Starbucks coffee is an affront to all things good about coffee
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
It's delicious. I like the peppermint latte that while it's not on the menu can be had for the asking year round. That said, I find it distasteful to pay that kind of money for coffee. Or wait in lines to get it.
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I disagree. Apple (hardware) products are very, very well designed. Their phone works well as a phone. Their laptops work extremely well as laptops. Their music players shaped what we came to expect from a music player. Starbucks coffee isn't, as far as I can tell, actual coffee. It doesn't actually fulfil its basic purpose. I think people go for Apple because they like the design, the ecosystem, the simplicity (we can argue about this later) and the cache that comes with Apple products. I think people go for Starbucks because of laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice. There are also those who treat Starbucks as a caffeine delivery system: give me a bigun' and I'll plug 'er in and I'm good. Taste is not even part of the equation. This makes me sad.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
cache
Cachet, actually. But I like your choice better. :) /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Chris Maunder wrote:
cache
Cachet, actually. But I like your choice better. :) /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
Are you accusing my iPhone's autocorrrect of being wrong?
cheers Chris Maunder
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Wrong on every imaginable count. Coffee:* Most stores, at least in the US, are company stores. For that reason they discard and replace unsold coffee on schedule, not when it's all sold or too nasty. Usually, however, it's sold out first.
- Dark roasted - although those admittedly nasty light roasts were made available for those who used that as an excuse not to buy coffee there
- They use more coffee to make their coffee - never watery - and, much as some like the element of surprise, no mystery about the quality=reliably high
- I haven't bought a fancy mixed coffee beverage in years (that wasn't alcoholic) there or anyplace else.
Environment:* Each Starbucks is different - usually with real furniture - the one nearest me has a fireplace. - and their business model is to encourage people to linger over their coffee - making it easy to study, use laptops, etc., with free WiFi and electrical connections
- Their planned niche is to make their place one of your comfort places - and there's nothing wrong with that
Social Consciousness:* Part Time employees, a great many of them, earn vacation time, sick time, medical benefits, college tuition, etc., which is rare, indeed, in the US for a chain (especially q.v., Walmart, McDonalds, etc.) - They were trend-setter in their coffee sourcing, getting the money directly into the hands of the growers when possible - and now it seems everyone's doing it
- Even their 'card' program - I don't have one, but apparently the changes reflect customer requests. A customer is now 'fully credited' for buying multiple items in a transaction, rather than 'per visit'. This would not be to my advantage, but it's clearly fairer.
Now, they don't sh^t as sweetly as the whip-cream that tops many a beverage, and have made mistakes, but when it comes down to it, they're a reasonably socially responsible company. And they, at least in the US, are the ones who really popularized the concept of drinking real coffee instead of the traditional swill that used to pass for coffee. Uh-Oh! There goes my CP account!
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfecti
The discussion is about he coffee, not the social responsibility or consistency. Consistently bad and catering to the lowest common denominator are awful things we need to avoid. Life is more exciting with a little inconsistency! Besides, at 5am in the morning I'd probably buy from someone using baby seals as seat cushions if the coffee was good enough. Sure, I'd feel _terrible later on, but the coffee would get me through those bad moments.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Taste is not even part of the equation.
Surprisingly, this is designed in. Starbucks use reverse osmosis filters to remove all minerals (and impurities) from the local water, to make it all the same. And that badly affects the taste of coffee: Secret to perfect cup of coffee lies in the quality of the water researchers say - Telegraph[^] If you want coffee to taste good, you need a water high in magnesium!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
OriginalGriff wrote:
If you want coffee to taste good, you need a water high in magnesium!
It also helps to not use over roasted beans that have no caffeine and an atrocious flavor.
Computers have been intelligent for a long time now. It just so happens that the program writers are about as effective as a room full of monkeys trying to crank out a copy of Hamlet. The interesting thing about software is it can not reproduce, until it can.
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I disagree. Apple (hardware) products are very, very well designed. Their phone works well as a phone. Their laptops work extremely well as laptops. Their music players shaped what we came to expect from a music player. Starbucks coffee isn't, as far as I can tell, actual coffee. It doesn't actually fulfil its basic purpose. I think people go for Apple because they like the design, the ecosystem, the simplicity (we can argue about this later) and the cache that comes with Apple products. I think people go for Starbucks because of laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice. There are also those who treat Starbucks as a caffeine delivery system: give me a bigun' and I'll plug 'er in and I'm good. Taste is not even part of the equation. This makes me sad.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
Their phone works well as a phone.
I know a few people who've had an iPhone that didn't work (even after returning it) :rolleyes:
Chris Maunder wrote:
Their music players shaped what we came to expect from a music player
I hope you don't mean iTunes. It's not only the worst music player in the world, it's easily one of the worst pieces of software in the world! I won't say Windows Media Player is much better (well, not anymore) though. If you're referring to iPod, I have an iPod Classic and I've come accustomed to it. Before this, many, many, many years ago, I had a Creative. Back then that was just so much better! Too bad they didn't come in 160GB (and neither does iPod anymore).
Chris Maunder wrote:
[...] ecosystem [...] the cache that comes with Apple products
You mean vendor lock-in. Really Apple is no better than other tech companies. You should know it's just software and software has bugs. They have bugs just like Microsoft, Linux, Google, Facebook, and what have you. True, their design is different from Microsoft (and others) and some like it (although personally I like the MS Phone better). Apple's different, but not necessarily better. It -is- a lot more expensive though. Many people buy Apple for status. I could now point you to many websites that show that people liked Android much better when they were told that it was the new iPhone. They even liked the "new" features! Or studies that show Apple fanboys are much less critical towards Apple than MS fanboys are towards MS. One study even showed that the part of the brain that's active when people practice their religion is also used when Apple fanboys talk about Apple. But one can question the validity of such studies. I'm pretty sure there's at least a bit of truth in them though.
Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need. Or read my articles at my CodeProject profile.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. — Edsger W. Dijkstra
Regards, Sander
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I disagree. Apple (hardware) products are very, very well designed. Their phone works well as a phone. Their laptops work extremely well as laptops. Their music players shaped what we came to expect from a music player. Starbucks coffee isn't, as far as I can tell, actual coffee. It doesn't actually fulfil its basic purpose. I think people go for Apple because they like the design, the ecosystem, the simplicity (we can argue about this later) and the cache that comes with Apple products. I think people go for Starbucks because of laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice. There are also those who treat Starbucks as a caffeine delivery system: give me a bigun' and I'll plug 'er in and I'm good. Taste is not even part of the equation. This makes me sad.
cheers Chris Maunder
Whether Apple products are well designed or not, people buy it for the coolness factor. Same with Starbucks, you've gotta get your coffee from Starbucks or else risk looking cheap.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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I disagree. Apple (hardware) products are very, very well designed. Their phone works well as a phone. Their laptops work extremely well as laptops. Their music players shaped what we came to expect from a music player. Starbucks coffee isn't, as far as I can tell, actual coffee. It doesn't actually fulfil its basic purpose. I think people go for Apple because they like the design, the ecosystem, the simplicity (we can argue about this later) and the cache that comes with Apple products. I think people go for Starbucks because of laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice. There are also those who treat Starbucks as a caffeine delivery system: give me a bigun' and I'll plug 'er in and I'm good. Taste is not even part of the equation. This makes me sad.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
I think people go for Apple because they like the design, the ecosystem, the simplicity (we can argue about this later) and the cache that comes with Apple products. I think people go for Starbucks because of laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice.
I'd make the argument that people flock to Apple for those exact same reasons: Their products are sold on the premise that they "just work", and nobody wants to give themselves the trouble to learn to use the products offered by their competitors (or they just gave up on them). How is that *not* laziness, ignorance and convenience...
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Whether Apple products are well designed or not, people buy it for the coolness factor. Same with Starbucks, you've gotta get your coffee from Starbucks or else risk looking cheap.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
I disagree. I buy apple products because the hardware is so nice and because of the ecosystem. [Edit: and I'm happy with the fact that the FBI can't crack my phone] I'm cool enough already. I live in Toronto.
cheers Chris Maunder
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I disagree. I buy apple products because the hardware is so nice and because of the ecosystem. [Edit: and I'm happy with the fact that the FBI can't crack my phone] I'm cool enough already. I live in Toronto.
cheers Chris Maunder
Well I would say you are in the minority then. Pretty much everyone else I know who announce their Apple-love have no idea about whether the hardware is good, whether it's good value for money, whether they need it, etc.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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I disagree. I buy apple products because the hardware is so nice and because of the ecosystem. [Edit: and I'm happy with the fact that the FBI can't crack my phone] I'm cool enough already. I live in Toronto.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
Im cool enough already. I live in Toronto.
:laugh: I do believe that's the first time those words have been used in that order!
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment "Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst "I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Are you accusing my iPhone's autocorrrect of being wrong?
cheers Chris Maunder
Oh, sorry! I love spell cheque! /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Oh, sorry! I love spell cheque! /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
See! It's oresome!
cheers Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Im cool enough already. I live in Toronto.
:laugh: I do believe that's the first time those words have been used in that order!
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment "Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst "I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
I tried to come back with some snappy repartee...but couldn't.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Well I would say you are in the minority then. Pretty much everyone else I know who announce their Apple-love have no idea about whether the hardware is good, whether it's good value for money, whether they need it, etc.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
Nish Nishant wrote:
Pretty much everyone else I know who announce their Apple-love have no idea about whether the hardware is good,
Really? I'm surprised at that. Apple are a hardware company. It's what they do best. I'd be surprised to hear that an owner of an Apple product didn't think it was "good".
cheers Chris Maunder
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Nish Nishant wrote:
Pretty much everyone else I know who announce their Apple-love have no idea about whether the hardware is good,
Really? I'm surprised at that. Apple are a hardware company. It's what they do best. I'd be surprised to hear that an owner of an Apple product didn't think it was "good".
cheers Chris Maunder
Well they do think it is good, but unlike someone like you, they don't really "know" that :-) Even if it wasn't good, they'd still think that.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
Starbucks' flavored beverages can contain up to 25 teaspoons of sugar per serving, points out a new report by an advocacy group called Action on Sugar. While the assessment was done on drinks in the United Kingdom, many of the numbers are pretty similar here in the states. In nutritional label terms, 25 teaspoons is 125 grams of sugar. To put that in perspective, a 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola has 33 grams of sugar. Put yet another way, 125 grams is about 12 and a half Krispy Kreme donuts. (Huffington Post) Marc
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The discussion is about he coffee, not the social responsibility or consistency. Consistently bad and catering to the lowest common denominator are awful things we need to avoid. Life is more exciting with a little inconsistency! Besides, at 5am in the morning I'd probably buy from someone using baby seals as seat cushions if the coffee was good enough. Sure, I'd feel _terrible later on, but the coffee would get me through those bad moments.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Catering to the lowest common denominator is a way to insure safe mediocrity.* Consistency doesn't imply the LCD. Example: an organization I belong to arranged some early morning rehearsal for an event and supplied Coffee & Donuts from Dunkin' Donuts (These are individually owned franchises). The majority of the time the coffee was lousy and weak. Going to the idea of a local coffee house that near my home (frequented mostly by Mrs. Wife): I've found the coffee, which they roast themselves (serious about their coffee) sometimes well under par. I couldn't honestly say it was ever better than Starbucks: just a closer walk. We don't disagree about good vs. bad coffee (and I truly despise weak coffee) - but Starbucks has become some sort of whipping boy. Maybe because it's a successful American company. One thing about the remainder of my previous rant: I took you literally when you said "all things good about coffee" - thus my broad-band response * I once saw something called "Hamburger, the Motion Picture[^]": one of the comments in the movie was addressing why people eat the stuff when they really don't like it that much. The reply was that they felt comfortable knowing what to expect and would rather be comfortable than taking a chance on getting something great with no guarantee they'd like what they tried. It's similar in the Former Soviet Union (a/k/a Russian Federation): The people were very uncomfortable, as a whole, with no one telling them what to do. Hence, Putin.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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How to make Turkish Coffee with detailed instructions[^] Sounds a little more than just milled coffee with hot water, unless you were being high-level in your explanation.
This stuff is usually referred to (at least when I've heard of it) as Israeli Mud Coffee. The mud is the tie in with Turkish coffee. You want the beans ground that fine so that they form a firm cake at the bottom. Improves drinkability, especially to newcomers to the practice.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
