Twitter and Keurig are finally seeing the impact of their decisions. How many more companies have to learn the hard way that strictly controlling how your users want to use your product is poor business practice?

I think people also probably just realized how much of assholes they're being by using single-use containers for making coffee every day. The one-use concept is nice in theory, but it creates so much trash. It's obnoxious.

When they say "we were wrong", I take it to mean they were wrong to think their actions were profitable, nothing more.

> We underestimated the passion the consumer had for this

The passion of their customers to not put up with bullshit?

Yeah, they definitely underestimated that.

What's interesting is that they are not planning to scrap the system. Instead they are planning to sell a refillable pod that is compatible with it [1]. In the end, they still want the DRM, it's just that the damage done is too big and they have to say big words to try and undo it.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/06/investing/keurig-green-mount...

I'm a 2-3x a year coffee drinker. Are these machines radically more convenient than the alternatives?

My folks manage to get by with one of those machines where you put the grounds in a basket, fill the water reservoir, put your mug under the spout and push the button. The machine is cheap, it looks like it's about the same amount of work to use as the Keurig machine and you get biodegradable paper + grounds afterwards instead of a plastic cup. And you can put in however much of whatever kind of coffee you want.

In 2014, enough K-Cups were sold that if placed end-to-end, they would circle the globe 10.5 times. Almost all of them ended up in landfills. They are not recyclable.

www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/the-abominable-k-cup-coffee-pod-environment-problem/386501/

I understand that their business model is probably based on the whole "give away the razor, sell the blades" thing, but what they probably should do is just make the coffee maker a little more expensive.

"We underestimated the passion", hah. Not giving money to greedy assholes: one of my passions indeed.