https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensive-6add74594e50
So this is kinda illustrative of what I've been talking about with the "ives-isation" of design. Sure, the Juicero is an inherently preposterous device, but the exterior design of the thing makes it even more preposterous. It's a plastic monobody meant to make you forget the thing has moving parts or a metal interior; it makes the mechanical difficulty of what it does obscure and opaque, so it looks stupider.
But consider this: You can go on Amazon right now and look up stand mixers or centrifugal juicers or any kind of kitchen appliance, and you will find machines that cost just as much, or more than, a Juicero. There is no wave of think pieces making fun of $400 Kitchenaid stand mixers, because, whether or not you would buy one, it's kind of understood that it costs that much because it's extremely well-made and will last a long time; or at least, there's an implied claim of that.
We value consumer electronics based on how much they can do, not how well they do one thing, because we don't expect them to be in our lives for very long. We expect them to fail once and permanently, and probably two weeks after the warranty expires. This is why the Pono Player was stupid: It cost a bunch of money and did one thing. The Juicero could have appeared MUCH less stupid if it didn't use its design to frame itself as consumer electronics, instead of as a kitchen appliance.
The Ives design aesthetic becomes starkly awful when it moves outside the consumer electronics space and into other domains, where it is hopelessly out of place. The Juicero bad design because it is deceptive: It's a heavy-duty metal machine that performs hard mechanical labor, pointlessly disguised as a plastic monolith whose #1 job is talking to the internet.
Imitating Apple in consumer electronics is merely boring; doing it on a kitchen appliance is gloriously stupid.
On the inside, the Juicero is a ridiculous, overengineered monster that seems built by engineers that don't know the words "cost reduction." It's the Jurassic Park of juicers: no expense was spared.
On the outside, it's designed to look like a piece of Applesque consumer electronics, not like a kitchen appliance. So we don't apply kitchen appliance valuations to it, we apply consumer electronics valuations to it. IE: Why the fuck does this thing cost $400?