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O Holy Crap

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Re: O Holy Crap

#11

Post by jtbayly »

vages wrote: post #4

Be aware that survivorship bias may fool you when comparing the quality of new and old items. The single juicer that lasts 70 years may be the only one of its kind to last that long, the others from the same production year being left to rot and rust in a landfill. That being said, I definitely believe that planned obsolesence and unintentional bad quality is a plague on modern consumer items. I am lucky enough to ha…

Metal, vs plastic gears. Bigger vs tiny electric motor. Metal vs plastic moving parts in contact with the fruit. Plug-in vs battery powered. These are the things that I would place money on as the reasons the 70 year old one is still functioning, and none sold today will work in 5 years. (I’ve never looked at one of these items. I’m just guessing. But I’d still place money on it.)

Re: O Holy Crap

#12

Post by thesaintlives »

A friend owns a bagless early 1960s Electrolux canister vacuum cleaner. It is still going strong. Really nice design, cast aluminum parts and sucking like a champ. Dyson? Don't make me laugh....

Re: O Holy Crap

#13

Post by Jupe »

tarr11 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Any alternatives?

We are "lucky" to have a Target, Walmart, Meijer, Nieman Marcus, Khols and Macy's nearby. (Sears and Hudsons have gone). But, from my experience, on many product lines, they sell the same "crap".

Re: O Holy Crap

#14

Post by robinsonb5 »

bambax wrote: post #8

> Many blamed these problems on the government. They believed it had crippled certain products (major home appliances, especially) This is a claim that was already present in Death of a Salesman . Here's the quote: > I am always in a race with the junkyard! I just finished paying for the car and it's on its last legs. The refrigerator consumes belts like a goddam maniac. They time those things. They time them so when…

The difficulty is that the abundance of cheap crap often makes finding the good stuff like finding a needle in a haystack. Yes, price is the first indicator, but there are plenty of chancers who are quite happy to sell the cheap crap at the premium price point.

Re: O Holy Crap

#15

Post by thesaintlives »

h2odragon wrote: post #10

Who needs most of this crap? I have a knife. It is a simple piece of metal that peels carrots, apples, and many other things with great reliability. It also performs other functions that a "carrot peeler" could not. It has done so for 20 years and can be expected to remain functional for several more decades. "Coffee grinder"? how many iterations of the idea of the blender does one kitchen need? (I count a half dozen…

I tried grinding coffee in the blender just after my divorce. Did not work so great...

Re: O Holy Crap

#16

Post by wincy »

h2odragon wrote: post #10

Who needs most of this crap? I have a knife. It is a simple piece of metal that peels carrots, apples, and many other things with great reliability. It also performs other functions that a "carrot peeler" could not. It has done so for 20 years and can be expected to remain functional for several more decades. "Coffee grinder"? how many iterations of the idea of the blender does one kitchen need? (I count a half dozen…

I mean I use a peeler because my kids like to help cook and I don’t want to give a four year old a sharp kitchen knife.

I don’t drink coffee but a nicely built hand powered coffee grinder is great at home or even on a camping trip for people who are really into coffee.

But you’re probably right, I bet my $400 Vitamix could grind coffee. Actually, I just googled it, and Vitamix helpfully sells a coffee grinder attachment! Haha, the gadgets never end.

Re: O Holy Crap

#17

Post by teekert »

I have Philips vacuum cleaner, I guess it's 30 years old. Some ducttape on the hose but still going strong. I bought a cordless one 2 years ago (also Philips, 8000 series), really love it, but it's starting to fail. I go back to the shop and the thing just works like normal, come back home... brush and leds fails periodically. So annoying.

I also own a lot of supossed 25.000 hours-of-life Leds, that failed after 1-2 years of incidental use. Also annoyes the sh** out of me.

Re: O Holy Crap

#18

Post by julianlam »

I have empathize with the author's plight, but I don't have much sympathy for him buying multiple coffee grinders and throwing them all out because he bought cheap ones.

> I can’t say the same about my coffee grinders. I use the plural because I’ve owned a lot of them, all bought in their original packaging and dead within a year. They’re good ones, supposedly, with burrs not blades, but they stop performing before long, ending their long journeys from overseas factories in unmarked graves in my local Montana landfill.

A Baratza encore will last literally forever, and if it doesn't, you can replace everything in it.

Re: O Holy Crap

#19

Post by agotterer »

I echo the sentiment of this article. Im nearly 40 and for most of my adult life I’ve found that most things are frustrating to use, have unnecessary tech bolted on (and that’s coming from a technologist), and in many ways barely work.

My fancy Bosch dishwasher can’t clean a dish if there’s a tiny bit of food on it. My GE dryer takes two cycles and at least 1.5 hrs to dry some cotton clothes. Don’t get me started on Bluetooth headphones. My coded garage opener takes 3 or 4 attempts each time because I guess the button push don’t register? When I want to watch TV sometimes I need to sit through a system upgrade which means I have to wait to watch. My town voted that cell phone towers are ugly, so there’s basically no cell service anywhere and most calls have between 1 and 5 drops (I live on Long Island, not in rural America). Every year there’s at least $1-3k of maintenance on my 4 year old “luxury” car. My smart lock works well as long as my fingers are perfectly dry and perfectly aligned. I replace my towels once every year or two because they completely fall apart. My “learning thermostat” doesn’t seem to learn anything even though I’ve been setting the temp at the same every night. I replace my jeans at a similar rate to the towels because they get holes in knees and pockets. Holes develop at the same rate in a $25 pair and a $125 pair. Self checkout at every store is a horrendous experience and I’ve never successfully checked out without the support person scanning their badge to fix some absurd error, like the weight of the item placed on the bagging area scale not being the weight the machine expects it to be.

Re: O Holy Crap

#20

Post by yetihehe »

jtbayly wrote: post #11
vages wrote: post #4

Be aware that survivorship bias may fool you when comparing the quality of new and old items. The single juicer that lasts 70 years may be the only one of its kind to last that long, the others from the same production year being left to rot and rust in a landfill. That being said, I definitely believe that planned obsolesence and unintentional bad quality is a plague on modern consumer items. I am lucky enough to ha…

Metal, vs plastic gears. Bigger vs tiny electric motor. Metal vs plastic moving parts in contact with the fruit. Plug-in vs battery powered. These are the things that I would place money on as the reasons the 70 year old one is still functioning, and none sold today will work in 5 years. (I’ve never looked at one of these items. I’m just guessing. But I’d still place money on it.)

> Metal, vs plastic gears.

Sintered metal gears, last only a little longer than plastic and then fail catastrophically destroying half of the device so that you can't repair it. But at least they are much cheaper than proper machined gears.

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