Comment by christophilus
3 years ago
> There's no room left for innovation or competitive advantage.
What? A hackable, OSS printer whose manufacturer puts time and effort into reducing waste and creating the best, longest lasting ink on the planet would crush it.
Well, maybe not. But anytime anyone has said: “That’s it. There’s nothing more to do here.” It tells me there’s a complacent market ripe for disruption.
How many people are using FairPhone or PinePhone outside HN bubble? I don't know anyone, even though most of my friends are from tech or science... I think that answers if people care about hackability / sustainability or similar
> A hackable, OSS printer
Outside of our bubble nobody cares about that
There is always something you can do, we see it with phones, just add more gimmicks on top, the thing is smartphones are aimed at the general population and became a fashion/class/status symbol. Printers are just printers, they work just fine and most of them are used in pro environment (aka most people don't pay, maintain or replace printers).
> It tells me there’s a complacent market ripe for disruption.
Then let's disrupt coffee mugs, or the wheel... some techs are good enough that further """progress""" isn't required.
Most people who have issues with printers buy cheap ones and/or use them once every 6 months, they then proceed to complain that they don't work anymore and that all printers are bad. It's like buying a car and never doing any maintenance until it dies and then complain about reliability.
> Then let's disrupt coffee mugs, or the wheel... some techs are good enough that further """progress""" isn't required.
There's still room to improve insulation on mugs, and I dare you to go tell any car manufacturer that wheels are a totally solved problem with no room to improve (personally I'm hoping one of the airless variants gets to mass market so I never have another flat).
Some techs are good enough that people get complacent; that's not the same as running out of room to improve.
Yeti built a company by disrupting coffee mugs. Michelan and friends spend a lot of money on improving the tire. Hardi and Trex have worked to produce better wood. Etcetera. Almost everything can still be disrupted or improved.
I kind of want to spend some time on this printer thing, now!
So it sounds like a company like System76 should build a printer and partner with no-brand ink cartridge companies to supply ink.
Or Pine64, then we could use it as part of the build farm when it wasn’t printing.