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Overkill objects for everyday life

neil.computer

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Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#451

Post by kube-system »

neonological wrote: post #368
kube-system wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Engineered to fail” and “planned obsolescence” are both pejorative rephrasings of “consumers prioritize price” Engineering is an exercise in prioritization. If 90% of consumers buy the cheapest blender on the shelf, the blender made with the cheapest materials wins. Hobart still exists, and still makes good blenders. Consumers just started buying new designs that were more cost efficient. If you look at the prices o…

Did you watch the video? It's not just about cheap materials. It's literal design decisions made for the express reason so that the product will fail. The iphone not having a replaceable battery is a design decision, it doesn't make the phone cheaper. You are taking two independent phenomenons and trying to group them together as if they are the same phenomenon. Yes making a product cheaper has the side effect of red…

I did watch it. (And I have watched it once before years ago.) Design is also an engineering constraint. All of these constraints are interconnected. None are wholly independent.

The “fashion” argument is particularly silly. Fashion and style are concepts that have existed as a part of human nature longer than manufacturing, corporations, or even money itself have even existed.

Having the latest flashy accessories to show off to potential mates is something that was literally invented (at least) 75,000 years ago by Neanderthals, not GM or Apple.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#452

Post by derefr »

dan-robertson wrote: post #53
notatoad wrote: post #4

I love to use professional-grade items where i can, but sometimes "overkill" means a worse product. like the professional-grade fan - it's not just designed for a high duty cycle, it's also probably designed to be operated in an environment where people regularly use hearing protection, so quiet operation is not a consideration.

Dishwashers are another example. You could buy a commercial one but it will come with no roll-out trays (you load up different plastic racks for different things and you can load a rack while the dishwasher is running) and it’s designed for an environment with lots of ventilation (you just open it when it is done and let the steam get ventilated away) which people are unlikely to have in their own kitchens. Other ite…

Presuming you have enough workspace to place one of the plastic racks down beside your prewash sink, loading the trays is way more ergonomic than loading+unloading a regular dishwasher. They don't just do it for throughput. Personally, I'd love to have a residential-class dishwasher that has that kind of modular load system. Would be wonderful on my back.

> and it’s designed for an environment with lots of ventilation

Speaking of, you know what the #1 thing I would design into a residential kitchen if I were building one from the ground up? A fume hood. Just a literal chemistry-lab fume hood box, but where the shroud folds away and the base of it is an induction cooktop. (In other words, it's just a really fancy above-the-range ventilation system.)

Imagine what you could do with that:

• No fear of burning your food setting off your smoke alarm — just drop/shut the shroud around the cooktop, and all the smoke would definitely be going out the vent, not into your house.

* You can grill indoors (with e.g. a Hibachi) with no fear of CO / CO2 poisoning. (Just shut the shroud while the food cooks, and only open it at the end. As a bonus, the extra airflow will make the grill into a convection grill!)

* You can vent your kitchen (and through it, the rest of your house) really quickly, if you're e.g. clearing something rotten out of your fridge.

* You can do real chemistry to make stuff, if you like. For example, given a fume hood, it'd be safe to make a CO2 generator to refill your soda-carbonator gas canister.

* Landlords would no longer have to worry about their tenants turning a house into a meth lab, because even if they did, the house would in some sense be safe to use as a meth lab, with much lower risk of volatile chemical explosions.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#453

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

MonaroVXR wrote: post #422
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree. One of the reasons I've used Macbooks for work for ages now is if something goes wrong, I can just pop over to the apple store and have a replacement within about 30 minutes. Don't even have to restore, can just target boot my backup and be back working immediately, and can save the restore until the evening. I've had one instance where this saved me 5 figures easily (wasn't even the macbook's fau…

That's you, but a lot of people don't live next to the Apple store and with business laptops, people come to you, to replace the device , repair or anything else.

Yup. I have coworkers in central America where getting a new apple is both a huge PITA and far more expensive than in the US.

One of my other friends had a Dell service business for a couple years, so I'm definitely familiar with how it all works. He uses macbooks these days too.

Working with smaller / early stage startups I've never had an IT dept that I could pass it off onto.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#454

Post by samatman »

Ekaros wrote: post #324
weasel_words wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds...really wasteful. Perhaps a happy medium? Maybe not $1500 Damascus knife, but maybe a nice Wüsthof so you're not throwing so much out, and damaging the environment.

I'm talking about proper brand name construction knifes like Mora... Using the wrong tool for wrong job will break them, but used properly they aren't easy to break.

I've found that Moras need a sharpen before they're really fit for duty.

And at that point, may as well keep sharpening them. What's the point of having a Scandi grind carbon steel blade if you don't sharpen it? There is literally no easier geometry or grind, and who cares if you scratch it a little?

I don't feel bad losing it (haven't) or breaking it (haven't) either. But taking a dull knife, letting it get duller, then tossing it, really doesn't sit right with me.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#455

Post by monkpit »

Grustaf wrote: post #272
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Military grade = the cheapest product that meets the spec.

I don't know about the US army, but in Sweden military grade means "extremely basic, works forever and can be operated by an idiot".

All signs of excellent design, I would say.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#456

Post by SkyMarshal »

m463 wrote: post #250
SkyMarshal wrote: post #204

Fyi, I have an industrial fan in my home similar to the one listed at the end of the article [1]. Beware, they're loud as hell and not really suited for indoors use. It sits dormant now. I replaced it with a smaller Vornado [2]. Powerful, nearly silent (can't hear the motor, only the blades), with a durable sealed-bearing motor. Much better. [1]: https://king-electric.com/products/high-velocity-air-circula... [2]: ht…

I like vornado - with caveats. If it's cold my HVAC would cycle and would get temperature swings. I installed a vornado space heater and it worked wonderfully. It had a continuous air flow and would keep the temperature in the room very stable. And then it wore out and I got a new model with electronic controls, which didn't work so well. The original had mechanical controls and were set and forget. I believe the ele…

Interesting. The Vornado fan I linked is pure mechanical. I have three that have been running without problem for years, the oldest since 2017, fwiw (during the warm half of the years).

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#457

Post by derefr »

MonaroVXR wrote: post #422
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree. One of the reasons I've used Macbooks for work for ages now is if something goes wrong, I can just pop over to the apple store and have a replacement within about 30 minutes. Don't even have to restore, can just target boot my backup and be back working immediately, and can save the restore until the evening. I've had one instance where this saved me 5 figures easily (wasn't even the macbook's fau…

That's you, but a lot of people don't live next to the Apple store and with business laptops, people come to you, to replace the device , repair or anything else.

With Apple Business leasing-program laptops, Apple Store employees come to you to replace/repair the device. Of course, that only exists in the places that Apple Stores do.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#458

Post by neilpanchal »

CarVac wrote: post #419
rsync wrote: post #3

I appreciate the link and summary for McMaster-Carr[1]. It is so pleasing to use this site and it is simultaneously full of utility as they stock a wide array of fixtures and hardware that are difficult to search for elsewhere. If you place an order before noon (typically) the box of goods will be in your hands the next day. The user interface is a wonder. It's too good to be true. In fact, using the UI actually sadd…

To me, McMaster-Carr is the best website in existence. The clarity of information presentation is unparalleled.

100%. I've been thinking about writing an article about McMaster-Carr's design and user experience. I've been using it for 10+ years. It's so much deeper than the web design - the moment you place an order, their return process, obtaining technical specs, datasheets and alternate unit system measurement, the entire experience of shopping on McMaster-Carr. Furthermore, their physical catalog design is also exceptional - from typography to layout, it's the pinnacle of what good design is and exemplifies what's wrong with everything today.

I just fear one day some new intern, engineer, designer or manager is going to join and ruin it. It will be a sad day.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#459

Post by derefr »

renewiltord wrote: post #281
MonaroVXR wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same for laptops, but most of the people (I assume?) buy Macbooks for programming which is... kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Than business laptops like the Z-book, ThinkPad or insert Dell business laptop eg; Latitude 7000 series (Dell XPS isn't a business laptop from my perspective.)

Repairability is a red herring. As a professional, I care about “time in service” and “maintenance cost”. A completely unrepairable tool that is in service a lot longer for way less maintenance? I take that any day of the week. And here’s the thing, I don’t really care that you can repair your Dell. I wouldn’t be able to do so without putting in a lot of time and it would be a little stressful. Reducing that time req…

Presuming a centralized corporate IT department that has 100+ of the same laptop in service, one advantage of repairability over time-in-service is that two half-broken laptops can be made into one working laptop. Very-repairable products are essentially just bags of parts that happen to come assembled; you can buy a few extra, take them apart, and now you have a couple of full sets of parts to use to repair any problem that comes up in the rest of the "fleet."

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#460

Post by MereInterest »

ValentineC wrote: post #253
MonaroVXR wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same for laptops, but most of the people (I assume?) buy Macbooks for programming which is... kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Than business laptops like the Z-book, ThinkPad or insert Dell business laptop eg; Latitude 7000 series (Dell XPS isn't a business laptop from my perspective.)

> This is the same for laptops, but most of the people (I assume?) buy Macbooks for programming which is... kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Personally, I don't think I've found anything that beats Apple's laptop trackpads, and I think that my UX matters more than repairability. Then again, I'm still using a 2013 MacBook Pro with an upgraded NVMe SSD.

> Personally, I don't think I've found anything that beats Apple's laptop trackpads,

Trackoads are one of those items that I don't know of a good way to compare them, because most differences become unnoticeable habits over time. Sure, there's an obvious difference between a 20-year old copier whose buttons require a small hammer to activate and modern capacitative touchscreens, but beyond that I can't tell much difference.

Definitely if I use the trackpad on a new computer or on somebody else's computer, it feels wrong. The mouse moves to quickly or too slowly. The mouse continues moving after I thought I lifted my finger up, or stops slightly too soon. But those feel more like acclimatizing to a particular set of device parameters, rather than there being anything actually better or worse with the device.

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