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

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

#61

Post by yousifa »

synicalx wrote: post #21

Odd answer, but probably a Blackberry Passport. Clean and sturdy design, OS is on point (assuming you dont use many 3rd party apps), keyboard is brilliant - it leverages the benefits of a physical keyboard and adds the flexibility of touchscreen keyboards. Not to mention the screen, never thought I'd enjoy using a 1:1 screen but it's so good for reading on. Outside of technology, probably my old man's Eames Classic.…

+1 on blackberry. Their keyboard is the most intuitive and comfortable keyboard I have used. BB OS10 was the best designed OS, guestures were intuitive, design was beautiful. It's unfortunate they didn't make it as a dominant platform in the smartphone era.

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

#62

Post by ygmelnikova »

handojin wrote: post #51

Magick in Theory and Practice Tractatus Logico Philosophicus Discipline and Punish The Ethics Beyond Good and Evil The Gay Science The Master and Margarita The Prince A Book of Five Rings The Book of Changes A Hero of our Times At Swim Two Birds

I think you misread the title.

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

#63

Post by xor1 »

cpt1138 wrote: post #18

The Reddit app on IOS. Something has always bothered me about most of the apps on IOS but I couldn't put my finger on it until I started using the reddit app. The UX is so good that it makes everything else feel awkward. I think that everything else was actually awkward and that's what I didn't like. Cutco knives. All my life I've known what makes a good knife and that you should pay a lot. I think this is fine in th…

I prefer Alien Blue to the new Reddit app. I hope I never end up losing it, since it's no longer on the app store.

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

#64

Post by i336_ »

eli wrote: post #16
jimmies wrote: post #8

Aesthetically pleasing: - The Palm Pre (1st edition). It is an absolutely amazing, brilliant piece of hardware (especially back in 2009) that fits just right in my hand like a pebble. The curved screen is brilliant to the eyes and to the touch. It also has an interface that is not cluttered and busy like shit in other mainstream OSes then, and now. But I mainly like things that are designed for ease of maintenance: -…

The modern ThinkPads are a lot harder to take apart, even though they superficially look very similar. The T42/43 was a tank. I saw one take such a hard fall that the frame bent and it still booted up.

I unfortunately dropped a T60 some time ago, on the right rear corner.

The system board and everything were all fine... but the LCD copped it :( only displayed sad rainbows (IIRC).

I'm not sure if I bent the heatsink slightly off as well; I tried to fix it but I may have made it worse. The thermal design on the T60 is a disaster: the part of the heatpipe that extends over the GPU has nowhere to bolt it down (see http://i.imgur.com/lUOwImO.jpg - the rightmost part, see how there are no screws, it literally was not factored into the design, it's held down solely by the copper itself) and because my heatsink is fractionally misaligned, my GPU consistently idles at 75°C (!) and can reach 90°C (!!) if I actually try to do anything!

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

#67

Post by apankrat »

Aeron chair.

Aeropress.

EIZO monitors - http://www.eizo.com

uTorrent, the older versions.

Dead serious about uTorrent. One of the best designed and engineered pieces of software ever. Everything you need, where you expect it to be, doing exactly what it should be doing, and nothing more.

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

#68

Post by klenwell »

I'm impressed with the new design of water coolers. It's been a while since I've been in an office with a real water cooler as opposed to a Keurig-like device connected directly to the waterline.

But at my new office, we have a good old-fashioned water cooler. Except that it's a newfangled water cooler with a redesigned interface between cooler and water jug. Now, instead of peeling a wax lid off the top of the jug and spilling a couple cups of water as you throw it on the cooler, you just pull off a sticker and sort of plug it into the water cooler. No more water spills.

It seems so simple and obvious. Yet how many Olympic-sized swimming pools full of water did we have to spill before someone designed it? I love it.

Here's the first video I could find that shows one of them in action (in 3D!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgS5VIwE1WA

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

#69

Post by dbg31415 »

Just about anything Razer.

Razer Taipan & Razer BlackWidow are wonderful. Totally reliable, precise, and pleasantly tactile.

I've had a few Razer mice over the years and the earlier ones had a rubberize finish that would wear off eventually... had my Taipan for 4 years or so and it still feels like it's brand new. Trackpads will work in a pinch, but after you get used to a high-DPI mouse it's hard to use anything else. Same for mechanical keyboards... ha, maybe we should tell people not to get started... you'll hate typing on anything else after you've used one for a while.

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

#70

Post by trelliscoded »

Oxo hand tools.

Hermin Miller Aerons.

My Olympus skyhawk. Literally the only piece of hardware that's going to outlive me.

The FN P90 and the 57 pistol.

The flight deck on the Sukhoi SU-34 and the Boeing 787.

Basically, anything where the design department went out and asked the customer what their biggest complaints were, then sat down to eliminate them in the design phase.

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