8 ms·

It's an extreme version of the more expensive is better mentality that made the coffee industry boom in the 90s+ and made Apple a trillion dollar company.

xxpor 5y ago
At least with those things, there's the theoretical possibility that there's a difference though. Why is it so hard to convince people that on the digital side of the equation, there's an objective right or wrong answer, and it's impossible to get any better than an exact copy of the bits?
- kevinmchugh 5y ago
  Audiophiles aren't concerned with just the signal being reproduced faithfully - it has to happen without side effects. You're talking past each other if you don't address that.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    But ultimately that means a clean digital pipeline and high quality D/A converters before it hits an actual speaker. The thing is... unless there are unnecessary conversions (making the signal less than bitperfect), there is no point for a lot of the digital side of this
  - jstanley 5y ago
    What kind of side effects are you talking about?
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Side effects like power consumed from the grid? Heat voided into the room? Gravitational attraction from the heavy case? Money draining from their account? They get all of that.
adolph 5y ago
Coffee is still there: The Weber HG-2 - The $1,650 Hand Grinder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL65i1XhVec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL65i1XhVec https://weberworkshops.com/products/hg-2 https://weberworkshops.com/products/hg-2
- durnygbur 5y ago
  hey, juicero at least was electric
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    > hey, juicero at least was electric But could be bested by simply squeezing the bag with your dirty grubby hands. Juicero is truly one of my favorite companies ever. The whole thing was a massive pile of extravagant hardware whose only reason for existence was to tell you "no, you cannot squeeze this particular bag of juice". It is the quintessential silicon valley echo chamber product. The fact that its founder went on to hawk "raw water" coming from spigots drilled into the hillsides along state highways only makes the story that much better.
- space_ghost 5y ago
  My wife bought me a $300 coffee grinder for Christmas. As a coffee ...enthusiast?... I'm quite fond of it. Perfectly consistent grid, very quiet electric operation, small footprint. I could argue that $300 was too much for it, but I'm willing to pay a premium for good product. $1,650 would be utterly insane.
  - kejaed 5y ago
    So which one was it? :)
    - ezarowny 5y ago
      Probably the Fellow Ode
    - space_ghost 5y ago
emsy 5y ago
No, Apple is at least partially successful because it’s a luxury brand. That’s not the same as more expensive=better. The Apple comparison is also dumb because even if you think they’re overpriced, they aren’t priced arbitrarily high and there’s a tangible difference between an Apple product and competitors. Compare that to wine, coffee and audio equipment that fails to be differentiated in blind tests.
- ForHackernews 5y ago
  > there’s a tangible difference between an Apple product and competitors This seems pretty subjective. iPhone does exactly same things (takes pictures, makes calls, runs apps) as a $50 no-name device running Android. Similarly, a bottle of Two Buck Chuck gets you drunk the same as a $25k Romanée-Conti.
  - hellisothers 5y ago
    Classic “only one metric matters”, by this standard you should only choose food based on how full does it make you which I guess is how we arrived at Soylent
  - anonymousab 5y ago
    > iPhone does exactly same things (takes pictures, makes calls, runs apps) as a $50 no-name device running Android The photo quality on the iPhone will be of objectively higher quality due to the larger, superior lenses. There's simply more light information to work with.
  - kristjansson 5y ago
    And Brainfuck does exactly the same thing as any other programming language.
  - evilduck 5y ago
    If you want to get drunk and that's your only value you place on a drink why even choose wine to compare? You can buy bottom shelf vodka and get more ethanol for your buck than Two Buck Chuck. Hell, vodka is wastefully distilled multiple times, why not just chase bootleg moonshine producers for even less? It all gets you drunk the same so they must be equivalent products.
Spivak 5y ago
The meme that people buy Apple products as status symbols needs to die at some point. If you can name one single other manufacturer making products at the quality of an iPhone but at half the price then you can call them overpriced. I don't normally like to use the "if it was possible someone would have done it by now" argument but there are literally millions of Apple copycats and wannabees and they all suck. Apple's product design and manufacturing is insanely good and can be felt going to any big box store and picking up any laptop. If you don't care about that then of course you'll say they're overpriced because dollars aren't going to places you don't care about. It's why I love my M50x's, they're cheap ass plastic and faux leather because every dollar went into the inside. Look I spent probably eight years deriding iPhones with some stupid sense of techno-superiority with my Android until I actually tried one. They are so much better holy shit, the speed of Safari alone is worth the price of admission.
- jjulius 5y ago
  You can be both a status symbol and an objectively superior product; they are not mutually exclusive. A laptop can be bought by someone who says, "Ooh, Apple, new, shiny, cool," and the next person to buy the same laptop might say, "This is the objectively better device for my use case."
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    The truth is clear when it costs more but is is objectively worse, yet sells anyway. The most characteristic Apple customer experience is persuading themselves that they can learn to live without the feature deleted in the latest software update.
- yonaguska 5y ago
  I'm still not an iPhone owner, but I'm close. The presence of a do not disturb physical button on the phone, the UI...with my pixel, it's not always a simple one swipe to the flashlight button. Which is amazingly annoying compared to even older phones. I have since bought a dedicated flashlight.
  - 5y ago
Bud 5y ago
It is in fact not related in any way to coffee or to Apple. Not even remotely. Apple sells products which are, in the main, at very similar price points to its competition, and it has won because it simply. makes. better. products. I'm not sure why there is still delusional thinking about this—apparently the last 20 years have not proven the point well enough?
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Better products whose keyboards fail routinely? Oh, did they finally fix that? And, replace the bad ones? No? Must we mention monitor stands again? Please.

xxpor 5y ago

At least with those things, there's the theoretical possibility that there's a difference though. Why is it so hard to convince people that on the digital side of the equation, there's an objective right or wrong answer, and it's impossible to get any better than an exact copy of the bits?

kevinmchugh 5y ago
Audiophiles aren't concerned with just the signal being reproduced faithfully - it has to happen without side effects. You're talking past each other if you don't address that.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  But ultimately that means a clean digital pipeline and high quality D/A converters before it hits an actual speaker. The thing is... unless there are unnecessary conversions (making the signal less than bitperfect), there is no point for a lot of the digital side of this
- jstanley 5y ago
  What kind of side effects are you talking about?
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Side effects like power consumed from the grid? Heat voided into the room? Gravitational attraction from the heavy case? Money draining from their account? They get all of that.

adolph 5y ago

Coffee is still there: The Weber HG-2 - The $1,650 Hand Grinder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL65i1XhVec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL65i1XhVec https://weberworkshops.com/products/hg-2 https://weberworkshops.com/products/hg-2

durnygbur 5y ago
hey, juicero at least was electric
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  > hey, juicero at least was electric But could be bested by simply squeezing the bag with your dirty grubby hands. Juicero is truly one of my favorite companies ever. The whole thing was a massive pile of extravagant hardware whose only reason for existence was to tell you "no, you cannot squeeze this particular bag of juice". It is the quintessential silicon valley echo chamber product. The fact that its founder went on to hawk "raw water" coming from spigots drilled into the hillsides along state highways only makes the story that much better.
space_ghost 5y ago
My wife bought me a $300 coffee grinder for Christmas. As a coffee ...enthusiast?... I'm quite fond of it. Perfectly consistent grid, very quiet electric operation, small footprint. I could argue that $300 was too much for it, but I'm willing to pay a premium for good product. $1,650 would be utterly insane.
- kejaed 5y ago
  So which one was it? :)
  - ezarowny 5y ago
    Probably the Fellow Ode
  - space_ghost 5y ago

emsy 5y ago

No, Apple is at least partially successful because it’s a luxury brand. That’s not the same as more expensive=better. The Apple comparison is also dumb because even if you think they’re overpriced, they aren’t priced arbitrarily high and there’s a tangible difference between an Apple product and competitors. Compare that to wine, coffee and audio equipment that fails to be differentiated in blind tests.

ForHackernews 5y ago
> there’s a tangible difference between an Apple product and competitors This seems pretty subjective. iPhone does exactly same things (takes pictures, makes calls, runs apps) as a $50 no-name device running Android. Similarly, a bottle of Two Buck Chuck gets you drunk the same as a $25k Romanée-Conti.
- hellisothers 5y ago
  Classic “only one metric matters”, by this standard you should only choose food based on how full does it make you which I guess is how we arrived at Soylent
- anonymousab 5y ago
  > iPhone does exactly same things (takes pictures, makes calls, runs apps) as a $50 no-name device running Android The photo quality on the iPhone will be of objectively higher quality due to the larger, superior lenses. There's simply more light information to work with.
- kristjansson 5y ago
  And Brainfuck does exactly the same thing as any other programming language.
- evilduck 5y ago
  If you want to get drunk and that's your only value you place on a drink why even choose wine to compare? You can buy bottom shelf vodka and get more ethanol for your buck than Two Buck Chuck. Hell, vodka is wastefully distilled multiple times, why not just chase bootleg moonshine producers for even less? It all gets you drunk the same so they must be equivalent products.

Spivak 5y ago

The meme that people buy Apple products as status symbols needs to die at some point. If you can name one single other manufacturer making products at the quality of an iPhone but at half the price then you can call them overpriced. I don't normally like to use the "if it was possible someone would have done it by now" argument but there are literally millions of Apple copycats and wannabees and they all suck. Apple's product design and manufacturing is insanely good and can be felt going to any big box store and picking up any laptop. If you don't care about that then of course you'll say they're overpriced because dollars aren't going to places you don't care about. It's why I love my M50x's, they're cheap ass plastic and faux leather because every dollar went into the inside. Look I spent probably eight years deriding iPhones with some stupid sense of techno-superiority with my Android until I actually tried one. They are so much better holy shit, the speed of Safari alone is worth the price of admission.

jjulius 5y ago
You can be both a status symbol and an objectively superior product; they are not mutually exclusive. A laptop can be bought by someone who says, "Ooh, Apple, new, shiny, cool," and the next person to buy the same laptop might say, "This is the objectively better device for my use case."
- ncmncm 5y ago
  The truth is clear when it costs more but is is objectively worse, yet sells anyway. The most characteristic Apple customer experience is persuading themselves that they can learn to live without the feature deleted in the latest software update.
yonaguska 5y ago
I'm still not an iPhone owner, but I'm close. The presence of a do not disturb physical button on the phone, the UI...with my pixel, it's not always a simple one swipe to the flashlight button. Which is amazingly annoying compared to even older phones. I have since bought a dedicated flashlight.
- 5y ago

Bud 5y ago

It is in fact not related in any way to coffee or to Apple. Not even remotely. Apple sells products which are, in the main, at very similar price points to its competition, and it has won because it simply. makes. better. products. I'm not sure why there is still delusional thinking about this—apparently the last 20 years have not proven the point well enough?

ncmncm 5y ago
Better products whose keyboards fail routinely? Oh, did they finally fix that? And, replace the bad ones? No? Must we mention monitor stands again? Please.