I agree that this is a good read - and the unusual and rather qwerky line is easily, and usefully, remembered even in the middle of the most animated discussion!
However to get back to the question that was asked, I all too often find that my own 'cheese' hasn't so much moved as simply disappeared. As all too often the quality and design seem to be sacrificed in order to minimize cost or production times and increasingly I find that more and more effort is needed to get the product that I like as this trend affects everything and is, it would seem, inevitable.
Fortunately apart from a number of specialist products I find that is possible to find items of a similar type or quality to those I'm used to if I change suppliers. I don't like it, but this is by and large something I've learnt to accept (that is of course the general thrust of the book). Unfortunately the old HP calculators were one product that has to all intents an purposes vanished...
However, to get back to the book, I rather suspect that if you find yourself agreing then, depending on you fashion sense, you may like me have three or even of four pairs of similar, even identical, pairs of trousers (pants for those American readers among you) and a collection of identical or similar shirts to go with them in you wardrobe. (I used to wear a similar tie most days too, but my wife has taken advantage of a more liberal dress code at work to banish them to some dark corner, and to my surprise my head hasn't fallen off yet...)
When calculators were rare and accuracy and reliability were more important than cost then HP could succeed by producing a limited number of expensive machines. Those of us fortunate enough to be able to afford the early HP calculators valued their quality and became used to their look and feel - it may have quickly become intuitive, but I expect we all had to learn RPN!
These days accuracy is taken for granted (actually a little too much for granted, but that is a different discussion). Calculators and computers have become commodity items where cost is more important than 'quality'. Though of course there have been amazing improvements in some areas like performance and capacity we seem take these for granted.
Modern calculators and computers may no longer be special but as far as I'm concerned it is more important that they have become so widespread and easily accessible.
We can see the same history in the development of just about every thing around us, the difference is that with anything to do with computers the rate of development is so much faster than anything else.
Mike T.
Now where did I leave my cheese...