Hi. In today’s episode, we look at Planned Obsolescence, the resulting mountains of e-waste, and why companies don’t want you to be able to fix their crummy products.
If you expect Cody to be nice to Apple, you will be very disappointed.
Hi. In today’s episode, we look at Planned Obsolescence, the resulting mountains of e-waste, and why companies don’t want you to be able to fix their crummy products.
If you expect Cody to be nice to Apple, you will be very disappointed.
This is a very jaded and warped take with some bias.
Fight me (ง’̀-‘́)ง
Everyone is biased. I’d like to think my 12 years working all over in various parts of the tech sector has made me more well rounded in understanding how things can be addressed differently rather than having a massive one size fits all.
No need for fighting friend. Just conversation.
You mentioned LG and HTC. There’s a reason HTC doesn’t exist anymore and why LG has cut back significantly on manufacturing. Neither brand is known for quality products in this segment. They fell from grace pretty quickly. None of the major US cell providers offer LG devices for sale. The Samsung S3 and S4 are decade old phones and the battery issue mentioned was when the technology was changing. Fast and adaptive charging was taking off. There are always hiccups for any emerging tech. These points you made here don’t really sway the argument. You’re simply mentioning bad products or bad product design. Which is something Apple is just as guilty of looking back.
Chromebooks were designed as cheap planned obsolescence to fit a specific market segment. That’s why they initially received short support lifespans. The average consumer owns a laptop for just four years before upgrading. Can’t complain when the product is made with cheap parts to make the price cheap. They know it’s gonna be replaced. After several years of push back, Google upped it to 10 years. Unsurprisingly expensive Chromebooks hit the market. There are models out there with $2000-$3000 price tags.
A business that does what it does to make money. They do what they can to make the most money in the long term. Take a look at any second hand market service and notice the abundance of Apple products. People upgrade often so it doesn’t matter how long the device lasts. Society’s desire for new and better is the real problem here. It’s our fault we have such a high ewaste problem. We facilitated these companies to get away with it. No matter who you point the finger at, they’re all the same. They’re all bad and produce a lot of ewaste. Contributing to the pile in different and/or similar ways.
Which brings home the point. If Apple really goes through this much effort of supporting their devices for 8 to 10 years with software updates, why release a new one every year? Why not make them easily repairable? They don’t want you to so we buy new ones because we’ve allowed them to build their business on this cycle.
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