What is a tool you use everyday but hate? For me, Excel and Adobe PDF. Replacement recs?
What is a tool you use everyday but cringe when you have to open them? For me, Excel and Adobe PDF. Replacement recs?
Since I moved to Google workspace, I've adopted google sheets. It's not perfect, but for the most part, I can do everything I need in there with ease. But I still work with organizations that use Excel. And yes, I always try to import it into google sheets first, but sometimes, when they are complex files with macros etc, I am forced to use Excel and I suffer trying to switch between google sheets and excel and finding the tools I need to do simple basic things! Is there anything out there that bridges the gap with a clean, simple interface?
As for Adobe Acrobat, I can't begin to list all my frustrations with it. There are so many different tools (see screenshot here. If you click View More at the bottom there, I counted, and there are 29 different tools...) What is the difference between edit, comment, organize, fill & sign etc? They are all EDITING the document. Why can't I just do all the things I want to do in the same interface?!
I use different tools for my personal PDF needs but I'm hoping to get recs for reliable PDF tools I can use in the professional setting (e.g. for an occasional signature I need to get request, I don't want to use an unknown, not trusted product that might not make it to my end user).
I've love to
1) hear recommended products to replace these tools (or maybe someone wants to tackle the issue and build one?!)
2) hear what everyday tools you use but cringe every time you open them (maybe someone in the community can help!)
Replies
It’s wild how many ‘essential’ tools feel like they were designed to punish you for needing them.
My daily cringe: complex project dashboards that try to be everything at once — calendar, doc, kanban, CRM. Too much surface area, zero clarity.
The real pain isn't bad UI — it’s tools that force you to spend mental effort just to figure out what they want from you. Clean design ≠ clear experience. Feels like what we actually need is not fewer features, but fewer assumptions baked into the workflow.
Snapchat is awful btw.
Product Hunt
@goshatirov omg Gosha! this 💯!!! There are so many of these out there that leave me more overwhelmed than when I opened them and that has to be a red flag 😅
TimeAlign
Siri and Apple Finder.
I've upgraded to using ChatGPT on mobile and Raycaster for Mac now but I still encounter situations where I must use Siri on mobile and Finder on my Mac.
Product Hunt
@matty_reed that's so interesting that you use ChatGPT instead of Siri on mobile. I think I still use Siri for very basic things like setting alarms, sending a text etc, but I'm assuming that the use cases you have for using ChatGPT are more complex?
And thanks for mentioning @Raycast . I started looking into them when they launched raycast notes. I installed Raycast but haven't been using it on my mac. Are you using it mainly just for searching?
TimeAlign
@ph_leeanntrang ChatGPT has the best voice chat of all the AI apps, and I find this the best interface for most questions that require any back and forth (it is a phone after all!).
I've been defaulting more to @Perplexity for one off questions, but Siri is still the fastest for extremely easy questions/commands. As much as I shit on Siri, the fluid design of the Siri activation is beautiful.
Im still learning how to best use @Raycast shortcuts, but for now Im using it for some basic actions like search, but also for quickly grabbing information or links. For example, I can grab my @Cal.com links very quickly now.
Outlook email is a headache to me...Really need it but sometimes it will miss my messages.
minimalist phone: creating folders
I use Slack every day. I like it as a tool but the Threads feature is annoying because sometimes I miss some messages.
Product Hunt
@busmark_w_nika this happens to me too! But at least if I go back to Threads, I can scroll through to see if I had missed anything. Sometimes because I was default open on a DM or channel, it assumes I read it though I was in a diff application and marks it as read 😅 Now I just tell people if they haven't heard back from me in 24 hours, to assume I haven't seen it and not to hesitate to ping me again.
minimalist phone: creating folders
Yes! When they use your handle, it is not so easy to overlook any task. But they didn't ping me and I left some tasks without any change 2 weeks LOL :D
Acrobat must be the single most depressing piece of software ever made.
Email. Not because it’s bad..but because it asks too much of us.
Teams are spending hours a week just figuring out what matters, what’s follow-up-worthy, what needs prep.
We’re building an AI Executive Assistant that automates that layer..handling triage, follow-ups, meeting prep.. so orgs can stop pouring time into inbox management.
Curious what tool you wish did more thinking for you?
MS teams.
Because if you type in chat too fast, it often doesn't recognize it, so you have to type very slowly for it to work. I don't know why this error occurs. It happens intermittently, quite often. I'll have to test it next time I get an error because it's not in English.