Will Planned Obsolescence Kill Silicon Valley? [video]

by sappapp • 11 years ago

25 63 11 years ago

TodPunk• 11 years ago

Planned obsolescence through sabotaging a product (or at least its quality) is a universally bad thing in my opinion. Planned transition to an upgrade is not. Terms are probably going to muddy the conversation around the importance of these topics, I think. Maybe we shouldn't borrow the term of planned obsolescence at all.

cbhl3• 11 years ago

Planned obsolescence can be looked at another way: using less expensive components because you know you don't need them to last longer than (say) 5 years, which results in cheaper, faster, smaller products.

vezzy-fnord• 11 years ago

Cheaper is evident, but I don't know why "faster" and "smaller" are being taken for granted here.

Silhouette6• 11 years ago

This is begging the question. How do you know your customer won't need those components to last longer than your arbitrary timeline?

swozey• 11 years ago

Can't we deter planned obsolescence by having stronger consumer protection laws? The USA is so far behind in consumer protection it's crazy. If a company had to warranty up to 5 years maybe they'd be more concerned with keeping the product as good as it can get.

Adams4722• 11 years ago

Is Apple a monopoly? In a normal market, competition and market forces should take care of this.

analog314• 11 years ago

In my view, the idea of market forces taking care of things depends on assumptions about public access to information, that probably can't be met. It may be prohibitively hard for consumers to get information on a reasonable expected life span of something like a refrigerator.

bediger4000• 11 years ago

Do "normal" markets even exist in the USA? Between the Defense Industrial Base (http://www.dhs.gov/defense-industrial-base-sector), the Department of Defense itself, lobbyists writing laws, industrial espionage by various governmental entities, it seems like all large markets are totally poisoned - there's forces at work that aren't acknowledged, and may be kept secret, that prop up oligopolies.

tetraodonpuffer2• 11 years ago

if the "normal market" is geared towards giving you a "free" cellphone every two years, the market forces aren't going to help much

ianferrel• 11 years ago

The problem with that is that there are lots of things that don't need to last 5 years because the upgrade cycle is faster than that, and if you have to design them to last that long, they cost more, with little added benefit to the average user.

It's like, the last time I bought a DVD player, it cost $26. They tried to sell me an extended warranty on it, and I laughed, because I didn't expect to actually need a DVD player longer than a year or two. I was right. It lasted a bit over a year, and then I got a bluray player. That's all I needed or wanted for my $26, and I'm glad that there was a cheap little DVD player that could provide it.

DanAndersen• 11 years ago

Then the question is -- why is the upgrade cycle faster than that? I suspect that we upgrade less because the new feature is something we really need, but because we have a desire to chase after the new for its own sake.

tetraodonpuffer2• 11 years ago

Consumer protection laws might help towards things like glued-in batteries, which would already be a big win (but then again you have reviews that praised Samsung for getting rid of theirs as if that was a net positive), but they aren't going to help the software side of things.

If the manufacturer comes out with version +1 and +2 of their OS that still do run on your device, but coincidentally run only badly enough to make it really annoying to use, how can you protect against that? Even if you mandate that any future version of the OS released during the warranty of your device must run on it, you can't mandate that it runs as well as the original.

When new releases come out the manufacturer will just say that "due to all these new features we can't keep the same level of performance on the older devices" and the software ecosystem being incentivized towards moving to these +1 and +2 versions makes holding onto them even more difficult.

rm_-rf_slash• 11 years ago

I imagine in the future manufacturing and supply chain tech - augmented by 3D printers - will put hardware products into a recycled lifecycle, wherein you would trade in your old iPhone 27 to be stripped of its component materials in order to get a discount on your 27S.

sliken• 11 years ago

Expensive phones with epoxied batteries drIves me nuts.

thetrb• 11 years ago

Easy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

jxramos3• 11 years ago

Good one! Makes me think about those crazy reality shows where they're on the hunt for some sea beast/monster crazy thing. The scale of the lore of the objects they hunt would be so huge that you wouldn't be hearing about such breaking news first by watching the next 30 minutes of characters bumbling around in dark forests and deep seas, etc.

kenrikm• 11 years ago

Apple has actually been doing really well on the software side of this iOS9 will support the iPhone 4S (released in 2011) through to the upcoming 6s. That's 5 generations of devices that will be on the latest version of the OS. To put it into perspective, how many other cell phones out there are able to run the latest version of the OS 5 years after their release date?

hn9780470248775• 11 years ago

How many other ~$1000 devices are obsolete after four years?

DannoHung2• 11 years ago

Well, a lot of computers cost about $1000 and the depreciation schedule for computers is 5 years. Since iOS 10 won't come out until 2016 at the earliest...

All computers?

qq66• 11 years ago

Electronic devices don't get "obsolete" as much as they get better so fast that the old device seems lame in comparison. A four-year-old PC is as fast as when it was new, but modern PCs are 10 times as powerful for the same price, so the old PC seems obsolete. My 9-year-old Canon 5D camera takes incredibly good photos, but the modern cameras are so insane (shoot a full movie in moonlight) that the 5D seems like an amateur in comparison.

An iPhone 4S is a great phone compared to everything except newer phones.

tbomb• 11 years ago

This is something that played a big role in me going from Android to iPhone. I was big into Android since the HTC G1, and just liked the feel of it over iOS. But if I wanted the latest release of android (without flashing the device, and usually compromising some feature) I had to buy a new phone, extend my contract, etc. I really like how Apple supports their past phones with updates for years after their release.

Silhouette6• 11 years ago

That's 5 generations of devices that will be on the latest version of the OS.

You might in theory be able to run it on an iPad of the same generation as well, but ask a few people who upgraded their iPad to iOS7 or above how well it worked afterwards and you'll hear plenty of complaints, particularly about performance being much worse on the older hardware.

ffk• 11 years ago

This becomes more troublesome when modification of the device is made illegal. Forced obsolescence with legal lockout when attempting to "repair" the device.

Perhaps we should call obsolescence over time as the market changes as natural obsolescence?

asift• 11 years ago

This becomes more troublesome when modification of the device is made illegal

Is this just a theoretical consideration or is there good reason to believe legislation is moving in this direction?

jdmichal• 11 years ago

It already has. This is why DMCA exemptions [1] exist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...

analog314• 11 years ago

However, unlike the decisions that eventually led to Detroit’s downfall, planned obsolescence is a good thing for both consumers and hardware vendors alike.

As I understand it, the original academic paper introducing the concept of planned obsolescence, described it as an economic boon -- essentially a form of stimulus. At the time, the intent was not to sabotage the lifetime of products, but to keep introducing desirable new features.

Now, anecdotally, I think that I've witnessed planned obsolescence of a sort, in some kinds of products. I remember the home appliances in my house when I was a kid, being much more reliable than those sold today. I've had to repair literally every appliance in my house over the past decade, in some cases two or even three times. We're already on our second fridge. The cause may simply be due to relentlessly driving the cost out of those products while keeping an eye on the one-year warranty.

brunoqc• 11 years ago

How can you tell that it was planned obsolescence and not just lowering the quality to lower prices?

analog314• 11 years ago

Don't know. I agree that your hypothesis is probably the best one. But lowering quality is a conscious decision.

webreac• 11 years ago

maybe, but I think that reducing the lifespan by 50% does not produce a reduction of 50% of the price for the seller, but often mean a reduction of 50% of the value of the product for the buyer. It is very bad also for ecology.

DannoHung2• 11 years ago

Are you 100% sure that the appliances were more reliable?

a8da6b0c91d• 11 years ago

I am absolutely certain that both my grandparents' homes had fully working 40 year old refrigerators and washing machines.

jobu• 11 years ago

Exactly. Lots of people seem to remember how reliable old appliances were, but it's notable that there are a lot fewer appliance repair shops than there used to be.

Is that a result of appliances becoming more reliable, or just cheaper to replace (disposable)?

jedrek• 11 years ago

Are you sure those appliances weren't repaired? I keep on hearing about planned obsolescence, but between my fridge, oven and washer, I've had one repair in a total of 36 functional years between the three items. I knew the people who lived here before me, and I know they repaired the items I replaced half a dozen times each.

rasz_pl3• 11 years ago

They might of been repaired. Point is things nowadays are designed specifically to be NON REPAIRABLE.

Apple is the perfect example, from using glue everywhere (have fun replacing screens/batteries/keyboards #1) to actively sabotaging servicing by booby-trapping products (screw holes over critical pcb section + carefully selected screw lenght to destroy said pcd section). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9833205

#1 replacing non splash/liquid proof apple keyboard means ripping out about 70 alu rivets! And we all know nobody ever spilled any liquid on a keyboard, right? Its not like it was designed to make you go out and pay $750 directly to Apple for replacement. Its not like its a solved problem and you could go out and but IBM/Lenovo T410 lapto .. oh wait.

kiba• 11 years ago

Human memories are not exactly the most reliable form of evidence. Even then, it's foolish to rely on the sample size of 1.

Show me a spreadsheet or a something.

rasz_pl3• 11 years ago

We're already on our second fridge

Fridges used to be made out of metal (plumbing, freezer etc). Now they are made out of plastic that cracks after ~2 years, perfect time for warranty to run out and force you to buy new one.

Solid washing machines used good quality stainless metal for the Drum Support/Spider. Nowadays they use specially designed alloy that DISSOLVES in washing powder:

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=corroded+spider+was...

Drum spider corrodes and falls apart, incidentally it is often the ONLY internal part not covered with anti corrosion paint :).

Car manufacturers also jumped on this bandwagon. VW group 2.0 TDI BLB Engine is made to fail at ~200K no matter what you do, from oil pump to head micro fractures. crankshaft sprocket after 200K http://lh6.ggpht.com/_m_33vQTtsxM/SyuSlFIeSXI/AAAAAAAAG9o/rt... http://lh3.ggpht.com/_m_33vQTtsxM/SyuSn5YALLI/AAAAAAAAG9s/ul... http://lh3.ggpht.com/_m_33vQTtsxM/SyuSp1yUs4I/AAAAAAAAG9w/mO...

VW answer: this part is non serviceable, whole crankshaft needs to be replaced :D Why is it made out of putty while smaller sprocket (the one taking more force) is still 'working'? Why is it designed not to be replaceable? Good 'old timer/not by the book' mechanic is still able to replace it (heat whole crankshaft, use big hammer).

varelse• 11 years ago

Isn't it great that we can outsource our toxic e-waste?

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/dec/14/to...

But besides the 800 lb gorilla in the room, what worries me more than planned obsolescence is an entire ecosystem primarily composed of glorified MVPs rather than refined products. And that is doing more to disenchant me with technology and applications than any other force, one crash to the desktop at a time.

spiralpolitik• 11 years ago

Planned Obsolescence is common lots of other industries. Your washing machine for example is now only designed to last 5 years before replacement is needed. While repair is possible, a lot of non-computing products are now designed to be taken away and recycled and replaced with new because its easier and cheaper to do so.

jxramos3• 11 years ago

I do a lot of amateur repair of various things around the house, washing machines, TV, etc. I remember being really struck by the commentary of this repair book I read:How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic by Michael Geier. He has some insight into this arena in terms of labor costs, and growing complexity of components...

"When I was a kid, there were radio and TV servicers in many neighborhoods. If something broke, you dropped it off at your local electronics repair shop, which was as much a part of ordinary life as the corner automotive service garage. These days, those shops have all but disappeared as rising labor costs and device complexity have driven consumer electronics into the age of the disposable machine. When it stops working, you toss it out and get a new one."

He makes some other points too from a deep technician perspective citing how companies began to view and deal with complexity and liability of having their products be user servicable...

"..."No user-serviceable parts inside. Refer service to qualified personnel," replaced the [repair/service] diagrams. Is it any wonder they call today's gadgetry "consumer electronics"? Service manuals were cheap and plentiful, and shops kept huge rows of filing cabinets bursting with them. In addition to manuals generated by the products' makers, the Howard W Sams company produced its own comprehensive line of Photofact schematics for just about everything out there. If you couldn't get a schematic from Zenith, you could get a Sams easily enough for a buck or two. As products got still more complex, manuals grew from a few pages to a few hundred, with large, fold-out schematics and very detailed, color pictorials. Producing these big books became quite expensive, so their prices skyrocketed. Shops continue to buy them--they had little choice--but no consumer would spend more for a manual than the product cost in the first place! Companies gradually reduced and finally abandoned the infrastructure for selling manuals to the public, and today's age of "use it, wear it out and toss it" was in full swing. Many manufacturers will no longer sell schematics or service manuals to consumers, thanks in part to fear of potential lawsuits by injured tinkerers. Some companies won't even sell manuals to service shops unless they're factory-authorized warranty service providers. And, believe it or not, some even refuse to provide diagrams to those facilities! Secretive computer makers, in particular, only let authorized servicers swap boards; the techs work on their machines for years without ever seeing a schematic of one."

jxramos3• 11 years ago

His books is solidly amazing, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0071744223/ref=rdr_ext_tmb, definitely valuable reading if you're into that sort of thing. Another thing to keep in mind with what may be confused as planned obsolescence can be tied to the well done story about the One Horse Shay..https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Deacon%27s_Masterpiece

Give it a read, you'll come to realize that for any failure something has to break, some component, otherwise for a failure to occur every single component has to go at once simultaneously. I realized this concretely when I had repaired our garage door opener. I could see the designer using substandard material on the teeth of this horizontal slider cog that allowed it to fail first, and it happened to be an easy part to replace, rather than say having the corkscrew fail, which would be much more complicated to replace. I remember reading about the part in amazon reviews where people criticized it, but I felt it was a good choice and had a reasonable lifetime to it. If something has to break, let it be the more serviceable part!

Fando• 11 years ago

Planed obsolescence and similar repulsive concepts are products of shallow minds and unchecked human flaws. I hate it.

rasz_pl3• 11 years ago

You can at least try to fight it

http://www.digitalrighttorepair.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcuAF3OJIoU

Will Planned Obsolescence Kill Silicon Valley? [video]

Related Stories