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| Video on planned obsolescence. |
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| helius:
--- Quote from: NiHaoMike on April 08, 2021, 01:11:57 pm ---There were some incandescent bulbs with built in diodes to allow the use of a shorter and thicker filament for a given wattage, often marketed as "solid state enhanced". They did not achieve much popularity since they appeared around the time CFLs became affordable. --- End quote --- They existed a lot longer than that. Here is an article from Inc. Magazine from March, 1986: https://www.inc.com/magazine/19860301/9470.html As the article mentions, diode buttons that insert in lamp sockets were already available (at least as early as the 1970s). The story of DioLight is interesting. They made two, relatively minor, "innovations": the diode is wired inside the bulb base, and there is a metal reflector around the stem. They had difficulties finding contract manufacturers: "As soon as we told them we wanted to make a long-life bulb, they'd say, 'No way, Jose. We're in the bulb-replacement business.'" The Inc. article doesn't get into the technical reasons that DioLights can last for 50 years, but voltage reduction is only part of it. The other aspect is the aforementioned temperature coefficient of resistance. Tungsten has a tempco of +0.0045, but silicon has a tempco of -0.07. That makes it very easy to compensate for the turn-on surge and avoid burning out the filament by rapid heating. Carbon is another material with a negative coefficient, but at -0.0005 its magnitude is unhelpfully small. Of course, nothing truly lasts forever, so DioLight's lifetime guarantee would eventually backfire. The company failed much sooner for unrelated reasons. |
| james_s:
It was common for halogen retrofit lamps in the 90s to use a diode, I have a few of the ones that are in an oddly shaped thick glass envelope, Sylvania I think, which have a diode inside the base. One of the issues though is the half-wave rectified power causes visible flicker. They are claimed to last longer than conventional incandescent lamps although I remember my grandmother bought one when I was a kid and it didn't really last much longer than an ordinary bulb, despite being much more expensive. I also remember those buttons you could stick on the bottom of the lamp and screw-in adapters, they did greatly increase the lamp life so they had some uses in hard to reach locations, but they brought with them the same compromises as conventional long-life lamps, the light was dimmer, yellowish and considerably less efficient. The same old trade of lifespan vs efficiency. |
| Zero999:
--- Quote from: tooki on April 04, 2021, 07:30:24 pm --- --- Quote from: SilverSolder on April 04, 2021, 02:05:41 am --- --- Quote from: MikeK on April 04, 2021, 01:20:00 am --- --- Quote from: SilverSolder on April 04, 2021, 01:02:45 am --- Surprisingly many people will argue there is no such thing as planned obsolescence... --- End quote --- And people will argue that it exists where it doesn't, or where it's just incompetence or cost-cutting. "Yeah, maaaaan, they had a carburetor back in the 70's that got 100MPG maaaaaan. But they don't want you to know." --- End quote --- Sure, but that's not what was being discussed in the video: we are talking about hard-core planned obsolescence. I can see it could be hard for e.g. an Apple fan-boi to admit they are being taken advantage of this way, but nevertheless, that is what is happening to them. --- End quote --- Or maybe it’s because it’s actually not. The useful lifespans of Apple products is well above average, and this has been the case since the 80s.* Apple provides OS updates for its phones and tablets for 5+ years, far above the 0-2 years typical in the Android world. (My iPad is from 2014 and still gets OS updates, and is still more than snappy enough for daily use. My 2015 iPhone 6S running the current iOS is nearly as snappy as my year-old SE. I only upgraded because I couldn’t get replacement parts quickly enough due to COVID delays, and my screen was cracked.) --- End quote --- I haven't seen any evidence that Apple products don't last as long as their competitors. The consensus seems to be they're fairly reliable. Apple frequently get criticised for making new products incompatible, with accessories designed for older products and updates which deliberately slow the device down. --- Quote ---*Through the mid 2000s, researchers continuously found that Windows PCs were replaced after an average of 3 years, while the average Mac was replaced after 4-5 years. Between the longer lifespan and the dramatically higher resale value, the higher up-front cost was more than compensated. Since then, the average useful lives of both PCs and Macs has risen a lot, but the much higher resale value of used Macs is still the case. --- End quote --- That's not been the case for a long time though. I've had the same computer for nearly five years and it was nine years old, when I got it. The only upgrades were the RAM and a solid state hard drive. |
| wraper:
--- Quote from: Zero999 on April 08, 2021, 09:14:13 pm ---I haven't seen any evidence that Apple products don't last as long as their competitors. --- End quote --- Their cables last a few months in average and are sold at huge premium. Competitor cables last for years and are much cheaper. Before they removed user ratings: |
| james_s:
--- Quote from: wraper on April 08, 2021, 09:33:21 pm --- --- Quote from: Zero999 on April 08, 2021, 09:14:13 pm ---I haven't seen any evidence that Apple products don't last as long as their competitors. --- End quote --- Their cables last a few months in average and are sold at huge premium. Competitor cables last for years and are much cheaper. Before they removed user ratings: --- End quote --- While it's a small sample size, I'm still using the original cable that came with my iPhone SE. I still have the original cable that came with my iPhone 4 as well, although I replaced it after the cat chewed on the end but it still functioned. I have various gripes about Apple products but I have not had any issues with build quality. |
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