Why Some Designs Are Impossible to Improve: Quintessence

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Touch screen on a smartphone makes sense. Because you look right at it 95% of the time when using it. Touch screens in a car, do not make sense. Because you're not supposed to be looking at it.

My parents received a Sunbeam toaster as a wedding gift in 1961. It died in 2015. We were all heartbroken. The new toaster takes too long and don't toast as well.

One of the things that applied to Fordlandia was that Ford took the Midwest house idea so seriously that he even made them all face South, as they do in America, and failed to consider that the reason you do that is to make sure the porch gives plenty of shade in the *Northern Hemisphere*, but Brazilian homes typically face to the North. His cultural jingoism went so far he wouldn't even consider the consequences of a round Earth.

The "classic" toaster mechanism also allows for simple lifetime limitation: a thin steel spring that WILL break at some point. I kept noticing the toasters thrown away, so I picked one up, took it apart - and all it was the broken steel "pin" spring. Fixed in 5 minutes.

Maybe the 5th element is the friends we made along the way

The reason for Mag-Lites success was that it was a weapon in disguise. While nightsticks could be banned in some areas for being a weapon, a flashlight would not. As noted, even when police where forbidden to use nightsticks they loved carrying a big ass Mag-Lite.

10:04 The Wii remote didn't quite replace regular controllers, but it did actually innovate in a way that's affected (nearly) every modern controller. The motion controls that started out as a gimmick ended up turning into gyro controls that were built into every future nintendo console. They allowed you to have just as much precision as a mouse and keyboard with the form factor of a controller, and the same gyro aiming was even added to Playstation controllers by the PS4. These days it's a standard feature, xbox controllers are the only ones that haven't adopted it yet.

Favorite quote about the model T and its focus on simplicity was about paint color “Any color the customer wants, as long as it’s black.” Henry Ford

Don't forget the classic wooden Pencil with eraser, and the Boston Pencil Sharpener.
The helical blade sharpener is the quintessential mechanical sharpener design thats been used in every wall sharpener in schools and offices for the past 100 years.

Please don't stop making these videos man, this stuff is so interesting and applicable, and almost fundamentally something most people aren't meant to think about as much as they should

29:40 that aged like milk...

(it turned out the rabbit r1 is just a crappy overpriced android device - without the touchscreen - with an app on it)

I think the best improvement to a paperclip that we could make would be modifying the cutting portion to slightly round the edges of the cut ends that scrape along the paper.
As-is, paperclips kinda tear into the paper if they're holding a few too many pages, and you go to pull the clip off by sliding it (the normal way).

If the edges of the cut wire ends of the clip were just a little less sharp at the paper-contacting area, it would drastically improve performance.

The flashlight gained popularity in Germany among taxi drivers, because it was so easily abused as a weapon for self defence. A club or baseball bat was considered a weapon - a massive flashlight on the other hand was just used to help finding houses at night. I know quite a few people that aren't taxi drivers, that had one of those in their car as well. As you say, it's just a confidence booster to know you could defend yourself if there is something happening.
Skype during its early days wasn't just a (video-)chat software. It was used in companies to check in on employes too, due to the online status changing by default, if the user was AFK for too long.

Microsoft had made the perfect paper clip, and they just killed it.

I really miss my old flip phone; you couldn't kill the blasted thing. I lost it in the snow for hours and when I found it, it just worked.

Shaving is funny example. The safety razor was perfect, and blades only cost a few cents each. The problem is it didn't make people rich, so we invented the Schik Quattro 5 blade + moisturizing blah blah and sell them at $5 a pop

The QWERTY layout key-jamming story is actually an urban legend created by Dvorak manufacturers to convince people that Dvorak should be objectively better. In reality, QWERTY is the result of incremental design improvements, which started with an alphabetical layout, and gradually moved various keys to locations that made more sense, like moving rarely used keys like Q, Z, and X to the corners. You can actually notice much of the alphabetical order remains, as, with the notable exception of B, the letters A through P are all very close, if not adjacent, to the letters that follow or precede them.

Interesting how you said people in developing countries only have smart phones for internet. This is very true. In talking with Joseph Jacobson, co-inventor of E-ink, he told me the biggest benefit of e-ink, and what he’s most proud of, in not the creation of the kindle /e-books but rather the creation of super cheap, mass produced smart phones that have a crazy long battery life using his technology. He said this has helped level the playing field in developing nations because they can get the same information that those in power do, ie, grain prices, news, etc. so it helps those at the bottom to rise up because as they say, “knowledge is power.” anyhow, I thought I would share. This is a fantastic video. Liked and subscribed!

16:11 Ford over here pioneering the saying "Fine...I'll do it myself"