33 karma · joined May 1, 2017
Not everyone can get scholarships and school isn't easy/cheap enough to make paying for it an option by working through school. Not if you want a real job after school.
Frankly it should be free. Why are you charging people to better themselves and their surroundings. It's obscene that we charge people for healthcare and schools.
The United States is a corporate neocon fantasy world. Low taxes for the rich, student loans for all.
The product was designed to specifically to justify the business model of the DRM pulp packets and thus MRR for the purpose of revenue and growth. Everything about it looks like they designed the packets and juice pulp DRM features first, then backfilled the rest of the mechanical design to support the REAL features (keeping people buying your fruit packages) and not the FAKE features (juicing?).
Many people talk about the ring roller/ toothpaste squeezer method being easier. Of course! But how do you do DRM with that? It's trickier. How do you scan the barcode and also keep your customers from using off brand K-Cups, I'm sorry I mean, fruit pulp packets.
It's obvious for $800 they could have designed an amazing conventional juicer, which actually would be a better product. But how do you get monthly recurring revenue out of that and thus justification for raising millions in venture capitalist money?
Juicero is a great example of dark hardware design and a cautionary tail about the hubris of the "if you build it" risk management strategy.
These are jeans you only have one pair of, that you wear EVERY DAY. They are worth it but it's like buying a nice sports car or nice purse. It's the same thing. Invest in what you use all the time.
"The inventor is always cursed to invent something that is just as difficult to explain as it is to invent."
Also you may note that my criticisms are aimed directly at the current broken systems under utilizing and abusing our agricultural and water resources. We absolutely have enough land and water to go around, but the way we misuse it is going to have the extraterrestrial archaeologists digging through our powdered bones and plastic wrap shaking their heads in sadness.
The truth is MFG is not what the US needs to be doing, the US needs to be working on automation and permanent systems design related to agriculture.
F* making some future recycling nightmare in the form of a fashion accessory and telecom unit, we need to be figuring out how to actually feed people on a massive scale without dumping phosphate and nitrates and plastics into the ocean, we need to figure out how to avoid the massive and unsustainable aforementioned supplies of chemical inputs required to sustain the BS process that is modern plow and sow automated factory farming. We need to shift the global food diet away from beef and other carbon nightmares and into more localized food sourcing.
This is going to require robots, and entirely new disciplines combining agriculture, industrial/agricultural/robotic engineering, and systems design.
Do you think anybody is going to give a shit about the iPhone 12 when half of the world is eating itself alive in the Water Wars of 2030? I doubt we will be as extravagant in our tastes when that new world order arrives.
tl;dr who gives a shit we have bigger fish to fry (or none really because they all died in toxic algae blooms)