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Comment by Nition | Hacker News Reader

Wow, this is an amazing teardown of the machine. Re the "apply force to the whole thing equally at once" problem mentioned at the end, I wonder if you could do something more like a roller on one side and a plate or another roller on the other, that rolls down from the top of the pack to the bottom.

Also, as overwrought and unnecessary as the Juicero product is, I can't agree with the "it's useless because you can do it by hand" argument. I could probably hand wash my clothes as well as the washing machine does in the same amount of time, but it's hardly useless. While the Juicero is pressing your juice you can be making your lunch or something.

Who knows why the CEO's response skipped straight past "having the machine do it saves you time" to "it can automatically lock you out if your pack expired."

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My biggest problem with the product is that the QR-scanner, the wifi, the app, all of that has the single purpose of sometimes saying "no" when you press the button to press a pack of juice. That's all it does.

If you remove all of that crap, you get an overengineered juice-press that never says no, and always presses the packet you put into it.

Nothing is more infuriating than machines that randomly say no and refuse to do the thing they're supposed to do. The consumer value of all of that crap is negative.

"But the machine can alert you if the juice pack expired or was recalled"

Look, if you can't read the best-before date already printed on the pack, and if you can't smell the juice and tell if it's funky or not, you are a useless human being. I'm sorry, but you are.

IMO the even worse part is that you can only use their own packs at all. You know the company is most likely going to be gone within five years and then you're stuck.

The recall thing is so ridiculous though. The CEOs letter mentioned a hypothetical "spinach recall" that you would want to know about. Never in my life have I had to worry about my vegetables getting recalled. Why on Earth would I be looking to buy a product that can tell me about something that in my experience never happens?

Actually, in the past few years there has been a number of packaged vegetable recalls.

Last ones were for packaged spinach.

Yes, we've gotten a couple notices from Costco about recalls on frozen vegetables.

And if your internet is down, or their service is down, or Amazon EC2 is down, no juice for you!

Why would anyone want that in their lives?

Vegetable recalls happen, check out https://consumerist.com/tag/recall/ but it doesn't justify the QR code, they already have your email address.

The washing machine trades money for time, but the Bloomberg video showed that squeezing the juice pack is actually faster than using the machine.

It was 1.5 minutes by hand vs. 2 minutes for the Juicero. But I'm not sure if you get my point. Even if I could hand wash my washing in 30 minutes and the washing machine took 45, I'd still use the washing machine because I don't have to be there washing it. I'm assuming of course that you don't have to stand at your Juicero and babysit it while it squeezes your juice.

But you could also pour juice out of a bottle, which is effectively free, and takes approximately 0 minutes.

I don't care about a more efficient bag squeezing method, that there's a bag at all is a bizarre and useless distinction.

Well yeah, I'm only talking about the benefit for people who actually want what Juicero offers. I'm not sure if those people actually exist.

> I could probably hand wash my clothes as well as the washing machine does in the same amount of time

No. It takes you about five minutes to load and unload the washing machine, try to do the washing yourself in the same amount of time.

> While the Juicero is pressing your juice you can be making your lunch or something.

In 120 seconds?

Isn't that like saying "It takes about 5 seconds to start the juicero - try squeezing it by hand in the same amount of time"?

Only if you have a really good case for using the remaining 115 seconds (as opposed to the hour or so, plus serious physical effort, needed to wash your clothes).

Yeah, I agree there is a lot less time saved in this case, both in a relative (percent time saved vs doing by hand) and absolute (actual time saved) sense. I also feel though that the Juicero is squarely aimed at a market of people who think they have no time at all for anything.

The washing machine analogy would have been appropriate if washing machines would refuse to start unless you use the same brand detergent and clothes.

You object to spending 2 min squeezing pre made juice, and this juicero contraption is the next logical iteration?

No, I just object to the general idea that any given machine is useless simply because something can be done manually in the same or less time.

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