What ever happened to Function?
We bought a new automatic coffee maker the other day that was more appropriately styled for our remodeled kitchen. I was more than happy to replace our old $9 white plastic one with the glass carafe that made it impossible pour a cup of coffee without dribbling some onto the counter. The new one has a carafe that is also challenging, but I think I may have found the proper pouring technique after a week whereas I never mastered the trick to the old one. The trick to the new one is to ignore the lid setting that says "pour" and unscrew the lid completely and take it off prior to pouring a cup of coffee. This is the same situation we had with the coffee maker that existed before we purchased the cheap white one. It also had a thermal carafe that required you to remove the lid completely if you wanted the coffee to end up in your cup and not on the counter and a lid that was easy to crossthread if you hadn't yet had a few cups of coffee, something that has happened a time or two with our new one, though not as often. That's three coffee makers in a row with carafes that don't perform their basic function very well. What is wrong with product designers these days? I'm all for artistic design and our current coffee maker is rather attractive (as far as coffee makers go) so I'm willing to consider they might sacrificed a bit of function for design in this case, but the previous two were down right hideous. I have to assume they sacrificed function for ease of manufacturing on those. And I have a sneaking suspicion this explains my frustration with a lot of other products.