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Comment by rubayeet | Hacker News Reader

Once upon a time, there used to be companies who made money by selling toasters. When toasting bread went out of fashion, these companies found their businesses to be in peril. They wanted their businesses to respond to the change in the market and pivot. The ones whose toasters were software-driven were able to survive, while the ones who hardwired them to do just toasting breads, did not.

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That's an interesting take, but what actually happened is three different things:

1. microwave ovens became affordable, popular, and then discovered to be terrible for browning things, but so good at generally warming food that they became a smash hit.

2. toaster ovens were introduced, with two hardware controls instead of one (heat and time), which did an acceptable job of toasting but also handled lots of other small warming and browning tasks.

3. toasters came back as a nostalgic luxury good.

In all of these markets, the companies with more robust hardware capabilities were able to charge a premium, attract customer loyalty to their brands, and use the brand reputation to diversify to related kitchen goods.

Is toast not popular in the USA? Still going strong in Europe!

Same in Canada.

It is, we just toast it in toaster ovens and not toasters these days...

Toasters are still a basic kitchen essential here. Maybe because we don't have as much space in our kitchens...

I think a hard engineering problem in general is knowing when to adopt what level of flexibility. Erring too far in either direction gets bad.

The ones who survived designed and built a new simple product that matched the market demand rather than attempting to retrofit their complicated product designed for a different purpose.

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