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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?

#481

Post by mrweasel »

yumraj wrote: post #393
stephenfin wrote: post #222

I'm amazed no one has suggested Chromecast. It just works. Click a button on your phone or laptop and the video or song you were listening to or want to listen to suddenly appears on the TV. Even grandparents seem to get it. Maybe Apple TV is a similar experience but Chromecast is as good as it gets

I know a lot of people seem to love Chromecast, but for some reason using a phone to control TV never made sense to me. I prefer the physical remote. And for sending screen to the TV, the quality was never good. Our Chromecast and the one included with TV haven’t been used for years.

The Chromecast was never amazing, and having to use a phone or Chrome to control your TV is really weird. Having a Chromecast was better than nothing though.

However if you’ve used an AppleTV you realise that the Chromecast is actually a pretty terrible solution, compared to just having a device with apps.

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

#484

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

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…

But you also need to find the file first. And sites to search for files are unreliable, often get banned. I remember long before bit torrent there were protocols like napster, edonkey, imesh etc that included search function and were superior to bit torrent in this aspect. Unfortunately, bad design won.

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

#485

Post by carlgreene »

grech wrote: post #151

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 cal…

I agree, unfortunately however I've recently developed worsening tinnitus that I've attributed to them. There appear to be several others who have a similar experience[0].

I've stopped using them in favor of my over-ear VModas the past couple weeks and my tinnitus is significantly better. I rarely listen to music loud and the volume only seldom goes over 50% so I'm having a hard time attributing it to excess listening volume.

[0]: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250886390

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

#486

Post by Accacin »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #457
amarshall wrote: post #239

The Kinesis Advantage keyboard [1]. The height of the keys in each column are different because, well, the length of each of our fingers is different. It’s so naturally comfortable that it goes unnoticed and one’s fingers just fall into the right position. Placing one’s fingers offset left or right is so obviously uncomfortable that it’s basically impossible to have off-by-one typos. There is a lot of subtly well-des…

> Contoured keyboard designed to provide maximum comfort and productivity for Windows and Mac users. As a Linux user this leaves me really second guessing.

I have this keyboard and use Linux and it works perfectly.

Best of all, all keyswapping and other layout changes are done via the keyboard itself so absolutely no software required to be installed :)

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

#487

Post by gautamcgoel »

dhosek wrote: post #355
Aeolun wrote: post #283

I’m a great fan of my reMarkable 2. I’m also a great fan of my (Japanese) unit bathroom control panels. I can set the shower and bath temperature to a specific number, automatically fill my bath to a specified level with the press of a button, have it keep the bath at temperature, let me know when it’s full when I’m in the living room. It’s glorious. Every time I’m staying anywhere overseas I cannot believe I’m back…

Are these Japanese control panels available in the us?

Yeah I want to know this too.

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

#488

Post by donatj »

betwixthewires wrote: post #452
stephenfin wrote: post #222

I'm amazed no one has suggested Chromecast. It just works. Click a button on your phone or laptop and the video or song you were listening to or want to listen to suddenly appears on the TV. Even grandparents seem to get it. Maybe Apple TV is a similar experience but Chromecast is as good as it gets

Well, that's because most of that is untrue. It's not a simple system. Technically all you need is upnp to perform all those functions. A raspberry pi with a build of VLC that only always plays full screen and a slideshow of some kind in between use. However, with the google product specifically it is deliberately designed to handicap itself and require all kinds of extra software (google at services, the YouTube app…

I don’t think that’s a fair way to judge a product. It’s made and marketed for sending videos from android phones to your TV, and it does that well. It doesn’t handle tasks it wasn’t built for well? That’s fine.

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

#489

Post by michaelhoney »

alpaca128 wrote: post #478
toomanyrichies wrote: post #155

One 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 t…

While this is true I often wonder why so many of those doors don't just open towards both sides. They exist and I think it's the best compromise because it's just not possible to use it the wrong way.

A couple of possible reasons: one-way doors can have a solid frame, making them easier to secure; and they are better at sealing against weather.

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

#490

Post by kortilla »

theduemmer wrote: post #203
jbay808 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love it if they added a price filter option! If I want a clear plastic tube I don't always know whether I'll get a cheaper price with acrylic, UV-resistant acrylic, static dissipative acrylic, ultra-strength polycarbonate, high-temperature polycarbonate, etc... It can take a lot of clicking to find the cheapest option!

Unfortunately I don't see them creating a price filter as they are mainly geared at businesses vs. hobbyists or consumers, where "get it here fast" is more important than saving a few dollars. That being said, I find adding all of the prospective parts to the cart works well for me when I want to compare prices

I’ve yet to work in a business that doesn’t care about the price of something. This is particularly true when we are evaluating parts that might be used in production at scale.
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