11 ms·

* Windows Phone. We need a third viable option in the mobile space. This week we are concerned about the loss of a browser engine, recognizing this is unhealt

by bhauer 8y ago

* Windows Phone. We need a third viable option in the mobile space. This week we are concerned about the loss of a browser engine, recognizing this is unhealthy for the market. Windows Phone was terrific in many ways and recent concepts by fans such as @boxnwhisker (Harry Dohyun Kim) [1] show how beautiful the Metro design could be today. * 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/ https://twitter.com/boxnwhisker/ (scroll down to see a bunch of examples)

michaelbrave 8y ago
I was just talking about how it was a shame windows phone didn't catch on last night, I really think they should have doubled down on it at least as hard as they did on the original X-Box, it really felt like they gave up on it too soon.
- thisacctforreal 8y ago
  I'm feeling the same way about Edge.
krackers 8y ago
>Windows Phone 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.
- LMMojo 8y ago
  If love to have PalmOS (pre-WebOS), still superior to Android or iOS in many ways.
  - tgtweak 8y ago
    Didn't it live on as webos (now in many smart TVs and printers)?
    - joshmn 8y ago
      I believe LG Smart TVs are webOS based.
      - fyfy18 8y ago
        Under the hood it's webOS, but obviously a custom UI for a TV. I have a 2017 LG with it and it works rather well, no issues with 4K HDR on Netflix and YouTube, and other than booting, it reacts instantly as a TV should. It's a shame there are limited apps for it though - I'd really like apps for Steam Link and Kodi.
        krackers 8y ago
        I think webOS has been open sourced and there used to be some effort [1] to port it to devices starting with the nexus 4/5. Seems the effort is still decently active with a release just last week[2] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuneOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuneOS [2]: https://pivotce.com/2018/11/28/luneos-november-stable-release-doppio/ https://pivotce.com/2018/11/28/luneos-november-stable-releas...
    - akvadrako 8y ago
      I think he means PalmOS, which has nothing to do with web or webos.
dukoid 8y ago
Note that there is KaiOS -- popular in India and Brazil but under the radar on HN because it's currently mostly aimed at feature phones. It's based on FireFox OS (hence probably closer to PalmOS than Windows Phone): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS
- ksec 8y ago
  That was what I posted in the Firefox ( or was it Edge ? ) discussion, Mozilla could have had Firefox OS being the 2nd most popular OS. Instead they handed it to KaiOS.
AsyncAwait 8y ago
I really hope Purism's Librem5 pans out for this very reason. A third alternative. I don't want Windows Phone, since that would not buy me much more privacy than Android with today's Microsoft, so having an open 3rd party mobile platform would be the solution here, I think.
- gardaani 8y ago
  There's SailfishOS, which is an alternative to Android and iPhone. It's a mobile Linux OS with an optional support for Android apps. It's not the world's most advanced mobile OS, but a good way to escape the Apple and Google ecosystems. It is possible to purchase the OS and install it to Sony Xperia phones. https://shop.jolla.com https://shop.jolla.com
  - Operyl 8y ago
    I guess it’s not even available for viewing in my country (the United States). Coincidentally, this must be close to what it’s like in the UK (just on a much much smaller scale) after the GDPR stuff.
- redwards510 8y ago
  I agree it is an exciting phone, but what are the privacy gains versus an android phone with lineageOS and f-droid foss apps? AFAIK it's just the baseband code. Convincing regular users that opensourcing the baseband will solve any problems seems pretty DOA when you have the very visible google play services tracking issue and no on cares.
  - arendtio 8y ago
    It is not just about privacy. With Android phones, you will sooner or later end up in a position where you can't install newer LinageOS versions, simply because your kernel is too old and the required binary drivers cannot be ported to newer kernel versions. Maybe project Treble helps to solve that problem, but it will still take a few years until we will find out (unless Fuchsia kills Android). Nevertheless, I hope that Purism will be able to deliver a product which is as easy to use as a "normal" Android device with those privacy/sustainability features as a bonus. That way I might be able to give the people who ask me which phone they should buy next some good advice.
culot 8y ago
Windyws Phone's tile setup is still the best home screen setup for mobile. As I peep at my Android home with pretty wallpaper with acres of bhank space and uninformative icons, I pine for the informative, intelligent WP tiles. 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.
- nicolapede 8y ago
  With respect to windows phone, I really miss the tiles, the consistency of the metro style gui and other little details, like automatic do not disturb mode while driving or face recognition well before it became mainstream.
  - culot 8y ago
    Dark mode was nice as well. To toggle from light/dark and have alnost every app follow suit was luxurious. On Android it's such a hodgepodge of light and dark, an affront to the eyes at times. Also being able to select text from most anywhere was useful.
  - eldavido 8y ago
    I completely agree and I used to work at Microsoft. Microsoft lost because they didn't have the users or the apps. It's an instructive story of how an inferior product can win. I'm not saying that happens all the time or that it's inevitable, but I think it's safe to say that's sort of what happened here.
    - mixmastamyk 8y ago
      A platform without users or apps and years late is not one I'd call superior. Good ideas are not nearly enough, as they often say around HN.
      - JamesBarney 8y ago
cztomsik 8y ago
electron eats so much cpu & memory simply because it's still a web browser, it has to support all those 20 years of HTML/CSS history and it was designed to do so for 10s of tabs, so it has a lot of caches and other things. 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.
- zmix 8y ago
  > electron eats so much cpu & memory simply because it's > still a web browser, it has to support all those 20 years > of HTML/CSS history and it was designed to do so for 10s > of tabs, so it has a lot of caches and other things. XULRunner does the same thing, includes, in addition, a full XML GUI language and assorted technologies and the full runtime distribution, on my Windows10 system, including debugging, crash-reporter aids, VC libraries, D3D libraries, consumes 72MB.
  - marktangotango 8y ago
    I often wonder why/how xulrunner has descended into obscurity while electron has blossomed. Anyone have input on that?
    - zmix 8y ago
      If I'd give you an honest answer, I'd be downvoted to hell ;-)
      - zmix 8y ago
        See?
        roywiggins 8y ago
nojvek 8y ago
JavaScript isn’t that slow and bloated, the browser rendering engine is a memory hog and cause of most pain. Electron is the big offender because it’s a copy of a new browser everytime. 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.
- eitland 8y ago
  > With Typescript, JavaScript is a very productive and sane language to work with. Mostly agree with your comment on the broader point that front-end (coding) is a lot saner than it used to be. This sentence however sounds to me like "With C, assembler is a very productive and sane language to work with." (FTR: I used to enjoy assembler.)
qznc 8y ago
For email client, what about Claws? https://www.claws-mail.org https://www.claws-mail.org It seems to be missing an OSX client, but Windows and Linux is supported.
PaulKeeble 8y ago
It is pretty telling of just how successful Yahoo, Google and Microsoft (and others) have been with webmail that the best client for multiple email accounts available is Thunderbird. It isn't awful, it works, but it is also kind of sluggish and pauses in the interfaces all the time.
naasking 8y ago
> compared to today's bloated apps that have difficulty keeping up with keystrokes on 8-core 3.5 GHz monsters 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.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Something is wrong, see my other replies for potential fixes.
WeAreGoingIn 8y ago
> Windows phone 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.
- shawn 8y ago
  If you make it illegal to buy companies, people won't start startups.
- freeone3000 8y ago
  They bought... Windows? Microsoft is one of the giants here. People didn't like the phone.
  - FlyMoreRockets 8y ago
    That and Microsoft didn't support developers.
Marc_Bryan 8y ago
PFE - Programmers File Editor. Was way more advanced then any of the editors available now. Could handle GB sized files easily. Had macro that can record your operations and playback. Was very nifty and virtually consumed no memory and was simply superb. I still use it though as it is available in 32 Bit version. https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/steveb/cpaap/pfe/pfefiles... 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!!!
eldavido 8y ago
> As a broader concept, a return to prevailing use of on-device processing and computation 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.
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  The Windows desktop is "mostly broken"? That's news to me.
  - DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
    It’s broken insofar as there isn’t a complete and coherent “developer story” for building a Windows desktop application that doesn’t look like it came from the 1990s. I call it “the Photoshop test”: Pretend you’re Adobe and you just invented Photoshop in 2018. How do you build the GUI for each desktop operating system? ...considering you need to do things like OpenGL hardware acceleration, 30-bit color, support binary plugins, and access certain low-level hardware features (e.g. supporting TWAIN, Pro-level broadcast media devices and interfaces, etc). On Windows it’s an unfortunate situation because all of the “new” application frameworks since 1998 are unsuitable: WPF is .NET only, UWP requires your application to run in a sandbox, you can’t even use MFC because it’s tightly coupled to User32 with its lack of support for 30-bit color. The only choice is the long hard road of doing almost everything by yourself through low-level interfaces with the DWM. Not pretty. The sad thing is that UWP is very capable - if it weren’t for the sandboxing then it would be perfect (that, and you would need to build your own widget library as UWP’s stock set is almost entirely touch-first controls that are utterly inappropriate for a mouse-first desktop UI)
mixmastamyk 8y ago
> High-performance lightweight desktop email clients. 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.
- octorian 8y ago
  Every time I try searching my Inbox in Thunderbird, it feels painful. Meanwhile, using my mail provider's (Fastmail) web interface, its snappy.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    Don’t have a problem with that either. Try the tips in my other replies.
bad_user 8y ago
For email, on Mac I’m using MailMate. It’s everything I wanted Thunderbird to be. 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.
open-source-ux 8y ago
I'm also a big fan of Windows Phone and am sorry to see its demise. While Android and iOS now share many similar UX interactions, Windows Phone, in contrast, is a refreshing change. 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2yzrZvZU6E
squarefoot 8y ago
"High-performance lightweight desktop email clients" https://www.claws-mail.org/ 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.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Evolution is also OK. Not sure how it compared to claws-mail feature wise but they both have a long history.
k__ 8y ago
"As a broader concept, a return to prevailing use of on-device processing and computation." Will probably come back with edge-computing.
snaky 8y ago
> High-performance lightweight desktop email clients https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/features.php https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/features.php "Continuously improving since 1998"
87 8y ago
While we're at Windows Phone I must say I miss Windows Mobile. Always found the decision to kill it and replace with Windows Phone a total disaster. At the time it still had a very dedicated user base built over many years. It got replaced with a half-baked copycat OS. I doubt many WM users had any reason to switch to WP instead of Android. It was a completely different product. Microsoft basically threw away a dedicated niche audience for a different niche audience. And I don't have any data on this but I suspect WM users were a much more affluent, valuable and "Microsoft'y" group of users.
stevenicr 8y ago
"desktop email clients" - I run thunderbird and "eM Client" - both are handling a large amount of email fine most of the time. 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.
partycoder 8y ago
If you resurrect those technologies they would die again right after. Nobody cared about Windows phone and nobody noticed when it died. It enjoys the same prestige as Microsoft Bob.
MasterYoda 8y ago
> We need a third viable option in the mobile space 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.
garfieldnate 8y ago
Yes, +1 for Windows phone! I found it much easier to use than the iPhone in general, apart from its lack of apps (which of course is what killed it).
johneke 8y ago
> "High-performance lightweight desktop email clients" I hope the SublimeHQ gods are listening to this

by bhauer 8y ago

michaelbrave 8y ago

I was just talking about how it was a shame windows phone didn't catch on last night, I really think they should have doubled down on it at least as hard as they did on the original X-Box, it really felt like they gave up on it too soon.

thisacctforreal 8y ago
I'm feeling the same way about Edge.

krackers 8y ago

>Windows Phone 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.

LMMojo 8y ago
If love to have PalmOS (pre-WebOS), still superior to Android or iOS in many ways.
- tgtweak 8y ago
  Didn't it live on as webos (now in many smart TVs and printers)?
  - joshmn 8y ago
    I believe LG Smart TVs are webOS based.
    - fyfy18 8y ago
      Under the hood it's webOS, but obviously a custom UI for a TV. I have a 2017 LG with it and it works rather well, no issues with 4K HDR on Netflix and YouTube, and other than booting, it reacts instantly as a TV should. It's a shame there are limited apps for it though - I'd really like apps for Steam Link and Kodi.
      - krackers 8y ago
        I think webOS has been open sourced and there used to be some effort [1] to port it to devices starting with the nexus 4/5. Seems the effort is still decently active with a release just last week[2] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuneOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuneOS [2]: https://pivotce.com/2018/11/28/luneos-november-stable-release-doppio/ https://pivotce.com/2018/11/28/luneos-november-stable-releas...
  - akvadrako 8y ago
    I think he means PalmOS, which has nothing to do with web or webos.

dukoid 8y ago

Note that there is KaiOS -- popular in India and Brazil but under the radar on HN because it's currently mostly aimed at feature phones. It's based on FireFox OS (hence probably closer to PalmOS than Windows Phone): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS

ksec 8y ago
That was what I posted in the Firefox ( or was it Edge ? ) discussion, Mozilla could have had Firefox OS being the 2nd most popular OS. Instead they handed it to KaiOS.

AsyncAwait 8y ago

I really hope Purism's Librem5 pans out for this very reason. A third alternative. I don't want Windows Phone, since that would not buy me much more privacy than Android with today's Microsoft, so having an open 3rd party mobile platform would be the solution here, I think.

gardaani 8y ago
There's SailfishOS, which is an alternative to Android and iPhone. It's a mobile Linux OS with an optional support for Android apps. It's not the world's most advanced mobile OS, but a good way to escape the Apple and Google ecosystems. It is possible to purchase the OS and install it to Sony Xperia phones. https://shop.jolla.com https://shop.jolla.com
- Operyl 8y ago
  I guess it’s not even available for viewing in my country (the United States). Coincidentally, this must be close to what it’s like in the UK (just on a much much smaller scale) after the GDPR stuff.
redwards510 8y ago
I agree it is an exciting phone, but what are the privacy gains versus an android phone with lineageOS and f-droid foss apps? AFAIK it's just the baseband code. Convincing regular users that opensourcing the baseband will solve any problems seems pretty DOA when you have the very visible google play services tracking issue and no on cares.
- arendtio 8y ago
  It is not just about privacy. With Android phones, you will sooner or later end up in a position where you can't install newer LinageOS versions, simply because your kernel is too old and the required binary drivers cannot be ported to newer kernel versions. Maybe project Treble helps to solve that problem, but it will still take a few years until we will find out (unless Fuchsia kills Android). Nevertheless, I hope that Purism will be able to deliver a product which is as easy to use as a "normal" Android device with those privacy/sustainability features as a bonus. That way I might be able to give the people who ask me which phone they should buy next some good advice.

culot 8y ago

Windyws Phone's tile setup is still the best home screen setup for mobile. As I peep at my Android home with pretty wallpaper with acres of bhank space and uninformative icons, I pine for the informative, intelligent WP tiles. 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.

nicolapede 8y ago
With respect to windows phone, I really miss the tiles, the consistency of the metro style gui and other little details, like automatic do not disturb mode while driving or face recognition well before it became mainstream.
- culot 8y ago
  Dark mode was nice as well. To toggle from light/dark and have alnost every app follow suit was luxurious. On Android it's such a hodgepodge of light and dark, an affront to the eyes at times. Also being able to select text from most anywhere was useful.
- eldavido 8y ago
  I completely agree and I used to work at Microsoft. Microsoft lost because they didn't have the users or the apps. It's an instructive story of how an inferior product can win. I'm not saying that happens all the time or that it's inevitable, but I think it's safe to say that's sort of what happened here.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    A platform without users or apps and years late is not one I'd call superior. Good ideas are not nearly enough, as they often say around HN.
    - JamesBarney 8y ago

cztomsik 8y ago

electron eats so much cpu & memory simply because it's still a web browser, it has to support all those 20 years of HTML/CSS history and it was designed to do so for 10s of tabs, so it has a lot of caches and other things. 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.

zmix 8y ago
> electron eats so much cpu & memory simply because it's > still a web browser, it has to support all those 20 years > of HTML/CSS history and it was designed to do so for 10s > of tabs, so it has a lot of caches and other things. XULRunner does the same thing, includes, in addition, a full XML GUI language and assorted technologies and the full runtime distribution, on my Windows10 system, including debugging, crash-reporter aids, VC libraries, D3D libraries, consumes 72MB.
- marktangotango 8y ago
  I often wonder why/how xulrunner has descended into obscurity while electron has blossomed. Anyone have input on that?
  - zmix 8y ago
    If I'd give you an honest answer, I'd be downvoted to hell ;-)
    - zmix 8y ago
      See?
      - roywiggins 8y ago

nojvek 8y ago

JavaScript isn’t that slow and bloated, the browser rendering engine is a memory hog and cause of most pain. Electron is the big offender because it’s a copy of a new browser everytime. 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.

eitland 8y ago
> With Typescript, JavaScript is a very productive and sane language to work with. Mostly agree with your comment on the broader point that front-end (coding) is a lot saner than it used to be. This sentence however sounds to me like "With C, assembler is a very productive and sane language to work with." (FTR: I used to enjoy assembler.)

qznc 8y ago

For email client, what about Claws? https://www.claws-mail.org https://www.claws-mail.org It seems to be missing an OSX client, but Windows and Linux is supported.

PaulKeeble 8y ago

It is pretty telling of just how successful Yahoo, Google and Microsoft (and others) have been with webmail that the best client for multiple email accounts available is Thunderbird. It isn't awful, it works, but it is also kind of sluggish and pauses in the interfaces all the time.

naasking 8y ago

> compared to today's bloated apps that have difficulty keeping up with keystrokes on 8-core 3.5 GHz monsters 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.

mixmastamyk 8y ago
Something is wrong, see my other replies for potential fixes.

WeAreGoingIn 8y ago

> Windows phone 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.

shawn 8y ago
If you make it illegal to buy companies, people won't start startups.
freeone3000 8y ago
They bought... Windows? Microsoft is one of the giants here. People didn't like the phone.
- FlyMoreRockets 8y ago
  That and Microsoft didn't support developers.

Marc_Bryan 8y ago

PFE - Programmers File Editor. Was way more advanced then any of the editors available now. Could handle GB sized files easily. Had macro that can record your operations and playback. Was very nifty and virtually consumed no memory and was simply superb. I still use it though as it is available in 32 Bit version. https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/steveb/cpaap/pfe/pfefiles... 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!!!

eldavido 8y ago

> As a broader concept, a return to prevailing use of on-device processing and computation 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.

jimmaswell 8y ago
The Windows desktop is "mostly broken"? That's news to me.
- DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
  It’s broken insofar as there isn’t a complete and coherent “developer story” for building a Windows desktop application that doesn’t look like it came from the 1990s. I call it “the Photoshop test”: Pretend you’re Adobe and you just invented Photoshop in 2018. How do you build the GUI for each desktop operating system? ...considering you need to do things like OpenGL hardware acceleration, 30-bit color, support binary plugins, and access certain low-level hardware features (e.g. supporting TWAIN, Pro-level broadcast media devices and interfaces, etc). On Windows it’s an unfortunate situation because all of the “new” application frameworks since 1998 are unsuitable: WPF is .NET only, UWP requires your application to run in a sandbox, you can’t even use MFC because it’s tightly coupled to User32 with its lack of support for 30-bit color. The only choice is the long hard road of doing almost everything by yourself through low-level interfaces with the DWM. Not pretty. The sad thing is that UWP is very capable - if it weren’t for the sandboxing then it would be perfect (that, and you would need to build your own widget library as UWP’s stock set is almost entirely touch-first controls that are utterly inappropriate for a mouse-first desktop UI)

mixmastamyk 8y ago

> High-performance lightweight desktop email clients. 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.

octorian 8y ago
Every time I try searching my Inbox in Thunderbird, it feels painful. Meanwhile, using my mail provider's (Fastmail) web interface, its snappy.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Don’t have a problem with that either. Try the tips in my other replies.

bad_user 8y ago

For email, on Mac I’m using MailMate. It’s everything I wanted Thunderbird to be. 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.

open-source-ux 8y ago

I'm also a big fan of Windows Phone and am sorry to see its demise. While Android and iOS now share many similar UX interactions, Windows Phone, in contrast, is a refreshing change. 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2yzrZvZU6E

squarefoot 8y ago

"High-performance lightweight desktop email clients" https://www.claws-mail.org/ 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.

ekianjo 8y ago
Evolution is also OK. Not sure how it compared to claws-mail feature wise but they both have a long history.

k__ 8y ago

"As a broader concept, a return to prevailing use of on-device processing and computation." Will probably come back with edge-computing.

snaky 8y ago

> High-performance lightweight desktop email clients https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/features.php https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/features.php "Continuously improving since 1998"

87 8y ago

While we're at Windows Phone I must say I miss Windows Mobile. Always found the decision to kill it and replace with Windows Phone a total disaster. At the time it still had a very dedicated user base built over many years. It got replaced with a half-baked copycat OS. I doubt many WM users had any reason to switch to WP instead of Android. It was a completely different product. Microsoft basically threw away a dedicated niche audience for a different niche audience. And I don't have any data on this but I suspect WM users were a much more affluent, valuable and "Microsoft'y" group of users.

stevenicr 8y ago

"desktop email clients" - I run thunderbird and "eM Client" - both are handling a large amount of email fine most of the time. 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.

partycoder 8y ago

If you resurrect those technologies they would die again right after. Nobody cared about Windows phone and nobody noticed when it died. It enjoys the same prestige as Microsoft Bob.

MasterYoda 8y ago

> We need a third viable option in the mobile space 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.

garfieldnate 8y ago

Yes, +1 for Windows phone! I found it much easier to use than the iPhone in general, apart from its lack of apps (which of course is what killed it).

johneke 8y ago

> "High-performance lightweight desktop email clients" I hope the SublimeHQ gods are listening to this