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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Google Inbox - neat interface for email (however Spike is an excellent alternative)
On the windows it is Keynote renamed Ketnote NF. It doesn't work on the mac very well under wine, nor on linux. There is nothing in the world as useful as an outliner with tabs.
When Nokia was struggling, the only bright spot for them was the Indian market. During that period they ran a series of Ads on Indian television with just some text and at the end of the Ad they use to play the ringtone. Every time that happened people use to search their pockets for their mobile phone :)
That was genius!
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.
Yes, I know about Vivaldi, but it's just not the same.
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.
These days, Windows has good file indexing out of the box... but I still miss the "recently changed files" pane.
https://web.archive.org/web/20091125090955/http://pokebook.c...
The simplest, quickest, cleanest, and most efficient social networking site you've never used.
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.
Ubuntu's Unity
Slackware (not technically dead at all, but it was so great, back in the day).
Google Reader
Do you want to buy/remake it and seek VC funding and exit before getting customers?
Asking for a friend!
sourcetree
hackpad
dropbox pre-enterprise pre-electron
one-drive pre-Files-on-Demand