This reminds me of soda/beer can designs. You know the hole in the ring tab? I used to believe it was there only for it to provide better grip for your finger when opening it. Turned out it was also there so you can fit a straw and have a way of stabilizing it.
Most people had no idea about that.
I’m not sure that’s their intended design. Old pull-tab cans actually had a ring for you to pull them off (similar to “easy open” soup cans of today)
I’d imagine that as the tab shrunk and changed from pull to a lever action, the “ring” was left as a vestigial design (as a form of skeuomorphism)
Yeah I remember those. Where I grew up that style of ring pull was the dominant style.
One reason why that style was retired in many places was to reduce waste. When you had a ring pull tab that peeled off, most people threw that away separately. I remember seeing those tabs being thrown all over the place.
Also, the one with the hole requires less material for the same lever width.
You’ve mistaken the manufacturers aluminum cost cutting measure for a feature.
First, you come up with a way to save on materials, then you come up with a way to represent the changes as a feature