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Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#111

Post by WorldPeas »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #71

These are the brands Ive had good success with, almost everything Ive bought has met or exceeded my expectations: Apple, Levis, Patagonia/LL Bean/North Face, Garmin smartwatch, Goruck, Toyota, Bosch or Milwaukee tools, Fender, Sonicare, Thule, Yakima, Ankur cables, weather tech floormats. Well designed websites: Google, Old reddit, and HN, can't believe they've stayed true all these years. Brands, I or a friend, has…

Just to be the contrarian I am, I'll say that dell is still actually pretty good. You just have to buy the business models like the precision to get the best experience now

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#112

Post by spacelamb »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #71

These are the brands Ive had good success with, almost everything Ive bought has met or exceeded my expectations: Apple, Levis, Patagonia/LL Bean/North Face, Garmin smartwatch, Goruck, Toyota, Bosch or Milwaukee tools, Fender, Sonicare, Thule, Yakima, Ankur cables, weather tech floormats. Well designed websites: Google, Old reddit, and HN, can't believe they've stayed true all these years. Brands, I or a friend, has…

Thanks for the recs, though Google has caused unexpected design problems in my usage. Sometimes it unpredictably switches to dark mode, then light mode on Firefox and Safari. Google's answer box also sometimes displays wrong information (infamously, "Google turned me into a serial killer" on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27622100).

I'm curious about Amazon Basics and Beats. For the former, they sell so many products that the ones I buy are pretty good (e.g. office supplies), but I have run into other products with middling reviews. For Beats, I would expect them to be good because Apple acquired them, so it's interesting to hear they have problems.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#113

Post by infocollector »

reggieband wrote: post #76
donatj wrote: post #53

My Cuisinart PerfectTemp water kettle. I bought it 11 years ago, a couple years after moving out. It was more expensive than many of its competitors, but the build quality seemed worth the investment. Early in my career, it was a big investment. I have used it nearly every single day in that time, and honestly never stopped to think about it until now. It's been a fixture of my life. Other than the occasional descali…

I have one of these and I use it about once or twice a week. I have one major design gripe with mine: the Keep Warm functionality is enabled by default. It does at least remember if you turn it off but for some reason it resets to default if my power cuts out. I happen to live in a slightly rural location where a 1-2 minute power cut happens now and again. If I use the kettle after the power outage it keeps reboiling…

Isn't it true that in design the hot water touches non-metallic parts, which is not good for you?

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#115

Post by WorldPeas »

samspenc wrote: post #42
lowkey wrote: post #39

Tonal is amazing. It is the fitness system of my dreams. A resistance training setup with digital weights that hangs on the wall. It is filled with high quality content that showcases how to take full advantage of the tech. An ai combined with a well designed adjustment system and suddenly weight training is so fun and fluid I can do it every day.

I've been looking into a home gym and am torn between Tonal, Mirror and other offerings. Just curious if you've compared Tonal against Mirror, Peloton, etc?

I don't want to come off as aggressive or smug saying this, but I was considering buying one of these and my friend gave me a used book called solitary fitness and I got a nice muscular build without needing a gym. When the gyms closed because of the pandemic nothing changed for me, because you can't take whats in your noggin. Plus it's muuuch cheaper. Just tryin to save ya the trouble

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#116

Post by NikolaNovak »

quiffledwerg wrote: post #68

The best thing I ever used was iPod shuffle mini. It was the perfect design, nothing could be added nor taken away to make it better. But apple being Apple they redesigned it to be crap then discontinued it. On the topic of designing great things and Apple …. Can I say that I hate Apples “minimalism above all else” approach to design. For example I want computers with lots of ports - what’s the point in buying a mini…

I loved the original iPod Shuffle - the one that looked like spearmint pack of gum. This may or may not be what you're referring to, but to me it was Perfect; the only Apple product I've truly enjoyed without the 5-25% incredible frustration I typically hit when I stretch my usage of any other Apple product. It felt like Apple philosophy distilled - beautiful, minimalistic and stylish but usable and useful too, even well priced and reliable. In fact I still have mine!

The following generations lost the allure somehow. Smaller, but that smaller form factor didn't actually work for me; it did not fit in my hand or in my pocket as nicely, you now needed a cable to charge it (how very Un-Apple in theory, how very Apple in practice!).

But the first one was just perfection. I got a couple of other MP3 players since in as similar format as I could find, both no-name clones and big-name versions, but nope, none of them were as smooth and easy.

P.S. Do *NOT* get me started on loss of 3.5mm port ;-<

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#117

Post by andersco »

The Technics SL-1200 turntable. The fact that the design has not changed except for minor tweaks since the product was released speaks for itself. I used it both as a DJ many years ago and now kept one of the turntables just for listening. The quality of the turntable is palpable not only in its physical weight but in the utter simplicity of the design. The dotted edges of the rotating plate are both aesthetically pleasing while also informative communicating rotation speed. Every detail every little part of the unit is functional design of the highest quality while also visually appealing. In my view one of the greatest achievements in modern electronics and industrial design.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#118

Post by dsizzle »

guidovranken wrote: post #27

BitTorrent is amazing. It just works. Anyone anywhere can create a torrent of their files, dump the magnet link somewhere, and everyone else can reliably retrieve it. It is self-reinforcing; the more people using a torrent, the better the robustness, redundancy and download speeds. You can often get better speeds from downloading something via torrent than from a web server. It's an open protocol that is relatively e…

Honest question: how much of the torrent content is corrupted in some way? I dabbled with file sharing back when Kazaa was a thing and I infected my computer to the point I had to reinstall the operating system and I "learned my lesson." But maybe I overlearned the lesson, and it can be used reliably?
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