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The Next Keurig Will Make Your Coffee With a Dash of "DRM"
FuzzNugget writes "Apparently seeking to lock competitors out of the burgeoning single-serve coffee market, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, maker of the popular Keurig coffee machines, will make their new machines work with licensed pods only. GMCR's CEO confirmed this in a statement: 'The much-anticipated ‘Keurig 2.0’ single-cup brewing system with ‘interactive readability’ (that doesn’t work with unlicensed/copycat pods) will offer such “game-changing functionality” that consumers - and unlicensed players - will want to switch.'"
Is it really so hard to just grind the beans and brew it yourself? I do this every morning.
Coffee from pods is an affront dignity anyway. Get a proper espresso machine, or use a press.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Screw pods... and especially screw DRM pods.
Roast it yourself and french press, baby!
Do not want.
That $30 Mr. Coffee espresso maker that breaks down after two years actually makes better economic sense. I amortized the busted unit over two years (sometimes longer) and achieved $0.57/shot espresso. Keurig can suck it.
they deserve to fail miserably and go down in flames.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
How much "game-changing functionality" can you really work into a fucking coffee machine?
I only drink certified genuine OEM HP inkjet printer ink. It's much cheaper than Keuring.
Reminds me of when Microsoft attempted to make their own (proprietary, locked in) java.
Because the circuitry to control a heater and pump are SO COMPLEX. If it isn't a modchip, it's going to be a firmware reflash. I give it about three hours before this is cracked now that it has made it into the news to get that much attention.
Although I am a heavy user of their current line of products, I appreciate the fact that I have the choice to buy unlicensed pods that are either cheaper or represent coffee that is otherwise unavailable. Surely this will kick open the door for a competitor that can take advantage of their self-disruption!
Insert pod, push button. How much interactivity does making coffee *need*?
hackmykeurig.com is currently available for purchase. I suspect variations will become popular.
This won't be legal to sell in Europe by the sounds of it..
Get out your cartridge razor handle. Find a razor cartridge from a different manufacture and try to mate the two, e.g: Schick stick with Gillette cartridge. It will not work. There is no reason it will not work besides the companies want you to only buy their razors.
This isn't DRM it is just an update on an old business model that happens to use a small circuit to achieve the same result.
Those things are such an environmental disaster no-one in their right mind should use that crap anyway.
Coffee is quite a bit more utilitarian than say, a movie. Clothes are this way too. This is a fatal business move for keurig - it's something even grandmothers will understand- not to buy the coffee machine that needs proprietary cups. Buy the knock off that works with all the cups you can buy in the store. I predict grocery stores with chipped kcups on hand they can't seem to get rid of.
a decent cup of coffee out of a Keurig machine anyway?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Probably tastes better, too.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
“game-changing functionality” ... you mean like coffee that actually tastes good?
...just supply a better quality, more desirable coffee? Oh no, that would be too hard!
DRM technology to the rescue,forcing users to buy crappy or overpriced coffee.
The real question is - after the "Keurig 2.0" hits the shelves, will I be able to use the "Keurig 2.0" pods with my "Keurig 1.0?"
Or are they going to screw themselves out of my money by trying to force me to "update" to the new model (probably by altering the design of the K-Cup ever-so-slightly), thereby ensuring that the only products I buy for my existing $160 coffee maker are non-Green Mountain brand?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
One company I worked at had a Flavia machine. Flavia is expensive as hell but the packages always work. Then they got rid of it for regular coffee. I left. (One of many reasons).
The next company had regular coffee and then "upgraded" to a Keurig machine. Every other day the machine would overflow is some spectacular fashion. I left.
My current company had regular coffee,was acquired and a perk of the new megacorp is Flavia machines in every office. Happy bee.
The patent on the Keurig has run out, so they are going to try and borrow the playbook from HP/Lexmark/et all? Hahaha. Sell short.
I say the same about all forms of DRM.
If you don't like it:
Don't buy the movie.
Don't buy the music.
Don't buy the game.
Don't buy the coffee.
I don't understand the crusade to have everything on your terms - without doing it yourself. Commercial goods, OSS, etc.
Take it for what it is... or don't, and that is a perfectly acceptable choice.
Sorry Dave, I can't let you brew that.
I'd damn sure reprogram his memory banks with an very large axe for that kind of insubordination.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'll make and sell conversion kits to unfuck your Keurig 2.0.
...and this could be awesome for my workplace. We have someone who never ever removes their used K-Cup from the Keurig. Maybe I could blacklist their "Caribou Obsidian" K-Cups from the machine, or program it to only brew the tiniest mug size, hehehe Stick a micro-sd/data logging on it and I'll finally know what time they sneak in...
But DRM is good for the consumer! Just ask the MAFIAA, they'll tell you whats best for you and you'll like it, no really.
i'm wondering where exactly are we going to have to put the piece of black tape or sharpie scribble to disable it...
lol DRM...will they ever learn?
knock knock: "OMFG it's the coffee police.,..AGAIN!!"
"damn, so who forgot the firewall the damn thing this time??"
"well...shit i was surfing for porn and disabled the FW for freakydeaks,com.."
pound pound "OPEN UP...WE CAN SMELL THE CRIME BREWING HERE DO NOT RUN"
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
This means my next Keurig will be a Keurig-compatible machine, sans-DRM.
I can't imagine anything they could possibly add to the "pods" to warrant moving way from all of the clone pods & machines. (Freshness date chips? Custom brewing settings?)
I smell a failing business model brewing...
I couldn't believe this whole "Keurig" thing when I saw it, it creates all sorts of plastic waste and is expensive per cup, plus having to have an expensive and complex machine to use it and not as much control over what ends up in your coffee cup. If they want to shoot themselves in the foot by locking everyone else out of the process rather than allowing laziness to help proliferate their coffeemaking process, then I guess that's their decision and good riddance to them when they kill off their own market. Meanwhile, get a French Press, people, they even make little ones for single-cup coffee, and it's really not that difficult to use.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Since the K-cup patents expired in 2012, I don't see why other companies don't just create their own K-cup friendly coffeemakers. Vue cups are covered by a new round of patents, but I wonder if the tradeoffs that the Vue cups provide may be worth the added expense by consumers, so K-cups may be an idea as a "standard".
The only big technical problem that the Keurig system seems to have that I've experienced is that the volume of water required per cup is not clearly marked. This means that if I accidently pour 8 oz of water into a 6 oz hot chocolate cartridge, it will be watered down and taste awful! A smarter system would detect the amount of water appropriate for the cartridge and only dispense that amount of water through it to enable consistently awesome hot beverages. Or they could set a standard volume and stick to it.
The "My K-Cup" device that is available for the current Keurig machines will allow the use of custom-ground coffee.
The two concepts are not incompatible.
Sell device at or below cost, make sure it only works with your highly, or moderately over priced (ink cart, eBook, razor blade refill, coffee pod, or whatever)!! I this case, I own an espresso machine and can hit the brew button for a second double shot of water for cafe Americano in about the same time as a K-Cup machine! For every day I'll stick to French press and grind my own beans, I own a pump pot carafe, so good to go for the whole day!!
Glad this news just came about; I just backed out of ordering a Keurig on this news (ie canceled the Amazon order).
I'll save up a bit and get a real (oood) espresso maker now.
Sure, the Keurig does something for speed and efficiency (when you need a cup, you NEED A CUP). But not at the cost of being locked into their packets: I want my locally roasted beans, thanks.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It always makes me chuckle when one of my self-anointed "green" friends whips up a cup of Keurig and then chucks the plastic container in the trash.
Pot meet...
I would encourage everyone to to the same. They have a simple email submission page on their site and it has no capcha or anything annoying like that. Let them know we do not care for the practice of locking out competition.
I've found only one suitable pre-made Keurig pod for me, Dark Magic Decaf.
Meanwhile, I still have opposable thumbs and can operate a french press or a Chemex or a porcelain cone or a Bialetti.
Choose your level of messiness (none horrible), but get much better coffee at at least half the price.
Yes, it can take up to ten minutes to get it, but there's something to be said for not making everything in life about pushing one button.
I can do them all with any heat source, from electric main to the trusty SnowPeak.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If this "Keurig 2.0" thing is actually the Keurig Vue, the only real difference is that the cups are "keyed" through physical distortions.
For a brief moment, I thought our culture couldn't get any dumber.
Thank you for wrenching me back to reality, Slashdot.
Jesus. My coffee needs neither "interactive reability" nor "game-changing functionality." All the interactive readability I need is, I pour clear water in, and it comes out dark, dark brown. My coffee pot's functionality is not a game that needs to be changed; I shovel some ground beans in, and press a button. My coffee needs to force my sleeping ass awake for the drive to work, not save the world, the whales, or the children. As if I needed another, this is one more reason why a Keurig will never clutter my countertop.
Why don't you grow your own beans, too? Seems simpler
Another option for small servings of coffee is switching to cold brew. Its far less bitter and much easier on your stomach. It keeps in the refrigerator so it can be poured in one cup servings. It takes a little more setup work.
I've used Keurig coffee makers for a number of years. Frankly, it doesn't hold a cup to a french press, or several other methods. It it does make sense in an office where you want coffee-on-demand.
Now that the patent has expired, I think it is time for an open source project to build a K-Brew coffee brewer that uses the old K-cups. Clones already exist from Mr. Coffee and Cuisinart. But since many of us have 3D printers, I wonder if anyone is interested in creating an open design?
BTW - I use a 1.5L french press, and put the brewed coffee into a vacuum thermos. Stays hot all day and is much better than K-Cups. Cheaper, too.
Place nail here >+
That's a much smaller lag time than usual. 1 to 2 days is more typical.
Hey there, just thought I'd comment on your absurd statement.
"Are you fucking stupid? Or just the product of stupid fucking?"
The ONLY reason I even invested in a Keurig style maker was the *cheap* pods available.
Getting rid of compatibility with these will lose you 99.9% of your market.
Better get that ass-lube ready there bub, your shareholders will be standing in line to ass-rape you for such a fucking moronic idea.
The Keurig is a pretty lame device. I haven't used one that actually brewed a decent cup of coffee, even the dark roast is weak. And least not compared with my Senseo.
Keurig once again showing that the inferior machine wins and the only thing that counts is marketing.
My wife and I have a Krups dual-carafe coffee maker with a setting switch for 4 cups. Set the switch, take some beans out of the sealed container for the pre-ground beans, place them in a small filter cone. Place cone in plastic holder, pour in water and wait briefly while the coffee brews. Add seasonings to taste and drink.
It's a simple enough process that even a Green Mountain Coffee Roasters executive could do it unassisted.
DRM doesn't have to be undefeatable. The point is simply that the number of people who have hacked machines which bypass the DRM is much smaller than the total installed base of machines.
So this makes it hard to make a viable business model by selling 3rd party cups. Even if you and everyone you know can run un-DRMed cups, companies still can't viably make generic cups.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Gosh-dag-nabit! Do you see what you 'smarter than everyone else' nerds have done?!! Oh, jeez...
"The 'Cloud' (tm)!! Connect everything to 'The Cloud'!!! Zen ve vill haff all zee control!"
You nerds screwed up the internet (monetize it!... use it to spy on everyone!!) Now I won't be able to just make a damn cup of joe without 20 different advertising companies knowing and reporting about it.
Great job guys. Just frickin' great... :^(
Grind the beans very fine (flour like). Put one large teaspoon of coffee in a cup and add boiling hot water. Stir and wait till cool enough to drink.
Using this method you might expect to have a mouth full of grinds with every sip of coffee. But that doesnt happen. If the coffee has been ground fine enough it sinks to the bottom of the cup and forms a solid "mud".
All plastic pod coffee systems should be banned or at least CRV charged on every single pod or equivalent. The only "pods" I've seen that come close to being eco-friendly are the commercial Flavia ones that are just foil in a UFO shape. Plastic creamer pods should be banned too! Those stupid bits of plastic stick around for thousands of years. If you want a quick cuppa, boil a kettle and drink tea or a decent instant coffee.
I've tried Kuerig and I'm not impressed. Considering the cost of the pods, and the poor quality of the result, I'm not missing much. I've gotten to where I drink instant much of the time (and before you bash instant, there are some pretty good instants out there today, and it is also the way most of the world gets their coffee). If I want something better and I have the time, I use a french press. I have instant hot water at home (a device that is not much more than a Keurig, and infinitely more usable) as well as the office, so these options are not a problem. Either coffee method is at least as good as Keurig, cheaper and greener.
Go ahead, Keurig, shoot yourselves in the foot. Good luck with that.
Proverbs 21:19
I tend to make a whole jug of it in Summer. Can take the first draft after a few hours, top up, another draft after 6 hours, top up, another draft after 6 hours, don't top up and drink the rest after another 6. Of course, sleep usually intervenes.
Make is strong and add lots of milk & sweetener.
You can drive the price down with bulk buying and so forth, but you're paying a rather hefty premium for mediocre coffee that would otherwise retail for about $10 a pound.
I worked it out one time and our fancy-schmancy Jura that does about 4 cups a day has proven to be more economical than a Keurig, mostly because it can make a good cuppa out of $10 beans. Yeah, it took nearly two years, but we've had it for four. At this point, we can splurge on Blue Mountain beans and still be ahead of where we'd be with a Keurig or Nespresso.
For those who don't know, all in one espresso machines operate on the basic principal of "water container on one side of the machine, beans on the other, finished coffee out the middle, grounds dumped into a small container that takes about a minute to clean out once a week." In general, they make very good, but not mind-blowingly great, coffee. But ... in terms of overall convenience? Yowza, we're in tough to beat territory. Plus I don't have to drive to the supermarket to recycle the pods. And I can use any beans I want while supporting local roasteries.
And yes, I know, a French press would be OMG cheaper and (possibly) make better coffee. But after 15 years of arguing over who makes the coffee, my wife and I figured that a mostly automated coffee maker would be cheaper counseling.
Didn't HP try this BS with inkjet carts and have the courts slap them down? What's the difference here?
When the K-cup patent expired Keurig tried to promote their "Vue" cups, some of which actually carried RFID chips that interacted with the brewer. Vue cups were bigger, didn't fit in the K-cup style brewer, and cost around twice as much as K-cups. You could get an adapter to use K-cups in a Vue brewer, which was great when those machines were cleared out super cheap because no one bought them.
Manufacturers continually screw themselves over thinking their customers are stupid. You can already buy k-cup pods in any drug/dollar store that you can put any ground coffee into and it's a sure bet some Chinese manufacturer will duplicate the current k-cup tech if Keurig does something stupid like DRM. We don't keep enough k-cups around to make switching over to something else that much of a problem, so they'd just lose another customer here....
Fuuuuuuuuuuck You!
Maybe we'll just stop using your coffee maker.
The free market's a bitch. Enjoy your bankruptcy.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I bought a machine that grinds the beans every time. â300. Simple saeco nothing special. This was 3 years ago.
It has since made over 3000 shots of espresso. 2-4 per day with peaks of many more. I drink 4 shots every morning on the commute to work.
That works out to â0.10 per shot ex beans and going strong. With beans... Probably 0.25
Seriously, if you drink coffee get machine with grinder.
Coffee lovers everywhere were overjoyed to learn that GMCR's CEO has confirmed that he's trying to kill the Keurig just as hard as he can.
'The much-anticipated ‘Keurig 2.0’ single-cup brewing system with ‘interactive readability’ (that doesn’t work with unlicensed/copycat pods) will offer such “game-changing functionality” that consumers - and unlicensed players - will want to switch.'"
I predict the CEO is correct, but may be misunderstanding the direction of the switch.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Firstly, so many people drink shit coffee that how you make it is irrelevant.
Secondly, if you have half-decent coffee but put milk & sweetener in, paying double for the coffee won't help.
There's nothing wrong with putting milk & sweetener in, just like there's nothing wrong with eating milk chocolate.
If you drink it neat, then yes, feel free to spend a fortune on the beans, hand grind them and use an Aeropress.
Otherwise, here's what I do:
1. Scour supermarkets for decent pre-ground own-brand coffee. Why? Because it will always be cheap and available. If you're in the UK, I can recommend Sainsbury's TtD Columbian Quichia.
2. Buy hot chocolate (or make your own using cocoa powder and sweetener) if you like the sprinkles.
3. Buy decent milk (of the big 4 UK supermarkets, Tesco's organic is the best, surprisingly).
4. Buy a cup-sized steel sieve from eBay.
5. Buy a milk-whisk from eBay.
Serving:
6. Microwave about 75ml of milk for 45s.
7. Put sweetener in the bottom. In my opinion, Nutrasweet and clones are better than even sucrose -- the bitterness improves the coffee.
8. Put a couple of teaspoons of coffee in the sieve and poor boiling water over it.
9. Whisk the milk.
10. Pour in and add chocolate sprinkles.
The sieve doesn't need cleaning. You don't even need to empty the coffee out except after a couple of days or when it's too full. Literally tap against the side of the bin and you're done. No cleaning, no clogging up the sink, no blowing $hundreds on coffee and generating a ton of plastic waste.
My coffee beats the shit out of Starbucks et al. Indeed, unless you drink coffee neat, it beats all the local independent cafes bar who charge 15x more.
Their K-cup patent has expired. They might pipe dream about migrating all their users to more expensive DRM protected coffee machines. But it will die like Vista. And it will give the generic K-cup makers, who have just 8% of the market now, a new lease on life. Eventually like Microsoft they will tuck their tail between their legs and come out and compete in a level playing field. But these top honchos who dream up these things will do a few power point presentations, do some hustle to make bonus, cash out the stock options and will go out looking greener mountain to roast something other their share holders. Dump the stock now if you own it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I love my Jura Capresso... I put beans in, and get awesome coffee out. Making expensive freeze-dried instant coffee will never compare.
Who will be the first to make a pirated cup of coffee?
Yeah, it'll convince people to switch alright... to switch the the clone version of the coffee maker so they can continue to use their favorite coffee pods. You can argue about the quality all day, but the fact is... being able to get a cup of coffee in the morning without all the fuss of making more than you need, or having to clean everything up is worth something.
The coffee isn't good, the amount of plastic waste is ridiculous, and each cup of coffee is expensive! Laziness is the only reason I could justify a Keurig, but then again I am a coffee snob who grinds craft roasted bean from a local roaster every morning. It is kind of sad that someone like me thinks it is too expensive, but I feel more justified that I spent 300 on my bur grinder than I would feel to buy one of their machines.
So the only way to win is not to play? Nah, that's ridiculous.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That won't work if the machine deactivates the RFID tag during brewing so that the user doesn't brew from the same K-Cup2 pack twice.
I have a keurig mini for a quick kick in the arse before work. And anyone that says stupid shit like "grind it and press it blah blah blah" go back to starbucks and type on your mac. Snobs are the worst.
Fairly sure that a former Nestle employee saw this in his future and patented it specifically so DRM coffee couldn't happen.
Consumers put up with the reduced and more expensive choice of video games on Nintendo consoles, as opposed to the 8-bit home computers that preceded them (C64 and friends) which were open to all developers. Both Atari and Nintendo put lockout measures into their third-generation consoles: Atari with RSA signed games that the BIOS verifies and Nintendo with a PRNG MCU in the Game Pak that communicates with a matching MCU in the console.
Basically anything that they can reasonably do with the cup I could tear off and put on another cup
But you might still have to buy one authentic cup for each homemade cup you want to brew. Otherwise, watch for an error message "You already brewed from this pack."
Well mostly my wife uses a K-Cup "basket" to use coffee she has ground a bit finer for the machine sounds like this won't be available either.
Yeah looks like competitors who don't do this may get a sales boost (at least for a while until they follow suit).
It still makes shitty coffee. I literally wouldn't drink it, if it wasn't free (for me) at my work. How about making better coffee instead of better pots? Or putting pot in your coffee? ;-)
I wonder how this will effect their "my k-cup" that allows brewing any kind of ground coffee in a washable/reusable container. If they don't get rid of that, which would wholly lock in customers, then surely other vendors would just make cups that fit in that thing.
...
This seems exactly what happens now with consoles. Your device will only interface with other hardware if that hardware provide a copyrighted code. If another manufacturer sells a device to use that code, then they get sued for copyright infringement. It will be interesting to see if they can come up with a system that cannot be modified by other companies to be reusable.
Smoking crack??
maybe the DRM will be whole beans?
Do you take it rich black or process black?
I like my Keurig. As the only coffee drinker in the house one cup at at a time fits me fine. But you can use any kind of ground coffee in it if you get some of those fill yourself pods. They are cheap and you can use your specialty coffees in them. If the Keurig folks shoot themselves in the foot with DRM I'm sure some one will come out with one without it. Or a hacker will build a home model.
that morons will continue to spent lots of money on overpriced poor quality coffee and that the rest of us will find some considerably cheaper alternative?
Incidentally, I love how my tea comes in cheap ($.05/use) bags with no cleanup.
I tried their machine once. But it invariably produced a concoction that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Damn, someone's going to have to update the graph.
the cost of long term exceptional health.
Do yourselves a favor people, skip the plastic in your coffee.
I will be selling my Jailbroke Keurig to the highest bidder!
Get a proper home espresso machine and make proper coffee instead, from whatever suppliers you are free to use....this is a truimph of marketing over genuine quality. However these machines will get hacked allowing folks to drink their ersatz hot beverages as before.
I guess the CEO hasn't learned the painful lessons the music industry learned about using Digitally Restricted Media. Ho hum.
-- Fuck Beta
I'm not a coffee drinker. Can't stand the stuff.
But every time I see or hear Keurig, I get South Park flashes.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Thought I'd give it a go.
...
Letting the market handle things led to the situation we now face with DRM preventing people from making choices (highlighting how freedom of choice is so often a scam). This isn't the first instance of DRM providing no benefit to the user (eBook DRM leads to publishers and distributors taking away legally obtained copies of DRM'd eBooks like Amazon.com did in 2012 or making it possible to electronically enforce restrictions one could never get away with in paper books should the DRM proprietor so choose). The issue is not whether a proprietor has or hasn't used DRM to accomplish such a thing, the issue is that DRM grants someone or some organization the power to enforce restrictions like these, restrictions that should not exist. DefectiveByDesign.org doesn't seem to have problems coming up with plenty of other examples of how customers lose with DRM. DRM examples show us that word does not "get around pretty quickly" nor do monopolies "die a miserable death". Today there are people defending the idea of making it easier to get DRM into HTML5 instead of rejecting it out of hand based on principled opposition and experience. If things were as bad as you claim no business would bother with DRM, DRM would be rejected out of hand.
I think this situation is much better understood by looking at this in terms of a minimum acceptable interoperability; something akin to environmental law (recognizing one can't negotiate everything they need on their own so we need to work together to set acceptable standards that let us get what we need) instead of a transactional basis (one-on-one interactions where each user is on their own to negotiate a better arrangement where it's likely no one user can muster the resources to effectively challenge the proprietor). Owner's rights should enter here as well: one should be able to use whatever they want with their Keurig device including less expensive beverage pods than what Keurig sells.
Digital Citizen
Screw you Keurig.
I'll train my DRM-busting civet to crap exactly one cup's worth of softened beans right into my grinder and use a French press.
WIN.
It seems they chose the latter.
In Europe, they'd just make sure to have patents on some part of the cartridges - same as Samsung's approach on their printer cartridges;
http://www.therecycler.com/pos...
http://tonernews.com/forums/to...
( I don't think we have Keurig coffee makers here in NL unless you import them - I think the most popular ones are the Senseo and the Nespresso, both of which have plenty of third party cups/pads so at least they're not trying to lock that down very much. )
Anyone see the parallel with the ink cartridge business?
See how THAT worked out.
People just started to buy printers that didnt need "manufacturer" ink, or just get "chip resetters"
I'm not a coffee drinker. Can't stand the stuff.
But every time I see or hear Keurig, I get South Park flashes.
Well to be honest you're not supposed to drink liters and liters of it.
American coffee has very little resemblance to real coffee, it is more like brown diluted piss.
One little cup of espresso is all that is necessary to keep you awake each day. No more.
They can 2.oh this all they want. I am holding on to my Keurig B70 until the thing dies. Which, given Keurig's awful reliability, has probably already happened in 7 out of 12 universes. But for now it still works!
And when it dies, it goes back to Costco for a new one. HA! Take that Keurig!
PS: Keurig coffee is not THAT good. It's merely convenient. The company often mistakes these for being the same thing. They are not. When they DRM it all to hell and make it less convenient, it will become another -nt word and that word is irrelevant.
Sig for hire.
(the comments on this are fantastic by the way!)
i admit I am biased - I am a complete coffee geek/professional, and to me, K-cups are giant bras and pods are for alien hatchlings and whales only. Neither should be confused with coffee.
So, Keurig make "quick/convenient" coffee - but only one cup at a time....
Not only is grinding your own beans cheaper and less wasteful, it also produces nicer (fresher) coffee (ground coffee goes stale in under 5 mins - how long does it sit in those pods?? I know they're air tight but it's not a great system....)
And now they are locking it down so you HAVE to buy their expensive branded pods....
I wonder then, how on earth are they going to market this? why would anyone want to by the new Keurig 2.0 if they know that means being tied to one type of pods? if the old ones allow you to use refills or CostCo cheapy ones, what possible advantage is there of the new version?
Thick glass will fracture when you pour boiling water in. The inside of the glass heats up and expands while the outside is still cool and that creates internal stresses and breaks it.
By making the glass/ceramic thin the whole thing expands with the heat which causes no significant stresses.
You could double-wall it or insulate it as others mentioned.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
> It is spelled *expresso* not *espresso*. I am from Italy. I would know.
The letter X isn't used in Italian. Seems like the kind of thing you would know.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
It is actualy there is NO 'h' not 'x'
Just another worthless product destined for the landfill.
You may have been born in Italy, but you need to brush up on your italian. There is no "x" in the proper italian alphabet. The correct spelling is "espresso".
The Keurig machines will have a brewing counter that will disable the device after a set number of cycles or your license has expired (full-time internet connectivity is required to use the Keurig 2.0).
This will be an improvement over the machine's current mode of obsolescence: leaking water onto the poorly protected internal electronics.
SCOTUS would never let that stand, no matter how appropriate a punishment.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I bet the drivers have just as much DRM, though. Plus they're at least 50 MB for the simple driver that only prints or more than 200 MB for the do it all driver.
What's the matter with this thing? What's all this churning and bubbling? You call that a radar screen?
No, sir, we call it, "Mr. Coffee". Care for some?
Yes! I always have coffee when I watch radar, you know that.
Of course, I do.
Everybody knows that!
Of course, we do, sir!
I'm up a cup size in just 6 months. Way cheaper than plastic surgery and I'll be sporting a handsome rack by next years beach season!
You'd still need to roast them.
I'm lazy and don't know how to actually make coffee. In fact, I didn't drink coffee regularly until the first Keurig came out. It's like 5X more expensive than brewing your own, but 100X more convenient.
But they already tried to come out with a DRM'ed successor to the Keurig called VUE and it totally flopped. The coffee was more expensive, and the machine just had a bunch of useless options making it not much better than the regular Keurig with much cheaper K-Cups.
ralphbarbagallo.com
I used to work for a company that made nuclear power plants. One morning while waiting for the coffee pot, I calculated that if you took the secondary side steam (not the radioactive loop) our design would make enough hot water to make a cup of coffee for every person in the country each day.
I didn't figure out the distribution issue though.
Keurig forgets that it got popular exactly because 3rd party K-Cups are easily assessable. Going proprietary will work for them exactly how it worked for Iomega and their ZIP drives. If you really want classy cup of joe from single cup machine without the mess -- go Nespresso. That is like PC (Keuring) vs. Apple (Nespresso). First is drip style coffee, other is expresso style. And you have to see those European Nespresso commercials with Malkovich and Clooney!
Downside : a normal coffee brew process generates 6-12 cups of Joe.
Brews between 1-6 (250 ml/8 oz) cups (or twelve 4 oz "cups", or tasse), with a built-in grinder so you get the freshest results:
http://gizmodo.com/5946005/
You can have either a carafe or a mug; it has a clock so you can have it start early and things are ready by the time you get to your kitchen in your morning routine.
Not cheap, but it will probably pay for itself in a year given the cost of K-cups.
the device logs (in NVRAM), which coffee pods have been used
sure glad there are a lot of non-DRM'd coffee makers out there
that Americans have no idea what coffee is, so the whole discussion is redundant.
It brews a cup of coffee. Exactly what functionality can they offer that changes that dramatically? The only thing I can think of is the ability to load several kinds of cups and have it programmatically select one. Remotely programming it... kind of pointless if I still have to walk down to get the mug, and if I've got the machine within reach to get the mug why do I need to program it remotely when I can just punch the Brew button? The only functionality I can think of they can add only benefits Keurig, and I'm not buying a brewer just for that.
Warning, Keurig: I'm attached to coffee, not your particular brand of machine.
*tinfoil hat on* :D
Does everyone here work for Apple?
Good luck shaving tomorrow while looking your full-of-shit-selves in the eye.
Keurig makes mediocre coffee at best. It is weak due to the way they run the water through the pods.
The only thing I see going for it is that it is generally cleaner than the big carafes in the office kitchen which are NEVER cleaned properly.
The only machine I have ever thought of purchasing is the Nespresso. The coffee is quite good though the pods are expensive. The benefits are that it is easy and quick to make a strong espresso drink.
At home, I use a French press and am pretty happy with it. I also have an old-fashioned stove top espresso make that I love but don't use much any longer.
Going to a proprietary pod for Keurig won't make a difference to me as I would never buy one to begin with. But it will surely hack off a lot of office managers and other customers.
Some of us only encounter the specific case which means the specific solution is more efficient. That said, if you DRM freaking coffee and make the overall process inconvenient then I'll find another solution.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the bean the thoughts acquire speed, the shirt acquires a stain, the stain becomes a warning. It is by.....uh....urm....LICENSE.....EXPIRED.......
LICENSE.....EX...PIR....ED...................GAAAAAAH! [WHUMP]
Italy that's somewhere out in Long Island?
My 12 year old $30 Mr. Coffee maker is going strong. The coffee sludge, mildew and bacteria that live in the water reservoir add a little "je ne sais quoi" to each cup. I use it every day. I cannot function without it, even for 30 minutes.
Isn't this exactly what the ink jet printer manufacturers did so many years ago?
Italy that's somewhere out in Long Island?
Or someplace equally irrelevant.
I was given a Keurig as a gift -- even their strongest coffee is just ok and just passable imo. It's handy for when guests come over I guess (about the only time I use it), but personally I like my good old fashioned french press way more. This kind of crap will only make me use it less, and certainly never replace their machine.
Given the cost of the machine, and that single serves k-cups run about .50-1.00, they're really not a good deal, especially compared to the buying/grinding your own and using a french press.. I can get surprisingly good whole bean coffee from Trader Joe's (organic and fair trade, a plus) for like ~$9 lb. I haven't done the math, but I get a shitload more coffee that way than from those pissy little cups, AND it's much better.
You can get a mini basket filter to use in a keurig instead of a k-cup, but they're so small (and messy) that they don't make a strong enough cup for me.
I also have guilt over how fucking wasteful those stupid k-cups are, for one little cup of joe. I even save the grinds from my press for the plants, they love it.
I wouldn't even blink if Keurig went away, eff them.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
This has been done. Tassimo has barcodes on their 'pods' that tell the system how to brew that particular pod. It lets the system have greater variety, e.g. there are latte, cappuccino, cocoa pods.
It was quickly reverse engineered on the internet.
Moral: Unless this thing has a mandatory internet connection, it's not going to stop anything.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
What do I care about the blinkenlights on the machine? Give me one button that gets me an espresso - freshly ground of course - and I am happy.
I don't understand the appeal of all that capsule crap.
Printer manufacturers tried this with their ink and toner cartridges. It got shot down pretty quickly with just a couple of lawsuits. Same thing will happen here. Restraint of trade or some such. Then they tried claiming that it was copyright infringement of their code when some of the cloners also cloned the embedded code in the official cartridges. Lawsuits found that it was just a method for stifling competition, so again, it got shot down.
I don't see this going too far for Kuerig.
A stupid, over-priced coffee maker, with silly, overpriced ingredients, makes itself even more useless...
when you could have something designed by a spark.
I hope they never intend to sell this product in the EU as vertical monopolies is something the EU courts have been very dilligent about fighting (to Apple's chagrin).
More marketshare for Nespresso, I guess. Lots of companies make pods compatible with their machines.
Downside of Keurigs & Co. They don't even brew full cups unless you are happy with see-through coffee. I recently asked a female coworker if she ordered an espresso from the machine and the answer was: "No. That's the amount of normal coffee from one pod.". And our regular coffee machines going from 1-10 cups @ 125ml in europe. It is also pretty common to drink 2-3 cups before work (my parents did, I prefer tea). In the office the cups are sized @ 500ml which means you don't even need to worry that a full run gets cold.
Think is Nespresso tried to sue generic pod makers and lost, so there is already a precedent...
Chocolate is the only one worth drinking.
I have been reading /. since August of 2001 and I honestly don't care at all that /. posted a story about this 4 hours after Reddit.
I'm fine with 4 hours. I just don't care. If it was a story I cared about enough to check a few times...one that was on Reddit but not /. then after probably 4 hours to 2 days I'd submit my own story.
I like for topics to get good discussion, and if the topic is relevant to stay on the main page for awhile. Bitcoin is a recent example. I could have used a "bitcoin open thread" or something because the news changed so fast it was hard to keep up with discussions in 8-12 hour old stories and keep up with new stories as they were posted.
In general I just would rather /. not change than risk it getting worse (fuck beta)...I know that's the kind of thing old people say but I don't really care there aren't very many sites like /. left.
Thank you Dave Raggett
These Keurig machines showed up in all of our break rooms at work all of a sudden without an announcement and no coffee pods. A few employees went out and bought their own pods of coffee and some bought the little tea filters also.
Keurig must be doing a huge push-out across corporate offices to get these machines in so that they could make money on the retail side by having the employees buy the pods.
Now version 2.0 has chipped pods. Sounds like HP and Epson and inkjet printer cartridges. The same old we'll make money on the consumable business models like razor blades.
Glad that I don't drink coffee, it's an occasional tea for me and mostly just plain water.
If you can't play fair, play dirty.
If I were the guy that invented this I'd make sure the same ID wouldn't be usable for more than one coffee.
Watch that stock graph trend down in a few months when they announce the actual solution. Anything they could do that would prevent workaround (via refils, spoofing, etc.) without adding prohibitive cost to the pods and/or impacting the user experience. Seriously - punishing people who buy their unremarkable coffee makers like this - if their business model (sell machine cheap and consumable materials dear) they can go suck it. It's not like he printer market where there are few alternatives - they have just found a way to make coffee makers as annoying as printers.
I can imagine a scene from Office Space 2 where they take the coffee maker out back for some batting practice.
If you really want to go to coffee heaven, start roasting your own beans. Takes 5-10 mins and makes a world of difference. Plus green beans cost a fraction of roasted.
For the life of me, I can't begin to fathom what "game-changing functionality" would be in a f**king coffee maker.
I love my Keurig, I own two of them, one for home and one for the office. This machine was designed for me and my coffee needs and uses. However, this whole idea of locking out "unlicensed" k-cups - it's just ridiculous. Over the past few years, the cost of k-cups has increased to the point where it's on the verge of becoming too expensive an option, what Green Mountain should be doing is finding ways to make the k-cups more affordable - they should be targeting the 40 cent range.
does that mean no more refillable cup like the ekobrew?
if so then i'll stop using keurig!
i will never buy any waste single-cup-to-trash coffee
If this situation sounds familiar, it should - Nintendo kind of fought this battle with unlicensed game maker Tengen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tengen_%28company%29) over 20 years ago. Now it's made its way to . . . a coffee machine? Dang. I just got a Keurig last week - makes great coffee :)
It's spelled Expresso... Right on the side of my Dodge Neon
Nothing beats the free coffee in the breakroom.
This was already tried with the Tassimo, T Disc, system. Each T disc has a bar code on the label that controls brewing parameters. The new Keurig VUE system is the same, and will fail miserably, simply because it's not compatible with K-cups. What happened was the K-cup patents expired, so Keurig developed a new, patented, cup design. However, K-cups are now patent unencumbered, ubiquitous in the market, and very cheap to produce. With time, you'll see the price of K-cups come down drastically, in response to competition, and this action will cement K-cups as the de facto standard for single serving coffee.
It will parallel that of Microsoft's Surface RT tablets. Think of K-cups as Windows/x86 programs, with the new system being a Windows/arm platform.
I use the refillable pod. I buy coffee in bulk and have no waste.
lots of posts saying that the Keurig is not economical or it creates waste (empty pods?). Am I the only person on the planet who actually bought it to use with the refillable cartridge? No waste, I buy coffee in bulk, etc. It's fast, cheap, AND reliable!
idiota!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Both Lavazza and Illy, great italian coffee brands sell them, among other brands. They provide the convenience these other pods have, but use a standard so I can decide which type of coffee to use on my machine. Also, the espresso machines (available at all price ranges) can also use freshly grinded coffee if you have any. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easy_Serving_Espresso_Pod
My cheap, but very usable espresso machine:
http://www.amazon.com/DeLonghi-BAR32-Retro-Espresso-Cappuccino/dp/B0002A3S66/ref=tpi_image_0?ie=UTF8&pf_rd_i=297556&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=456787401&pf_rd_r=0Q7ZM8DY0XSGR76ZX3E5&pf_rd_s=center-6&pf_rd_t=101
Sure there are people that have no desire to be thrifty and will continue to buy k-cups from the supermarket until the end of time. I do not fit in that classification however. Once or twice a year I make a bulk purchase on Amazon and based on the pricing I am guessing the cups I buy are not "officially licensed". If I knew I couldn't get the cheap cups and had to buy the expensive k-cups all the time, there's zero chance I'd shell out for a keurig.
The real reason for Keruig doing this is to reduce returns and warranty issues with their brewing machines (which are a large part of their sales and 99% of their warranty issues.)
Most of the third-party vendors do not properly (if they include it at all) build the internal ground-filter in the k-cup and this results in coffee grounds clogging the intakes on the keruig brewers that use third-party cups.
Keruig is on the hook for the warranty fix for this and are tired of losing money on it (and it will give them income by licensing their k-cup design to these third-party packagers.)
So, it's not a nefarious conspiracy to extract more money out of you, it is a way to stem unsustainable losses (that also makes them more profit.)
That is what businesses do.
I just bought a quality thermos (vacuum) that keeps my coffee hot for hours. I chose a size that fits my consumption.
Brew in the morning, bring with, have hot coffee until lunch.
Easy.
I've come in to work with some gross frickin coffee makers.
Or finding the grinder lid is no where to be found on Monday morning.
If you stash your next grinder you're considered some kind of pretentious schmuck. So you get some cheap POS grinder, just to find that the coffee filter is gone the next Monday. You grab some paper filters, and find that someone tried to brew stronger coffee by using five filters at once, making an ever loving mess of the coffee pot/kitchen area
I like that it is really inconvenient for someone else to make the brewing part go nasty/break on a K cup system.
Knowing that I just grab a pod and have fresh brewed caffeine in 20 seconds is comforting.
I think we've seen this before...
And the machine will refuse to work with "refilled" cartridges or expired ones, due to the chip. Give it a few years, and there will be coffee shops that sell nothing but re-manufactured coffee pods. All with a guarantee that it's the same quality of coffee in the genuine pods and it won't clog your coffee maker. Keurig, of course, will refuse to honor the warranty on their machine if they believe you've been using refilled/remanufactured pods.
All this will do is make K-Cups even more expensive than they are now and since Green Mountain already has many coffee makers in their grasp they will have no choice but to go along with this nonsense. Really? DRM for K-Cups? How about a giant FU to Green Mountain for even thinking that this is a valid idea.
I got tired of all the hassle and started drinking instant coffee.
Much easier and not too bad.
My coffee maker (12 cups) cost me $40. A large bag of ground coffee (dunkin donuts brand) costs me $14 (160 cups). 100 count of filters is about $2.00. So, .02(filter) + .08(coffee) = $.10 per cup of coffee. The filters are biodegradable as are the grounds as is the remaining undrunk coffee (rare). The keurig route would cost me far far far far more since it's about $7.99 for a 12 count of pods...... yeah losing money.
Has Keurig also gone to an embedded windows OS? Maybe it will have a touch screen with colored blocks.
Can't imagine what functionality they will include, besides making coffee at high cost.
I'm just waiting for Apple to sue all of them for daring to use their word 'Pod'.
Exactly - to something else.
Switch to tea and be civilised. Anyone for a bunch of DRM coffee going into the harbor?
This strategy works so well for ink cartridges and lightning cables. The counterfeit pods will be available before the brewer is.
I think at this point people are so fed up with proprietary items that they will just forgo Keurig. For them to take this action seems petty and will cost them in the long run. After all, I think I read somewhere that the single serve pods end up costing around $50+/pound of coffee. Not such a good deal. Just to add, this "new" Slashdot website really is cumbersome.
I bought a Keurig brewer about five years ago, for $150.00. I also bought a Gaggia Platinum espresso coffee maker, from Aabree Coffee, about the same time, for about $1,300. Guess which one has stood the test of time? The Gaggia Platinum grinds the beans, makes the coffee or espresso and heats the milk, either on their milk island or through a steam tube, and I use Dunkin' Donuts beans. The payback was less than two years and I use the Gaggia nearly every morning and six-eight times on the weekends or holidays.
GMCR needs to also look at the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act and "Lexmark Int'l v. Static Control Components," USCA Sixth Circuit which (2004 and 2013) ruled that circumvention of the technique of interactive readability does not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Steven Moshlak
http://www.computerlegalexperts.com
Cotton underpants can be used as coffee filters, and they're washable. If you use the underpants after you've worn them you're better off using the sides as the underpants will eventually develop large brown stains in the seat area. If you already have large brown stains in the seat area, you may want to avoid using that area anyway, as it will affect the taste of the coffee.
Not only will you save on coffee filters, you will also save on laundry soap and realize that you're displaying your concern for the environment by proudly hanging your coffee stained underpants on your clothesline for the neighbors to envy.
Hope that helps!
If your only tool is a hammer, you'll approach every problem as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
I was never that interested in one of these to begin with, but now they want to restrict pods to just the ones they make and sell..... Nope, even if I was inclined, DRM implementation immediately has me rejecting it. Wasn't cost effective to start and that makes it worse, for mediocre coffee. There are all kinds of alternatives for a single cup or small quantity. My Cuisinart and Caphalon coffee makers both have a setting for 1-4 cups. But I also bring my own brewed coffee from home in a self contained coffee mug that keeps it hot for hours.
This is a dumb idea that in the long run should bite them back hard.
Anyone who says they love coffee and drinks pod coffee has mothballs for brains...
anyway isn't this anti competitive?
I have one of those. It's great.
The picture on the box it came in shows a half dozen of those coffee thimbles the Italians use. It just about fills up my pre-breakfast mug.
It is kind of hard to hold the mug steady pouring the mid-breakfast brew.
The first post-breakfast brew is hazardous.
--
Real programmers can PERFORM COBOL and DO FORTRAN.
How about we just skip to the end of the chain?
Unless you created a pocket universe, started a creation event, formed stars from the resulting big bang cloud, fused a solar system worth of hydrogen into heavier matter, collected the matter into a planet in the perfect orbit, formed a primordial soup, created life from the soup, evolved the life to create coffee bean producers, harvested the beans, processed and roasted the beans, ground them, and finally pressed them yourself, then it's not proper coffee.
I'll just train the butterflies, and let their wings do the work for me.
Err, is that "obligatory XKCD"?
http://xkcd.com/378/
If they actually got sued I expect them either to lose or to be forced to license the patents for cheap. Those are patents on interfaces for crying out loud.
Nespresso is probably the biggest in the EU yeah. You know how Nestle is.
It could give you a bad attitude, just like a human barista.
(Disclaimer: I'm not American, and I've never heard the word "Keurig" before today.)
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
No X in Italy?
And how do you know when a flick is pr0n?
-- 29A the number of the Beast
As a long time fan of the original Keurig machine and pods I guess it
may be time to change brands. I'm not going to be locked into
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters pods only. When this came to market years ago a box of 24 pods was like 8.99 now boxes of 18 are going for 12.99.
This is the equivalent of everything I hate about apple.
mmorrissey
This is going to make me buy an Aerobie AeroPress plus 350 filters for under US$30 online instead.
Let's get Richard Stallman to fork the Keurig and release a coffee maker under the GPL!!!
These precedents would seem to say this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
more here on similars
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/inde...
Yes, this does make me want to switch--back to my French press.
You dont find the starbucks...you find the waffle house. They already have a contingency plan and backup generators so they will have hot coffee ready to go. They are the only resturant I know that reports its operational status to FEMA.
This isn't a preference thing. Before my Keurig, I wouldn't have anything in the morning and I would be a zombie before late afternoon. My Keurig has saved the day. So, fuck you.
I have a Krupps automatic espresso machine which allows everything from normal coffee to espresso . It only takes a minute to grind the beans and make the coffee. It is fantastic.
I also have a Keurig. Awful. No matter what "pod" you use they are all awful and awfully expensive. I honestly cannot fathom how this created such a sensation.