<story><title>An Antique Toaster That&apos;s Better Than Today’s [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spaceman_2020</author><text>My biggest pet peeve is all sorts of appliance manufacturers sticking touchscreen displays everywhere.&lt;p&gt;The coffee machine in my office has a touchscreen display. It only dispenses 4 things - lattes, cappuccinos, black coffee, and espressos.&lt;p&gt;Why does this have to be a touchscreen? It could have easily been more usable buttons.&lt;p&gt;But I guess you can&amp;#x27;t charge a $100 premium for buttons</text></item><item><author>hinkley</author><text>Except we live in a world where YouTube videos are interrupted by photogenic hipsters selling sunglasses made of titanium and hand cut, old school soap.&lt;p&gt;Recreating this toaster is exactly the kind of thing I hope that set gets around to.&lt;p&gt;Plus, there are toasters that cost more than my tablet which don’t have this feature.  If you can make a toaster that infuriatingly stupidly expensive and sell it, you can sure as hell afford to make a workalike [of] this mechanism.</text></item><item><author>tompccs</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a simple reason why this toaster was discontinued, and that&amp;#x27;s because it can&amp;#x27;t be made from commodity components which are used by all toaster manufacturers, as well as in a variety of other domestic appliances.&lt;p&gt;Plus, assembly looks quite intricate and probably highly manual.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s beautiful, sure, but go and buy a toaster today and see how much premium people are willing to pay for a designer brand with no functional advantage.&lt;p&gt;Sadly toasters all work &amp;quot;well enough&amp;quot;. This is a textbook example of great engineering being trumped by globalised economics and fickle consumers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hrktb</author><text>Doesn’t it also display warnings, cleaning and maintenance messages ?&lt;p&gt;All coffee machines I’ve seen with any kind of screen made extensive use of it for messaging purposes. It is a lot more useful than some led blinking twice for cleaning and three times when there’s no water in the tank.</text></comment>
<story><title>An Antique Toaster That&apos;s Better Than Today’s [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spaceman_2020</author><text>My biggest pet peeve is all sorts of appliance manufacturers sticking touchscreen displays everywhere.&lt;p&gt;The coffee machine in my office has a touchscreen display. It only dispenses 4 things - lattes, cappuccinos, black coffee, and espressos.&lt;p&gt;Why does this have to be a touchscreen? It could have easily been more usable buttons.&lt;p&gt;But I guess you can&amp;#x27;t charge a $100 premium for buttons</text></item><item><author>hinkley</author><text>Except we live in a world where YouTube videos are interrupted by photogenic hipsters selling sunglasses made of titanium and hand cut, old school soap.&lt;p&gt;Recreating this toaster is exactly the kind of thing I hope that set gets around to.&lt;p&gt;Plus, there are toasters that cost more than my tablet which don’t have this feature.  If you can make a toaster that infuriatingly stupidly expensive and sell it, you can sure as hell afford to make a workalike [of] this mechanism.</text></item><item><author>tompccs</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a simple reason why this toaster was discontinued, and that&amp;#x27;s because it can&amp;#x27;t be made from commodity components which are used by all toaster manufacturers, as well as in a variety of other domestic appliances.&lt;p&gt;Plus, assembly looks quite intricate and probably highly manual.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s beautiful, sure, but go and buy a toaster today and see how much premium people are willing to pay for a designer brand with no functional advantage.&lt;p&gt;Sadly toasters all work &amp;quot;well enough&amp;quot;. This is a textbook example of great engineering being trumped by globalised economics and fickle consumers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lb1lf</author><text>Probably cheaper to localise.&lt;p&gt;Rather than having to do X front panels, you just put all localisation data in a config file and be done with it.&lt;p&gt;And yes, I would much prefer actual pushbuttons.</text></comment>