

Ask HN: What apps/businesses has Apple just rendered obsolete? - arturadib

Of course Apple is not coming out with <i>all</i> features supported by the apps below. But for average users like myself, Apple's new offerings will force me to abandon these apps, as they seem to cover most of my needs.<p>Off the top of my head:<p>- Dropbox (cf. iCloud)<p>- Instagram (cf. iOS5 Twitter integration in Photos)<p>- Zinio, Flipboard (cf. iOS5 Newsstand)<p>- Instapaper, ReadItLater (cf. iOS5 Safari Reading List)<p>- Camera+ (cf. iOS5 Camera)<p>- reQall, Remember-The-Milk, etc (cf. iOS5 Reminders with location support)<p>Any other unlucky souls?
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mstolpm
IMO, most of the mentioned services are not in danger if they focus on
differentiation:

Dropbox: How long will it take until all Dropbox-enabled apps are upgraded to
iCloud and Dropbox integration dropped? Differentiation for Dropbox: Ease of
use across MULTIPLE platforms.

Camera+: Has a lot more to offer than just crop and rotate. Focus on best
post-processing and sharing, turn it into a universal app. Camera+ can read
the photo roll, so it can be used to optimize photos taken taken with the new
camera app as well.

Instapaper, ReadItLater: Focus on social features, cross platform sharing.

Flipboard: Nothing in iOS5 seems to come near a "personal magazine".
Newsstand? Not really something that comes near a 'personal social magazine'.

To-do apps: What about cross-platform, collaboration, reusable lists? Lots of
room to differentiate.

In addition, all these developers either have made money through direct sales
or advertising. Money they made by using an ecosystem built by Apple. They may
make less money in the future if they can't differentiate. But as long as
Apple isn't banning e.g. Dropbox-enabled apps, I don't think they are so
'unlucky' souls and nobody is forced to abandon these apps.

~~~
muruke
It's interesting, I wanted to teach myself iOS development and the best way
for me was to come up with a project and see it to the end. My project was
location aware reminders. I wasn't going to get rich or anything, just was
solving a problem I had and learning a new framework/environment.

Seeing Apple's new Reminders app has really de-motivated me to finish it. Also
before you point out TaskAve or any others, I only learnt about them today, in
this thread. I purposely didn't go looking for location aware reminder apps as
I knew it would de-motivate me to finish mine, and hence not learn what I
wanted.

Although I can't miss reading what is coming in iOS 5 :)

Oh well, I'll have to think of something else to keep me interested.

------
chc
Have you actually looked at iCloud? I can't imagine why a paid Dropbox user
would abandon it in favor of such a scanty offering.

~~~
mikeleeorg
I found Dropbox's UI so easy & sensible that I'm surprised the iCloud folks
didn't try to model their product more on Dropbox. But perhaps they will in a
future version.

~~~
eslaught
I think Apple would like to make the file system disappear (from an end user
perspective). With that goal in mind, iCloud has no reason to emulate
Dropbox's behavior.

------
nathanstitt
Perhaps my app Remindly, but am waiting to see how easy they made it to
schedule a reminder, as Remindly is intended to make creating an reminder
simple enough that you can perform it in only a few seconds while
multitasking, driving, on phone, etc.

The screenshots of Apple's location based alarms do make it appear much more
robust than Remindly. I'm looking forward to playing with it to see how
accurate they are, that's something I encountered huge issues with.

------
pixeloution
Dropbox, along with the rest of these, I imagine, have plenty of non-mac
users.

~~~
jbail
To add to your comment: I use Dropbox on both my Macs as well as a couple PCs
(and my Android phone). iCloud won't work for my type of usage.

------
matdwyer
The guys at TaskAve (Location aware notes - <http://taskave.com/>)

On twitter they immediately said "PIVOT!"

~~~
DavidChouinard
Which they then removed and replaced with "Ouch."

~~~
matdwyer
Sorry, I should have clarified pivot was from one of the founders (@skanwar)
but ouch says the same thing ;-)

~~~
cal5k
As much as I like Satish and wish him the best, their "product" was really a
feature from day one.

Still, great learning lesson they won't soon forget :-)

------
mtogo
The chromebook. Now that everyone's iThing can sync and back up, what need is
there for this cut-down web browser OS?

~~~
whiletruefork
I disagree becuase the chromebook functions under the idea that 99% of what
users need to do happens within the browser. OSX makes the guess that what the
users need to do happens within the Apple Entertainment Ecosystem...
(Disclaimer: I use both)

------
bricestacey
Interestingly, the Twitter app is itself obsolete since it'll be built into
iOS. All the negative attention that Twitter got over advising against
implementing additional clients and then adding the dickbar to their client
was for nothing.

~~~
tobylane
iOS can tweet, not read. Twitter for iPhone is really good for searching,
seeing trending topics, profiles.

------
mmccomb
The big win for me with Instapaper is the cross-platform and cross-browser
support. Apples offering is Safari and OSX centric. What use is read it later
when I potentially can't get access on the device I'm using?

------
r00fus
The "Red Pop" Kickstartr project suddenly looks less exciting also.

------
dyream
it's bigger than just apps. telecoms are in big trouble due to imessage and
increased voip. also, all these new icloud features are going to put a heavy
burden on their network. as soon as a relatively cheap and reliable data only
service comes out, that's pretty much all you're going to need.

------
beatpanda
Well, I'm not going to use iCloud, and I'm sure I'm not alone, so probably
none of them.

------
meeech
Have you ever used instagr.am? The appeal has nothing to do with twitter
integration.

