I was taking apart my Dyson today to clean it out. I was thinking that it was elegant and useful. I sort of like the company because it doesn’t attempt to get in the way and just provides a nice experience for a tad higher price.

Then I thought vacuum cleaners have existed for a while now. There’s the Whirlwind, Bissel, Kirby, Electrolux, Hoover, Oreck, Dyson, and most recently iRobot. Each generation had their brand.

We’re living through cycles and computers with operating systems are no different. With all the Chromebooks floating around in schools today, I bet you’ll have a generation of kids who will do everything on a web browser in the cloud and won’t complain about not having an exposed filesystem.

This is funny because I just went down a vacuum research rabbit hole and Dysons are despised by many techs and aficionados. Bagless vacuums in general are seen as a downgrade, and Dyson was the biggest hand in pushing their popularity.

My favorite is one vacuum tech who said Dyson’s biggest innovation was having a clear chamber that showed you the moving dust. Not much utility, but great product marketing.

But because this is HN, I look forward to a grizzled vacuum industry veteran coming by to put me in my place.

> a grizzled vacuum industry veteran coming by to put me in my place

…Or a wet behind the ears vacuum industry rookie who read a Wikipedia article yesterday

Microwave ovens are simple to design and that makes them not comparable, almost all the cost comes from running the factory and buying inputs.

A consumer level OS on the other hand is extremely expensive to develop and basically free to copy, so the advantage of scale is extreme, you wont see that level of competition there.

Mostly US schools.