Creator here, I used a camera so that I would have video of everything that is happening. As seen in the follow-up post [1], I rebuilt the system so that the nut-release is triggered by a proximity sensor. The camera only records now.
I agree the use case ulf suggested is more of a turn-off, and more used for trying to create a beneficial relationship through dishonest / manipulative means.
Starbucks does the name-game in the best "automated" way as you can. Asking for your name to put on your drink, and then they repeat your name a bunch of times - which attempts to make people feel they have more of a connection.
It's not just that - it seems there's this idea that we should actually be optimising these interactions out of our day, which I disagree with.
Perhaps if you think about all the mom and pop stores in many us cities closing and being replaced with generic chains its possible to understand some of this behaviour.
"I want to walk into any Starbucks and they must know my name and produce my chosen beverage".
This seems like a perfectly reasonable response to wanting to 'personalise' a large chain now that all the small and personal mom and pop places are gone.
From my perspective though, I can't wait to get back to my home city where I don't have to go into Faceless Mega Brand stores. I want to go back to my favourite coffee place simply because they know my name, what I like and we get to chat. For me, having my coffee shop try to predict what I want so it can optimise out 30 seconds of my day where I chat to the owner and have some human interaction will actually make my day worse. No thanks.
Except it's not a good idea. It's never been about price. Otherwise Apple would've never succeeded with the iPhone. There are tons of cheaper smartphone options out there yet people are still flocking to the iPhone. Consumers today are trending towards quality and usability, even if it costs them slightly more.
Nonsense. Of course it's partly about price. If it weren't about price then why doesn't Apple just raise their prices by a factor of 10 and really make a killing? Why did the Touchpad that had just totally flopped become a hot item when sold at a 80% discount?
Really price is just one way to differentiate a product from others in the same niche. Features, specs, manufacturing quality, app ecosystem, design, brand, usability, etc. are others. Those tons of low-end cheap smartphones are at least as critical to Android becoming the most popular smartphone platform as the ones that instead compete with the iPhone by better specs.
Right now Honeycomb tablets aren't all that good at positively differentiating themselves from the iPad in any useful way. Maybe some people desperately need some particular Android feature that can't be added to iOS in any way, or really dislike Apple. Not really a solid foundation... The closest exception is probably the Eee Transformer.
The real question is whether some other manufacturer really can lower the price enough to really make it a differentiating factor.
There's no margin in touchpads if you want to undercut Apple, but I bet Amazon doesn't care. They want eyeballs. Amazon is really good at datamining, and they already have your credit card details. If you interact with any channel they control, they will find a way to shake you down.
HP and the rest don't have that advantage - they need to make money off the touchpads, and Apple can undercut them by controlling the App store and locking down supplies.
"There's no margin in touchpads if you want to undercut Apple, but I bet Amazon doesn't care. They want eyeballs."
The same goes for Google-rola. Should be an interesting next couple of years for the tablet business in terms of seeing how low these non-Apple players are willing to go on hardware price in an attempt to prop up their real moneymakers (content, ads).
Just because they compete on price doesn't mean they will cut quality or usability. That is what I feel is wrong with the existing inexpensive tablets, they cut those corners, but Amazon isn't known for doing that.
I think he meant it more in the context of olden times, where neither pirates nor navy had "high tech playtoys" and piracy was a little more common than today
And those two would be considered among the least piratic! The English Crown granted licenses that gave commercial vessels the rights to any plunder from Spanish ships and settlements. It was effectively a loose mercenary affiliation. Deal: We empower you to commit legally sanctioned piracy. In return you make life difficult for our enemies and cut us in on the proceeds. Soldiers in war were never as restrained as period movies would have us believe, so imagine being boarded or invaded by a desperate privateer crew with not even the semblance of honor and soldierly gallantry to moderate their behavior.
Wall street just followed a general theme among banks. Once upon a time they were institutions built to control capital flow, from where it was available to where it was needed, to provide some social value by allowing enterprises to thrive. But apparently the credit interest was not a big enough margin, so they decided to do all kinds of other shit, investment banking was born. Which mostly makes rich people richer, without any kind of social benefit.
[1] http://blog.ulfster.com/post/114942851719/squirrel-feeder-v2...