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A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

mstdn.social

31–40 of 531 posts

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#31
The fridge from 70 years ago was an extreme luxury item. Most people could not afford one. Nowadays we have refrigeration so cheap and accessible to all.

If you want a fair comparison, go spend $20k+ on big fancy commercial refrigerator. I guarantee it will be better than the '50s model.

Just to throw one more comparison. It is not shocking to say that a Rolex watch or a Leica camera from decades ago is better than a Swatch or a cheap point+shoot today.

TL;DR: It's not true that they were better at making things in the olden times. It's true that luxury high end goods are superior to mass produced goods.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#32
post #11
post #3

> Thing is, producing crappy, cookie-cutter, uninspired, overpriced junk that falls apart within 5 years (generously speaking) pays more to the shareholders. That's how we got from there to here. This summarizes it quite well for me.

See: Samsung fridges. A huge touchscreen and a water pump/ice maker that will fail in <5 years are standard.

But they also do entirely plain units that last well with no 'extras' - their commercial units are also great and easy to repair. But most people want to spend as little as they can so avoid the commercial units.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#35

This reminds me of the same types of complaints around air travel now versus the 50s/60s. Both ignore the relative costs and the fact that you can still buy high-end fridges or first class tickets if you are willing to spend the same amount of money that you would have had to back then.

True, but even most high-end brands these days are more about fashion and high markups for the illusion of luxury than actually better quality. Though at least they generally have far better customer service, which makes a big difference.

It probably depends on where you are, but you can absolutely find brands where the production quality is higher.

It's like with electric bikes. You can buy VanMoof (bling) or Gazelle (quality).

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#36
This fridge looks way worse than my current one. Much smaller and poorly designed.

The ice machine looks annoying and inferior (mine automatically drops ice and dispenses it through the door, no touching or work required). Mine also dispenses purified water through the door, a major feature missing here.

Over-use of door space for temperature sensitive goods is a classic refrigerator mistake as it's the warmest section. Combined with the inability to control humidity for fruits vs veg, it's clearly an inferior produce storage system.

I do also have a removable container for fruit/veg, but mine is much better designed for real world use. I can't imagine what a huge and thin door-cage-system would offer you. Total gimmick.

What we don't get to see is how well the temperature is controlled ESPECIALLY between the fridge and freezer. This isn't easy to pull off (and we have degree-accurate settings today) and it's likely that this model runs a lot warmer than we are used to today, especially in the freezer compartment. There's also questions about frost-free operation as many classic units required manual defrost cycles (taking all your food out) while my unit has automatic defrost cycles and guaranteed frost-free operation.

Finally this fridge would have cost $5000+ in todays money. Mine is better in basically every way I can think of and I paid 1/5 the price. I bet mine will last twice as long, use a fraction of the electricity (cost significantly less to operate), and have a fraction of the environmental impact, too.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#37
My wife is a brute[1]. She's broken two of the plastic refrigerator drawers -- the vegetable drawer and the deli drawer -- which were impossible to repair. Yes, I tried super glue, but the bond never held.

It's cost me $400 to replace both drawers -- 1/3 the cost of a new refrigerator.

I wish I had one of these refrigerators; they look virtually unbreakable! And even if it did break, I could hammer it back into shape or weld it back together at home.

[1] She's bent both her house key and her car key, and broken the car's shifter twice!

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#38
post #16

1950-1970 seems like a local optimum in UX that we've yet to surpass. My personal, completely-unsupported theory is it was a combination of 3 qualities. (1) New types of things, while unlike anything that came before, were still simple and understandable enough that someone without formal engineering training could understand their use and offer improvements . (2) Engineering was still seen as something that was appr…

Also, everything was new. Now everything has been done, so people 'innovate' on silly crap in the UX space. Or they try and eek out margins resulting in intended obsolescence

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#40
post #10

I don't think it is better where it matters. Modern fridges circulate the air to manage humidity and temperature better for different zones (meat, vegetables etc). Also, less energy usage and no ozone-destroying coolants.

Having to throw a fridge in the landfill every 5 years negates the energy usage and ozone issues.
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