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Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?

worseonpurpose.com

61–70 of 144 posts

Re: Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?

#61

I'm so tired of reading things in this imbecilic ChatGPT voice. I'm going to start flagging the most egregious AI slop, following my interpretation of the guidelines: > If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it Dang, feel free to let me know if this is an inappropriate use of flagging.

Tip: Emailing the moderation team at hn@ycombinator.com is more effective (and more welcome, I believe) than invoking @dang in comments. They and the rest of the team are preturnaturally responsive.

Re: Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?

#62

Just for the record, this is a novelty domain with a history of posting AI-generated articles that are clearly designed to get clicks based on nostalgia for how random things "used to be better": https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=worseonpurpose.com

The author works at Palantir as well. One of the prime offenders for making life and liberty Worse on Purpose.

Re: Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?

#63
post #2

For us US folks, Amazon.jp will send you the unobtanium Makita tools you know you want.... like the Makita battery-operated microwave. Shout out to TTI for keeping Ryobi cheap, cheerful, and a good value. Not my cup of tea, but their stuff is reasonably fine for the price.

What’s a good one to start with

If you can afford to pay that bit more for quality product, from the article plus a few comments here; seems that people really like Makita.

- hasn’t enshitifed

- makes quality tools that last

- much more repairable (saving you even more in the long term)

- single company, not a conglomerate, no weird vc influence.

For most tools you won’t need upgrades, just build out your collection as you go.

Re: Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?

#64

Just for the record, this is a novelty domain with a history of posting AI-generated articles that are clearly designed to get clicks based on nostalgia for how random things "used to be better": https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=worseonpurpose.com

I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed the article felt AI generated.

Re: Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?

#65
Milwaukee tools are fine, I’ve got 20+ electricians working for me with Milwaukee tools. Hilti are better, but 2-3x more expensive.

There is a specific Hilti tool that allows concrete anchors to be shot in without powder, which lets us work in occupied spaces during regular hours instead of on double time, it’s $1,000 but pays for itself in a day: https://www.hilti.com/c/CLS_POWER_TOOLS_7125/CLS_DIRECT_FAST...

All power tools anre engineered for the bathtub curve. My guys like Milwaukee because the Makita portaband (metal bandsaw for cutting conduit) has a crappy tensioner and the blade falls off every 10 cuts. I’d rather pay someone not to keep putting a blade back on. I have no special love for Milwaukee, but one of the fundamental electrician power tools being that much more reliable makes buying into the whole line worth it.

It’s not always about the cost of the tool itself, but minimizing downtime when labor costs over $100/hr

Re: Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?

#66

> Ryobi handles DIY at Home Depot. Milwaukee handles pros. The two brands don't eat each other. They serve different people at different price points with different expectations So market fit is driving both worse and better products at the same time. Cheap DIYers like me are buying the cheapest stuff we can find, and complaining that it's as cheap as its price. My neighbor the contractor buys the expensive stuff and…

Ryobi make mostly good tools though. The results produced by most Ryobi users, myself included, are limited by user skill not tool quality.

Their tools work, but that's different from being good, in comparison to others. They feel and sound terrible and don't perform well at all. If you buy any other brand than Ryobi, you will immediately go "oh, this is clearly better". It's like they designed Ryobi to be as bad as possible without being defective, so that you can't complain about it, but have a great reason to buy Ridgid or Milwaukee.

Re: Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?

#67

The big thing that happened to power tools was Lithium-Ion batteries. All of these companies competed when they were still corded electric tools. You could just make a really good drill or saw or router. Interchangeable batteries got really good and made every set of tools a platform. More importantly, there are only a handful of sources to get batteries from. For all these companies to differentiate and compete they…

The larger factor here is batteries are expensive enough that you don't want to mix and match. There is no reason your corded drill and saw need to be the same brand so you can choose whatever. However if your cordless drill and saw take the battery that means you don't have to buy as many batteries (or alternatively when your drill battery goes to the charger you take the saw battery instead of being unable to drill any holes).

Though people are starting to figure out that there are only a couple different batteries and so a cheap adapter means you don't need to buy all the same anymore.

Re: Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?

#68

I'm so tired of reading things in this imbecilic ChatGPT voice. I'm going to start flagging the most egregious AI slop, following my interpretation of the guidelines: > If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it Dang, feel free to let me know if this is an inappropriate use of flagging.

Yep, clearly written by AI. Seems like an SEO-type play where they just have AI do deep research and write these reports on as many categories as possible to get traction.

Pretty smart business idea as I imagine people love ragebait about why products aren't as good as they used to be.

Re: Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?

#69
This article is missing conversation about tools. It’s as if someone prompted ChatGPT to look up business deals for power tool companies and then write a summary with dollar amounts in bold.

There are some exceptions in every product line, but the current crop of power tools are actually pretty good. If you know people in the trades they can tell you which specific products are best in each category because trades people are generally very good at sharing that info on social media with each other.

Re: Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?

#70
Way back when, Black & Decker tried to make a push with a professional line of high-quality tools, but nobody was buying them because of B&D’s reputation for cheap, low-quality tools. So they had to introduce a whole new brand line with a distinctive yellow paint scheme. Sad to see them repeating the same mistakes.
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