Oversupply of Models in Consumer ELectronics

[protopapas86]

Dear All,

I am trying to find a good book, that can explain, why there is such an oversupply of crappy consumer electronics (and products in general) that address the general public's fashion wants and at the same time such a scarcity in supplying slightly different alternative products that are truly build to last.

For example, try buying a mobile phone for the elderly, or any other product, based only on it technical and life-time characteristics.

It seems very clear to me that nowadays, its all about fashion and branding, where in the past (at least I have the impression) this was not the case.

When did we switch and why?  Why do companies value more their marketeers than their engineers? Why do they keep spitting out un-meaningful new products and series, instead of fixing their previous ones and improving their performance and endurance?

Best,
Andreas

[T4P]

They are after 1 thing : MONEY!!! That's all they want now. If they make a product that lasts, the engineers will be in trouble 

[AndyC_772]

The industry makes more money by selling a piece of crap, then selling another new piece of crap a year or two later, than it would do by selling a better product on day one but then not seeing that customer ever again.

[poptones]

Because it's cheap to make stuff, overseas labor is cheap, and governments subsidize fuel costs so shipping is cheap.

It all began with the demise of the vacuum tube (or the invention of the transistor). In the US you rarely saw Japanese audio gear (for example) before the 1970's. In the late 1960's more started to appear until, by the mid 70's, the US was awash in Japanese gear. Why? Because it cost a fortune to ship those big, heavy receivers abroad. With the transistor, it wasn't so heavy and cumbersome any more, and it didn't have to be assembled by hand (as most vacuum tube stuff was).

Stuff is cheap, and technology evolves quickly. Why build a cell phone to last 10 years when it will be obsolete in two?

[bullet308]

If you really want a book on the subject:

http://www.amazon.com/Made-Break-Technology-Obsolescence-America/dp/0674025725

[AndyC_772]

Bonus points awarded if the book is printed on tissue paper 

[JoannaK]

Savin paper.. I'd recommend videos from Story of Stuff -project .. Freely available on their site (and youtube...)

http://www.storyofstuff.org/

Note that I'm in no way affiliated to that project, nor I'd expext them to even know me.. I just happen to like their videos.

[MikeK]

I smell spam.

[Simon]

It all comes down to money. We live in a vile world that values money of the worth of a person and moral responsibility. We are a self destructive race and we will destroy ourselves through greed. I don't give this planet more than 100 years at the outside.

[gxti]

Lots of cheerful people in here! Well don't you worry, if you're like me your pessimism will eventually collapse in on itself and you'll start feeling hopeful for society because people are too stupid and incompetent to be really malicious. I call it "misanthropic humanism", and seminars are held every second Thursday.

Products aren't cheap and disposable because it makes more money, they're cheap and disposable because people keep buying it. The pendulum may well swing the other way if durable goods become popular again. Vote with your wallet and change may come sooner than you think.

[mariush]

If you want to get some good info about planned obsolence , this documentary is very good:

[Simon]

Products aren't cheap and disposable because it makes more money, they're cheap and disposable because people keep buying it. The pendulum may well swing the other way if durable goods become popular again. Vote with your wallet and change may come sooner than you think.

Yes and no. Everyone wants to be better than the next man so has to have a newer gadget and the market knows this and uses this. Vote with our wallets ? yes we all do and most of us choose crap that costs more than it's worth and will soon need replacing either because our mate has a better one or it breaks. I always try to buy good long lasting stuff and often stay a step behind with decent second hand stuff. The average human is stupid and the average stupid human does not care for wider society or long term benefit.

[poptones]

What a bunch of elitist crap. I grew up in the 1970s in a fairly comfortable middle class house, and one of the things I recall well about that era is that most households did not have air conditioning. We're not talking comfy California here, we're talking muggy Michigan and Mississippi - and even in the middle class, air conditioning was fairly rare. The schools I attended in the 1960s and 1970s were not air conditioned.

A fairly good middle of the road hifi amp cost more than 200 bucks and this was a time when a luxury car could be had for five grand and a pretty nice home for 20. A color TV set cost easily a month of an auto worker's salary. Air conditioners cost well into the hundreds of dollars at a time when gas cost less than half a buck a gallon.

Now I can buy an air conditioner for less than that hifi amp cost in 1968. I can buy an android pad for less than the hifi amp cost in 1968 and it will replace the tv of 1968 1000 times over. I can buy a freaking 50" HD plasma monitor for less than the first color TV set my parents bought in the late '60s.

Meanwhile, the modern equivalent of that luxury car my dad paid 7 grand for in 1973 (a Buick Electra 4 door) would now cost more than our house was worth at the time - but it also has 3 times the horsepower, double (at least) the mileage and is just getting broken in at a hundred thousand miles where the 70's car was ready for trade in at 60K. The Mustang 5.0 I bought in 1987 went over 300 thousand miles - many of them 1/4 mile at a time - before I retired it, and the drivertrain even then was still in perfect condition. So, although the  NEW version of that car would cost over 40K new, I can buy a five year old version of it for a fourth of that and it will still last longer than that NEW car of 1973 - like the 2005 Magnum I bought in 2009 with less than 40,000 miles on the odo for less than $11,000.

Not everything is cheap crap, only the stuff that is going to be replaced anyway. Even a crappy entry level car is still going to run a hundred thousand miles; you can buy a cheap $300 Kenmore stove or you can buy a $3000 Viking. Cellphones and computers are cheap crap because they're going to be obsolete in just a few years no matter what. Overall, I think we enjoy a pretty good standard of living in spite of "real wages" stagnating or falling over the last two decades, and a large part of that is because of so many things being available at lower cost.

[GEuser]

It all comes down to money. We live in a vile world that values money of the worth of a person and moral responsibility. We are a self destructive race and we will destroy ourselves through greed. I don't give this planet more than 100 years at the outside.

Yes and lol on the use of the word Moral , it is of my personal opinion that that word is a combined usage of 2 words and over time has transposed to what it is today , they(back then) knew all about it so it's not new ...

Moral , More Alms , Alms being a dollar , so the more money one has the more Moral one is and automatically the opposite , 15-20 years imo ...

Thanks for the read....

[Rerouter]

pop tones your unlikely to ever see a blatant disregard for safety in a entry level car, as when people are investing a few grand in your company you loose business very fast if all your cheapo cars have there brakes leak out in a few months or the motor catastrophically fail within a year,

have a look at some of the chinese brands and you will see some of the cheapness is starting to creep in, e.g. greatwall utes have asbestos based parts in the engine bay and cheap wire wrap that is actually very flammable :/ now tell me that is not something being built to a tad too low of a price point :/

[JonnyBoats]

This is not a new phenomenon. Here is a quote from DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA By ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE published in 1863:

"I accost an American sailor, and inquire why the ships of his country are built as to last but for a short time; he answers without hesitation, that the art of navigation is every day making such rapid progress, that the finest vessel would become almost useless if it lasted beyond a few years. In these words, which fell accidently, and on a particular subject, from an uninstructed man, I recognize the general and systematic idea upon which a great people direct all their concerns."

[vk6zgo]

Of course,"Liberty ships" which were meant to last for a couple of years,were still around 40 years later!

[vk6zgo]

You know,when I saw "Models" & Electronics" in the heading,I thought NiHaoMike would have brought Tiffany Yep into the conversation by now!

[G7PSK]

The real reason that Japanese transistor radios started to appear in the late 60's and early 70's is down to the cold war and the military. The Japanese saw early on that electronics was the way forward even before the war in fact, loosing the war and the peace treaty etc meant that they did not have a large military machine to consume all the expensive electronics so they started on a concerted effort to develop consumer products whereas in the US and UK and of course the USSR the effort was all on the military equipment which sucked up all the available EE's and the manufacturing facility's by the time the west either woke up or had enough EE's or manufacturing base to look to consumer products the battle was already lost to the Japanese and far east, Game over folk's take you eye off the ball and you loose. 

[8086]

I have a printer that literally told me it had reached it's end of life. A dialog popped up on my PC and the printer refused to print.

A firmware hack later and it works just fine again. Ridiculous.

[Simon]

The sort of thing that should be made illegal !

[AndyC_772]

I have a printer that literally told me it had reached it's end of life. A dialog popped up on my PC and the printer refused to print.

A firmware hack later and it works just fine again. Ridiculous.

Please, name & shame the manufacturer, that's just pathetic. You'd have a strong legal case that the product was defective from day one.

[8086]

I have a printer that literally told me it had reached it's end of life. A dialog popped up on my PC and the printer refused to print.

A firmware hack later and it works just fine again. Ridiculous.

Please, name & shame the manufacturer, that's just pathetic. You'd have a strong legal case that the product was defective from day one.

I think it was an Epson Stylus C64. (I don't have it anymore)

This is the message you get when it decides it's had enough, literally telling you it's reached the end of it's life.

[SeanB]

Ink dump pad is full ( or to be accurate you have poured most of the expensive ink from a few cartridges into it, a lot more than what you put on paper in all cases) and needs to be changed ( you need to have the counter reset and it will work for the same time again without changing the pad, as it is so big that it fills the bottom of the printer, and will absorb almost half a litre of ink in most cases) by an authorised agent who will charge more than the cost of the printer to do so.

There is a set of instructions on how to put the printer into a maintenance mode and reset the counter on the Internet......................

I still have the cousin of that printer around, mostly because it is so old that the drivers for Win98 were on a disk in the box, and I need the occasional print from this dedicated computer, which will stay 98 till the equipment it is attached to dies.

[T4P]

Heh. How about a printer that tells you it's dead after 3 years of hardly any prints?
Worked great on day 1 but leaked all it's guts out onto the ink dump pad and thus Sean said, god ever knows why they drip like a mad man!