8 ms·
Ask HN: What's the worst-designed, slowest app that still makes a lot of money?
Hey all,
Gathering data for a potential blog post.
- matte_black 9y agoSlack
- caleblloyd 9y agoSkype
- logicalmike 9y agoI second this.
- caleblloyd 9y agoTo add to that, most business conferencing solutions in general are pretty bad: Skype for Business, WebEx, and Google Meet. Have seen a big pickup in Zoom which is decent.
- JBlue42 9y agoZoom isn't bad. I've seen companies using BlueJeans lately. HighFive (https://highfive.com/ https://highfive.com/) was really great the one time I had a chance to set it up.
- hal9000xp 9y agoSkype for Linux was OK for years. It worked reasonably well till recently on my old laptop. Recently (may be a few months ago), MS upgraded Skype to make it "better". I must upgrade Skype since old client stopped working as they break backward compatibility. After upgrade, new Skype started using a lot of CPU, memory and disk IO. To the point that I can't work in browser while running Skype. If you launch Skype, it started very slowly. Since I still have HDD, I can hear scream of my HDD during heavy Skype launch. New Skype is so bloated and slow that, I had to remove it because I didn't want to torture myself and my poor old laptop. You may say that I have to upgrade hardware but I find this argument quite annoying because Skype is just a messenger and video/voice call app. This functionality worked perfectly well for years and now just because of Skype developers, I have to upgrade my hardware in order to use the same app with the same functionality. In the bigger picture, I see that modern apps have a tendency to be fat and bloated. And it looks like many developers are totally OK with that. I would recommend Skype developers read this: https://suckless.org/philosophy https://suckless.org/philosophy
- singularity2001 9y agojust yesterday 2 out of 4 people could not hear shit.
- cryptoz 9y agoCoinbase. Their webapp and mobile app are full of lies and bugs. Sometimes they won't take your money but they say they did, sometimes they take 5x extra money from your account, etc. Making billions though.
- arthurcolle 9y agoYeah coinbase is total shit, its insane that they are dominant
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- alexandernst 9y agoWordPress. The buggiest, ugliest (in terms of code) piece of shit on Earth. And somehow it managed to get almost 50% all website traffic... (with all the revenue that this means)
- JBlue42 9y agoFor those that don't have to customize it, it 'just works' right? Also, their only major competitor was blogger at the time which, IIRC, was far less customizable and monetizable.
- alexandernst 9y agoIt “just works” as long as you don’t install any themes or plugins. The moment you start adding stuff to it... oh boy... That and the fact that most themes/plugins are coded by juniors, in the best case... So, yeah, it “just works” as long as you don’t actually pretend to use it for something useful.
- JBlue42 9y agoYep. It's dominant in its space and definitely belongs on this list. As someone that has created and destroyed so many blogs, it was easy to get going, choose a theme, and post. At one point, they may have gotten $10-20 from me so I could use my own domain. Not sure how they make their other money.
- valb 9y agoWindows
- _icarus 9y ago1.Solarwinds 2.ServiceNow
- evnn 9y agoState-run websites. Tax forms.
- mf2hd 9y agoExcept gov.uk, that site is amazing.
- atticusberg 9y agoSalesforce?
- atticusberg 9y agoAh, and let’s not forget JIRA. JIRA is a real dumpster fire.
- zanybear 9y agoiTunes Podcast
- jachee 9y agoAs an Overcast user, I don't disagree about the design aspect here, but for whom does this make money?
- projectramo 9y agoI second this but its not just the design: the podcast app is so buggy and freezes up all the time (iphone 7 plus). I tried overcast and I realized what I had been missing. I actually think design wise they are about the same.
- comfortablynerd 9y agoindian railways website
- satyanash 9y agoWhile that was true for quite some time, it has dramatically improved to it's current state such that it is only noticeable during peak 'tatkal' booking time. The UI/UX is still horrible though.
- hiyer 9y agoThe UI is horrible, but the UX is quite functional. And given the millions of people with various degrees of tech-savviness who use it, it's probably a good thing they haven't done a major revamp in years.
- satyanash 9y agoThat still shouldn't prevent them from iteratively, slowly fixing the UI such that people have to only get used to small bits at a time. It is one of the most unintuitive design I have seen. It only works because we're trained to it's quirkiness. I also feel the UX is horrible because it will often log you out and demand that you log in again if you have performed a set number of actions repeatedly.
- makbol 9y agoFacebook
- mabbo 9y agoReally? How so? The page loads fairly quickly for me, and the design is highly optimized. Not optimized for users, mind you, but optimized for profitability. If you don't like Facebook, that's one thing but it's hardly fair to say they're slow or poorly designed.
- cryptoz 9y ago> Not optimized for users It's slow and buggy and awful to use on most Android phones for most of history. It sucks the CPU and battery while you're not using it and slows your whole phone down. > hardly fair to say they're slow or poorly designed. No it's completely fair and totally true. The Facebook apps are really badly designed and so are the websites.
- mabbo 9y agoAh maybe that's what I'm missing- I don't use their app. The mobile website mostly works well for me. They removed messaging from it because they're jerks, but you can switch the desktop mode and it works.
- cryptoz 9y ago> They removed messaging from it because they're jerks That's another case of bad design. Intentionally making the webapp worse for you by removing perfectly good features so they can extract more $/user on average. They make lots of money and the make very poorly designed and user hostile software.
- intellent 9y agoThe Desktop browser version of Facebook is slow af. It almost feels like they are loading every single HTML element with yet another API request.
- madmulita 9y agoAltamira
- marak830 9y agoWouldn't anyone on this site, if they had the knowledge of that, make a competing product? Or perhaps some of us are? That's a fairly lazy question, and I cannot see how it would really start a good conversation.
- dpark 9y ago> That's a fairly lazy question, and I cannot see how it would really start a good conversation. And yet, 25 minutes and 42 comments.
- marak830 9y agoIn my defence when I replied there were 3 throwaway replies and nothing through provoking. I do stand corrected though :-)
- dacracot 9y agoNot necessarily... If I said MS-Word, would you decide to go out and create a word processor, probably not since the market is pretty much a done deal.
- supernes 9y agoI get what you mean, but why not? Having a well-established, dominant player doesn't mean there's no opportunity to make a living solving similar problems. "Word" is a huge target, it covers so many use cases that it's possible to focus on a few of them and provide a tailored solution that enough people find valuable. This was the status quo when Google Docs was being developed as well, and OpenOffice for that matter.
- crdoconnor 9y agoBy and large the apps that are bad will be in markets where the purchasing decision makers are not buying based upon the quality of the app. In which case you could create a better competing app and it wouldn't matter.
- lima 9y agoJIRA and Confluence...
- farnsworthy 9y agoEnterprise-scale.
- nwatson 9y agoSlack et al work great for arguing and discussing, but confluence is the best Wiki for recording long term conclusions and providing long term structure for projects. Google Docs is a jumbled atrocity by comparison ... confluence linking and navigation just work.
- humanrebar 9y agoIf it's just for devs, I like GitHub Enterprise wikis and readmes.
- humanrebar 9y agoA good design is as simple as possible but no simpler. The problem with ticketing and document authoring platforms are that they are arbitrarily complex. I have some sympathy for Atlassian on managing the complexity of these things. We could say that they should limit their features better, but predicting the cost of adding another use case to a pile of them is not a solved problem.
- nailer 9y ago> The problem with ticketing and document authoring platforms are that they are arbitrarily complex. I have some sympathy for Atlassian on managing the complexity of these things. Many things are arbitrarily complex. But Atlassian constantly gives items of differing importance the same level of attention, in a shotgun blast of UI.
- tdewitt 9y agoAnd just when you think you've got it sorted out, they do a major redesign and screw up your workflow (not the ticket flow, your personal one). +1000 to JIRA as a response to this. I'd probably support confluence here too but every company y I've worked with killed it one the WYSWYG editor became mandatory and all of engineering refused to use it.
- phren0logy 9y agoAny electronic medical record software
- roywiggins 9y agoThis is probably the right answer. Between oldness, amount of money made, and general bad design, I think EHR systems take the cake.
- rostigerpudel 9y agoNot to forget the myriad of different standards for storing and ex-/importing data...it's job security for the programmers, I guess
- JBlue42 9y agoThis was interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_health_record#Barriers_to_adoption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_health_record#Barri... I forget, but I think there was some criticism that came out in a major paper about Epic Systems a couple years back. They all seem to be a mess (and salesperson's dream).
- igammarays 9y agoOutlook.com/OneDrive web
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bsenftner 9y agoiTunes
- timrichard 9y agoIt's a nice OS, but could do with a simple lightweight music player.
- roddds 9y agoPretty much any financial or HR app: QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, ADP...
- saketmehta 9y agoWhy is it like that? Are people not interested to design better products or it’s the “don’t fix what’s not broken” attitude?
- rostigerpudel 9y agoMy guess would be that everybody is just happy they have some tool for this other than pen and paper. Since not one product in the sector distinguishes itself by being both mostly correct and somewhat useable, there is no pressure to improve. EDIT: typo
- tyingq 9y agoThe sale for this kind of software is made at a level that has no idea what the actual product/deliverable does. With predictable results.
- ac29 9y agoDecades of legacy code to maintain continuity of business (dont assume for a minute you can export or import data from many of these apps in any sort of sane way). I think a lot of businesses would be open to better designed products, but the aforementioned legacy compatibility and the need to train people on the new software make this a nonstarter. Pretty much the same reasons Microsoft Office is still so dominant, although I actually like the recent versions of office.
- tyingq 9y agoSAP, Siebel, Salesforce
- SamSkjord 9y ago"Oh you have multiple monitors with different resolutions? No, I don't like that at all." - SAP
- pjc50 9y agoPokemon Go (Android, can't say about the iPhone version)
- dacracot 9y agoIt's a buggy mess also.
- zerostar07 9y agoebay
- tyingq 9y agoPayPal too.
- zerostar07 9y agoyeah paypal redesign is half assed and awful. i keep having to look for the 'switch to old version' buttons
- tyingq 9y agoWith you
- olavgg 9y agoI shop a lot on Ebay, I think it really works well.
- zerostar07 9y agoit's slow as hell, clunky interface , hidden options, bouncing from one page to another in apparently different designs and versions. The seller interface is quite terrible, but even the shopping experience is pretty outdated.
- JohnJamesRambo 9y agoThey change stuff seemingly at random, usually for the worst, I always imagine various competing groups in the organization just add and remove features and how things work when they feel like it or need to show that they are "doing something."
- reti 9y agoI agree. UI is awful, it's like every page you visit has a different design (compare browsing products to account management pages). Completely different interface again on mobile. I also find it ridiculous they have some much advertising on it - both buyers and sellers are producing revenue through seller fees and paypal transactions. Why do they need ads as well? I've tried to use other selling sites but always end up back at ebay as they have far more stuff for sale, and more buyers.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- thethunderbox 9y agoHipChat
- SamSkjord 9y agoSAP
- Artemis2 9y agoEverything Qualys. A simple task that I need to accomplish regularly which should take 30 minutes tops requires a full day almost everytime (despite building an internal wiki for the process with all edge cases).
- lozzo 9y agoskype for business
- jenscow 9y agoAny URL ending with .aspx
- andechs 9y agoCA Agile Central (Rally) - Enjoy the mystery of why you can only view 5 defects in a very small iframed area plopped on the page.
- zerostar07 9y agoreddit self-serve ads
- rostigerpudel 9y agoYou might want to take a look at http://dreckstool.de/hitlist.do http://dreckstool.de/hitlist.do There is a nice ranking there... ("Dreckstool" = sh*tty tool)
- DoreenMichele 9y agoDreck does not mean shitty. It means garbage.
- singularity2001 9y agoand a pun on "dirty sh*t" (stool)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- zerostar07 9y agoHSBCnet global banking. man you have got to experience that one
- xiphias 9y agoas an app not sure, but as a system, I would call it government
- molteanu 9y agoLotus Notes
- throwaway2016a 9y agoNetsuite comes to mind. Enterprise software. Charges hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. It tries to be everything to everyone which makes it really slow. And the menu has 500 options so it's hard to navigate. For what it's worth, it has made me say "Wow, that is really cool and useful!" more than a few times but also very often "WTF! Why does this take so long! This is a common operation!" and "Why is this so unnecessarily complex!" The API is SOAP and routinely takes 5+ seconds to do a common operation like "Create order" - and ad hoc searches can take minutes. Business people like it because it gets them every critical piece of business operations data they need at their finger tips but also hate it because of the hundreds of thousands they ultimately pay consultants to deal with the complexity. Runner up: Jira A lot of people say Wordpress but I think a lot of the Wordpress UI is good design. Which is part of why it's popular. It is just really slow (unless you spend a LOT of time optimizing). So Netsuite wins for being both slow AND poorly designed. Edit: That said I can't say that I wouldn't recommend Netsuite. If you are a multi-national corporation (or even a large domestic one) and sell or manufacture a physical product, and have the time and money to pay the licensing fees and the consultants it does everything you could possibly want and more. If someone asked me for a recommendation I'd say: "It's great but don't expect it to be perfect day one. It will take a year with possibly multiple full time consultants to get everything where you want it to be."
- dade_ 9y agoVisio
- yousuckatlinux 9y agoI can believe no one's said Oracle database. I keep thinking it's dead in favor of FOSS alternatives, but every large business I consult at has racks and racks dedicated to that tire fire, and a bunch of aging ODBAs itching to retire. And, Larry's still making an absolute fuckton of cash from it.
- hiyer 9y agoClearcase. I used to think Perforce was a bad VCS until I had the misfortune of having to use Clearcase. Perforce is no spring chicken, but it's a breath of fresh air compared to CC. And of course open source VCS'es like git and svn are light years ahead of both of these.
- MrMember 9y agoI always make a backup of all my work before trying to check it into ClearCase. It should not be possible to accidentally delete files when adding them to source control or checking them in.
- WalterGR 9y agoIn what ways is svn light years ahead of Perforce?
- davidgould 9y agoJesus yes! Clearcase is the only software that ever made me cry actual tears of rage and frustration. I haven't used it in years, but in a prior incarnation at Informix had to use Clearcase multi-site. I think we lost about 10 plus company wide workdays that year due to Clearcase outages. Every developer ended up writing their own 300 line spec file so no builds were ever reproducible. Oh yeah, the "VOBS" got corrupted so they had to move all the sources to an entirely new Clearcase installation, but could not move the history. They kept the old installation online read-only to serve history. But mainly, it was incredibly slow and since it provided the repos as a filesystem that meant builds were slow too. To build the product from the top on a workstation took about 40 minutes. To build from Clearcase was over 8 hours. Basically, touch a header file and your workday is over. Ima stop now, cause it still makes me mad.
- ksvarma 9y agoInternet Explorer Plus their bookmarks manager
- ksvarma 9y agoSome of the Banking websites ( easily say most of them) - Bank of america, ICICIBank (India), State Bank of India etc.
- egwynn 9y agoAlmost anything designed by (or at the behest of) a TV network. From set-top box software to web platforms to mobile apps. They always want to shoehorn their long antiquated paradigms into everything they make.
- throw7 9y agoIBM Notes?
- sparrish 9y agoBraintree - simple subscription edits take tens of seconds.
- mamcx 9y agoAndroid. Certainly contender for #1