jrwoodruff

Same. I think metaphors that paint something as black or white are almost as damaging in practice as they can be useful in understanding. It doesn't help that these metaphors usually have a built-in positive/negative connotation as well - who wants to be a drone?

Also made possible by the internet and computers in general, I'd argue. Without the easy availability of prices, sales data, and general number crunching capabilities I don't think this would be happening. Certainly not at the scale we're seeing.

The equivalent of about $200 for someone making $100,000/yr

For me, it was more about the humanity represented by the objects than what company they came from. All of those objects are far more human-centered than the iPad. All of those objects were crafted and perfected over centuries - guitar forms, paint formulas, camera technology, etc. In a way it's representative of the much of human culture, and this add kinda says, yea, screw all that old crappy stuff. Look at our neat piece of glass that replaces all that humanity.

I get it, that's exactly their point. The iPad can do all of those things. But at a time when many creatives feel like AI is going to replace them or make their skills irrelevant, it's pretty tone deaf.

And also, it's far more likely that most of those objects were made by skilled craftsmen, even if they did work at a bigger company.

Yea this is gross. Even the examples they provide are gross. Someone struggling with debt, and a some robot gives them the impression that there's a person that cares and, by the way, you should spend your money on this service. Ewww.

Color me jaded, but isn't this just business as usual in the U.S?

If every site used the same font, maybe. But different font faces vary in readability at the same size. Also, we still have to set sizes for things like titles, subtitles and other elements to create a hierarchy on the page.

'Don't resize my fonts' is such a narrow view of whole range of design considerations.

Definitely a yes-and scenario here. I was a cashier, I'm good at finding and scanning bar codes and PLU lookups. I was a damn fast cashier. That's impossible in a self checkout. And then you get carded for a can of spray paint, and the one attendant for 8 machines has three people with blinking lights. On top of that, most of these self-checkouts are not designed to handle a full cart of groceries, but also why do I want to do the work of ringing up and bagging a full cart of groceries by myself?

For the most part, in practice there's little or no advantage for me, the consumer with a cart full of groceries.

One exception was 2003-era Martins in Virginia - Walk in, grab a cart that had bags attached to the front, grab a portable scan gun from it's charging dock. Scan and bag as you shop, dock the gun to the checkout register, show the attendant my id if needed, pay, and I'm done. No unloading and reloading the cart, no fiddling with plu lookups, fumbling with bags, etc. It was actually glorious, but relies on trusting your customers. Corporate stores seem to trust me even less than I trust them.

I'm somewhat ok with these things as a secondary 10-items-or-less option. But for the love of god staff enough cashiers to handle the grocery-shopping-Sunday crowds.

I'm unfamiliar with this, but I'd love some well-done black out shades - got a link or a brand?

The problem is we shouldn’t be working against the government on this. Problems like this are why governments exist, it needs to happen at that scale. Unfortunately, it seems like we’ve forgotten how to solve social problems of any significant scale.

It'd be neat to have a list of companies that use this strategy. It seems like all the big ones do?