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Mike Masnick over at techdirt has an informative editorial up about Keurig's coffee maker DRM being cracked by its competitors.
... it appears that Keurig competitors have already figured out ways to crack the DRM. TreeHouse Foods very quickly announced that it would be able to break the DRM. Meanwhile, Mother Parkers' RealCup has just announced that its pods are compatible with Keurig's DRM. It's a little unclear from the press release if Mothers Parkers cracked the DRM or came to a deal with Green Mountain, though it sure sounds like it was internal work ...
Being both coffee and tech related, it had to be submitted.
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Keurig DRM Cracked By Competitors
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New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Thursday August 28 2014, @10:31PM
What am I not getting here? Why would a coffee maker need DRM, and why would anybody buy one knowing it had DRM.
Must make some mighty fine cups of coffee.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Covalent on Thursday August 28 2014, @10:36PM
In order to ensure continuous replacement revenue (coffee pods).
This is exactly like the inkjet printer business model which, unsurprisingly, also failed miserably. You would think Keurig would have learned from history...
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Thursday August 28 2014, @10:40PM
Gillette would like a word with you...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hamsterdan on Thursday August 28 2014, @10:42PM
Since they're still selling Inkjets at probably around cost (lasers too, looking at you Samsung_, and the cartridges are as expensive as ever, I wouldn't say they failed.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @10:56PM
No, it was a near total failure. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mmcmonster on Thursday August 28 2014, @10:48PM
And the impetus at this time is that the patent Keurig has on the coffee pods has expired.
Which means it's suddenly a race to the bottom on coffee pod prices. (Well, not really. It's never going to be as cheap as just buying a can of Folgers ground or instant.)
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Thursday August 28 2014, @11:50PM
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @11:53PM
I personally do not like coffee however my wife does.
We would buy a bag of beans grind it and she would drink 1 to 1.5 cups out of 4 cups. So usually 2-3 would go down the drain.
I figured out per cup a keurig was slightly more expensive by about 80 cents. However she is no longer wasting as much coffee. Which makes her happy. As she does not like to waste food.
You can still buy the brew your own cup. So grind your own and use the machine. She uses that quite a bit too and saves money and it makes 1 cup.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 29 2014, @12:31AM
Or you could've bought a smaller coffee pot. I have one that brews 2 cups, which is perfect since I'd only drank 1 or 2 cups a day. I also have an Aeropress, which is perfect for brewing single cups, but takes just a little bit more effort.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday August 29 2014, @07:57PM
Buy her a French press. No point in brewing a pot for one person only to drink a fraction and toss the rest.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 29 2014, @12:57AM
I buy the Latin-American brands of espresso. If you get espresso with an Anglo or Italian name on it, you pay through the nose, often around ten dollars a pound. The Hispanic-sounding brands are two dollars a pound, sometimes less on sale. They're the exact same product, sometimes packaged by the same companies in the same factories. Only the ethnic "feel" is different.
Works for some spices too. Try looking for Cinnamon with a nice Anglo name like "McCormick." Then find the "Goya" brand, probably in the "ethnic" aisle. Compare prices.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pnkwarhall on Friday August 29 2014, @02:20AM
I second this. IME ethnic food stores (Indian, North African, etc..) have the cheapest spices, generally cheaper than the grocery store, and in quantities that mean the spices will have lost their potency by the time most Americans have used them up.
Haven't found better paprika than Penzey's, though... and I pay out the nose for it.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 2) by dcollins on Friday August 29 2014, @01:04AM
// Any one of these cases accounts for the majority of people
return !isKnowledgableOfDRM() || !isAwareKeurigIsDRMed() || !isAwareCompetitorsExist() || !isExpectingToUseCompetitorProducts();
(Score: 1) by epitaxial on Friday August 29 2014, @02:36AM
So you spend $100 on a coffee maker to brew single cups that nearly cost $1 each. It would be far cheaper to buy a $25 Mr. Coffee, brew a full pot, and discard the rest.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Friday August 29 2014, @06:15AM
But I would have to wait maybe 10 whole minutes for the pot to finish brewing, and then there is all the cleaning and refilling and measuring.
It's just so complicated.