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Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by edmcnulty101 on Friday November 26, 2021 @08:34PM (#29356295)
These are the brands Ive had good success with, almost everything Ive bought has met or exceeded my expectations:

Apple, Levis, Patagonia/LL Bean/North Face, Garmin smartwatch, Goruck, Toyota, Bosch or Milwaukee tools, Fender, Sonicare, Thule, Yakima, Ankur cables, weather tech floormats.

Well designed websites:

Google, Old reddit, and HN, can't believe they've stayed true all these years.

Brands, I or a friend, has had extremely poor success with, enough to call out:

Dell (their quality control dropped off, I think, they used to be great), Amazon Basics, Mini Cooper, Fitbit, Beats by Dre, Goal Zero Yeti, new Reddit.

Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by nradov on Friday November 26, 2021 @11:46PM (#29357511)
I'm also a fan of Garmin smartwatches, they have some amazing functionality and are serious tools for athletes and outdoorsmen. But they are handicapped by glitchy software.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/competitor-software-inst...

Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by edmcnulty101 on Saturday November 27, 2021 @06:18AM (#29359321)
Interesting article.

I haven't used any of the features in that article. I do have a glitchy connectivity issue with a temp sensor so I cant disagree there.

They just have less pain points than any other option possibly?

Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by spacelamb on Friday November 26, 2021 @09:02PM (#29356525)
Thanks for the recs, though Google has caused unexpected design problems in my usage. Sometimes it unpredictably switches to dark mode, then light mode on Firefox and Safari. Google's answer box also sometimes displays wrong information (infamously, "Google turned me into a serial killer" on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27622100).

I'm curious about Amazon Basics and Beats. For the former, they sell so many products that the ones I buy are pretty good (e.g. office supplies), but I have run into other products with middling reviews. For Beats, I would expect them to be good because Apple acquired them, so it's interesting to hear they have problems.

Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by edmcnulty101 on Saturday November 27, 2021 @06:02AM (#29359239)
Google: I just appreciate sticking with the design simplicity after all these years and not going full New Reddit with the front page. That serial killer thing is hilarious and scary. Their draconian customer service may be the worst ever.

Amazon Basics: is the ultimate cheap product. Everything I've bought has just failed alot faster than if I bought a more name brand.

Beats: I thought the same thing about Beats. I bought the power beats pro and one of the buds wouldn't charge unless you fiddled with it and checked the phone to make sure there was a connection , which doesn't sound like a big deal but it's a hassle to do every day. And if the base was jarred accidentally while charging it could lose that connection. It was just a hassle.

The amount of times I went running with only one earbud working was too many.

I mailed them back and the new set they sent had the exact same issue.

I have cheapo 30 dollar bids now and they don't have that issue.

This was like immediately after it was purchased by Apple so maybe the Apple QA hadn't kicked in yet.

Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by WorldPeas on Friday November 26, 2021 @09:02PM (#29356519)
Just to be the contrarian I am, I'll say that dell is still actually pretty good. You just have to buy the business models like the precision to get the best experience now
Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by edmcnulty101 on Saturday November 27, 2021 @05:50AM (#29359194)
Maybe that's the issue. I bought consumer XPS's. One had a fan go out after 1 year. One had a keyboard failure out of the box. My co-worker had hardware issues on theirs.

It was too many issues in too short of a span.

All consumer grade though.

Maybe business is the way to go.

Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by papertokyo on Saturday November 27, 2021 @02:26PM (#29362661)
I had an XPS laptop from 2008 which constantly overheated. I ended up having to remove the bottom of the case and put it on a stand to make it usable.

One day a bolt of lightning struck the house across the street and it died instantly.

Used the insurance money to buy a macbook pro and never looked back.

Re:Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? by edmcnulty101 on Saturday November 27, 2021 @08:58PM (#29365494)
>> Used the insurance money to buy a macbook pro and never looked back.

And that MacBook will probably outlast 3 Dells.

When my new Dell failed out of the box, I switched to my 6 year old MacBook pro I had waiting in the wings and was able to keep on working. It worked great until the new work MacBook arrived.

When I have to turn my work MacBook in, buying myself another MacBook. And still have the trusty 6+ year old one in the wings.