3 ms·

A snappily branded, advertised on podcasts, D2C dumb-fridge, dumb-oven, dumb-washer-and-dryer, and dumb-TV company aimed at YoPros would be well positioned to m

A snappily branded, advertised on podcasts, D2C dumb-fridge, dumb-oven, dumb-washer-and-dryer, and dumb-TV company aimed at YoPros would be well positioned to make a mint. I strongly believe this will happen soon and as a consumer I can’t wait for it. Especially once it turns into a gold rush like the D2C mattress space and everyone is competing to see how much money they can lose to acquire a customer.

api 6y ago
21st century mattress and pillow capitalism is a real WTF for me. What set that gold rush off and why is that market so weird? It reminds me of the audiophile market. Also: a pillow mogul attempted to incite a fascist coup a few weeks ago.
dhd415 6y ago
Some of these already exist in certain niches. For example, there are a fair number of "chef-style" ranges with no smart features. I have a gas unit with all analog controls and its only electric features are the oven light and the piezoelectric igniters for the gas burners. I expect it will last close to forever though, somewhat ironically, it did cost more than the smart-feature-laden ovens you'll find in most consumer stores. There are also commercial fridges without lots of extraneous features though they're often not ideal for consumer applications due to the way they look, the amount of noise they make when cooling, and their size. I'd love to see more such "dumb" options in the TV and auto markets but I suspect we overestimate the demand for such things because we HN readers are largely tech-savvy. I think the ideal would be dumb devices with open APIs so that third-party smart features could be added, but that's of negative benefit to manufacturers (lack of vendor lock-in, potential for brand damage due to poorly-implemented third-party features, etc.), so I'm not optimistic about that happening.

3 ms·

A snappily branded, advertised on podcasts, D2C dumb-fridge, dumb-oven, dumb-washer-and-dryer, and dumb-TV company aimed at YoPros would be well positioned to m

by paulcole 6y ago

api 6y ago
21st century mattress and pillow capitalism is a real WTF for me. What set that gold rush off and why is that market so weird? It reminds me of the audiophile market. Also: a pillow mogul attempted to incite a fascist coup a few weeks ago.
dhd415 6y ago
Some of these already exist in certain niches. For example, there are a fair number of "chef-style" ranges with no smart features. I have a gas unit with all analog controls and its only electric features are the oven light and the piezoelectric igniters for the gas burners. I expect it will last close to forever though, somewhat ironically, it did cost more than the smart-feature-laden ovens you'll find in most consumer stores. There are also commercial fridges without lots of extraneous features though they're often not ideal for consumer applications due to the way they look, the amount of noise they make when cooling, and their size. I'd love to see more such "dumb" options in the TV and auto markets but I suspect we overestimate the demand for such things because we HN readers are largely tech-savvy. I think the ideal would be dumb devices with open APIs so that third-party smart features could be added, but that's of negative benefit to manufacturers (lack of vendor lock-in, potential for brand damage due to poorly-implemented third-party features, etc.), so I'm not optimistic about that happening.