4 ms·

People get irrational over this kind of products where all control of the outcome has been ceded to the product designer. I don't. To me, this is the kind of pr

by kccqzy 3y ago

People get irrational over this kind of products where all control of the outcome has been ceded to the product designer. I don't. To me, this is the kind of product that disrespects the user by not even giving the user any (literally) knobs and controls to customize things. Especially on something as personal as food. I'm at least glad that the author describes the failings of the toaster and says it only works "most of the time".

paxys 3y ago
Yeah I read the whole article waiting for the eventual gotcha but it never came. The toaster cost $260 (inflation adjusted). You can't control how much you want to toast the bread. It only works for specific bread types. There is no indicator for when the bread is ready. It only works "most of the time". It is much more likely to burn down your house. What exactly makes it smarter and better than my modern $25 one other than the standard "everything was better back in the day" nostalgia?
- noqc 3y ago
  >everything was better back in the day This exception is actually an example of how everything was better "back in the day". This toaster, which has had its controls removed, is analagous to, for example: - a personal computer which can only browse the web, or run verified software. - a coffee mug that keeps your coffee warm, but requires you to install an app in order to set a temperature - any gaming console (technically the first category) - cars which have had their buttons removed - A tv and a roku, that have been glued together for some reason
  - paxys 3y ago
    There are examples of devices released every day in each of these categories that don't have any of these restrictions.
- alok99 3y ago
  > You can't control how much you want to toast the bread. But it does let you control that. There's a knob for it. Granted, I still wouldn't pay $260 for this, but it's a pretty cool mechanism nonetheless.
- tb_technical 3y ago
  You can control how dark you want your toast. There is a knob under the handle. It works for all bread types that fit in the toaster. I should know, I bake my own bread (and it's not all sandwich bread loaves). It is not more likely to burn down your house. Take responsibility for your own well-being and just add a 3 prong cord (and ground it to the outer shell, there's even a screw hole for it). I have one of these toasters and I love it. It's my favorite kitchen appliance
jjtheblunt 3y ago
The knob to customize things was, in this case, your choice of which toaster to buy among the many alternatives?
jermaustin1 3y ago
Better than my sunbeam I bought a few months ago. It only works "some of the time".
RankingMember 3y ago
I think someone at TheVerge saw the TechnologyConnections video and decided to rip it off for a quick throwaway article
godelski 3y ago
> by not even giving the user any (literally) knobs and controls to customize things. FYI, there is a darkness control knob
noqc 3y ago
Imagine removing the number keys from your phone and calling it progress. Manufacturers build in parental controls and then the customers become children who you can get to do chores for you in order to unlock the right to use them. This business model should be illegal, and barring that it should at least be unpalatable to consumers, but we can't even have that for some reason.
- asoneth 3y ago
  > Imagine removing the number keys from your phone and calling it progress. But that's what the iPhone did, didn't it? Before that most phones (even touch-screen ones) had physical number keys, whereas the iPhone demoted the keypad/dialpad off to a secondary screen in the Phone application. For a while the only time I ever used the keypad when navigating an automated menu, but now that Android has "Direct My Call" I don't even use it for that. I'm glad that there are still phones with number keys for people who like them, but I'm equally glad it's not illegal to make products simpler for those who prefer that.
  - noqc 3y ago
    I did not mean the physical keys.
    - asoneth 3y ago
      Are there examples of phones that have done this, or is it a hypothetical fear? Either way, I remain glad that the government has not made it illegal for a company to remove functionality from a product.
      - noqc 3y ago
        I'm afraid you just don't understand the structure of my comment. It's not a hypothetical fear. It's an analogy for removing functionality under the guise of curation or security.
asoneth 3y ago
Some customization controls, such as the darkness of the bread, are valuable to me because I like slightly darker toast than my partner. (As others have pointed out, note that this product does have a knob for that.) But all options have a cost so those I do not use have negative value. My current toaster oven has three dials and an LCD display with a hierarchical menu, the vast majority of which I have never intentionally used, though I don't mind all the bells and whistles because I have learned how to ignore them. But for toasting slices of bread my current toaster is less useful than one in the article despite the proliferation of options because it requires that I mentally estimate the amount of time to toast depending on the bread slice's thickness, composition, and current temperature (i.e. from counter, fridge, or freezer) so I can specify an appropriate amount of time to toast. Occasionally I slightly over- or under-toast something and then deal with correcting that. I agree that it is much more infuriating when controls I depend on are removed or shunted off into a car touchscreen menu or appliance-specific mobile app. But for the vast majority of appliances and applications I just want the thing to do the job I hired it to do with minimal questions or interruptions.
Brian_K_White 3y ago
It's not irrational to appreciate elegance. It is an elegant design to to achieve a goal with simpler and fewer parts. A uC and a dozen sensors and actuators and MB of code is a brute force solution. It's flexible and functional but not elegant. Instead of figuring out some way for a thing to happen by itself, you explicitly write a bunch of code to spell it all out. Now the uC way is more flexible. You can change the code to change what happens, but that's a separate metric and a separate value. Not all tasks or products actually benefit from it, and it comes at the cost of complexity and reliability and longevity and dependence on infrastructure and supply chain. Personally, I think it's completely and utterly ridiculous that a toaster requires a chip fab. I know why it's not really that crazy if chip fabs happen to exist anyway for other reasons but the observation of the absurdity does still stand.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  This is false. Nothing happened "by itself". This thing as explained by the author of the article requires "a series of cleverly designed levers" and "a mechanical thermostat" and "a single screw underneath the crumb tray to adjust the tension of the wire". This kind of mechanical engineering is really no different from software engineering. You design a series of mechanisms to make things happen, whether through levers and screws and bimetal strips or code. With code, frankly less effort is needed for such design. And yes there could be elegance in code that is not directly apparent to the consumer, much like there is elegance here. I'm not disputing elegance. I'm decrying the lack of functionality and lack of control by the user.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    Many aspects of the things operation happen by itself. They cut a piece of metal to a particular shape, but the properties and behavior of that metal already existed and were not designed by anyone, merely disscovered and utilized. It's somewhat like the difference between a mechanical interlock and a program with rules that do the same thing. You could have two solenoids operating two relays, and two extra contacts on each relay to act as sensors, and some code that says if A is on then turn B off, if B is on then turn A off. (pretend for the moment that a single relay can't be both sides at the same time) Or you could have no solenoids and no sensors and no computer, just a solid bar connecting the two switches with a pivot in the middle. It becomes impossible to press both switches at once, and the function, the enforcing of the desired truth table rule, very much happens "by itself". The fact that a person designed and fashioned the mechanical interlock does not make the two systems equal, in kind not just in degree.

by kccqzy 3y ago

paxys 3y ago

Yeah I read the whole article waiting for the eventual gotcha but it never came. The toaster cost $260 (inflation adjusted). You can't control how much you want to toast the bread. It only works for specific bread types. There is no indicator for when the bread is ready. It only works "most of the time". It is much more likely to burn down your house. What exactly makes it smarter and better than my modern $25 one other than the standard "everything was better back in the day" nostalgia?

noqc 3y ago
>everything was better back in the day This exception is actually an example of how everything was better "back in the day". This toaster, which has had its controls removed, is analagous to, for example: - a personal computer which can only browse the web, or run verified software. - a coffee mug that keeps your coffee warm, but requires you to install an app in order to set a temperature - any gaming console (technically the first category) - cars which have had their buttons removed - A tv and a roku, that have been glued together for some reason
- paxys 3y ago
  There are examples of devices released every day in each of these categories that don't have any of these restrictions.
alok99 3y ago
> You can't control how much you want to toast the bread. But it does let you control that. There's a knob for it. Granted, I still wouldn't pay $260 for this, but it's a pretty cool mechanism nonetheless.
tb_technical 3y ago
You can control how dark you want your toast. There is a knob under the handle. It works for all bread types that fit in the toaster. I should know, I bake my own bread (and it's not all sandwich bread loaves). It is not more likely to burn down your house. Take responsibility for your own well-being and just add a 3 prong cord (and ground it to the outer shell, there's even a screw hole for it). I have one of these toasters and I love it. It's my favorite kitchen appliance

jjtheblunt 3y ago

The knob to customize things was, in this case, your choice of which toaster to buy among the many alternatives?

jermaustin1 3y ago

Better than my sunbeam I bought a few months ago. It only works "some of the time".

RankingMember 3y ago

I think someone at TheVerge saw the TechnologyConnections video and decided to rip it off for a quick throwaway article

godelski 3y ago

> by not even giving the user any (literally) knobs and controls to customize things. FYI, there is a darkness control knob

noqc 3y ago

Imagine removing the number keys from your phone and calling it progress. Manufacturers build in parental controls and then the customers become children who you can get to do chores for you in order to unlock the right to use them. This business model should be illegal, and barring that it should at least be unpalatable to consumers, but we can't even have that for some reason.

asoneth 3y ago
> Imagine removing the number keys from your phone and calling it progress. But that's what the iPhone did, didn't it? Before that most phones (even touch-screen ones) had physical number keys, whereas the iPhone demoted the keypad/dialpad off to a secondary screen in the Phone application. For a while the only time I ever used the keypad when navigating an automated menu, but now that Android has "Direct My Call" I don't even use it for that. I'm glad that there are still phones with number keys for people who like them, but I'm equally glad it's not illegal to make products simpler for those who prefer that.
- noqc 3y ago
  I did not mean the physical keys.
  - asoneth 3y ago
    Are there examples of phones that have done this, or is it a hypothetical fear? Either way, I remain glad that the government has not made it illegal for a company to remove functionality from a product.
    - noqc 3y ago
      I'm afraid you just don't understand the structure of my comment. It's not a hypothetical fear. It's an analogy for removing functionality under the guise of curation or security.

asoneth 3y ago

Some customization controls, such as the darkness of the bread, are valuable to me because I like slightly darker toast than my partner. (As others have pointed out, note that this product does have a knob for that.) But all options have a cost so those I do not use have negative value. My current toaster oven has three dials and an LCD display with a hierarchical menu, the vast majority of which I have never intentionally used, though I don't mind all the bells and whistles because I have learned how to ignore them. But for toasting slices of bread my current toaster is less useful than one in the article despite the proliferation of options because it requires that I mentally estimate the amount of time to toast depending on the bread slice's thickness, composition, and current temperature (i.e. from counter, fridge, or freezer) so I can specify an appropriate amount of time to toast. Occasionally I slightly over- or under-toast something and then deal with correcting that. I agree that it is much more infuriating when controls I depend on are removed or shunted off into a car touchscreen menu or appliance-specific mobile app. But for the vast majority of appliances and applications I just want the thing to do the job I hired it to do with minimal questions or interruptions.

Brian_K_White 3y ago

It's not irrational to appreciate elegance. It is an elegant design to to achieve a goal with simpler and fewer parts. A uC and a dozen sensors and actuators and MB of code is a brute force solution. It's flexible and functional but not elegant. Instead of figuring out some way for a thing to happen by itself, you explicitly write a bunch of code to spell it all out. Now the uC way is more flexible. You can change the code to change what happens, but that's a separate metric and a separate value. Not all tasks or products actually benefit from it, and it comes at the cost of complexity and reliability and longevity and dependence on infrastructure and supply chain. Personally, I think it's completely and utterly ridiculous that a toaster requires a chip fab. I know why it's not really that crazy if chip fabs happen to exist anyway for other reasons but the observation of the absurdity does still stand.

kccqzy 3y ago
This is false. Nothing happened "by itself". This thing as explained by the author of the article requires "a series of cleverly designed levers" and "a mechanical thermostat" and "a single screw underneath the crumb tray to adjust the tension of the wire". This kind of mechanical engineering is really no different from software engineering. You design a series of mechanisms to make things happen, whether through levers and screws and bimetal strips or code. With code, frankly less effort is needed for such design. And yes there could be elegance in code that is not directly apparent to the consumer, much like there is elegance here. I'm not disputing elegance. I'm decrying the lack of functionality and lack of control by the user.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  Many aspects of the things operation happen by itself. They cut a piece of metal to a particular shape, but the properties and behavior of that metal already existed and were not designed by anyone, merely disscovered and utilized. It's somewhat like the difference between a mechanical interlock and a program with rules that do the same thing. You could have two solenoids operating two relays, and two extra contacts on each relay to act as sensors, and some code that says if A is on then turn B off, if B is on then turn A off. (pretend for the moment that a single relay can't be both sides at the same time) Or you could have no solenoids and no sensors and no computer, just a solid bar connecting the two switches with a pivot in the middle. It becomes impossible to press both switches at once, and the function, the enforcing of the desired truth table rule, very much happens "by itself". The fact that a person designed and fashioned the mechanical interlock does not make the two systems equal, in kind not just in degree.