Dumb bitch in the notes arguing planned obsolescence is necessary to keep costs down,
I thought planned obsolescence was to prevent your phone from just suddenly turning off and never working again? Like it’s meant to be an “oh, my thing isn’t working, I should invest in a new one soon.” Kind of thing?? Like shits gonna break either way, I just thought this let us know like a month earlier than it would otherwise.
I mean… that’s kind of what they want you to think?
Sure, throttling your phone’s cpu so that the battery doesn’t wear down faster is certainly… a thing that’ll extend battery life… but, uh………… Hey, why don’t we just allow customers to replace their old batteries, you know, just like batteries were originally designed to do?
This extends far beyond phones/computers/etc as well. I recall, there’s light bulbs that exist from around the time of their invention that can still burn to this day. But companies only manufacture light bulbs that degrade and burn out over a few years, so that they can keep selling more light bulbs and turn a profit.
There’s a lot of examples of this, really. But, no, the main purpose of this is simply to make people continually have to replace their old “““broken”““ products for new ones, when the only reason they break to begin with is because they purposefully build in deficiencies that cause the product to degrade over time. It’s capitalism, baby
idk about that claim about light bulbs because of the way incandescence literally burns the resistive element
BUT
planned obsolescence goes way beyond electronics getting old fast.
Every single mechanical, electromechanical, and electronic device on the consumer market is:
explicitly designed with the goal of failing after a predetermined amount of time
explicitly designed to require non-standard proprietary parts and to be excessively difficult to repair
power tools brands owned by the same company vary wildly in quality and reliability. the absolute longest a consumer kitchen appliance will run without breaking down, no matter how many thousands you spend on it, is 3 years.
and the kicker is that it’s clearly intentional, because commercial and industrial products are designed sturdily and sensibly: to last a long time and to be accessible, modular, and easily reparable
bc this is something i am furious about on a regular basis-
Some people argue it’s needed to drive innovation, because otherwise people will never replace products with newer models, but it does the opposite.
If your toaster breaks every five years, all the company needs to do is make a toaster and you’ll buy it again.
On the other hand, if your toaster is a pre-planned obsolescence toaster you couldn’t kill if you tried, you don’t need to replace it. You won’t buy the same product, or a worse product. A company has to be able to sell you a better product. That drives innovation.
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