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

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911–920 of 1001 posts

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

#911

Textmate 2 - It's such a well-engineered piece of software, and it's gorgeous. Bialetti Brikka - Such an elegant design, and it makes delicious coffee, Italian-style. Nespresso - If Apple made espresso machines. The espresso tastes great and it's easy to clean. Patagonia MLC 45L - My pet peeve with luggage is that the good stuff tends to be heavy. Not this! It's big enough for extended travel, has backpack straps if…

Isn't Charles Schwab terribly insecure ? There was a post here a year ago about their password and 2fa policies.

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

#912

Nexus 5. Marvelous beauty of a phone. Red panda is especially beautiful. Screen size was just about right at the time, the way the screen blent into the bezels was amazing, the ergonomics were awesome.

I found the Nexus 5 (not the 5x) had poor build quality - it was plasticy, and mine fell to pieces after 18 months - the battery started to run out early, then the microphone, and eventually it just stopped working at all.

It had a nice interface, but I moved to the HTC One (installed GPE on it), got a rock solid case and after 14 months it feels like it hasn't aged a day.

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

#913
post #376

- My cast iron skillet. It's indestructible and once I learned to season it and cook with it, I prefer it over any other. - 15" Macbook Pro w/ Retina display, iPhone 7 - BNC connectors - The Xtrend Professional Rabbit Wine Opener. (Super cheap on Amazon and it has an incredibly well-designed mechanism) - The Mezlan Cordoba men's shoe -- high quality, no break-in needed, durable, fashionable. - Crocs -- indestructible…

> - Crocs -- indestructible, comfy. Why these are so berated really dumbfounds me. I love my crocs. So easy to slip on, comfy. Good for all seasons, summer without socks, winter with socks. And (imho) they look awesome too.

..because they are really bad for your feet and most of them are ugly as hell?

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

#914

Jura superautomatic coffee machines. Jura is a Swiss brand that is like the Apple of superautomatics. Their range extends from small, somewhat expensive consumer machines to rather expensive, excellent machines for industrial use. They're really solid, stylish workhorses, with excellent availability of spare parts and repair shops (though I've never needed any). I have the ENA Micro 9 [1], which comes with an excelle…

I have the Jura Impressa S9 Classic and love it. Use it for espresso and coffee every day. It is still going strong after 70.000+ cups of coffee and I would expect it to work for at least 50.000 cups more before it needs service.

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

#915
Something I use and love is a chopping board and knife set: https://www.josephjoseph.com/en-us/index-with-knives

In terms of parts it has exactly the same as any other; 4 knives, 4 boards and a block.

It's simple but it's exceptionally well designed. Without meaning to sound like an informercial, I'll mention some of the improvements over the standard. Firstly, it's colour coded for improved food safety, with matching logos on the board to help understand the semantics of the colours. The knife blade sizes/shapes are matched with the food types and similarly coloured.

You can throw it all, including the block, in the dishwasher. The block is open ended to the bottom to allow it to drain (I hate those blocks that let damp, dirt and bacteria accumulate at the bottom of the knife holes). The block also holds the boards apart, to prevent spread of bacteria and allow them to air dry.

The boards can be flipped around, and the knives moved to match. This doesn't sound like much, but it reveals the designer having thought about the ergonomics of taking the board out and always using (and wearing down) the same side of the board. Allowing it to be flipped and the knives to fit into corresponding flipped sockets is actually pretty clever.

A lot of thought has gone into it and without adding any complexity (sensors, motors, extra parts) or much manufacturing cost, they've kept it simple and greatly improved upon the standard (and probably selling it with a much higher markup). It's an example of the kind of applied design thinking I appreciate.

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

#917
post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have another sad story to share. My wife and I used to have this small grill oven with two knobs: one for time and one for temperature. She was into baking cookies and I was into her works. I was also into toasting bread for breakfast. One day she appeared to be ready for the next level and demanded that we replace it with a shiny electronic grill oven with larger capacity. Replace we did but the next thing I found…

I really like the Breville Smart Oven series. I've owned several, but I currently have the Smart Oven Pro and use it more than our actual oven. It heats up quickly, cooks very evenly, and the UI is straightforward. My only problem with it is that the UI frequently suffers from button bounce. Often, when I press the start button to turn the oven on, the bounce causes it to turn right back off again. And it can be occa…

You've owned several smart ovens? Sounds like they aren't very durable.

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

#918

Any coffee addict like me knows that some methods of brewing are impossible before you've had a cup. The AeroPress understands this and is really simple to use, and makes amazing coffee. Everyone in my family has one and some other method as well, like a Mokapot or French press, but for the first cup in the morning it's Aeropress every time. I also love Papermate Sharpwriter pencils. They feel so comfortable to hold,…

I like the Aeropress, but my favourite coffee production method is the Kalita Wave.

Again, it's beautifully designed - almost impossible to damage, very simple to use, comparatively quick (about a minute longer than an Aeropress for one or two large mugs of coffee), arguably even easier to clean than the Aeropress (invert over bin. Done.). The pouring jug's great, too: tough, well labeled, fits perfectly, easy to store.

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

#919

Textmate 2 - It's such a well-engineered piece of software, and it's gorgeous. Bialetti Brikka - Such an elegant design, and it makes delicious coffee, Italian-style. Nespresso - If Apple made espresso machines. The espresso tastes great and it's easy to clean. Patagonia MLC 45L - My pet peeve with luggage is that the good stuff tends to be heavy. Not this! It's big enough for extended travel, has backpack straps if…

I'm a big fan of my Schwab account too. But I'm a bit angry at them recently. The standard protocol for an expired card... I believe... Is to send a new one a month before expiration. I was caught in a foreign country without my Schwab debit card of choice. Spent thirty minutes on an international call only to be told that my card was expired. I know, I know, I could have inspected my card a little closer. I feel that this was a cost cutting measure on their part...

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

#920
Nobody has mentioned the Minimoog Model D and its modern variants(Voyager, Sub37, etc.), so I will. As synthesizer instruments go, it's astoundingly hard to match the number of "sweet spots" the genuine article has. There are lots of synths with more complex architectures, polyphony and timbral possibilities, that are more affordable and ship with lots of presets, and there are lots of bad digital knockoffs that don't reproduce the sound correctly or correctly handle parameter changes, but an original one in good condition sounds good from nearly any starting point and allows for continuous development of a sound just by holding one note and turning knobs. You don't "program" a Moog and then play, you "perform" it as you play - and that's a key difference between their style and what most other synth makers put out.
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