typescript, JavaScript is a very productive and sane language to work with.
I 100% agree with you that the current state of desktop apps are extremely bloated.
[+] [-] Marc_Bryan|7 years ago|reply
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/steveb/cpaap/pfe/pfefiles.....
Would love to see a 64 bit version and with some more advanced features.
Still loving it and it's one of my main stream editor which just works with just one executable and part of my big list of portable apps collection which mostly consists of single executable based tools for almost any task!!!
[+] [-] michaelbrave|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cztomsik|7 years ago|reply
and while javascript is certainly one of the worst choices if you care about performance, it's also one of the best choices if you need to iterate really quickly (which I believe is very important in overall, especially for new projects)
I hope there will be lighter electron one day (I'm actually working on something like this already) but it's unlikely that people will start doing UIs in systems languages.
[+] [-] squarefoot|7 years ago|reply
https://www.claws-mail.org/
Don't dismiss it because of the lack of bells and whistles on its web page, it runs circles around everything else. Outlook mail folders also can be imported through an external utility. Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Windows and reportedly can be built on MacOSX.
[+] [-] snaky|7 years ago|reply
https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/features.php
"Continuously improving since 1998"
[+] [-] MasterYoda|7 years ago|reply
Agree. It feels like apple respect users privacy which is great, but are you not interested in ios you are stuck with android and how google collects everything about its users, which feels really bad. I also think that "google play store" is rather bad. So it really needs competition here and a 3rd option.
What I really hope is that Microsoft (which have the muscles) should embrace android fully and build an "MS android app store" and an ecosystem around it for android so there could be an real option and competition to google and "google play store" on android.
WP died a lot because it did have to few apps. But because this should be android, developers shouldn't need to convert any apps, just simple upload the same app to "MS android app store" too, more or less. This way they could get a lot of apps in their app store and fast. To get developers to upload they could give better deals (ex lower %) and for users they could give an better user experience, focus on privacy like apple to differentiate them self from google and play store etc to get traction and popularity.
If MS did and got some traction, smartphone manufacturers would have an real option not to be forced to install play store and all googles apps just to be able to sell their phones, because there whould be an viable option for it users to download all android apps they want anyways. And competition is always good for consumers. At least for me, I would love to buy an android phone without google, with someone that respected and focused on privacy, and with an good app store out of the box.
[+] [-] open-source-ux|7 years ago|reply
For those of you haven't tried a Windows Phone, this video gives a good overview of some features:
I Used a Windows Phone for a Week in 2018! I Will Miss It:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2yzrZvZU6E
[+] [-] qznc|7 years ago|reply
It seems to be missing an OSX client, but Windows and Linux is supported.
[+] [-] PaulKeeble|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevenicr|7 years ago|reply
When I have 100 firefox tabs open and it starts to go wonky my thunderbird also has issues doing just about anything. Sometimes even get the "stop this script" on occasion.
I think this has more to do with the java heavy pages in firefox getting bogged down while other software is trying to run backup tasks and AV and such.
I still enjoyed the older outlook, but with the current two I'm not longing for shiny new tools lately. I also realize that my lack of trust in cloud servicing means I am not using some likely popular features like calendar notifications and other things that may be important to others. So bias, ymmv, etc.
[+] [-] bad_user|7 years ago|reply
On the other hand I think the web is awesome and I’m 36, I remember very well what the landscape looked before web apps. So I don’t understand the fetish for native to be honest.
[+] [-] garfieldnate|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|7 years ago|reply
Will probably come back with edge-computing.
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|7 years ago|reply
Interesting, haven't had performance problems with email in about well, never. Been using Thurderbird for a decade. Not perfect, but slowness isn't a problem.
[+] [-] partycoder|7 years ago|reply
Nobody cared about Windows phone and nobody noticed when it died.
It enjoys the same prestige as Microsoft Bob.
[+] [-] johneke|7 years ago|reply
I hope the SublimeHQ gods are listening to this
[+] [-] WeAreGoingIn|7 years ago|reply
The gigants buy up competitors and bury it, shot down the project.
We would have more freedom and viable options as consumers if not the big companies such as Facebook, Google buy up the competition. It should be illegal to do this. The world is a more poorer marketplace because of this.
[+] [-] dcminter|7 years ago|reply
The only significant failing was that it couldn't handle removable media at all well.
Shotwell is the best I've found so far, but it's not quite the right feature balance for me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotwell_(software)
[+] [-] iscrewyou|7 years ago|reply
I could point it to a directory and it would read all the images. It wouldn’t copy them to it’s database, it wouldn’t try to change their format. It would simply read them as fast as I’ve ever seen and show me what’s in that directory. Then it would keep the directory hierarchy in place. I haven’t been able to find anything similar. I search for a similar piece of software every now and then but nothing shows up. Lightroom is close but it’s god awfully slow. I just loved how fast Picasa.
I actually did some cleaning on my computer last night and found the last Picasa dmg. Maybe I run it and see if it still works.
[+] [-] mceachen|7 years ago|reply
After the Nth photo sharing website that I'd early-adopted decided to close up shop, I determined I wanted to own the next solution I invested time into, and I founded PhotoStructure.
I've got 20-odd hard drives from laptops and servers and backups. No software that I tried, either open or closed source, would do what I wanted: organize everything into a nice, timestamped, deduped folder structure.
Many years ago, I'd shot myself in the foot by using tools to do JPEG editing and rotation, but those tools quietly deleted EXIF metadata, so PhotoStructure applies a suite of metadata inference heuristics to heal those holes, too.
The MVP is focused on high-quality metadata extraction and inference, and has a simple web-based UI. Simple editing support, along with GPS POI and face detection, is planned.
After spending more than a decade in the ads business, and (helping build) ML-powered behavior targeting based on metadata, it blows my mind that so many of us give the most rich metadata stream, our photos and videos, for free, to the FAANG. PhotoStructure isn't just an effort of love, it's also, at least in some way, penance.
I've got a limited number of beta users trying it out right now. If you're willing to share your feedback, please consider signing up. Use of PhotoStructure during the beta period is free.
https://PhotoStructure.com
[+] [-] PaulMest|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imhoguy|7 years ago|reply
https://github.com/linuxmint/pix
[+] [-] dpau|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucideer|7 years ago|reply
- UX-wise, it solved many issues browsers today are still struggling with. Vivaldi is working in a similar direction, but they've basically started from scratch again so aren't close to the point of development Opera had achieved by version 12.
- These HN posts from today's frontpage [0] [1] give some idea of why we really need Presto today. Not only would it just be good to have more competitors in the space, but also, for most of its existence Presto was ahead of its competitors in every detail (except for the one important, and very political, issue of "site compatibility", a.k.a. making badly written websites work). It also, similarly, got many UX points working at an engine level that modern browsers still get wrong, like text selection of html content and link text, responsiveness of scroll and of page links during navigation, etc.
- M2 will never be surpassed by Thunderbird, and quite possibly will never be surpassed full stop (though I really hope I'm wrong about that).
... so many other things
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18626316
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18622516
[+] [-] ioman|7 years ago|reply
When getting directions, you could designate a number of areas on the map as “avoid area”.
You could map all sorts of census data. Want to colorize the map based on crime rate divided by median home price? No problem.
You could import lots of data from a spreadsheet and do useful things with it. I used this when looking for my first house. I scraped the data from realtor.com and made maps where the icon changed on the number of bedrooms and the color changed based on the price.
You could make drivetime zones. Want to see how far you can drive in 30 minutes from your office? No problem.
You can probably do a lot of this with ArcGIS, but I don’t know since its way out of my price range.
I keep hoping that Microsoft will bring some of this to Bing Maps. I would pay to use these features again and adding them to Azure would definitely differentiate them from Google Maps.
[+] [-] cpcallen|7 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_(software)
I would happily pay for an update that fixed outstanding bugs and ensured compatibility with future versions of macOS. It would be nice to have some new features, too, but it is basically "good enough" as it is and I dread the day I can no longer run it. I'm really not sure what I will do.
The claim that Photos was going to be a meaningful replacement for Aperture was obviously a lie at the time it was released and even nearly five years later it is still not true.
I'd have moved to Lightroom had Adobe not moved to a subscription model.
[+] [-] sheepybloke|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Noumenon72|7 years ago|reply
It seems like in the physical economy, if you create something of value and you aren't making money off it, you will sell it and someone else can make money off it. With software like Picasa, it's just gone. Some programs release a sunset version, but you never know how long it will work and you can't promote it because they might take it down.
[+] [-] linguae|7 years ago|reply
1. The Genera operating system for Symbolics Lisp machines. Ever since I've gotten bitten by the Smalltalk and Lisp machine bugs, I've been wanting to use Genera, but I was born at the beginning of the last AI winter, and unfortunately the operating system is still proprietary, with no word about whether or not it will become open sourced. It's regrettable that the proverbial baby was thrown out with the bathwater when Lisp machines lost out in the marketplace to RISC workstations and the x86 running Lisp on other OSes; there are a lot of interesting lessons we can learn from Genera in today's operating systems and programming environments, and an entire generation of computer scientists and software engineers are unfortunately completely unfamiliar with Lisp machines.
2. I've heard wonderful things about the productivity software developed by Lighthouse Design for NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. I haven't used them myself, but I've read that many NeXTSTEP users were devoted fans of Lighthouse Design software, and the presentation tool that the company designed influenced the design of Apple's Keynote.app. Unfortunately when Sun acquired Lighthouse Design, Sun hasn't done much with the Lighthouse Design codebase. It would have been nice had these programs been updated and further refined for Mac OS X.
3. I would love for someone to resurrect the ideas of Apple's OpenDoc platform, which allows for component-based development of GUI applications, much like how pipes and redirection in Unix allows for different command-line utilities to be used together.
My dream is an operating system where all objects can be inspected (like Smalltalk or a Lisp machine OS), where there is a component framework similar to OpenDoc that allows for component-based GUI application development, and where there's a REPL that allows power users to have complete control over their applications (both command-line and GUI). All applications would adhere to some type of well-designed usability guideline (I'm thinking about the classic Apple Human Interface Guidelines from the pre-OS X days), and the interface would be reminiscent of Mac OS 8.
[+] [-] ilmiont|7 years ago|reply
To this day no Android phone I've used ever as fast, reliable or plain refined as WP8 was.
Unique design and many genuinely useful features, and it reflected a time when smartphones could have been vibrant and diverse, not our current two mega-platforms or nothing.
[+] [-] rmprescott|7 years ago|reply
n-dimensional spreadsheet with a logical data model (including hierarchies) rather than rows and columns:
Net Worth := Assets - Liabilities
[+] [-] skrebbel|7 years ago|reply
It had all the right features for graphics editing targeted at the web. Mixing vector layers with raster layers, both fully featured, is still something many modern programs either don't have, or half-ass.
And it was dirt cheap, compared to the competition.
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|7 years ago|reply
It's been decades and I've still never found a better way to make simple GUI applications.
[+] [-] walterbell|7 years ago|reply
Ecco is still being used 20 years later and has been binary patched to support Lua extensions. Written by a four person team in Seattle.
doogiePIM has been resuscitated by its founder, hopefully it will carry a torch for some of the ideas in Ecco and Agenda, https://bitespire.com/details_doogiepim.php
[+] [-] tyoma|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lewiscollard|7 years ago|reply
Going further back, I think Symantec JustWrite was an extremely fine piece of software; I remember it being blazingly fast on the 486 monster I had at work. But my glasses may be rose-tinted :)
[+] [-] EamonnMR|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 80386|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beefman|7 years ago|reply
Excel for Mac before it became a cartoon
Google Reader so there would still be blogs to read
Eudora so e-mail wouldn't suck
a dozen or so iOS apps that stopped working after iOS 10
a dozen or so niche Windows apps that haven't been updated
Reddit's redesign is probably the most destructive redesign of anything I've ever seen, and that is saying a lot. But kudos to them for (so far) supporting the old version with a sticky setting you can choose.
[+] [-] drinchev|7 years ago|reply
Although these days you have Airtable [2] and Ninox [3] they are having different user base than good old FoxPro.
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_FoxPro
2: https://airtable.com
3: https://ninoxdb.de/en/
[+] [-] kevindong|7 years ago|reply
The cross platform email client bought and abandoned by Dropbox. To date, I have not found a cross platform (or really any single platform) app that's as fast as Mailbox. I don't know how they did it, but everything felt truly instant. All of my devices would simultaneously ring when an email arrived. Archiving/deleting/snoozing emails instantly synced across all platforms (including the web Gmail client).
The aesthetics of Mailbox remains unmatched by any email client available today.