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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?

#301

Post by stillblue »

muzani wrote: post #212
stillblue wrote: post #166

The Apple Ecosystem. I've invested a lot of hard earned money into it. I have an ipad, iphone, a macbook air, an apple watch, airpods pro and a mac mini. Bought these over the years. Just the way these things work so cohesively to me is pure magic. The attention to detail on extremely minor things is pretty impressive. I haven't had to think about "doing" anything with tech ever since I bought apple products. You jus…

There are some things I like, but never fell in love with them. iPhones died too fast. MBP had weird display glitches because of the lighting adjustment. The touch bar was less useful than a touchscreen. Keyboard is so bad that it's often the deal-breaker when trying to buy a macbook. It might be useful if I could just plug an external keyboard into it, but I need an adapter for that now and the adapter gets hot with…

I managed to dodge every single bad apple product. I never bought MBP's only Airs. No touchbars. No shitty keyboard.

The products I've owned / own had zero problems maybe cos they're a subset of Apple products that do not have problems. What do you mean iphones die too fast? My experience has been quite the opposite.

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

#302

Post by z2 »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #177
jerkstate wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Of course, the water starts out cold (because the water in the hot water pipes are cold) No, this should be considered a failure condition for a constant temperature shower. I don't care how they do it, just bleed the cold water into a separate pipe off to the side or something. We have sent people into space, I want actual uniform temperature water.

I've seen a few apartments in Asia have small electric water heaters right before the faucet. They provide instant hot water until the main boiler's hot water arrives.

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

#303

Post by colechristensen »

walterbell wrote: post #140
Diesel555 wrote: post #84

My most useful watch for daily life and my job (pilot) has been a Citizen Navihawk JY8035. I have many styles between the Apple Watch and a Garmin Fenix to a 5$ Casio. The functionality is amazing both day and night. Features I wanted: Automatic time updates to the second Analog face Digital second readout Solar Visible at night Secondary time without any button presses (I use UTC) I list it because it is the best de…

Is there an option for leather or metal watchband, either from Citizen or aftermarket?

Almost every watch has a standard replaceable wristband.

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

#304

Post by boomboomsubban »

dsizzle wrote: post #214
boomboomsubban wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kazaaa has nothing to do with torrents, but what do you mean by corrupted? Torrenting can cause a fragmenting issue, but defragging clears that up. And like anywhere else, random executables sometimes contain malware but there's nothing inherent in torrents that makes that more likely.

I meant “file sharing” more generally not “torrents” specifically (I edited my previous comment). I don’t know what exactly happened to my computer but I suspect malware. While not inherent to torrents, it does seem inherent in sharing of random executables. Have the trust issues improved? What are some good use cases of torrents?

It's mostly like the rest of the web, though another commenter is right that seeds demonstrate a small amount of trust. If I'm on some random public warez site, my executable is likely to be malware. If I'm on something like the Internet Archive, Debian's site, or /r/datahoarder, their torrents are likely just a more efficient way to share data.

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

#305

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

wh313 wrote: post #61

My Aeropress coffee maker. It feels more convenient than a french press, and much cheaper than an espresso machine. https://aeropress.com/ Also a bidet. Americans really need to start using it more.

As an espresso snob, I'm going to go with a Breville Double Boiler machine. Many espresso machine snobs used to crap on Breville as being "consumer grade", but they really succeeded with their Double Boiler machines, especially their more recent models that make it easy to descale the boiler at home.

The BDB includes features that can cost literally 5X as much on Italian machines (stainless steel boilers, a preheating tube that pulls brew water through the steam boiler first, an electrically heated grouphead, etc.) but it still has fantastic temperature stability.

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

#306

Post by einarvollset »

thih9 wrote: post #300
muzani wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been searching for a PB that didn't literally add trans fat. After a few years of searching, Pic's was the only good one.

There are peanut butter brands where the product is just blended peanuts. Though they can be more expensive and the texture is different.

AFAIK approximately all “no-stir” peanut butters only have peanuts in them. People don’t buy them because the oil floats to the top and causes a mess and if you don’t stir, then the bottom 1/5th is like glue.

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

#307

Post by robocat »

shimonabi wrote: post #231
japhyr wrote: post #134

If you split your own firewood by hand, a Fiskars splitting axe is insanely better than any standard splitting maul you'd find in a typical hardware store: https://www.fiskars.com/en-us/gardening-and-yard-care/produc... For mechanical pencils, the Rotring 600 is the best thing I've ever written with: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AZWYUA4/

I have this Fiskars model, but I haven't used it in more than 5 years. I had to chop up 2 huge cherry trees and this thing was useless. For splitting wood, I now always use this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ochsenkopf-OX-3509-Log-Splitter-Rot... Now THAT is really good design.

> Now THAT is really good design

Perhaps explain why it is better? A personal opinion is not as useful as an insightful explanation.

> was useless

You haven’t said what was wrong with it. Also I think your wording is awfully close to breaking site guidelines: "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Disclaimer: not a mod, I’m just a hippy that wants us all to get on well together!

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

#308

Post by nradov »

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…

I'm also a fan of Garmin smartwatches, they have some amazing functionality and are serious tools for athletes and outdoorsmen. But they are handicapped by glitchy software.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/competitor-software-inst...

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

#309

Post by redthrowaway »

Buttons840 wrote: post #50
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…

Wish browsers had built in support for it. Imagine if by default most downloads were through BitTorrent, and your browser would then seed the file for 1.5x the download size and time.

Brave supports bittorrent natively and is basically a reskinned Chrome without the spyware.

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

#310

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

It kind of pains me to say this, but I'll say Sonos from about 5-6 years ago. When I first got a couple speakers, I touted it as the best consumer electronics experience I'd ever had to except maybe some Apple products.

Unfortunately, it has been consistently downhill the past couple of years. What used to "just work" now constantly has issues and glitches, and speakers I got just a few years ago that work great are now essentially EOLed in their software. I've definitely purchased my last Sonos product.

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