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Video on planned obsolescence.

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SilverSolder:

--- Quote from: tooki on April 12, 2021, 03:59:46 am ---[...]
1. Collusion has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Planned obsolescence does not in any way require collusion between competitors.

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Planned obsolescence doesn't require collusion, but it helps! - for example, the light bulb cartel agreeing to limit light bulb life to exactly the same 1,000 hours from all the manufacturers.  This carved the market up nicely between them - and had consumers overspending on replacements for 50 years while development was frozen.

Have you considered why SD card slots, replaceable batteries, and headphone jacks have disappeared from the high end models from all the manufacturers at the same time?  Seems a big "coincidence" to me...  - could it be that they want you to subscribe to cloud services rather than adding local storage?  Do they prefer you to buy a new device when the battery wears out (convenient monthly payments from the carrier can continue)?  Do they want you to use unnecessarily expensive bluetooth headhones (that have a life of what...?) instead of cheap dynamic headsets? 

Would all the industry players benefit if they could get consumers go accept this state of affairs?

Is it possible to be too naive about the business methods of large corporates?  ::)


--- Quote from: tooki on April 12, 2021, 03:59:46 am ---2. I completely disagree. A company choosing to not make thick, cheap, and heavy laptops doesn’t mean it’s engaging in planned obsolescence!   :palm: (Especially not when the company offers battery replacement service, including labor, for the same price as the user-replaceable batteries in prior models.)

--- End quote ---

Is it beyond the wit of man to make a super thin laptop with a more easily replaceable battery?  -  I think we could come up with something within a couple of days if we started a design challenge thread here on the EEVblog...

You are ascribing the lack of replaceability to "It is a design trade-off"...  but I, and many others, think this "tradeoff" is a little too convenient for the sales department - and that you would have to be naive to think they haven't noticed!



--- Quote from: tooki on April 12, 2021, 03:59:46 am ---3. No, changing a charger plug is not planned obsolescence unless it was done specifically to reduce lifespan

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Obviously changing the plug makes all the previous chargers obsolete - the ones you have in your three cars, seven rooms in your house, at your office, at several rooms in your summer house, etc. etc. etc. - basically, you might have to replace a dozen chargers depending on the change made.  Docking stations etc. - same thing.

Dell is very good at sticking with the same design year after year - that's because they have corporate IT department customers, and they call out this kind of BS and refuse to buy it -  to a professional, it becomes a selling point for Dell that they don't play these games.



--- Quote from: tooki on April 12, 2021, 03:59:46 am ---Basically, all you’ve done here is proven my point: that people expand the scope of “planned obsolescence” to mean “anything I don’t like” rather than what it actually means, which is to purposefully design a product to fail sooner than it inherently would have in order to promote sales of replacements. Because none of the things you describe in any way even distantly count.

--- End quote ---

Let's get specific then:

1) Laptops, tablets and phones with non-replaceable batteries:   Purposefully designed to fail after 2-3 years, therefore it is planned obsolescence.

2) Bluetooth headphones with non-replaceable batteries:   Purposefully designed to fail after 2-3 years, therefore it is planned obsolescence.

3) Phones without headphone jacks:  Purposefully designed to force (2) above by preventing use of wired headsets, so this trick enables the use of planned obsolescence

4) Phones and tablets with non-expandable storage:   Purposefully designed to fail if the storage is so small that normal users will run out and are forced to subscribe to cloud services to make the device work again.  If the internal storage is adequate for normal use cases, it is a design decision rather than designed to fail.

SilverSolder:

I am actually a fan of Microsoft Office...  I recall deploying Excel v1.0 back in the day (I was the young and radical IT manager trying new fangled stuff, exactly the kind of people I hate today, LOL) -  it was just so much better than the DOS based stuff that went before.

I personally trained the users, too.  I remember holding one accounting lady's hand over a mouse, guiding it across the mat and seeing her make the connection between what her hand was doing and the mouse cursor on the screen...  She eventually became one of the most proficient users.  Today, I'd probably be up on a human resources violation for touching her hand...  :D

SilverSolder:

--- Quote from: tooki on April 12, 2021, 05:30:46 am ---[...]
Now that they’ve added that feature in iOS that mostly keeps the battery charged at 80% until right before you begin your day [...]

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That is a cool feature.  I wish my laptops all had that, and that the %charge was user selectable -  ideally 40% when not planning to use the battery...

JohnnyMalaria:

--- Quote from: SilverSolder on April 12, 2021, 04:24:00 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on April 12, 2021, 05:30:46 am ---[...]
Now that they’ve added that feature in iOS that mostly keeps the battery charged at 80% until right before you begin your day [...]

--- End quote ---

That is a cool feature.  I wish my laptops all had that, and that the %charge was user selectable -  ideally 40% when not planning to use the battery...

--- End quote ---

What brand laptop? Both my Win10 Lenovo laptops have configurable limits on charging.

Buriedcode:

--- Quote from: tooki on April 11, 2021, 06:07:09 pm ---...
In other words, design tradeoffs aren’t planned obsolescence.
..

--- End quote ---

And that was entirely my point.

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