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Comment by theGimp | Hacker News Reader

AvE also did a teardown. It's 40 minutes long, and evidently I watched the whole thing according to YouTube. https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ

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He also did a DRM bypass, by which I mean he hooked a power supply up to the motor and ran it manually.

It really is the most ridiculous product. Even if it were engineered properly to a reasonable price point the entire product is unnecessary and wasteful. The difference between selling bags of juice vs. bags of mostly juiced pulp that you have to finish yourself is definitely not worth $800 or whatever they were trying to charge. On top of that they added DRM, some goddamn subscription thing, required internet connectivity, and every other annoyance you can get in a modern product.

I mean, if pressed juice actually lived up to its health claims I might consider Juicero more seriously.

Eating whole fruit is unbelievably more healthy, cheaper, and simple than the convoluted process this product serves.

The time spent setting up this machine, throwing away the bags, electricity used, resources used, etc VS peeling an orange seems comical and sad.

To be fair, the founder was much more into stuff like kale juice and beet juice than orange juice. Stuff that isn't particularly nutritious when eaten raw and unprocessed.

You think the nutritional content of kale or beets increases when you juice them? Source?

The effort to eat a bushel of kale dwarfs the effort to drink 1.5 juiced bushels of kale.

Perhaps, though steamed or fried it'd probably fit on a single plate... and then you'd get the fiber, too.

Supposedly cooking kale will destroy most of its nutritional value.

Yes, because you're crushing up the cells and releasing the stuff our puny human guts can digest. Raw kale is mostly undigestible by humans unless you're willing to sit and chew on every leaf for a few minutes like a cow.

Unfortunately I'm having trouble finding the sources on this. All of this breathless superfood wankery is really polluting the search results.

http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/digestion-kale-11913.html

http://gi-north.com/kale-good-for-you-and-your-digestive-tra...

over/under on the number of features pushed by a board member?

Thank you -- watching it now. Best quote so far: "...the local black bear...hasn't had it so good since my daughter was in diapers" (after he sliced open the juice-pulp bag).

Such a good video. I've been an AvE fan for a long time, but I used this one to turn a couple of friends on to him.

Wow that was painful to watch considering how much was invested in that company, and how much the machine costs. Wow. Thank you for posting this link.

Hah. Yeah, it's quite the spectacle.

I've gotten used to AvE's unboxing by now and in fact look forward to it, but I remember it being jarring the first few times.

I just can't stand this guys mannerisms, and constantly goofing of words. Every single word, is some kooky variant. I respect that he's clearly an intelligent guy, and knows what he's talking about. It's just like listening to your annoying uncle, trying to constantly make a stupid joke.

His Canadian dialect contributes a lot of this, dontya know? Skookum choocher's a thing up there.

I understand that, I work with Canadians in every one of their provinces daily. They definitely do not talk as backwoods as this guy. His shtick is just to be obnoxious, and it's distracting from the otherwise great tear downs he does.

I'm quite the opposite; the shtick is addictive, and actually seems to help me retain the info. I remember points he makes and moments in his videos better because of the off-the-wall comments. I even end up talking a bit the same way after I binge on his videos.

My wife gave me a strange look when I told her something was "good enough for the girls I go out with".

Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. The biggest reason I watch AvE is for his hilarious delivery.

You and I can disagree of course. I'm not finding issue with your opinion -- just offering mine.

I should also mention I'm Canadian and pretty much nobody talks the way AvE does. His accent and vocabulary are purposely exaggerated.

It's very regional. I'm from Ontario and hadn't heard of half of his vocabulary when I first started watching. Now I can't get enough!

Of particular note in that video is that there's more to the cost than the press. The build quality of the machine is way above and beyond what's necessary. I mean, that's a good thing, but you have to stop before your consumer-grade juicer costs $400 (was it really $700? Dang).

To be fair, people have hurled similar criticisms at Many Apple Products over the years (and more prominently, NEXT), and we do complain about poor build quality of its competitors.

> I mean, that's a good thing

Like AvE says, it's really not. Elegant engineering is exactly meeting your design requirements (assuming your design requirements are good). It's far far easier to overengineer everything. It's also wasteful, since all that extra capacity won't be utilized.

>Elegant engineering is exactly meeting your design requirements

Sure, if you selling juicers to businesses. Juicero is selling a lifestyle, not a product. Nice design is then a part of engineering.

Fruit juicers have existed since I can remember. The real selling point here is the juice packs. The nice machine is so that people don't realize what they're doing, which is basically buying pulped juice then letting the machine pour it into a glass for them.

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