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Video on planned obsolescence.

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tooki:

--- Quote from: wraper on April 08, 2021, 05:02:00 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on April 08, 2021, 04:24:10 pm ---If they were under vacuum, the glass envelope would have to be much more robust, plus it makes the manufacturing far more complex. (As vacuum tube manufacturing shows us!) Instead of pulling a high vacuum they just shove a hose in and pump in the inert gas, which pushes out the air. Since it’s at ambient pressure, it can then be “lazily” sealed off without the complexity of having to maintain high vacuum during pinch-off.

--- End quote ---
Not true. Air is pumped out thus creating vacuum inside and only then inert gas is filled.

--- End quote ---


--- Quote from: james_s on April 08, 2021, 06:00:56 pm ---It actually isn't as simple as just "shoving a hose in", it's necessary to draw a fairly hard vacuum and bake out impurities before backfilling with inert gas. Getting lazy with this process is one reason a lot of cheap bulbs don't last very long. The inert gas fill is done for only one reason, to reduce the evaporation of tungsten by increasing the pressure inside the bulb, it doesn't save any manufacturing effort.

--- End quote ---

Yep, you guys are right about how the air is removed. I double checked and indeed the videos I found showed that they pumped out the air and then added the inert gas fill. But I know I have seen the flushing-the-air-out-with-inert-gas method for manufacturing something, and it’s gonna bug the hell out of me that I can’t remember what it is! :(

I’ve edited my post accordingly.

However, no source I found talked about (or showed) a hard vacuum, nor of any kind of baking out before filling.



--- Quote from: james_s on April 08, 2021, 06:00:56 pm ---Lots of bulbs do use vacuums, typically below about 40 watts, this is because as the wattage goes down and the filament is thinner, the convective losses of a gas fill become much more pronounced. The pressure is not an issue at all, vacuum tubes for example are obviously vacuum filled and the envelopes on those are not any thicker than light bulbs.

--- End quote ---
The subject here was the light bulbs once covered by the Phoebus cartel, i.e. general illumination lamps, which pretty much begin at 40W. We aren’t talking about little flashlight bulbs (many of which were krypton or argon filled anyway, as they routinely advertised this) or indicator lamps.

Vacuum tubes are typically smaller than a household general illumination lamp, which needs to be fairly robust. I suspect that if they were under hard vacuum, they’d be too fragile for general use. That one can evacuate it to a vacuum during manufacturing doesn’t mean it could hold up to household manhandling.

wraper:

--- Quote from: tooki on April 10, 2021, 11:43:28 am ---I suspect that if they were under hard vacuum, they’d be too fragile for general use. That one can evacuate it to a vacuum during manufacturing doesn’t mean it could hold up to household manhandling.

--- End quote ---
Vacuum does not suck anything in, it's just an empty space. Stress is created by pressure difference. And it's only a 1 bar pressure from the outside. It does not matter how hard vacuum is. Complete vacuum VS 1% of air left makes virtually no difference in how much stress glass will experience.

tooki:

--- Quote from: Zero999 on April 08, 2021, 09:14:13 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on April 04, 2021, 07:30:24 pm ---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.

--- End quote ---
That doesn’t mean those accusations are true! Apple has been using the same connector on its phones since 2012. And while some versions of iOS were annoyingly slow on very old hardware, Apple put a lot of effort into fixing that, and iOS 12 sped up older devices dramatically. (On iOS 11, my iPhone 6s was annoyingly slow. On iOS 12, it was as snappy as on iOS 9. iOS 13 and 14 didn’t slow it down at all.)

I think many people don’t understand that adding new software features, which they have, does take up storage and runtime resources. There are 3 options I can think of:
1) don’t let the new software run on older hardware at all
2) restrict some new features to newer hardware that can handle it without being too slow
3) release all features for all devices, even if doing so makes it sluggish overall, or even if running some new feature requires dreadfully slow software emulation for something newer devices do in hardware

You see the problem? No matter which approach Apple chooses, some people will complain that it’s planned obsolescence, even though 2 and 3 in actuality extend the useful life of the device compared to the alternative.

Re-engineering software to be more efficient takes a lot of work, which isn’t always feasible to do with every release. For many, many years Apple has had the approach of a few years of “feature” OS releases, followed by a “performance” release that adds few features but does a ton of cleanup. That doesn’t get the same press as new features, of course.

(That’s a common way of developing software: do an initial release of a feature using code that works reliably, but hasn’t been optimized for performance. Then later go back and see how you can speed up the main code paths.)



--- Quote from: Zero999 on April 08, 2021, 09:14:13 pm ---
--- 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.

--- End quote ---
Huh? I said “Since then [the mid-2000s], the average useful lives of both PCs and Macs has risen a lot”. Doesn’t that perfectly agree with your experience?? 14 years ago was 2007, and to me, the middle of the 2000s was 2005.

What’s definitely still the same is the appreciably higher resale value of Apple products. A used Mac will retain far more value than an equivalent PC. (This can make used PCs excellent bargains for a buyer, whereas I have never found it sensible to buy used Macs. Great if you’re selling one, though!)


--- Quote from: Zero999 on April 09, 2021, 07:40:16 am ---Oh, I'd forgotten about the crappy cables, which I believe were due to Apple going halogen free and nothing to do with planned obsolescence, so it didn't enter my mind. Going by the dates on that screenshot, none of the complaints are recent, so hopefully it's been resolved now. I've had similar problems with halogen free cables, on a project I've worked on.

--- End quote ---
Yep, it was when Apple went PVC-free. Those first few years of PVC-free cables they used were awful. I don’t know what material it is (it’s not silicone, since it readily melts), but it was terrible. I concur that they appear to have gotten it under control, though they’ve never reached the high reliability of truly top-quality cables like Anker. (But those cables also cost a lot of money, and they’re a lot bulkier than Apple’s sleek cables.)

tooki:

--- Quote from: wraper on April 10, 2021, 12:04:47 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on April 10, 2021, 11:43:28 am ---I suspect that if they were under hard vacuum, they’d be too fragile for general use. That one can evacuate it to a vacuum during manufacturing doesn’t mean it could hold up to household manhandling.

--- End quote ---
Vacuum does not suck anything in, it's just an empty space. Stress is created by pressure difference. And it's only a 1 bar pressure from the outside. It does not matter how hard vacuum is. Complete vacuum VS 1% of air left makes virtually no difference in how much stress glass will experience.

--- End quote ---
But it’s a big difference compared to the ~0.7 bar of the gas fill that we actually used in general illumination light bulbs, which is the point. Making a bulb that can temporarily withstand a vacuum during manufacturing is different from making one that can withstand a vacuum and household abuse at the same  time without breaking. Think about how fragile light bulbs already were, and then imagine if they were prestressed by a vacuum. No, they wouldn’t shatter if you touched them, but it certainly would reduce their maximum drop distance, for example.

I don’t need you condescendingly defining what a vacuum is, thank you. I’m perfectly aware of that. Don’t be a turd, remember? :)

wraper:

--- Quote from: tooki on April 10, 2021, 12:25:45 pm ---but it certainly would reduce their maximum drop distance, for example.

--- End quote ---
Not sure about that. It may actually increase strength since glass is compressed. Think about is as if it was a spherical structure with tension cables inside preventing its deformation.

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