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Comment by rubatuga | Hacker News Reader

Same! Complete! Nutrition! More efficient!

Please, it’s a bottle design. Is Soylent trying to create a following like Apple fans? At least Apple makes good products.

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"I am upset because someone working at a company wrote a blog post to share their design work on a new bottle."

What's the value of sneering at someone else's work like this? Why the mean tone?

Because the parent post is ridiculously pretentious, and funny.

Don't you think its interesting to see the thought process of the people who make what we see in the world. Sure, it is just a bottle, but that doesn't mean that someone didn't put time and effort into making a good one.

I mean, sure, but don’t act like you’re changing the world. This is nothing more than marketing. Also, 5 seconds of thinking would tell you that a juice box has more packing efficiency than a bottle.

(I also have had a bad experience with Soylent)

Do tell...

Juice boxes have pretty obvious ergonomic issues. Also the article goes into detail on why they didn't make it perfectly square.

I have lactose intolerance and struggle to gain healthy weight. Off-brand Vegan soylent has changed my world. So, like, speak for yourself buddy.

Don't mix apples and oranges. This discussion and the article are about the design of the bottle, not the actual soylent powder.

Yep, it's marketing, but it's also somewhat educational. That's marketing done right. Compare to the marketing blurbs for most products that are fairly meaningless.

Can you imagine if the people who marketed shampoos and cleaning products explained how they work in a similar way?

It does seem like they're trying to create a following like Apple. Instead of letting the work speak for itself, though, Soylent seems to think that they can incite that kind of appreciation.

Apple might have some good products, but a lot of bad ones as well with a whole lot of marketing and devoted fans that will wait in line all night for it, so really not that different.

I'm not an Apple person by a long shot (full-time Linux desktop / Android user) but I'm struggling to think of an outright bad product that they've put out in the past 15 years or so... I guess the Watch had its shortcomings and the specs on their computers are falling behind the competition but everything they put out seems very well designed and engineered.

Watch, new computers lacking many peripherals unless you buy a bag of dongles, rehashing the same product over and over while software upgrades make them obsolete...just saying marketing is a huge part of what apple does.

The reference to Dieter Ram's Braun designs didn't tip you off?

Jony Ive is well known to love that look: https://www.google.com/search?q=johnny+ive&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8...

Soylent Cafe is almost exclusively sold online by the dozen, so a bottle that's more space-efficient and resistant to shipping damage is a tangible benefit to customers.

Yeah they are the first company to look at that problem :-|

Hey now. Soylent is a perfectly cromulent Ensure knockoff. ;)

indeed, they've managed to make powdered gunk desirable to 20 somethings, a marketing coup.

Not really. Check the nutritional label. Disclosure: tried Soylent and didn't find it agreeable with my belly.

> Is Soylent trying to create a following like Apple fans?

Everyone is trying to create a following like Apple.

Key ingredients:

1. Simple name

2. Simple design with no instructions or "bells and whistles descriptions"

3. Act as if design is 75% of your value proposition

If it isn't obvious, this doesn't always work.

Their new bottle has rounded corners. Apple might try to sue them for that.

At least the cap isn't slide-to-unlock.

It needs one for such a niece product

tou·ché

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