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+--- Thread: Coffeemakers, a History: The Modern Era (/showthread.php?tid=247)
Coffeemakers, a History: The Modern Era - FrodoSwaggins - 04-15-2025
I'm a man of few luxuries, or rather, I take them where I can: a cheap office gym, 6 speaker stereo in the car (the standard, I just tune it), and a LOT of french press coffee each week. Naturally, I'm horrified at the threat of tariffs, isolationism, and global warming coming between me and my caffeine fix, but more on that in another post. Another luxury I deeply enjoy is home automation.
At this point, I have very little automation at home. Roombas never became "affordable" to me, smart bulbs ALWAYS lose WiFi connection, smart speakers are a privacy nightmare, things like Keurigs turned out to be "razor and blades" model style thievery with no small amount of microplastics thrown into the mix.
Automation I love: AM / FM clock radios with cassette or CD AND the "appliance outlet" so you can turn on a light or coffee maker when the alarm goes off! Programable coffee makers. Smart power-strips with timers and gadgets. Remote controlled lighting set-ups and the kind of FM transmitter multi-room audio installations we just don't see anymore. Someday I'll put in a multi-room intercom with retro-phones and ambient music, but for now, please accept this amazing video about the history of the Mr. Coffee. Not sure I like the idea of my water coming out of a plastic reservoir to get poured over various sketchy metal alloys, but hey, the tech is super cool!
I like the sideline about how restaurants switched over to automatic pour over coffee makers too because the percolators were burning too much coffee. Very interesting.
RE: Coffeemakers, a History: The Modern Era - gorzek - 04-21-2025
We have a Roomba because my partner got one off a free group. It was broken and the owner didn't know how to fix it so she was gonna toss it out.
My partner figured out it just had a bad sensor. For like $20 she got a new sensor pack and a new set of brushes and rollers and it was good as new. We've been using it for 3 years now, works like a charm. Feel bad for iRobot, the company that makes them. Roombas are so good and so user-serviceable you practically never have to replace them. Unfortunately this means once everybody has a Roomba who wants one, you have no one else to sell to, and that's exactly the situation they wound up in. They're now on the verge of bankruptcy because their products are too good.
The other end of the wedge is that they never made one that's really cheap, while plenty of competitors have. Those units are awful, but they are always for sale at Five Below. Capitalism: where cheap, shitty products can kill high quality but expensive ones because people do not, in fact, operate with perfect information. Then all you have left are shitty products and everybody lamenting that nothing is built to last.
Home automation: I hate "smart" appliances. I want my computer to be a computer. I don't want anything else to be a computer. (I mean, phones and game consoles are also computers, but bear with me.)
The "smart" things in my house are:
- TVs, because you apparently can't buy a non-smart TV anymore. I avoid using the "smart" features whenever possible.
- Washer/dryer, because they were new and my partner picked them. However, we do not connect them to our wifi or bluetooth, so that functionality isn't really in use.
- Dishwasher, just barely. It has a lot of nice features but no wireless connectivity or "automation." It's just kind of a fancy dishwasher albeit well in the sub-$1000 range.
- We were given a Nespresso Vertuo coffee machine, which is basically "we found a way to make K-cup technology even more expensive and fiddly." We have maybe one of those pods every couple weeks. Way too expensive to make a regular thing, though what it makes is pretty decent. It has bluetooth connectivity because I guess it's so much work to walk up to it and push the "make coffee" button? Literally it's a single button.
- The most pervasive one are smart light bulbs. They are handy but I would've been fine with normal ones. Being able to adjust the color and all is pretty nice. Many more options for mood-setting.
For everyday coffee, I've kind of done it all. French press, K-cup machine, Mueller drip. These days I just buy bulk instant coffee and I have a nice electric kettle. Is it the best coffee? No. Does it work? It's good enough.