> that genre of thinkpiece spawned another genre of thinkpiece, which drops the ‘marvelling at how poorly-conceived or scammy products get hundreds of millions in investor funding’ to just settle on ‘sneering at the fact things are sold which I, an enlightened consumer who sees past the horrors of late-stage capitalism, would never buy’.
...
> yes, there exist people for whom getting a package regularly is way less stress and way more convenient than running out to the nearest convenience store. Not everyone lives in cities where the nearest toothbrush is ‘down stairs to the bodega’, not everyone has access to a means of transportation, not everyone can leave their house or pick things up at the store. The store’s hours might be hours you are working. You might be a single parent who can’t nip out for a shopping trip without packing up the kids. You might be disabled. Literally all of those things at once might be true, and are true for many people!
...
> unless you’re a big established company for who [$2300+ is] nothing and the cost of the lawyers is no big deal, it’s way safer not to admit that your product is for disabled people or to advertise in a way that suggests it is a solution to a specific condition. And so we get generically incompetent infomercial people
I wonder if that's what the EZ-Crunch bowl does. I'm not sure what disability it might help with, but I'm hardly an expert on all the disabilities that exist in the world.
I don't understand why the quoted author took issue with Quip in the first place. Modern life is increasingly complicated, and full of small burdens on memory and willpower that add up to a huge background stress load. If I can pay a small amount of money to alleviate just one thing to remember (refreshing my toothbrush every couple of months) and could do that for every other annoying little inconvenience of modern life (car maintenance/insurance/tax, renewing and comparing financial services, buying in food and finding new recipes, tracking my dietary composition and fitness, backing up my computer, expensing mileage, and so many hundreds of little things) then life would be a lot more enjoyable. I have nothing but praise for the companies who focus on the little things and do them well. We could all do with not having to think about and remember so many things.
Yeah. I have no particular problem with the quip. It's an expensive electric toothbrush but not ridiculously so. For me, it ultimately wasn't great as an electric toothbrush for travel which is what I bought it for. But, in general, I take advantage of subscriptions and automated billpaying etc. when I really do want things to be on autopilot as much as possible.
> that genre of thinkpiece spawned another genre of thinkpiece, which drops the ‘marvelling at how poorly-conceived or scammy products get hundreds of millions in investor funding’ to just settle on ‘sneering at the fact things are sold which I, an enlightened consumer who sees past the horrors of late-stage capitalism, would never buy’.
...
> yes, there exist people for whom getting a package regularly is way less stress and way more convenient than running out to the nearest convenience store. Not everyone lives in cities where the nearest toothbrush is ‘down stairs to the bodega’, not everyone has access to a means of transportation, not everyone can leave their house or pick things up at the store. The store’s hours might be hours you are working. You might be a single parent who can’t nip out for a shopping trip without packing up the kids. You might be disabled. Literally all of those things at once might be true, and are true for many people!
...
> unless you’re a big established company for who [$2300+ is] nothing and the cost of the lawyers is no big deal, it’s way safer not to admit that your product is for disabled people or to advertise in a way that suggests it is a solution to a specific condition. And so we get generically incompetent infomercial people
I wonder if that's what the EZ-Crunch bowl does. I'm not sure what disability it might help with, but I'm hardly an expert on all the disabilities that exist in the world.