“The fact that Instant Pot is already being framed as a corporate cautionary tale—the company that went bankrupt bc they made a product so durable & versatile that its customers had little need to buy another one—instead of as a critique of capitalism is deeply, deeply depressing.”
The story with Pyrex is more nuanced than people think.
Yes, the type of glass was switched, but for safety reasons. The classic (all-caps, I believe) PYREX was able to handle the thermal shock of going straight from the freezer to the oven. When it did break, though, it broke into sharp splinters. Modern Pyrex needs to warm up some before being put into the oven, but when it breaks it does so in square chunks.
Like all glassware, scratches and chips seriously degrade the strength of the glass, even if those scratches aren’t visible. Failure can happen unexpectedly because of slight impacts to invisible microfractures. Don’t scrape your glass with metal utensils and be careful with secondhand Pyrex, because you don’t know if it’s been dropped before.
Ah, so it’s like when they introduced safety glass so that kids (mainly) don’t cut themselves on giant shards if they run into it and it smashes while they’re playing?
I’ll follow that advice. Thanks for explaining.