4 ms·

I don't think the OP is being serious. Wash dishes by hand? Call me optimistic but, I kind of thought we perfected the craft of producing dishwashers.

jws 14y ago
We will have perfected it when you can again expect them to last 20 years without failure and at failure there is a diagnostic code that tells which reasonably priced part needs to be replaced.[1] They are probably optimized now, but not for the consumer's benefit. Also, people's thoughts on dishwashers vary hugely with the number of people in the household. When I am alone I never use a dishwasher. When in a household of four, always. EOM [1] As near as I can tell from family experience, the difference in reliability between the high end brands and the normal brands is that the repair parts are more expensive on the high end.
- genwin 14y ago
  > They are probably optimized now, but not for the consumer's benefit. I suspect you mean they've been optimized for the shareholder's benefit.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Not to plug or anything, but our Miele dishwasher is still working fine after 18 years, and the clothes washer only required a cheap fix a couple years ago. That said, they're definitively more expensive. We only got them because they came with the house.
- maxerickson 14y ago
  It's fun to chase consumer benefit in a circle. At least some of the drive towards more features and low upfront price comes from consumers giving more weight to those aspects of the design (rather than reliability and lifetime cost). I would still agree that cost optimization has certainly done its part in trampling all over maintainability.
john_flintstone 14y ago
My dishwasher was broken for months - never got around to fixing it - and the reality was, it didn't take noticeably longer to clean up after a meal or after a day's meals. Might be different if you have a big family, but from what I remember growing up, the actual washing of dishes was the least time consuming part of cleaning up.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Yes, but they add up, and the rest is harder to automate.
daedalus_j 14y ago
Our 4 year old dishwasher was just recalled because it has, apparently, a habit of catching on fire unexpectedly. "Perfected" is a tricky word. :-D
genwin 14y ago
They were perfected, until the new buyers wanted to connect their smartphone to it.

jws 14y ago

We will have perfected it when you can again expect them to last 20 years without failure and at failure there is a diagnostic code that tells which reasonably priced part needs to be replaced.[1] They are probably optimized now, but not for the consumer's benefit. Also, people's thoughts on dishwashers vary hugely with the number of people in the household. When I am alone I never use a dishwasher. When in a household of four, always. EOM [1] As near as I can tell from family experience, the difference in reliability between the high end brands and the normal brands is that the repair parts are more expensive on the high end.

genwin 14y ago
> They are probably optimized now, but not for the consumer's benefit. I suspect you mean they've been optimized for the shareholder's benefit.
icebraining 14y ago
Not to plug or anything, but our Miele dishwasher is still working fine after 18 years, and the clothes washer only required a cheap fix a couple years ago. That said, they're definitively more expensive. We only got them because they came with the house.
maxerickson 14y ago
It's fun to chase consumer benefit in a circle. At least some of the drive towards more features and low upfront price comes from consumers giving more weight to those aspects of the design (rather than reliability and lifetime cost). I would still agree that cost optimization has certainly done its part in trampling all over maintainability.

john_flintstone 14y ago

My dishwasher was broken for months - never got around to fixing it - and the reality was, it didn't take noticeably longer to clean up after a meal or after a day's meals. Might be different if you have a big family, but from what I remember growing up, the actual washing of dishes was the least time consuming part of cleaning up.

icebraining 14y ago
Yes, but they add up, and the rest is harder to automate.

daedalus_j 14y ago

Our 4 year old dishwasher was just recalled because it has, apparently, a habit of catching on fire unexpectedly. "Perfected" is a tricky word. :-D

genwin 14y ago

They were perfected, until the new buyers wanted to connect their smartphone to it.