3 ms·

I'm a classically trained chef who tends to specialize in bar food. I know more about the marketing, creation, and perception of food than you do— you're wrong.

I'm a classically trained chef who tends to specialize in bar food. I know more about the marketing, creation, and perception of food than you do— you're wrong. McDonald's has very high quality preparation standards. Their ingredients and techniques were constructed to facilitate their high-speed, high-consistency process, but prevent them from incorporating things that the overwhelming majority of burger consumers prefer. For example, the extremely fine grind on the meat, the thin patty, the sweet bread, the singular cheese selection, the inability to get the patty cooked to specification, the lack of hard sear or crust and the maillardization that accompanies it, etc. etc. etc. At a minimum, people prefer juicier burgers with coarser, more loosely-packed texture, usually cooked to lower temperatures (though this depends on what part of the country you're in,) and the flavor and texture differential from a hard sear, be it on a flat top or grill, and toasted bread. For consumers who, at least at that moment, have a use case that requires their food be cheap, fast, and available, well we know who the clear winner is. In my new career as a software developer and designer, I use apple products. I am willing to pay for the reliable UNIXy system that can also natively run industry-standards graphics tools without futzing around with VMs and things, and do all that on great hardware. There will always be people who aren't going to compare bits pushed to dollars spent and are going to be willing to spend the extra few hundred bucks on a device they spend many hours a day interacting with. This isn't about perception at all— Apple products meet my goals in a way that other products don't. If your goals involve saving a few hundred bucks on a laptop, then don't buy one. I really don't understand why people get so mad at Apple for selling the products that they sell.

kbenson 6y ago
> I know more about the marketing, creation, and perception of food than you do— you're wrong. I don't doubt you know more about food. If you applied that knowledge to my actual point instead of what it appears you assumed my point was, this assertion might have been correct. That's not entirely your fault, I was making a slightly different point than the exiting conversation was arguing, so it's easy to bring the context of that into what I was trying to say and assume they were more related than they were. The belittling way in which you responded though, that's all on you. > This isn't about perception at all— Apple products meet my goals in a way that other products don't. If your goals involve saving a few hundred bucks on a laptop, then don't buy one. I really don't understand why people get so mad at Apple for selling the products that they sell. My point, applied to this, would be to question what other products you've tried? My assertion is that people perceive other products to be maybe 50%-70% as good, when in reality they are probably closer to 85%-95% as good (if not better, in rare instances). That is a gap between perception and reality. As applied to burgers, I was saying that people that refuse to eat at McDonald's because of quality probably have a very skewed perception of the actual differences in quality in a restaurant burger compared to a McDonald's burger. I'm fully prepared to be wrong. I'm wrong all the time. I also don't see how anything you said really applies to my point, so I don't think you've really proven I'm wrong yet.
- chefandy 6y ago
  So you're creating metaphors that don't make sense using things that you have a limited understanding of to describe something you think you might be wrong about and getting annoyed that everybody else isn't following along with your deep conversational chess. Right then. I'm going to go ahead and opt out of this conversation.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Feel free. I simply made an observation that was loosely connected to the existing converaation and noted how it seemed to parallel something else. I wasn't annoyed by you misunderstanding, I was annoyed by you misunderstanding, assuming you understood my position completely because it would more conveniently fit with your existing knowledge, and then using that assumed position to proclaim your superiority and my foolishness. It's not about deep conversational chess on my part, it's about common decency and not assuming uncharitable positions of others by default on your part. A problem, I'll note, that you repeated in the last comment.
JAlexoid 6y ago
Oh please! Just the mere perception of quality will increase your satisfaction levels. The perception of lack of quality will reduce you satisfaction levels. Thus I still maintain that your "perfect" $18 burger is only marginally better than McDonald's midrange burger. The fact that you actually spend time on making that burger more appetising - is proof that the low cost foods are getting better and better. While focusing on my analogy, you literally prove my overall point. 30 years ago you weren't necessary, as low cost food wasn't nearly as good as today. Now - you have to exist to justify that premium.

kbenson 6y ago

> I know more about the marketing, creation, and perception of food than you do— you're wrong. I don't doubt you know more about food. If you applied that knowledge to my actual point instead of what it appears you assumed my point was, this assertion might have been correct. That's not entirely your fault, I was making a slightly different point than the exiting conversation was arguing, so it's easy to bring the context of that into what I was trying to say and assume they were more related than they were. The belittling way in which you responded though, that's all on you. > This isn't about perception at all— Apple products meet my goals in a way that other products don't. If your goals involve saving a few hundred bucks on a laptop, then don't buy one. I really don't understand why people get so mad at Apple for selling the products that they sell. My point, applied to this, would be to question what other products you've tried? My assertion is that people perceive other products to be maybe 50%-70% as good, when in reality they are probably closer to 85%-95% as good (if not better, in rare instances). That is a gap between perception and reality. As applied to burgers, I was saying that people that refuse to eat at McDonald's because of quality probably have a very skewed perception of the actual differences in quality in a restaurant burger compared to a McDonald's burger. I'm fully prepared to be wrong. I'm wrong all the time. I also don't see how anything you said really applies to my point, so I don't think you've really proven I'm wrong yet.

chefandy 6y ago
So you're creating metaphors that don't make sense using things that you have a limited understanding of to describe something you think you might be wrong about and getting annoyed that everybody else isn't following along with your deep conversational chess. Right then. I'm going to go ahead and opt out of this conversation.
- kbenson 6y ago
  Feel free. I simply made an observation that was loosely connected to the existing converaation and noted how it seemed to parallel something else. I wasn't annoyed by you misunderstanding, I was annoyed by you misunderstanding, assuming you understood my position completely because it would more conveniently fit with your existing knowledge, and then using that assumed position to proclaim your superiority and my foolishness. It's not about deep conversational chess on my part, it's about common decency and not assuming uncharitable positions of others by default on your part. A problem, I'll note, that you repeated in the last comment.

JAlexoid 6y ago

Oh please! Just the mere perception of quality will increase your satisfaction levels. The perception of lack of quality will reduce you satisfaction levels. Thus I still maintain that your "perfect" $18 burger is only marginally better than McDonald's midrange burger. The fact that you actually spend time on making that burger more appetising - is proof that the low cost foods are getting better and better. While focusing on my analogy, you literally prove my overall point. 30 years ago you weren't necessary, as low cost food wasn't nearly as good as today. Now - you have to exist to justify that premium.