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I think something that characterizes a lot of stereotypical hacker news comments is reductionism of a product to its feature list. A classic one is on the Drop
by lincolnq 8y ago
I think something that characterizes a lot of stereotypical hacker news comments is reductionism of a product to its feature list.
A classic one is on the Dropbox 2007 launch post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224).
In retrospect, some product ideas are dumb. Others are good. But because we see this kind of comment so often (really not trying to pick on you!), I wanted to point out that it might be a good habit for lots of people to notice if they are trying to describe a product by its list of features, and maybe think if that is the best way to achieve their goals.
Again, not trying to pick on you in particular, I think that habit is incredibly common for tech people in particular. And there's a lot positive to be said about that style of interaction.
- lm28469 8y agoThat's true in a lot of cases but comparing a gadget to a service is far from being intellectually honest. Best case scenario it becomes a hit as the philips hue, but at the end of the day it's a gadget, it's shiny, it's new, it's trendy, but it's still a gadget. Sure it fulfils some kind of weird pseudo-need but it's not going to revolutionise anything.
- Quinner 8y agoSo? Not everything needs to be a revolution. Casper already revolutionized the mattress industry. They're merely further monetizing that success by introducing a well-designed new product, since mattress sales cycles are so long.
- jpm_sd 8y agoAs a hardware engineer and sometimes product designer, I am interested in discussing the list of features with other people of a similar background. This isn't a review of the user experience (since I've never touched one of these lights), it's a response to a hardware teardown.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y agoI think it also explains why you see a lot of Apple hate in the tech community. It becomes a specification comparison by cost and the majority of people just don’t care about those things.
- morsch 8y agoNo wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...
- ceejayoz 8y agoThere may never be a better example of "what's compelling to techies isn't necessarily what's compelling to the general public" than that one.
- icebraining 8y agoYes, but CmdrTaco never claimed to be stating anything more than his personal opinion of the product. Slashdot wasn't HN, people weren't always making product-market fit predictions and discussing the financial of startups.
- cmdrtaco 8y agorise to my defense! (Also always lost in the mythologizing of this quote is that the first version of the iPod was not good. Mechanical click wheel, mac only, it took them a revision to disprove my statement!)
- icebraining 8y agoIt would be fair to say that misapprehension grinds my gears a bit: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=cmdrtaco+by:icebraining&type=comment&dateRange=all https://hn.algolia.com/?query=cmdrtaco+by:icebraining&type=c... :) Since I have your attention, thanks for all the good years of Slashdot! Hope you're doing well.
- coupdejarnac 8y agoI don't think the parallel with the classic Dropbox comment is fair. I have the tech skills necessary to make an IoT flashlight, too, but doing so would probably not occur to me. I don't think such a product would necessarily fail, but it seems a bit gimmicky in that it only superficially solves problems.