Ask HN: Products that suck but you still use? (2020)

by anton_tarasenko on 4/28/2020, 9:28:57 PM with 25 comments
Fellow user albertgudl asked this question a year ago:[1]

"What are products you use frequently but still hate/they suck? What are products you use frequently but think they could be done better?"

Does anyone have something to add this year?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19715548

  • by oldsklgdfth on 4/28/2020, 11:05:23 PM

    Amazon.com

    If I don't find what I need in the first few results I have to scroll endlessly. No amount of filtering or sorting helps.

    The browsing experience is lacking. I think most people have been trained to buy specific items, rather than searching for the product that is good for them.

  • by notkaiho on 4/28/2020, 9:43:45 PM

    Spotify. The Mac desktop app often stops being able to play songs until you can restart the app, an issue they've been aware of for months if not a year. The catalogue is an absolute mess and there's no way to report metadata issues, or transparency about which editions records are based on.

    But it syncs nicely with my phone, lets me download songs for listening on planes, and has decent little features like discovery playlists.

  • by lesderid on 4/28/2020, 11:30:08 PM

    As a former power user of Inbox, Gmail.

    It has a ton of icons and labels and whatnot that for me provide only clutter. They never completely integrated the 'tasks' or 'notes' or whatever they used to call it either. It's also much slower to load.

  • by Spooky23 on 4/28/2020, 10:57:42 PM

    Microsoft Outlook - because work.

    Apple Music.app - gets worse with every release.

  • by daneyh on 4/29/2020, 7:08:02 AM

    Calibre for book library management. The UI stinks to high hell but apparently developer DGAF.

    Has so many great features and i'm not sure of any alternatives that gets even close what calibre can do.

  • by open-source-ux on 4/29/2020, 10:40:49 AM

    There are so many - where to start?

    - Microsoft Outlook, Excel, Word (the desktop apps)

    - Google Sheets, Android, GMail

    - Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects etc)

    - Git, GitHub

    - Apple Finder

    - Dropbox, Dropbox Paper

    Not products, but technologies: most programming languages, CSS, most APIs, anything with the description "static site generator"

  • by keiferski on 4/29/2020, 10:47:01 AM

    Taking regular bicycles on elevators or other tight spaces. Getting my bike up to my apartment is a huge hassle, but leaving it outside will get it stolen. I wish there were a quicker way to disassemble a standard, non-folding bike on the fly.

  • by swah on 4/29/2020, 10:17:44 AM

    Linux :) Rages me every other day, but also good enough.

    Terminator, VSCode and Chrome: mostly love. GUI file managers, display stuff: mostly hate.

  • by gshdg on 4/29/2020, 2:17:30 AM

    Apple’s mail apps. The dishwasher in my rental apartment. Slack’s API docs. Modern web browsers. Google search.

  • by w321amw8 on 4/29/2020, 6:18:42 PM

    Job boards.... is it me or are they all shit?

  • by jurgenwerk on 4/30/2020, 10:05:31 AM

    Evernote.

    Terrible UX, sluggish, indexing problems.

  • by rawgabbit on 4/28/2020, 11:51:58 PM

    MS Outlook. MS Windows. Anki.

  • by ak39 on 4/29/2020, 8:44:46 PM

    Gimp

  • by billconan on 4/29/2020, 2:30:39 PM

    gimp,

    gitk,

    xcode