Ask HN: Products that suck but you still use?

[albertgudl]

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?

[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.

[Ultramanoid]

Hah. Let's combine your pain and mine. I actually use FFmpeg daily in Android. Terminal, indeed.

[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.

[CM30]

The Mac OS app store. The fact you have to have an account to update programs you already have installed on your computer is ridiculous. As is how the system makes you login/register to do anything, the fact it seems to require a credit card number even for free apps as well as the stupidly lengthy registration process in general. Then again, the registration process for Apple accounts in general seems kinda busted, and makes me wonder what the hell happened to their UX designers when coming up with that bit.

For something you can actually do more with?

Well, I guess every A/B testing program I have to use would count there. Both VWO and Adobe Target have their strengths, but it definitely seems like they were designed by people for whom good UI and UX design was not a strong point. Target has a confusing interface with buttons that say save not actually saving the content and rather limited targeting rules, whereas VWO seems to think no one should be able to edit projects associated with multiple subaccounts at once, or that anyone using the code view shouldn't be able to upload new images.

It'd be nice to see one of these tools designed by a company/individual who knows how to design something worth a damn.

[albertgudl]

This is actually a really interesting idea.

Could you give me some more details about the different pain points you have with these softwares? Where you see an opportunity to do things differently etc.

Thanks in advance!

[albertgudl]

Have you tried Google Optimize?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[philonoist]

The whole corporate world in my experience uses Foxit.

[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.

[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.

[psyclobe]

Logitech harmony universal remotes

[adperry]

I actually like mine and get super upset when mine is misplaced and have to use my phone.

[mattrp]

Or any kind of remote

[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.

[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?

[brickmort]

What's not to like about Amazon Music? I use it for streaming music and have been pretty happy with it.

[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.

[BostonEnginerd]

And they changed their privacy policy to allow collection of more data for advertising: https://thewirecutter.com/blog/your-privacy-your-devices-and...

[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.

[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.

[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.

[muzani]

Facebook.

I use it as a blog that targets people who live in my geographical area and are likely to know me.

It's full of problems. It ruthlessly violates privacy, it's slow and a memory hog. It's designed to be addictive. It rewards and spreads unpopular opinion.

But the privacy thing is the worst. If there was a duckduckgo version of Facebook, that would be great.

[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.

[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.

[kull]

Podcasts app from apple. So many complains but still better than any other competitor. Recently I tried Spotify for podcasts but I could not switch to it. I guess a super simple interface of the native Podcasts app and a few core options there make me stick around.

[runjake]

TurboTax.

The Kindle touch UI. I want everything about the Kindle, except I want physical buttons to turn pages.

[milesokeefe]

The Kindle Oasis has two physical page turn buttons, and the option to disable the touch screen. You put it to sleep and wake it up to reenable touch.

I got one recently and think it's a great design.

[zillfacon]

Well, I often use Mobirise web page creator. It's quite decent but has a lot of glitches. For example with the gallery during the sorting. When you choose some certain sorting option, the outcome isn't correct.