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.
One of the arguments that they made is that since they didn't have a coffee maker at a low enough price point last xmastime, they lost out on not only the sales but also the people who would have bought coffee because of those sales. They had issues bringing the MINI (the lower price point coffee maker) to market because of some manufacturing issues so they really lost out in the holiday season. So that's a good idea (and the DRM stupid thing is expensive relative to the older model) but apparently wouldn't work.
The waste doesn't HAVE to be the issue since with reusable cups it's actually a decent option because it only heats a small amount of water, doesn't have a heating pad, has auto shutoff, etc. However, the insistence that people use the (worse for the environment) cups because it's more profitable is the real waste thing. You could make a coffee maker one-hitter that made better-than-average coffee, but the sorts of people who go in for Keurig convenience are not the people who care (so much) about these things.
It would never work anyway. You can't print without a printer and ink, you can't shave without razor blades, but you certainly can make coffee without Keurig.
The waste doesn't HAVE to be the issue since with reusable cups it's actually a decent option because it only heats a small amount of water, doesn't have a heating pad, has auto shutoff, etc. However, the insistence that people use the (worse for the environment) cups because it's more profitable is the real waste thing. You could make a coffee maker one-hitter that made better-than-average coffee, but the sorts of people who go in for Keurig convenience are not the people who care (so much) about these things.
[nb: I wrote this https://medium.com/message/keurig-didn-t-learn-a-damned-thin... My take is a little different from TCs]