Ask HN: What are the best-designed products you've ever used? I'll start: Teenage Engineering OP-1 Portable Synthesizer. Simply music magic. |
Ask HN: What are the best-designed products you've ever used? I'll start: Teenage Engineering OP-1 Portable Synthesizer. Simply music magic. |
This might sound stupid, but another thing I really like is that the headphones jack connector is aligned with the Caps Lock key. When I take the laptop on my couch with headphones, I just look at the Caps Lock key to find the socket.
It might be random chance, but I think someone at Apple designed it this way. Saves me maybe half a second but it's thoroughly satisfying.
- Unreal Engine
- Microwave oven with just two knobs: one for "power" and one for "duration"
- Victorinox swiss army knife (I forgot which model it is but it's going strong for years and will probably last a few decades)
- Victorinox trifold wallet
- Audio Technica M50 series of headphones
- Teostra Timer android app for the game 'Monster Hunter 4 Unlimited'
- Not a single product but: Motorcycle. I haven't had as much fun with anything else.
Apple Watch is also well-designed. It doesn’t try to do too much, and every feature has become well-implemented over the years. For example, it used to be a slow and annoying process to load music onto it. In recent watchOS I never have to think about it, whatever I’ve been listening to recently is there automatically and ready to send to my AirPods. But the feature I use most and which was the reason I bought one is Apple Pay, specifically that in Japan it supports mobile Suica for riding public transportation. Since the underlying technology for Apple Pay has been used in Japan for a long time, many businesses including almost every convenience store and even some vending machines supported it out of the gate.
“Helper” brand 65W USB-c charger. I can’t find it online anymore, presumably because it’s unsafe like many chargers. However, for $30 it has 1 USB-c port, 2 USB-a ports and compact adapters for most countries’ power outlets. It works for all of my devices including Nintendo switch and it’s dock (it uses a voltage which is often not implemented in USB-c chargers). I have 3, for home, work and my bag.
Raspberry Pi. It has some annoyances and I wish the design itself and processor selection was different. But, it was cheap enough and popular enough to arrive at the end result of amazing community support.
Seriously.
I was a long time Apple //e user and my Mac LCII with a //e card was a great combination of hardware and software with how the //e card could take advantage of the Mac hardware. I also had Soft AT to run my dos compilers for my CS class.
But I upgraded two years later to the Powermac 6100/60 with the 486 DX/2 DOS Compatibility Card. The integration wasn’t quite a slick but it worked pretty well.
The right size. Great battery life. More useful than the first iPhone. Great homebrew.
Which of these peelers are you referring to? (if any)