Comment by pencerw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pencerw | Hacker News Reader

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Hey! Co-inventor of the product (and author of the link) here.

The reason that the button isn't on the lid is because that makes the lid uglier and, more importantly, undermines the philosophy behind the UI - which is to keep the device as absolutely simple as possible. The idea came from my partner (Zach Dunham) and was inspired partly by Radiolab's 2008 episode, "Choice" - it's a bit of a deep cut but I recommend listening to it and thinking a little bit about how choice functions in the FM radio world (which is, obviously, competing with Spotify & podcasts) today.

Also note that we developed the product in ~2013, when everyone in the hardware scene in NYC was all into IoT and making everything bluetooth. I think there was part of us that believed that IoT (and connecting everything to the internet) was misguided and that having a long term relationship with a local news/radio source (which for me is Hot 97, but for most of our customers is their local NPR affiliate) is actually really cool/powerful/valuable.

Lastly, you should note that a lot of our business now comes from selling The Public Radio to radio stations (again, mostly NPR affiliates) to give out as fund drive gifts. For obvious reasons, having a single-channel radio is attractive to both the station managers and their donating listeners.

> Lastly, you should note that a lot of our business now comes from selling The Public Radio to radio stations (again, mostly NPR affiliates) to give out as fund drive gifts.

Here in NYC, we have two NPR-affiliated public radio stations that often play different content, WNYC AM and WNYC FM, and their parent organization also runs WQXR (a classical music station) and NJ public radio. So even if you only listen to public radio (like I do), an untunable FM-only radio wouldn't be enough. ("Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.")

My ideal "simple" radio would be one that worked like my car radio: you can preset any number of AM/FM stations and then select them with forward/backward buttons. (And once you have a display that can indicate the station, it would be sad if it couldn't also be an alarm clock.)

The solution is obvious! Buy three The Public Radios! Isn't it genius? :D

Here in NYC

There are hundreds of other markets in the United States than New York City (and tens of thousands worldwide), and the vast majority of them have just one public radio station.

This isn't a "public radio tuner." It's a single station tuner.

So for one, WNYC is actually one of our biggest customers to date. You'll hear our radios being plugged on Brian Lehrer (among others) periodically if you listen closely. Again, our philosophy is that customers are deciding on the station (not parent organization - the actual broadcasting station) they want to listen to every day and staying there.

For two, we definitely tried that early on! And we've had a lot of conversations about replacing the potentiomenter (which controls power and volume) with a rotary encoder (which, if you added a push button to it, could be used to control a lot of other interactions with the radio, including seek/scan, etc). The issue is that doing so would easily raise our cost by $5, which means we need to raise our retail pricing by $15 or $20, which ends up being crazy.

I've said this elsewhere in this thread, but The Public Radio totally isn't for everyone! But a surprising number of people like it just the way it is, and we've worked hard to build a business to support their needs as efficiently as possible.

> undermines the philosophy behind the UI - which is to keep the device as absolutely simple as possible.

But you're not keeping it simple, you're just pretending the complexity doesn't exist. The task still needs to be performed, and you've made it far more difficult.

Your argument certainly has validity, but the bottom line is that our customers don't interact with the choice of what to listen to (which is kind of the core idea of the product) on a day to day basis.

And, whatever philosophy we bring to the table is really neither here nor there. Our customers (apparently) like our product enough to buy it, and we have really low return rates, and the customer support emails (which I literally respond to 100% of) are almost exclusively positive and outright friendly. But that doesn't mean you have to like the product! And anyway the point of the blog post was to explain how our business works operationally - not to promote (or defend) the product itself.

An iPhone has approximately the same level of technical complexity as a Saturn V rocket. One can be used by a toddler; the other needed the entire might of the military-industrial complex to successfully operate.

Apparent complexity matters just as much as real complexity.

I <3 this.

Reminds me of the Muji CD player which has just on/off, eject. No skip tracks / rewind

Oh that's awesome - I wasn't aware of that at all!

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