This may be a normie response - but Apple Airpods Pro are one of the best products I've used. After years of using several bluetooth headsets that get finicky (with connections that is), having a set that just connects and works every single time is refreshing. They really changed my behavior - I went from not liking phone conversations at all (getting agitated after a few minutes)to comfortably having long phone calls. I would replace mine immediately if they were lost / broken.
Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
151–160 of 994 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#152US Forest Service picnic table. 3 kinds of simple flat cement castings. Held together by their own weight. Easily carried and assembled by two men. Cheap. Almost indestructible.
Do you have a photo / link? My searches haven’t turned up anything.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
The format has been around for 2000 years, so it's pretty well refined.
1500 years for the current bound format. The preceding codices and before that scrolls were much less user friendly.
They were making something that would be recognizable as a book (or booklet) at least as early as late republic, which ties in to my point that the format has been refined a long time.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#154Sennheiser HD600 headphones: gorgeous sound that is very detail oriented without being clinical.
Fractal Audio FM3: guitar amp+FX modeling done incredibly well. Guitar is now a fully addictive hobby for me.
Fish shell: I use it 8 hours a day and have very few complaints. Performant, ergonomic, and thoughtfully maintained.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#155One example of quality design which I gleaned from reading Don Norman's "The Design Of Everyday Things" is the metal plate I've frequently seen on doors which are meant to be pushed.
The only affordance of such a plate is its push-ability, and the fact that someone actively installed a metal plate (instead of just relying on the door's natural flatness), as well as its location at the point of maximum leverage (all the way to the right of the door, in the door's vertical center), is a clear signifier for such push-ability.
Not only that, but it does its job without offering any other confusing affordances (such as a vertical handle which is also technically pushable, but which many would interpret as being meant to be pulled).
Whenever I need a relatable, succinct example of affordances and signifiers for my engineering comrades, I turn to this one. Anyone interested in design is doing themselves a dis-service by not reading Don Norman's classic.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#156BitTorrent 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?
Also getting to like 98% and not completing the download. Very aggravating
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#157Google flights is fantastic. Don't know if it is "the best-designed thing I've ever used", but it is on top of my mind as I just used it yesterday. Google doesn't get enough credit for the things that they did do well - including Search and Maps. Another is Macbooks - the pre-2015 ones at least. I haven't used the latest M1 ones, which I hear great things about. The Aluminum body, the flawless screen, magsafe, great…
I have multiple close family members who are still using the old Magsafe Macbook Airs. I ask them every year if they want to upgrade to a newer model, and they decline, they just love the laptop. I replaced the battery in each one to the OWC upgraded battery kit.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#158Google flights is fantastic. Don't know if it is "the best-designed thing I've ever used", but it is on top of my mind as I just used it yesterday. Google doesn't get enough credit for the things that they did do well - including Search and Maps. Another is Macbooks - the pre-2015 ones at least. I haven't used the latest M1 ones, which I hear great things about. The Aluminum body, the flawless screen, magsafe, great…
I must disagree with you on maps. Google maps is a fantastic geographic aware search.
It is a horrific map. On any given screen there is an 80% chance that the major road I'm interested in is not labeled. Finding the name of a relevant cross street is a nightmare.
I feel like it used to be better. Way better. I think the map aspect has been dropped entirely as a real feature now that they supply directions (search) primarily instead.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. It's real tempting to answer, "indoor plumbing". It's really nice to flip a lever and get clean, safe water. It's real good not to need to stroll to the outhouse, too.
Mostly unrelated but I would like to be able to set the temperate and water pressure for my shower so I can just enter and press a single button. This would also be great for those showers where you can never get the water temperature or pressure right so you have to keep adjusting it. I would also like to run a bath by doing the same thing, and having the water stop when it's at the right level. Maybe there could be…
Thermal regulating shower/bath faucets are relatively common: https://www.deltafaucet.com/design-innovation/innovations/sh...
I have one in my master shower and it's fantastic. Of course, the water starts out cold (because the water in the hot water pipes are cold) but once it's up to temperature, it's very consistent, even if you have a toilet flush in your house which would reduce the pressure of cold.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#160The 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 pl…
Agree. The device is made of long lasting parts. Easy to repair if needed and parts for even the oldest models are still available.