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I think before the advent of personal computing, a bit of extra complexity was ok. Life was pretty simple. You had a car, a stereo, a tv with a button for each
by asciitaxi 16y ago
I think before the advent of personal computing, a bit of extra complexity was ok. Life was pretty simple. You had a car, a stereo, a tv with a button for each channel, a stove/oven, and a calculator. You actually had room in your mind and time in your weekend to read the manual and figure out your new VCR. It was fun!
Making complex things was actually expensive to do, so a microwave with lots of functions cost more than one with a single button that said "heat up my food". This made it a bit of a status symbol. It was also the start of everything becoming digital, so it was cool for everything to have lots of buttons and a fancy readout.
Now we have several TVs, all with several boxes, incorporating our audio system, and connected to several services. We have smartphones, computers, tablets, printers and routers. Then there's all the software on and off the web to figure out, configure, and get working together. And you have to deal with all that at work, too. It's tough just to stay afloat.
So, the last thing you want is a digital toaster. They can make it look as complex as they want, but it won't make it look any more expensive. Today something looks expensive if it is simple, heavy, and looks like it was handcrafted by a German man. People still lapse into 1980s thinking and make the association that complicated means better, but that will wear off.
I'm not saying that extra features aren't sometimes important, but features are so easy to add to things today. You just have to type a few lines of code. Making someting look complex is easy and inexpensive. Making something complex look simple takes much for time, effort, money, and talent. Increasingly, people will pay for that.
- kentnl 16y agoI see limited use for a digital toaster, there are some perks you /could/ see like having personalized settings which somehow just know which person is using them ( RFID? ) and sets the appropriate toast setting for that person. Possibly detection on what it is toasting ( ie: hash-browns, muffin-splits ) and "smarter" toasting ( ie: using an optical sensor to measure surface browning, and using a laser thermometer to measure core temperature ( which is required for hash browns because they're often still cold in the middle :( ) ), but these are all purely practical features and I'd want the toaster still 100% practical with no knowledge of these features. But I'm guessing these sorts of features are not the ones they implement, and probably add silly things like an LCD screen with a countdown timer, and a blingy screensaver, and a robotic toast loader ( ok, on the other side I can see how that would be useful, I do get annoyed every time the toaster is a little too eager and throws my toast in the air and into the sink ..... ) , and they probably add useless features like bread-decorating toasting with high powered lasers or something equally stupid.
- jws 16y agoPlain old mechanical toaster trivia: The thermostatic element is placed in such a way that it is receiving reflected energy from the toast. As the bread dries and the Maillard reaction browns the toast it reflects more energy from the elements to the thermostat. Viola! Toast browning detection in one bent piece of metal!
- cturner 16y agoDarker things absorbed heat, rather than reflecting it - ? But then raw black bread will behave differently to raw white. Sounds interesting but I'm unconvinced.