Hacker News Reader

Comment by hiimshort | Hacker News Reader

I've enjoyed the analogy so adding onto it:

Google would open up 5 competing, different burger places next to each other and then close them all down a year later, confused that none of them did well enough. All to open a new Taco stand on the other side of town and claim it's got the same great food you liked before (it doesn't).

View on HN

Apple would sell exactly one kind of burger, which is great but costs $20. The wrapper is rose gold or space grey. Only Apple-certified condiments can be applied to the burgers, and a packet of ketchup is $5. Each year the faithful queue outside for the privilege of obtaining the latest burger.

The silver lining is if you pay for it it pretty much will always taste decent.

Unless you like your burgers with barbecue sauce. That use case is bravely unsupported.

You’re eating it wrong!

They would also stop providing plates with the meal. They would be available for an additional charge.

Well, McDonalds did that like ~70 years ago.

https://youtu.be/KultzqPJaJs?t=264

Microsoft would license their burger recipe. All the licensees would sell unique, subpar versions. They'd also for some reason have a $10 billion contract to supply burgers to the military.

and drinks would come in cans that require a special adapter but the adapters are so expensive you need to carry one around with you so you can drink when you’re thirsty.

I would pay $20+ for a fantastic burger, especially if all other burgers made people sick.

and more and more people would simply accept that great burgers cost $20 and come from Apple if you want a decent one. While there are some other burgers that sound great at a lower price point, they occasionally give you e-coli. Mediocre burgers at a low price are still widely available.

All mediocre burgers are also sponsored by local companies who pay to have their logo on the wraps and their commercials on the wall in the restaurant.

Some new people try to make fresh burgers and get funding, only to be bought up by Mediocre Ads Burger and killed a year later.

Unfortunately people found out that they payed $20 for the sense of a great burgers, but found out that they were mediocre at best which began a new trend of making your own burgers - either from ready made components from all kinds of price/quality or even make them more or less from scratch. Though, some people insisted on keep buying overpriced burgers as they believed the ads made in the format as objective benchmarks or reviews.

The burger is nearly always great, but occasionally it tastes strange. You are not allowed to see the ingredients and the staff suggest you might be able to improve the situation by re-wrapping and re-unwrapping the burger. This does nothing. The senior staff suggest leaving the burger in the fridge overnight and trying again in the morning. This does nothing. None of the staff actually know how to make a burger, but they will swap your strange burger for a refurbished burger for only $18.

I think this thread has transitioned from interesting analogy to just describing Apple's business model with the word burger instead of phone

Now, imagine McDonald's selling phones...

In'n'Out burger?

I think they're pretty reasonably priced burgers.

Oh sure, was instead referring to the lineup.

I love reading those.

That being said, I can make a pretty damn good burger myself. Sadly, can't say the same about Google/Apple/Microsoft products.

Found the Linux burger.

They'd also switch how one orders food every 18 months, and have them migrate to the new way of ordering food. Food ordering in gmail, food ordering as an app, food ordering using a kiosk, then back to an app, then merge it into the wallet app because why not.

And the food is delivered using an old-school automat format where you can see people on the other side but never talk to them if anything is wrong.

They'd start giving out a free family meal, which is a medium combo version of their corporate banquet pack, and they'll promise it's free forever.

Then after 15 years, they'll, give you three months to upgrade, then five months, then after three months of pushback, they'll begrudgingly let you keep having the free family meal, so long as you promise you're not using it to cater for a business event.

The five wouldn't compete, one would sell buns, another patties and lettuce, one would have a door so confusing that nobody knows what it actually sold inside, another would sell burgers but advertise itself as something completely unrelated, and the final one would be an acquisition that immediately shut down for a complete rebuild while its staff are fired or reassigned to the other stores.

"Hey, As some of you know, we've been working hard on a complete redesign of BurGer, and we are happy to announce that it's ready! The new GerBug is square, with cheese and bun swapped places. All is this to give our customers a new great experience. Truly yours, the GerBur team."

AWS would provide one large kitchen in backstage for all of these people to cook. You’d be like “Well I could just buy the appliances” but regulations mandate a certain way of cooking with autocleanup of desks, that can only happen in the AWS kitchen, unless you want to hire dozens of workers to do menial tasks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com