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Comment by kmeisthax | Hacker News Reader

The packs were pre-juiced, the Juicero Press just squeezed the juice out of the packs.

The advantage of the packs is that they can lock you into their ecosystem and charge you more money for the convenience of using the machine. Razor-and-blades is a common, worthwhile business model... if the razor can be made cheaply enough to give away, and the whole package actually solves a problem.

The idea was to basically be "Keurig, but for juice"; and it would have worked had they not charged SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS for the press.

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Hehe, charitable to not call i a outright scam :)

> and the whole package actually solves a problem

The problem of having to carry one less item from the supermarket?

Soda stream is kinda the same, a machine which produce a easily available product directly in you home. But the soda cartridge doesn't expire after a week and can produce alot of fresh soda. So you save alot carrying and it's easy to always have soda since an extra cartridge takes little space. In addition it offer you a choice of how "strong" soda you want.

The only advantage of the juice packs is that they presumable ship it to your door. But it seems very strange if the packs actually are any fresher than presqueezed juice shipped in a regular container (which would've been more convenient). And from the few pictures I saw no water was added to the juice so no volume/weight is saved.

Keurig seems to be coffee capsules which arguable does solve a problem/brings convenience.

soda stream is a lot cheaper than buying bottled sparkling water, and you can make a very good analog to your favorite mineral water / soda / energy drink for even cheaper if you buy the right additives online. They did do a good job of making their luxury version waste most of the CO2 tank because it's impossible to make a good airtight seal.

you can homebrew your own though, and use a much larger/cheaper CO2 source than what they sell at grocery stores, which I'll probably be doing soon.

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