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Saturday, April 19, 2014 - 6:18amSanction this postReply
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This is the same France from which productive people are fleeing.  And Nestlé is not facing up to its own "sanction of the victim" problem. Otherwise, they would just pull the plug on France and not sell machines there at all.  But no company does that. Every corporation is in business for profit to its shareholders and morality has nothing to do with it -- or so Milton Friedman claimed.  Nestlé will put up with the problems to squeeze out another CHF of temporarily expedient profit if they can.  

 

But compatibility is a marketable service. Remember Sony and the betamax? "Beta is better" but it was incompatible. Would you buy a Philips iPod to play Philips artists... and then need a 1000 others for all the labels?...  It makes no sense.  What if you could only drive your Ford on Ford-brand roads?  Sure, they have a right to do whatever they want... but the market points the way.  Ignore the market and pay the price.

 

And from another angle, you find out pretty quickly from experience that the "compatible" pods are not. Then they go back to Target and you buy the actual brand name if you want the actual coffee.  But we have seen this before.  Read about Edison versus Westinghouse.  They both made lightbulbs for the home. Edison's had a screw fitting, the kind we all know today. Westinghouse had a bayonet style, a cylinder that set and locked into place.  However...  you could buy adapters for them so that your Westinghouse bulbs would fit your Edison sockets and vice versa.

 

I did not know about the Nespresso machine.  Keurig, I know. For one thing, I never saw a Nespresso, but I have seen Keurigs everywhere.  For another, Frog Design happens to have an office here in Austin and they have their Apple // and Keurig on display in the reception area.  True, Wozniak and Jobs "invented" the Apple //, but it was never going to sell outside the Homebrew Computer Club if it was not a commercial product.  Frog Design did that.

Esslinger's products caught the eye of Steve Jobs as he was searching for the design magic that would give Apple Computer a market edge. A multimillion-dollar deal was struck, esslinger design arrived in California, and the company took on a new name: frog design. http://www.frogdesign.com/about/history.html

 

One problem with Keurig and Nestlé and the others is that you have to drink their coffee.  We prefer other brands, other sources.  At my office the other day, somoene called me a "coffee snob."  I drink a cup a day in the morning. Some mornings, I forget to drink it at all. Other days, I drink tea. Yes, I am a tea snob, too, if you must.  Again, we tried buying compatible adapters for the machines in our offices, but nothing was exactly right -- and then you have to clean up the mess...

 

Nespresso and Keurig are conveniences, to be sure. You can have a cup of strawberry decaf and I can have a cup of morning roast and it is all very easy.  But the machines are not "inventions" in the true sense. We have all kinds of ways to make coffee here, from french presses to gold-foil filters.  Laurel and I actually have separate drippers, side-by-side on the counter.  We have carry-out this and carry-in that. And they take all manner of sizes and shapes in paper filters, but mostly just two shapes, compatibility being a marketable attribute of any product.

 

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 4/19, 6:21am)



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Saturday, April 19, 2014 - 7:23amSanction this postReply
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If these coffee pad machines are not an invention then what is? Does it have to be electricity or better - anything lower does not qualify?

Of course the companies go where the market is (point in case VW and the Chinese car market with all it's little kautau problems, or Siemens/Deutsche Bahn and Russia in spite of the Ukraine problems, or or or ...) and as a consumer of course I value variety and compatibility (next point being charger plug compatibility - yaaay ... by EU law - yuck).

However I'd like to have that variety/compatabilty sold as a 'better product', instead of bureaucrats forcing companies to reveal their inventions, regulate them to total equality (lowest possible denominator) and then telling me 'we did it all for the consumer'. Do they actually think we believe that crap? Guess some do ...or we wouldn't have laws to make it easier for moochers to feed off creators.

Maybe that's why new inventions are always 'incompatible' - incompatible with the consumer, with the market, with society (according to the bureaucrats). Didn't they call it 'Miracle Metal' once everybody had the same right to the same amount at the same price in the same quality ...



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Saturday, April 19, 2014 - 8:06pmSanction this postReply
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Thanks. I agree with you and we are on the same page. I apologize for not being complete in my thoughts on "invention". That was left over from a different discussion completely on another board, Galt's Gulch. The discussion there was still resonating with me.  My point was that the US Patent Office requires that an "invention" not be something knowable to the skilled practitioner, i.e., to the average craftsman.  I disagree with that standard on the "shoulders of giants" theory.  We all benefit from the work of others.  That does not invalidate invention.  Novelty, innovation, and invention are real.  I believe that the USPO standard is not objective.  I agree with you, also, that this was not the proper sphere for the French government.  They intruded with force where it served no objective purpose.  



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Sunday, April 20, 2014 - 1:40amSanction this postReply
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Thanx Michael :)

Re USPO: I'd have a simple answer to their requirement. If we all stand on the same shoulders of the same giants, then how come so few of us are capable of reaching beyond it's height and so many reach down to consume the mountain they're standing on? And I'd like to see those 'skilled practitioners' even reach the giants shoulders - they are still nibbling at the toenails ;)

So we have a herd of dogs, some giants, a gulch of renegades, lots of coffee and enough juice to ignite the whole mass - shapes up to be a nice fantasy story :D



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Sunday, April 20, 2014 - 7:59amSanction this postReply
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The barrier to entry of selling coffee compatible with a K-Cup is nill; go to Bed, Bath and Beyond; they aisles are overflowing with K-Cup alternatives.

 

The alternative packaging with the liquid pouches is a little more restrictive, but barely.

 

It is a stretch to call these configurations of an embedded system, hot water, and plumbing an invention.

 

This isn't the major pathway of corruption(folks having their me,too gizmos purloined and manufactured by others), at least in the US.

 

Here it works as follows:

 

Tiny group A works for years at risk developing a solution to some problem, the government wants the solution.

 

A buries its costs of development and manufacture into its price and marks it up to price 'A' as some percentage, not factor.    But the government, by law, cannot and will not buy directly, must be sold to the government through group B.    Group B marks up gross price 'A" to 2x 'A' and sells to the government.    Group B is a phone, fax, and PO box, or maybe even a glass cube building down around the beltway, also filled with folks who had nothing at all to do with creating solution 'A'.    The government purchasing agents and agencies responsible for this process know precisely that group B has nothing to do with anything, but it is with group B that those in government plan their soft landings with and worse.     The massive markup -- 200% for passing along an invoice and marking it up -- is paid for by group C, the taxpayers not involved in the transaction.  This is IKE's MIC in DC, only it goes well beyond defense.    We just don't have a cozy handle for the entire  CronyFest on the Potomac.

 

Tiny group A is taxed on its profits and effort(a fraction of price A).   Group B is taxed on its much larger profits (twice gross revenue 'A') but it is all windfall, at least, that which can't be hidden/buried.    Group C is taxed to make up the difference (the unearned net realized by group B for absolutely nothing, where the majority of revenue goes.)

 

4000B/yr worth.

 

So let's bitch about coffee makers.



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