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New UK plan "could spell end of throwaway culture" (BBC News)
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unknownparticle:

--- Quote from: MK14 on March 13, 2020, 01:32:46 pm ---

People do seem to buy/get flashy/excessive cars, due to some psychological effect. Paying excessive amounts of money.



--- End quote ---

The car thing is easy to explain. Main reason is PCH plans. People can buy (borrow actually) cars that with conventional purchasing methods they could not afford.  So, to anethiatise themselves against their otherwise pointless, trivial lives, they fall for all the 'lifestyle' guff from car manufacturers and buy a Merc, or Audi, or BMW etc and wallow in all the false status. Like that even matters, especially when they park the shiny expensive toy outside some grotty terrace in nowheresville.  Then the main thing they use it for is sitting in traffic jams commuting to their souless jobs in a call center, or some other brain dead, no skill job.  Same applies to all the other pointless trinkets they are brainwashed into thinking life cannot be complete without, like the latest Apple whatever BS product, or Dyson £400 hairdryer, etc, etc.

Rant over, now where is that latest Fluke catalogue :o
MK14:

--- Quote from: unknownparticle on March 14, 2020, 04:02:38 pm ---
--- Quote from: MK14 on March 13, 2020, 01:32:46 pm ---

People do seem to buy/get flashy/excessive cars, due to some psychological effect. Paying excessive amounts of money.



--- End quote ---

The car thing is easy to explain. Main reason is PCH plans. People can buy (borrow actually) cars that with conventional purchasing methods they could not afford.  So, to anethiatise themselves against their otherwise pointless, trivial lives, they fall for all the 'lifestyle' guff from car manufacturers and buy a Merc, or Audi, or BMW etc and wallow in all the false status. Like that even matters, especially when they park the shiny expensive toy outside some grotty terrace in nowheresville.  Then the main thing they use it for is sitting in traffic jams commuting to their souless jobs in a call center, or some other brain dead, no skill job.  Same applies to all the other pointless trinkets they are brainwashed into thinking life cannot be complete without, like the latest Apple whatever BS product, or Dyson £400 hairdryer, etc, etc.

Rant over, now where is that latest Fluke catalogue :o

--- End quote ---

Of course, that makes lots of sense. You are reminding me of many things, where this 'psychological' effect, is exploited by marketing teams.

I'm happy with a mobile phone, that meets my needs. If that is a non-Apple £50 .. £400 phone, then that's fine for me.
But, others, such as Apple buyers, are apparently happy to pay double or more for the same phone (functionality wise).
How on earth it has got to £1,000 (just looked it up, they can now be £1,499 for an Apple phone, 'Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max, iOS, 6.5", 4G LTE, SIM Free, 512GB, Silver £1,499.00' John Lewis Website) just for a phone, I'm a bit out of touch.

So it reminds me of a long time ago (few decades), when you could get decent jeans for relatively little money. Yet many would insist on paying considerably more for genuine 'Wrangler' or 'Levis' jeans (I may have got the makes wrong).
Somehow there were many Jean fanboys of that era, who insisted that they were better, than the non-famously branded ones.

tl;dr
Basic needs such as food/air/water/shelter (truth) vs claimed needs (probably wants really) such as oversized SUV/pickup trucks (what marketing companies want you to buy).

I was going to jokingly mention that marketing wants you to buy the latest Apple iCar, only to discover, it may actually exist for real (rumour). https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-car-3425394/
bd139:
£1500 is too much for me. That's unnecessary. However less is fine.

When AppleCare runs out on mine I will shift it and buy a new one. I pay ~ £1000 for a phone every 2 years. At the moment I'd buy a 128gb iPhone 11 if I needed one for £929 including apple care. But honestly I actually extract the entire value from it. I spent 4-5 hours a day on the phone, run my entire business from it, run my entire life off the thing, run my entire job off the thing, use it as an entertainment device when I'm stuck away from home, use it for navigation in the car and when I'm hill walking, use it as a payment device, do my financial spreadsheets on it, do my banking on it, manage my eating, communicate with my family and probably use it for music 7 hours a day. When it's done I still get at least £250 back when I sell it. If I break it I can get it replaced the same day for a minimum premium.

All that for a quid a day is a fucking bargain!

Issue is MOSTLY people who tend to buy a £1500 phone and use it for whatsapp.

Tesla is a subscription car ;)
MK14:
I can see your point about the Apple iPhone, it makes a lot of sense.

On the other hand, leaving out a microSD card slot(s), is almost certainly a marketing ploy (in many peoples opinions). To get people to get the higher flash capacity ones, at a much higher price.

Is a top of the range, £500 (or whatever the price is these days), Samsung (or whatever the best non-Apple phone is), really that bad ?
I think the google phone is suppose to be good or reasonable as well, and at half the price (if I remember correctly).

But anyway, if you are hugely using your phone most of the time, and it is important for your life/work/family etc. Then you might as well choose your favourite tool, even if it is more expensive.
bd139:
I really don't like things with microSD cards in myself. I spent years arguing with Android and windows phone handsets which had slow access, weird integration problems and general unreliability when using expansion cards. One of these events ate all of the content of my youngest's first birthday which was an unforgivable failure in my eyes. The storage in iOS is very well integrated and transparent to operation. One less thing to worry about. I look at my XR and I've used 36Gb of storage at the moment including cached netflix episodes which isn't a whole lot out of a 128Gb handset.

The issue with non iOS devices is that the companies I work for are financial sector mostly and after years of problems with Android device management, malware and security issues, they are mostly "iOS only". So you have to meet them there to integrate. Also on top of that you're paying for the support and repair network with Apple which is far better than Samsung and Google etc who use independent generic repairer networks. Motorola was the worst experience I had on that front where my Moto developed an SD card fault (yeah that again). When I sent it in for repair in warranty it disappeared for two weeks. It came back with a £205 ransom for repair which was complete system board replacement because it was water damaged. The handset was waterproof. I suspect they had, and this was confirmed by various on line experiences, that they didn't want to repair it and they damaged it themselves.

A £1000 iOS device is a £500-ish phone as well. But you're paying £229 extra for less hassle (integrated high speed storage, better integration, better quality control, much better longevity) and £179 (applecare) on top of that for premium service and support. And I don't mind that.
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