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That’s like Ali G saying he invented the PlayStation 2 because he thought about it when the playstation came out.
Similar to my idea called to make a clothing brand called “brandless”
No logo, no graphics, no distinguished designs
Just plain basic clothes in basic colors, using fabrics that last.
No itchy washing label either. All product information in detail available on site. At most a product number printed or sown on the inside.
I mean Uniqlo is kinda like this. No brand (at least in most of their basic stuff, I‘m not counting their new shit), long lasting and not expensive
Their new shit isn’t long lasting either.
I’ve been pondering if one could make open source controllers to replace the “smarts” in these with something that actually just does the job, and even customizable. With different sensor addons/adapters for different makes and models.
“no tech”
50/50 chance it sells at a premium compared to other models, making the entire idea useless
Source: Like every project that pretended to do this with their respective market
Why the hell is a light phone more expensive than a mid to high range model smartphone. I’d rather just buy that and swap the ROM if I want to remove google.
Economies of scale and not capturing data as part of your profit model
Yeah I know my sample size is pretty useless, but this was just a dumb excuse to complain about light phone because even SMB manufacturing cost wise, it should be almost comically cheap to produce.
There are lots of other hardware accessories in the same range that cost much less to buy as a consumer, that are produced by more expensive vendors.
Cars too!! Just a basic car, without too many bells and whistles. Electric windows and central locks are nice but unnecessary. Just more things that can break. Defo no screens or ‘smart’ stuff.
What about all the safety tech?
https://frame.work/ kinda does this for computers, it would be nice to more manufactures follow this lead.
Whatever happened with one of the higher ups there? CEO maybe? Got into some nonsense online?
Yanks those things are expensive. I get the repairability aspect but I’m not sure I’d want to sell my kidneys just so I could have a user replaceable battery.
Just sell one, that’s why you’ve got two!
I’d just build my own, like I did for my water purifier. It ain’t that hard.
So, right now you have like a modern Samsung fridge with a screen and app, or something, but if a company produced a nicer simple one, then you’d finally decide to build your own?
I have never seen someone build their own washing machine or refrigerator. It’s intriguing. A whole new level of diy
Sounds like something Tim Allen would do. It’d have a big block V8 for more power, ahh, ahhh ahhh ha ha ha! Sprays water all over the kitchen and fills the house with smoke!
Does the Red Green Show count?
If women don’t find you handsome, at least they’ll find you handy.
Gonna have to rebrand all that to Just A Dream, unless you have a plan to secure the capital to start that all up, and also somehow not be beholden to short term profit crazed investors who will change that business model.
Hooray! Hypercapitalist Realism!
There’s a huge demand from consumers for that. Just not from investors.
There’s a huge one-time demand from consumers. But, if it’s an amazing device that never needs repairs (or that can easily be repaired by the consumer) and it has no bells and whistles, that’s a problem: there’s no repeat business.
There’s a huge demand from consumers for that.
Is that actually true, though?
Very likely. Why not?
Because consumers have shown to prefer features over reliability:
French Door refrigerators are the most popular and most complex design.
Built in ice makers are popular but also complex and prone to failure due to physics.
They still sell very basic refrigerators and washer/dryers. But these don’t sell as well as more feature rich models.
People would likely want products with new features and reliability.
But what we actually have on the market is products with new features that are mostly unreliable, and slightly cheaper products with less features that are similarly or more unreliable. Our products are clearly regressing in quality even if the existence of luxury features or designs are rising.
We are in a hostile relationship economically where almost every manufacturer is engaging in planned obsolescence (instead of using resources appropriately and making products we want that also last).
Corporations want us to keep buying - they are hyper-focused on perpetuating that reality.
In my albeit anecdotal experience, these ‘very basic’ appliances suffer their own variant of faults. They take no modern design cues; they are more prone to reliability issues from bargain bin components; or they somehow cost only slightly less than their fancy feature rich counterparts.
Just because I don’t want off-white equipment in my kitchen, I shouldn’t have to buy an ‘AI’ oven. But the companies want to know when and what I’m cooking so when I go to the grocery in the middle of dinner prep, the AI price labels can adjust a bit higher because they know I need an ingredient right now for a meal I’ve already started making.
The variant of fault these normal appliances have aren’t truly a fault. It’s intentionally made to be less appealing, less reliable, and more expensive than it should be, so when we’re looking at a white oven in the store for $800, we’ll opt instead for the $1,000 Alexa powered stainless steel double range that’s sitting right next to it.
Oh and if you’re in a spot and need to finance your new appliance, sorry but our financing isn’t available for the budget tier.
This comment kind of went off the rails, didn’t it.
But are there simple fridges that don’t look like rental apt fridges? If there was a nice simple fridge with a big bottom freezer, in stainless, I bet it’d sell. Tho water dispensers and ice makers are damn convenient when they do work.
“all the companies are dumb and refuse to earn money this simple way that I discovered in a showerthought”
Half of people on lemmy, facebook, reddit, twitter…
My recent experience buying such is that it is very very hard to find basic but quality models. If you’ve had a water dispenser or ice maker once, you realize how awful they are. They take up massive amounts of fridge and freezer space and need expensive filters every 3 months and break as soon as the short warranty is over. But if you want double door and bottom freezer you pretty much have to buy the crap extras as well.
I don’t think complex design is the opposite of “just” it’s more that the refrigerator is just a kitchen refrigerator that doesn’t have weird proprietary temperature management system, and easily accessible replacement parts. It’s not also a built in tablet for example
Yes. Cars especially right now.
I’m just going to run my car until it no longer functions because I can’t be doing with all of these crappy infotainment systems. My car has a non-functional radio and that’s it, it’s so old it has headlights that don’t even blind people, and buttons to control the AC.
Investors need not be shareholders, to be fair.
But does it have AI?
My washing machine and dryer likes to throw about AI. The model came out around or just before the current LLM craze started, and I’m guessing they wanted to capitalise on the buzzword.
AI in the case of my washing machine means that it keeps track of the time and day of week, and what washing programmes I tend to run within a certain timeframe. It then suggests that programme when you turn it on. For the dryer, AI means “suggest the programme matching what the washer just washed.”
Lately the washer has taken to flash “AI Cycle Complete” on its stupid little screen whenever it completes a wash, even if I keyed in every single setting myself. Such AI.
Nothing has Ai. Everything that does refuses to explain what their use of that term means. It’s like buying the name brand cereal over the generic because someone slapped an “asbestos free” sticker on it.
It’s the Linux philosophy in appliances. I’m down.
Shut up and take my money.
I’m not against it having an open API to allow it to be controlled by some computer system, though don’t even bring up the word “cloud”.
The problem is they start including features no one wants. Like my dishwasher has an app, why?
It’s not like it can fill itself so I can put the dishes in the dishwasher and I can start it remotely, but since I have to put the dishes in the dishwasher it’s pointless to then not immediately turn it on, it’s not like the dishes will care if they’re sat in the dishwasher for a few hours. What is the point in me being able to remotely turn it on from my phone?
The app also lets me set a start time, which is a doubly pointless feature because I could just remotely turn it on with the app whenever, if for some reason I cared about that.
Imagine how much better the dishwasher would be if the people who’d spent the time building the world’s most pointless app, instead worked on literally any other aspect of the dishwasher.
I want to produce boxed recipes under a product line named “Jamaican”
- Jamaican a pie
- Jamaican mac and cheese
- Jamaican chicken with mushroom gravy
I also wanna make a perfume line named “Eureka,” following the same general idea but with awfully generic scent names
- Eureka flowers
- Eureka citrus
- Eureka chicken with mushroom gravy
What Jamaican?
There is a nonprofit org called Open Source Ecology that is aiming to create what they call the “Global Village Construction Set”, a collection of basic industrial machines required for modern living, designed in a way where everything can be built DIY by a single community (Including modular generators). I imagine that they have a plans for home appliances, I think as of now they’re still working on construction equipment.
I think this is the way you have to do it. Open hardware designs. If you make a product that’s so reliable that it never breaks, it’s a product where you never get repeat business. If it’s a super simple thing that doesn’t need or get new features, you can never sell someone an upgrade. That’s great for the consumer, but not great for the appliance maker. So, there’s always an incentive for them to enshittify.
Love the concept but doesn’t seem to have many plans.
It does seem to have fizzled out a bit, sadly. They need to collaborate with other established groups doing similar things, IMO.
That’s so cool. Yeah I’ve been thinking a great design strategy would be to build exclusively out of commonly accessible parts. Like, even repurpouse car parts if they’re more accessible, or use arduinos as the microcontrollers.
