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Ask HN: Successful products that (in)famously lacked "table stakes" features?

• 082349872349872 2y ago
  Early LLMS just make shit up and don't double check Early Facebook had no provision for sharing different things with different people Early HTML had (and current HTML still has) hyperlinks to nowhere Early Oracle would occasionally lose your data Early Macs and Windows* lacked preemptive multiprocessing Early Unix made no provision to keep a process from overwriting its own code Early business computers didn't process lowercase alphabetics; early scientific computers didn't process alphabetics at all. Early desk calculators would just go into an infinite loop if you were foolish enough to divide by 0 Early telephone calls had to be manually routed Early steam engines were only economically feasible because the mines they were pumping out were coal mines Early saddles didn't have stirrups Early alphabets didn't have vowels etc, etc * there was even folk wisdom at the time that any sub-3.0 microsoft product was bound to be woefully lacking in at least one area
  • ohong 2y ago
    This is a very good list! Curious if all of them just came top-of-mind (if so, very impressive haha) or if you did any research / AI assist. Thank you!
    • 082349872349872 2y ago
      All off the top of my head, but if I were to do any research, the first place I'd look would be Burke, Connections (1995) FWIW, having spent nearly 4 decades in tech, I agree with Buchheit. EDIT: there may also be relevant case studies in Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (1962) and Moore, Crossing the Chasm (1991) [in the language of the latter: great products are for the innovators and early adopters market segments; good products are for the early majority and lagging adopter segments]