Video on planned obsolescence.

[cdev]

The title is good.

"This is why we can't have nice things"

[SilverSolder]

Surprisingly many people will argue there is no such thing as planned obsolescence...

[MikeK]

Surprisingly many people will argue there is no such thing as planned obsolescence...

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."

[SilverSolder]

Surprisingly many people will argue there is no such thing as planned obsolescence...

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."

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.

[Ground_Loop]

I would argue that most of what is claimed to be planned obsolescence is actually marketers and engineers providing a product aligned with a price point that people are willing to buy it.

[I wanted a rude username]

"Value engineering" is obviously the norm, but that's not the central thesis of this video.

[SilverSolder]

I would argue that most of what is claimed to be planned obsolescence is actually marketers and engineers providing a product aligned with a price point that people are willing to buy it.

Not sure I get what you mean?  - a cheaply made product breaks and isn't worth fixing...  fine, we all get that.

A light bulb where a lot of work went into reducing its life so they could sell more...   what do you call that?  "Value engineering" from the perspective of the shareholders, perhaps? 

[wraper]

In regards to incandescent bulbs, I do not agree it's a planned obsolescence just by itself. You have to trade off between lifetime and brightness, light whiteness and efficiency. As you decrease filament temperature to increase it's lifetime, bulb becomes less efficient as it's spectrum shifts more towards IR, thus more energy is spent on heating ambient rather than usable light. And light no longer will be "white" and will have a strong yellow/red tint. As a confirmation of that, I can assure you that bulbs produced in Soviet union did not last a tad longer. And their planned economy did not bother with planned obsolescence to ensure future sales. If anything, they would be more happy to spend less resources on producing consumer goods, and more on military. If something did not last, it was simply because it was crap due to negligence, low quality materials or similar reasons, not because it was intentionally designed to not last.
Longevity of incandescent bulb can be easily increased a lot at virtually no cost, however you will not like how it works.

[BrokenYugo]

I find the term similar to the legal term "entrapment", in that the accusation is made at least a million times more often than it actually happens.

I find it funny the dude claims a LED light bulb is the opposite case and nearly everlasting, when most are running too few LEDs too hard to keep costs down, and as a result produce a bulb that quickly dims, is of lower luminous efficiency and prematurely fails...

[james_s]

I find the term similar to the legal term "entrapment", in that the accusation is made at least a million times more often than it actually happens.

I find it funny the dude claims a LED light bulb is the opposite case and nearly everlasting, when most are running too few LEDs too hard to keep costs down, and as a result produce a bulb that quickly dims, is of lower luminous efficiency and prematurely fails...

That's exactly the case with LED bulbs. It's possible to make them last nearly forever, but you need to run the LEDs at low current and that means you need a LOT of LEDs and they are expensive. If you offer a bulb that lasts 15,000 hours and costs $5 next to one that lasts 50,000 hours but costs $15 people will buy the $5 bulb 9 times out of 10. Heck most people will buy the 75 cent incandescent bulb that only lasts 750 hours and costs far more in energy than is saved in the purchase price. Heck it's easy to make a 75 cent incandescent bulb that lasts 50,000 hours but it will consume several times more energy per lumen of light you get than the 750 hour bulb. There's no free lunch.

You hit the nail on the head, planned obsolescence does exist, but the vast majority of the time when someone points something out as planned obsolescence that is not really what is going on. It's just cost engineering, adjusting the cost/lifespan compromise to the lowest cost that will still result in most units lasting through the warranty.

[Ground_Loop]

I would argue that most of what is claimed to be planned obsolescence is actually marketers and engineers providing a product aligned with a price point that people are willing to buy it.

Not sure I get what you mean?  - a cheaply made product breaks and isn't worth fixing...  fine, we all get that.

A light bulb where a lot of work went into reducing its life so they could sell more...   what do you call that?  "Value engineering" from the perspective of the shareholders, perhaps? 

I said 'most.'  And having been an engineer involved with consumer products, we design and manufacture things that people are willing to buy based largely on marketing input. If we make it last forever it will be too expensive and no one will buy it. If we make it fail immediately we won't sell past the first few units.  So much of what people decry as planned obsolescence is actually a result of trade offs to optimally support market demand.

[SilverSolder]

The point about not confusing planned obsolescence with value engineering is reasonable enough.



The definition of planned obsolescence

Planned obsolescence is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so that it becomes obsolete after a certain pre-determined period of time upon which it decrementally functions or suddenly ceases to function, or might be perceived as unfashionable.

The rationale behind this strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases (referred to as "shortening the replacement cycle").

It is the deliberate shortening of a lifespan of a product to force people to purchase functional replacements.

[JPortici]

I would then replace planned obsolescene with "cloud-based", or "connected service", or whatever other money trap.

[SilverSolder]

I would then replace planned obsolescene with "cloud-based", or "connected service", or whatever other money trap.

LOL yes, the ultimate example - "shortening the replacement cycle" to just one month at a time! 

[cdev]

This kind of thinking is often applied to people. On another blog I recounted a story of how doctors discovered that low doses of a popular and inexpensive sleeping medication (zolpidem, or "Ambien" is one, there are several other"z-drugs" ) would bring some people in deep comas (who had been on the verge of being declared irreversibly brain dead, out of the comas for a brief period of time. And they would temporarily recover but then as the medication wore off they would lose them again.

See "Effect of Zolpidem in the Aftermath of Traumatic Brain Injury: An MEG Study."


and others..
linked at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=zolpidem%20coma

This discovery has led to a lot of new research on certain kinds of strokes, Write this down however in case any of your loved ones has serious stroke or other TBI and is in a coma..

One would think this story would make everybody happy that these people might be revived, but, no.  Instead I got critical email from people who I now call Malthusians, who want old or sick people to die sooner. They really do.

Frankly, they scare the shit out of me.

[cdev]

Surprisingly many people will argue there is no such thing as planned obsolescence...

They are often the same people who are planning it. They are up to no good.

[cdev]

I would argue that most of what is claimed to be planned obsolescence is actually marketers and engineers providing a product aligned with a price point that people are willing to buy it.

I think that like almost everything, its an optimization tradeoff, what tradeoffs do you make, based on what you know. Nothing lasts forever. Nobody expects that. But, people don't expect a timer in their products that makes them stop working after the warranteed period runs out. (the worst case scenario, which I think should be illegal.)

This reminds me of the double meaning in the use of the word "sustainable" these days. Sometimes, "sustainable" has a double meaning and not in a good way. With it actually meaning "profitable enough" . I'll leave it up to you to figure out where those uses are,l don't want to get into arguments about it.

[madires]

Have you noticed that after the Phoebus cartel was shut down standard incandescent bulbs are still rated for only 1000h? Business as usual - it doesn't need a cartel.

[wraper]

Have you noticed that after the Phoebus cartel was shut down standard incandescent bulbs are still rated for only 1000h? Business as usual - it doesn't need a cartel.

If you increase longevity, you will decrease lumens per consumed power, as I already mentioned. You will make more durable product but much worse overall.

[madires]

Like 42W halogen bulbs rated for 1500h (former replacement for standard 60W bulbs)?

[Miyuki]

Have you noticed that after the Phoebus cartel was shut down standard incandescent bulbs are still rated for only 1000h? Business as usual - it doesn't need a cartel.

If you increase longevity, you will decrease lumens per consumed power, as I already mentioned. You will make more durable product but much worse overall.

There are, especially for cars headlight, light bulbs with like +25% or even +50% light output at the same power
But they pay for it with a very short life compared to standard ones

[wraper]

Like 42W halogen bulbs rated for 1500h (former replacement for standard 60W bulbs)?

It's a different technology. It's comparing apples with oranges. Even for halogen, there is no way around trading off between performance and durability. You just choose what you consider a sweet spot.

[BrokenYugo]

Like 42W halogen bulbs rated for 1500h (former replacement for standard 60W bulbs)?

Nature of the beast. The point of halogen is you can crank up the filament temperature (and thus efficiency) because magic chemistry inside the bulb puts the boiled off tungsten back on the filament, bringing the lifespan back to something tolerable.

[SilverSolder]

Have you noticed that after the Phoebus cartel was shut down standard incandescent bulbs are still rated for only 1000h? Business as usual - it doesn't need a cartel.

If you increase longevity, you will decrease lumens per consumed power, as I already mentioned. You will make more durable product but much worse overall.

I don't understand the science behind that assertion - why would increased lifetime correlate with light output as a percentage of power consumed?

[wraper]

Have you noticed that after the Phoebus cartel was shut down standard incandescent bulbs are still rated for only 1000h? Business as usual - it doesn't need a cartel.

If you increase longevity, you will decrease lumens per consumed power, as I already mentioned. You will make more durable product but much worse overall.

I don't understand the science behind that assertion - why would increased lifetime correlate with light output as a percentage of power consumed?

As you decrease filament temperature to increase it's lifetime, bulb becomes less efficient as it's spectrum shifts more towards IR, thus more energy is spent on heating ambient rather than usable light. And light no longer will be "white" and will have a strong yellow/red tint.

[David Hess]

Operating life ratings for LED bulbs are disingenuous at best.  The operating life of the LEDs is 10s of thousands of hours to half brightness but failure is complete when the ballast fails, which in my experience often happens before an incandescent bulb would fail.

So how much energy is saved by using a bulb which costs more in energy to manufacturer (as measured by cost which is a good proxy), when it does not last as long?  None.  NONE!

[SilverSolder]

Have you noticed that after the Phoebus cartel was shut down standard incandescent bulbs are still rated for only 1000h? Business as usual - it doesn't need a cartel.

If you increase longevity, you will decrease lumens per consumed power, as I already mentioned. You will make more durable product but much worse overall.

I don't understand the science behind that assertion - why would increased lifetime correlate with light output as a percentage of power consumed?

As you decrease filament temperature to increase it's lifetime, bulb becomes less efficient as it's spectrum shifts more towards IR, thus more energy is spent on heating ambient rather than usable light. And light no longer will be "white" and will have a strong yellow/red tint.

OK but there is an unspoken assumption here -  that lowering the filament temperature is the only way to improve bulb life.  It is one way, and it is an easy way - but is it really the only way?  For example, you could make the filament thicker, so it could withstand "boiling off its surface" for longer?

[james_s]

I don't understand the science behind that assertion - why would increased lifetime correlate with light output as a percentage of power consumed?

Lifespan is determined largely by filament temperature. The hotter the filament, the more rapidly tungsten evaporates off it and the sooner it fails. The ratio of visible light to IR (heat) produced by the filament is also determined by temperature, the cooler the filament, the more of its radiation occurs as heat instead of visible light. There is a sweet spot right around 700-1000 hours where the lamp delivers reasonably good efficiency (in incandescent terms) while lasting an acceptable lifespan.

There are some extreme examples, like photoflood lamps that produce a very bright white light around 3200k and are quite efficient, but this is accomplished by overdriving the filament and the result is a rated life of 6 hours. Lifespan decreases exponentially as voltage is increased.

[SilverSolder]

Operating life ratings for LED bulbs are disingenuous at best.  The operating life of the LEDs is 10s of thousands of hours to half brightness but failure is complete when the ballast fails, which in my experience often happens before an incandescent bulb would fail.

So how much energy is saved by using a bulb which costs more in energy to manufacturer (as measured by cost which is a good proxy), when it does not last as long?  None.  NONE!

The switch to more advanced bulbs that have less "real world" life and at higher cost might be considered related to Planned Obsolescence:    basically, needlessly increase the complexity of a product so you can charge more for it.

This works best of all if you can lobby to have laws passed that bans the simple and inexpensive solution that you don't think is making you enough money...  especially if you think the public would not accept price rises on the existing, simpler product!

[SilverSolder]

I don't understand the science behind that assertion - why would increased lifetime correlate with light output as a percentage of power consumed?

Lifespan is determined largely by filament temperature. The hotter the filament, the more rapidly tungsten evaporates off it and the sooner it fails. The ratio of visible light to IR (heat) produced by the filament is also determined by temperature, the cooler the filament, the more of its radiation occurs as heat instead of visible light. There is a sweet spot right around 700-1000 hours where the lamp delivers reasonably good efficiency (in incandescent terms) while lasting an acceptable lifespan.

There are some extreme examples, like photoflood lamps that produce a very bright white light around 3200k and are quite efficient, but this is accomplished by overdriving the filament and the result is a rated life of 6 hours. Lifespan decreases exponentially as voltage is increased.

Understood.  What happens if we make a thicker and longer filament to maintain the same resistance - will it burn longer before it breaks?

[james_s]

OK but there is an unspoken assumption here -  that lowering the filament temperature is the only way to improve bulb life.  It is one way, and it is an easy way - but is it really the only way?  For example, you could make the filament thicker, so it could withstand "boiling off its surface" for longer?

You can. But what else happens when you make the filament thicker? It requires more current to reach the same temperature, so either your lamp wattage increases, or you need the supply voltage to be lower. This precisely why low voltage incandescent lamps are more efficient than high voltage lamps of the same wattage. A 240V 60W incandescent produces close to the same light output as a 120V 40W lamp. Everything is a compromise, you can gain in one area but it will cost you in another.

[Miyuki]

I once saw some "special long life" incandescent with a rating of 5000h it had super thin and long fillament with a complicated support structure (230V one)

[james_s]

There exist incandescent lamps rated for 50k hours, I doubt they're made anymore but they were for indicator use where long life is more important than efficiency. For most applications though, lamps are optimized for efficiency. There is another factor that affects this, an inert gas fill. The increased pressure of a gas fill reduces the evaporation rate of tungsten which allows increased life at a given filament temperature. The cost is an increase in thermal losses from convection, which becomes more pronounced with thinner filaments and this is why most line voltage lamps below about 40 watts are vacuum filled while almost all larger lamps are gas filled.

[james_s]

Operating life ratings for LED bulbs are disingenuous at best.  The operating life of the LEDs is 10s of thousands of hours to half brightness but failure is complete when the ballast fails, which in my experience often happens before an incandescent bulb would fail.

So how much energy is saved by using a bulb which costs more in energy to manufacturer (as measured by cost which is a good proxy), when it does not last as long?  None.  NONE!

That does not reflect my experience at all. I have numerous LED bulbs that have been in service for at least 10 years so far. Some of them I replaced due to technological obsolescence, the original ones still worked fine but the newer ones bring almost double the efficiency and better quality light. I've had a couple of early failures but even the cheapest ones have lasted longer than incandescent lamps. Even just eliminating the "flash & pop" failure mode which usually seemed to happen when I turn on a light in the middle of the night made it worthwhile to change.

[SilverSolder]

So the best bet for a long life incandescent - if we lived in a cartel-free world - might be:

1) Longer, thicker filament to maintain same output while tolerating evaporation for longer (con: more complex support structure)
2) Gas fill, to suppress tungsten evaporation

and

3) Always run them on dimmers, so they only get cranked up to the max when actually needed


(point 3 is probably why I have many bulbs in this house that are >20 years old and still working!)

[james_s]

So the best bet for a long life incandescent - if we lived in a cartel-free world - might be:

1) Longer, thicker filament to maintain same output while tolerating evaporation for longer (con: more complex support structure)
2) Gas fill, to suppress tungsten evaporation

and

3) Always run them on dimmers, so they only get cranked up to the max when actually needed


(point 3 is probably why I have many bulbs in this house that are >20 years old and still working!)

If electricity was free then yes, that would work nicely. In the real world, you pay much more for the electricity than you do for the bulb, so while running a big high wattage bulb at lower power will give you very long life, it will also give you abysmal efficiency. It would be much cheaper to run a lower wattage bulb at full power and turn on an additional higher wattage bulb in those occasions where you need more light. The cost of the more frequent bulb replacements is trivial compared to the energy savings in doing so.

Using a longer, thicker filament for the same light output is just another way of saying "using a less efficient bulb optimized for long life". A thicker filament means higher current, a longer filament means higher voltage. A longer, thicker filament means higher wattage, ie more power consumed. The same light output from that longer, thicker, long lived filament means lower efficiency.

You can already buy exactly what you are proposing, at least you could. They are sold as "long life" lamps and often are simply 130V rated bulbs for use on 120V. They were intended for applications where changing bulbs is difficult and do last a very long time, however they are dim for the rated wattage (inefficient) and produce a yellowish light. You can also connect two identical bulbs in series so each gets half the rated voltage and they will easily last many decades of continuous use, but again there is a cost, the light output is a fraction of what you would get by giving each lamp full rated voltage. Using a dimmer is another option, but again with the same penalty. Try sometime dimming a lamp while watching the consumption on something like a Kill A Watt. Drop it down to where it looks perhaps half of full brightness and see that the energy consumption is around 80% of full power. Drop it down to half of rated power and it will be a dull reddish glow. It will last a very, very long time though.

You can optimize for lifespan or efficiency, increasing one will always cost you the other, there is no free lunch. Technologies like inert or halogen gas fill shift the entire scale but you still get the same compromise between long life or high efficiency and whiter light. It's still always true that in terms of commodity bulbs, the cost of the bulb itself is a small fraction of the total cost of ownership, the majority being the cost of energy it consumes over its life.

[SilverSolder]

[...] A longer, thicker filament means higher wattage, ie more power consumed. [...]

This is the part I am having difficulty understanding.  We can make the filament thicker:  lower R.   We can also make the filament longer: higher R.   If we do this just right, we can make a filament of any size ranging from very small to very large for a given target R.  The R is what controls the power ( P = E^2/R ) since we are keeping voltage constant.   The only difference between a small and a large filament of a given R will be how much metal it takes to make it (and therefore how long it will last before burning through).

What am I overlooking?

[BrokenYugo]

You're overlooking that this resistor has to get white hot, more mass/area=lower temperature=lower luminous efficiency.

[tooki]

Surprisingly many people will argue there is no such thing as planned obsolescence...

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."

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.

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.)

*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.

[wraper]

What am I overlooking?

More filament for the same power = lower temperature = lower efficiency.

[tooki]

You're overlooking that this resistor has to get white hot, more mass/area=lower temperature=lower luminous efficiency.

Not to mention that the resistor would rapidly grow in size, to where it wouldn’t fit inside the bulb.

People forget just how long the filament is: it’s not a coiled wire. It’s a coiled coil of insanely thin wire, so it’s far longer than it appears. If we increased its diameter, we’d have to increase its length too...

[SilverSolder]

If a filament is suspended in a perfect vacuum, do we agree that the only way it can lose heat is by radiation?  (IR + light)

[Wolfram]

If a filament is suspended in a perfect vacuum, do we agree that the only way it can lose heat is by radiation?  (IR + light)

Radiation is by far dominant, and there will also be some conduction down the lead-in wires. Part of the IR from the filament is re-absorbed by the outer glass envelope, some of which is re-radiated and some of which is conducted to the socket. An energy balance diagram for gas-filled lamps can be found at http://lamptech.co.uk/Documents/IN%20Operation.htm , along with other relevant info.

[james_s]

There were a few incandescent lamps that employed an IR reflective coating on the inside of a specially shaped capsule to reflect radiated heat back at the filament. The challenge is that it requires extremely precise placement of the filament in the focal point for that to work, and that means that it has to be relatively rigid. The early attempts used a filament that was extremely brittle and often did not survive shipping from the manufacture. More recently around 12 years ago I got a few 60W equivalent lamps that used something like 38W. They used a small quartz capsule with a compact tightly wound filament. They worked well, but still couldn't compete with even the early LED bulbs.

They really did make attempts to push incandescent as far as possible. There were long life lamps, vibration resistant lamps, high efficiency lamps, low cost lamps, lamps optimized for heat output, lamps optimized for high color temperature, lamps optimized for any one characteristic for specific applications. With over 100 years of development it is a very mature technology, at some point there just wasn't much further it could be taken.

[tooki]

Tangent about IR reflection: did you know that halogen reflector bulbs come in two kinds? One uses an aluminum reflector coating, and reflects all the IR energy. This means the fixture doesn’t get hot, but the object lit by the bulb does. The other kind uses a dichroic mirror coating, which reflects visible light, but lets IR pass through, keeping the lighted object cooler, but requiring a fixture that can handle the heat.

[james_s]

Yes I remember when the dichroic ones first started appearing in the 80s, they were expensive and were used in high end track lighting in places like jewelry stores. I think one of the first applications was film and slide projection, as it was always a challenge to have a bright enough light source that would not melt your slides if you left one up on the screen for too long.

[helius]

You'll hear endless repetitions of the concept that filament life is a function of temperature, a convenient explanation that is both true (you can change the life by changing the voltage, which affects temperature) and false (not all filaments at the same temperature have the same life). That is because temperature is not the only independent variable in the life equation.

since we are keeping voltage constant.
What am I overlooking?

Most of the design space, if you think in terms of constant voltage. The higher the voltage, the longer and/or thinner the filament must be to get the same power dissipation. This reduces luminous efficacy and life, since the power is spread over a larger area (in a relation of length and cross-section to surface area, length dominates) (longer and thinner means more fragile). Automotive bulbs have much longer lives compared to house bulbs, and 120V bulbs much longer lives than 240V bulbs. And higher luminous efficacy!

There are more blind spots in this discussion, but the biggest one is the steady state assumption. If temperature corresponded with life, we would expect that bulbs of the same design would cluster around the same life time in terms of "on hours". But what actually happens is that a significant number last for 0 hours! If you've ever had a motion-activated "security" light, you know that they burn out bulbs at a ferocious rate. It's almost as if life should be counted in switching cycles rather than on hours...

What mechanism can explain the frequent (nearly universal) observation that burnout coincides with switching? The filament has a temperature coefficient. When turned off, it is at room temperature (or colder for exterior lamps; generally, ambient temperature). The temperature coefficient of resistance is positive, so as temperature increases, so does resistance. That makes cold resistance much lower than operating resistance. Say that a 240V lamp has a power dissipation of 60W. That means that its operating resistance should be around 1K ohms. Suppose it operates at 3000 °C. Then its cold resistance (from the tungsten tempco of 0.0045) is just 75 ohms. So during the first few milliseconds after it switches on, its power consumption is over 750 watts! And the wiring etc has no difficulty delivering that much current.

When such a large amount of power is focused in a small object, heating is also rapid. Unfortunately, the filament does not have uniform cross-section at the atomic level, so there will be some regions where heating happens first. Metal will boil away faster in these areas, thinning them down further, and the local heating becomes progressively more intense. These are the places where the filament will eventually, on one of these switch-on events, break and end its useful life.

There are also ways to mitigate this process, and they have been known for a very long time. This is really basic stuff, nothing fancy that you could patent or build a company on. It was probably known by Edison a hundred years ago.

[james_s]

They do usually fail at turn-on, however in typical usage patterns I don't think a light would last that many more hours when left on continuously, eventually you will still get a thin spot that burns hotter and thins even more quickly until it fails, and I have had lamps burn out a few times while they were on steady state. I suspect a lot of the rapid failures in motion sensor lights involve halogen lamps, which most of the later incandescent PAR lamps are too. You can kill a halogen lamp pretty quickly by running it in short cycles, or on a dimmer at too low brightness because the envelope temperature never reaches a point where the halogen cycle works effectively. This happens in laser printers too which typically use a tubular halogen lamp to heat the fuser roller. I remember replacing one once that was completely black, and back when those halogen torchier lamps were popular I killed a bulb once when I accidentally left it on at low brightness overnight, by the time I noticed it was on, the bulb had turned black and it burned out soon after I tried turning it up to see if the bulb wall would clean up.

Certainly some bulbs tolerate cycling well, the small vacuum filled sign lamps used to frequently be used on chasers and scintilators that would turn a bulb on and off thousands of times in a single evening.

[SilverSolder]

I was thinking about the implications of a coiled filament.  It seems to me that by coiling the filament, it cannot radiate from half its surface (the IR radiation on the inside of the coil is balanced by the IR radiation coming in from the opposite side).  So a coiled filament will run hotter than the same length of filament that has not been coiled.  -  Which in turn means that a coiled filament could be made from thicker wire, and might therefore last longer...  ?

[NiHaoMike]

Most of the design space, if you think in terms of constant voltage. The higher the voltage, the longer and/or thinner the filament must be to get the same power dissipation. This reduces luminous efficacy and life, since the power is spread over a larger area (in a relation of length and cross-section to surface area, length dominates) (longer and thinner means more fragile). Automotive bulbs have much longer lives compared to house bulbs, and 120V bulbs much longer lives than 240V bulbs. And higher luminous efficacy!

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.

[tooki]

If a filament is suspended in a perfect vacuum, do we agree that the only way it can lose heat is by radiation?  (IR + light)

I guess so, maybe. But it doesn’t matter, since incandescent light bulbs don’t use vacuums. The envelopes are filled with inert gas at roughly a bit below ambient pressure, such that the glass envelope isn’t under any real pressure. 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.

*Edit: hmm, I double checked in response to replies, and indeed the videos I found showed that they pumped out the air and then added the inert gas fill. But I know I saw 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 was thinking about the implications of a coiled filament.  It seems to me that by coiling the filament, it cannot radiate from half its surface (the IR radiation on the inside of the coil is balanced by the IR radiation coming in from the opposite side).  So a coiled filament will run hotter than the same length of filament that has not been coiled.  -  Which in turn means that a coiled filament could be made from thicker wire, and might therefore last longer...  ?

Thats not what a filament looks like. It’s a much, much more open coil, and again, it’s a coil of coiled wire, totally changing the radiation formula: nowhere near half is being reflected back in. It does make a difference, and indeed it’s part of why we do it.

The <1” (2.5cm) of filament in a bulb is actually around 20” (50cm) of coiled coiled wire.

[wraper]

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.

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

[james_s]

I guess so, maybe. But it doesn’t matter, since incandescent light bulbs don’t use vacuums. The envelopes are filled with inert gas at roughly ambient pressure, such that the glass envelope isn’t under any real pressure. 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.

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. 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.

[MikeK]

And Bill Hammack needs to make more videos, dammit.

[SilverSolder]

According to the reference posted by @Wolfram (perfect handle for this topic!), http://lamptech.co.uk/Documents/IN%20Operation.htm ,  the losses due to gas convection is only 20%, most of the energy goes out of the bulb via radiation.

[helius]

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.

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]

Surprisingly many people will argue there is no such thing as planned obsolescence...

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."

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.

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.)

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.

*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.

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]

I haven't seen any evidence that Apple products don't last as long as their competitors.

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]

I haven't seen any evidence that Apple products don't last as long as their competitors.

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:

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.

[David Hess]

The switch to more advanced bulbs that have less "real world" life and at higher cost might be considered related to Planned Obsolescence:    basically, needlessly increase the complexity of a product so you can charge more for it.

This works best of all if you can lobby to have laws passed that bans the simple and inexpensive solution that you don't think is making you enough money...  especially if you think the public would not accept price rises on the existing, simpler product!

I could make the same statement about electronically commutated motors which replaced shaded pole motors in refrigerator evaporators because of EPA requirements.  I have never had one of these shaded pole motors fail, but I have had to replace the electronically commutated motor in my new refrigerator 6 times now in 10 years, and they cost $30 each.

[james_s]

I could make the same statement about electronically commutated motors which replaced shaded pole motors in refrigerator evaporators because of EPA requirements.  I have never had one of these shaded pole motors fail, but I have had to replace the electronically commutated motor in my new refrigerator 6 times now in 10 years, and they cost $30 each.

I'm kind of surprised to hear they're THAT bad. Did you look into what actually failed? I've had the shaded pole motors fail before but it was only the bearings. My friend had a fridge in a rental house that would make weird chirping noises, I immediately identified it as bearing failure in the evaporator fan motor but they had no clue what it was.

[David Hess]

I could make the same statement about electronically commutated motors which replaced shaded pole motors in refrigerator evaporators because of EPA requirements.  I have never had one of these shaded pole motors fail, but I have had to replace the electronically commutated motor in my new refrigerator 6 times now in 10 years, and they cost $30 each.

I'm kind of surprised to hear they're THAT bad. Did you look into what actually failed? I've had the shaded pole motors fail before but it was only the bearings. My friend had a fridge in a rental house that would make weird chirping noises, I immediately identified it as bearing failure in the evaporator fan motor but they had no clue what it was.

Bearing wear after a year is insignificant.  The electronics are failing.  The original and all of the replacements except one come from Switzerland but the most recent one, which has lasted the longest so far, was made in China.   

[james_s]

Yeah the shaded pole motors I've had fail were all at least 15 years old. I'm still surprised these are that bad, I'd be curious to look inside one and see what is actually failing, it may be a good opportunity to improve the design. There is no inherent reason a motor like that can't be reliable, I mean the ubiquitous brushless DC muffin fans often last many years and in every one of those I can recall having fail it was bearings.

[wraper]

The switch to more advanced bulbs that have less "real world" life and at higher cost might be considered related to Planned Obsolescence:    basically, needlessly increase the complexity of a product so you can charge more for it.

This works best of all if you can lobby to have laws passed that bans the simple and inexpensive solution that you don't think is making you enough money...  especially if you think the public would not accept price rises on the existing, simpler product!

I could make the same statement about electronically commutated motors which replaced shaded pole motors in refrigerator evaporators because of EPA requirements.  I have never had one of these shaded pole motors fail, but I have had to replace the electronically commutated motor in my new refrigerator 6 times now in 10 years, and they cost $30 each.

It only means that particular motor is crap. I have no warm feelings towards shaded pole motors whatsoever. They are junk which convert most of consumed power into a lot of heat which reduces bearing life. And the only good things about them are that they are cheap and stall current is almost the same as current at normal operation.

[Zero999]

I haven't seen any evidence that Apple products don't last as long as their competitors.

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:

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.

[Bassman59]

I haven't seen any evidence that Apple products don't last as long as their competitors.

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:

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.

One of the reviews mentions the iPhone 4, and yeah, the screen shot date is 2014. The Apple Lightning cables we have that shipped with recent products -- new iPhone SE, iPhone Xs, AirPods, whatever -- have been quite robust, certainly all much better than off-brand cables which last a week.

[wraper]

new iPhone SE, iPhone Xs, AirPods, whatever -- have been quite robust, certainly all much better than off-brand cables which last a week.

They last a week if you buy cable for $0.5 including delivery from China. Cables which cost $2-3 last for years with no sign of wear. Screenshot is old because since then Apple removed customer ratings, I wonder why...

[David Hess]

Yeah the shaded pole motors I've had fail were all at least 15 years old. I'm still surprised these are that bad, I'd be curious to look inside one and see what is actually failing, it may be a good opportunity to improve the design. There is no inherent reason a motor like that can't be reliable, I mean the ubiquitous brushless DC muffin fans often last many years and in every one of those I can recall having fail it was bearings.

The electronics are potted in epoxy where the coil would be on a shaded pole motor with what I suspect is an exposed 3 wire hall effect sensor to track rotation.  The oldest ones I have seen used shaded pole motor armatures without the shorted turns.

Because the motors still turn, but at low speed, I suspect the rotor may have demagnetized.  Whatever the problem, over a 10 year period they have an appalling reliability and cost effectiveness.

[Zero999]

Yeah the shaded pole motors I've had fail were all at least 15 years old. I'm still surprised these are that bad, I'd be curious to look inside one and see what is actually failing, it may be a good opportunity to improve the design. There is no inherent reason a motor like that can't be reliable, I mean the ubiquitous brushless DC muffin fans often last many years and in every one of those I can recall having fail it was bearings.

The electronics are potted in epoxy where the coil would be on a shaded pole motor with what I suspect is an exposed 3 wire hall effect sensor to track rotation.  The oldest ones I have seen used shaded pole motor armatures without the shorted turns.

Because the motors still turn, but at low speed, I suspect the rotor may have demagnetized.  Whatever the problem, over a 10 year period they have an appalling reliability and cost effectiveness.

The only motor in my refrigerator is inside the compressor. I've not looked at it, but the ones I've seen are normally capacitor start, induction motors. It wouldn't surprise me if inverter driven compressors are used in industrial refrigerators and some top of the range domestic units.

There is no fan in my refrigerator. The evaporator is in the top of the enclosure and cools by convection. It's much more reliable than a fan. I have seen refrigerators with a fan, but I doubt they're more efficient, because the extra energy used to circulate the air, will probably outweigh the tiny saving in improved evaporator efficiency.

[tooki]

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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]

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.)

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.

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.)

*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.

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.

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!)

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.

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]

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.

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.

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]

but it certainly would reduce their maximum drop distance, for example.

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.

[tooki]

but it certainly would reduce their maximum drop distance, for example.

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

I suppose that is possible. I’m certainly not an expert on glass.

Either way, can’t you just try to be a tad less pointlessly argumentative?! I mean, come on, you already got a person on the internet to admit they were wrong, can’t that be enough for you?!?

Let’s instead focus again on the person making silly arguments about incandescent lamp design, like how we should just make the filaments way thicker...

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Let’s instead focus again on the person making silly arguments about incandescent lamp design, like how we should just make the filaments way thicker...

Hey -  I resemble that remark!   

[tooki]

[...]
Let’s instead focus again on the person making silly arguments about incandescent lamp design, like how we should just make the filaments way thicker...

Hey -  I resemble that remark!   

::ducks::

No hate intended, just to be clear, just a bit of a collegial hard time. :p

[Zero999]

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.)

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.

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.)

Oh, I can see your point, but other companies don't attract the same level of criticism: why is Apple any different?

*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.

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.

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!)

Yes, the PC I'm currently typing this from was made in 2007. It's an Intel Duo, with 3GB RAM, upgraded from 1GB and a solid state hard drive. It still does all I need, since I don't game, edit videos, or use 3D CAD, I'll keep it, until it breaks, or someone gives me a new one.

I wouldn't consider buying a Mac. They seem overpriced, for what they are.

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.

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.)

The cable I had an issue with was low smoke halogen free. The insulation on the conductors was so soft, I could strip it with my fingernails.

[SilverSolder]

[...] No hate intended, just to be clear, just a bit of a collegial hard time. :p

OK I'll take the bait! 

Where did we get to...

We have established that an incandescent filament gets rid of its heat via radiation (yes, 20% escapes via other means including gas convection, we'll ignore this for now).

All else being equal:

1) Doubling the length of the filament essentially doubles its ability to emit radiation for a given current (think: two bulbs in series with a current source).

2) Doubling the thickness of the filament essentially halves its ability to emit radiation for a given current (think: two bulbs in parallel with a current source).

3) Doubling both the length and the thickness of the filament therefore balances out perfectly (think: four bulbs in series-parallel with a current source).  The 'problem' is that since the same radiation is now coming from 4x the original source area, the intensity (temperature/colour) of the radiation is now 4x lower per bulb... we do get the expected total amount of energy being radiated, but at a lower frequency / longer wavelength, shifted towards red (heat)!


Our ancestors, before the invention of planned obsolescence, came up with the idea of coiling the lamp filament, which reduces its ability to radiate (due to the inside of the coil "containing" the radiation) which means: the coiled filament runs hotter for a given current.  Thus, coiling the filament let them use a thicker, longer wire while still getting a good colour (wavelength) of the emitted radiation.

(Note: Everything here is thinking out loud, for discussion/entertainment purposes, and not statements of fact!)

[tooki]

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.)

Oh, I can see your point, but other companies don't attract the same level of criticism: why is Apple any different?

The media, and most of the computer industry, has always treated Apple differently, mostly because they simply do not understand Apple’s success*. And now that Apple is, and has been for years, one of the most successful and largest companies in history while maintaining industry-leading customer satisfaction (which they also don’t understand*), they know that putting Apple in a headline will get more clicks.


*They cannot wrap their heads around the concept of people willing to spend more (sometimes**) on a better-designed product. They can’t let go of the concept of specs above all else, not understanding that the specs alone don’t tell the whole story, that a product is more than the sum of its parts. And the rest of the industry is salty because they got outperformed by people they perceived as “slackers” or artists, not “proper” engineers.

**Apple refuses to make bargain basement junk, that’s true. But their pricing is largely similar to other high-quality manufacturers. A ThinkPad isn’t any cheaper than a MacBook. And I have literally (literally!!) had people argue with me that Samsung’s most expensive phone was way cheaper than Apple’s most expensive phone, at a point in time where Apple’s most expensive was $999 and Samsung’s was $999. In my world, $999 and $999 are actually the same, but maybe that’s just me... And they wouldn’t budge from their claim even when provided with screenshots of stores that carried both, showing the same price for both! 

[tooki]

*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.

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.

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!)

Yes, the PC I'm currently typing this from was made in 2007. It's an Intel Duo, with 3GB RAM, upgraded from 1GB and a solid state hard drive. It still does all I need, since I don't game, edit videos, or use 3D CAD, I'll keep it, until it breaks, or someone gives me a new one.

And? Still doesn’t answer my question of why you disputed my claim, even though your experience is a perfect example of my claim!

I wouldn't consider buying a Mac. They seem overpriced, for what they are.

Well, “overpriced” is a value judgment, not an objective fact. (When comparing one product vs another from a different vendor.) Clearly, the millions and millions of people that buy Macs do think they’re worth it, or else they wouldn’t buy them!

And as I said, their TCO is actually quite favorable due to the high resale value and low support costs. (Some years ago, when hell froze over and IBM started letting their employees choose whether to be issued a PC or a Mac, they found out that the long term TCO of the Macs was appreciably lower than that of the PCs, because the Macs needed only a small fraction as much support as the PCs. And think about that: that’s the experience of a company that not only invented the IBM PC, but is now specialized in IT consulting. As I said: a product is more than the sum of its parts, and Apple has produced a killer product.)

To be clear: nobody is saying that ONLY Apple makes a good system. Nor is anyone saying that an Apple product is ALWAYS the best fit for a particular purpose or user. What just irritates me is the frequent attitude of “it’s not the right fit for me, therefore anyone who chooses it is an idiot”. :/

[SilverSolder]

[...] What just irritates me is the frequent attitude of “it’s not the right fit for me, therefore anyone who chooses it is an idiot”. :/   

Obviously, it is confusing to some that both minivans and supercharged Mustangs can be called "cars"! 

[Zero999]

*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.

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.

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!)

Yes, the PC I'm currently typing this from was made in 2007. It's an Intel Duo, with 3GB RAM, upgraded from 1GB and a solid state hard drive. It still does all I need, since I don't game, edit videos, or use 3D CAD, I'll keep it, until it breaks, or someone gives me a new one.

And? Still doesn’t answer my question of why you disputed my claim, even though your experience is a perfect example of my claim!

I didn't dispute your claim. You imagined it.

I wouldn't consider buying a Mac. They seem overpriced, for what they are.

Well, “overpriced” is a value judgment, not an objective fact. (When comparing one product vs another from a different vendor.) Clearly, the millions and millions of people that buy Macs do think they’re worth it, or else they wouldn’t buy them!

And as I said, their TCO is actually quite favorable due to the high resale value and low support costs. (Some years ago, when hell froze over and IBM started letting their employees choose whether to be issued a PC or a Mac, they found out that the long term TCO of the Macs was appreciably lower than that of the PCs, because the Macs needed only a small fraction as much support as the PCs. And think about that: that’s the experience of a company that not only invented the IBM PC, but is now specialized in IT consulting. As I said: a product is more than the sum of its parts, and Apple has produced a killer product.)

To be clear: nobody is saying that ONLY Apple makes a good system. Nor is anyone saying that an Apple product is ALWAYS the best fit for a particular purpose or user. What just irritates me is the frequent attitude of “it’s not the right fit for me, therefore anyone who chooses it is an idiot”. :/

I'm neutral on Apple. A friend of mine gave me an old iPhone which I'm extremely grateful for, but I could no way in my right mind justify the cost of a new, or even second hand one. If you like Apple that's fair enough. I put it in the same category as designer labels, expensive cars, with custom number plates, posh frocks etc.

[David Hess]

There is no fan in my refrigerator. The evaporator is in the top of the enclosure and cools by convection. It's much more reliable than a fan. I have seen refrigerators with a fan, but I doubt they're more efficient, because the extra energy used to circulate the air, will probably outweigh the tiny saving in improved evaporator efficiency.

Frost free freezers use forced air convection so require a motor for the evaporator.

[Zero999]

There is no fan in my refrigerator. The evaporator is in the top of the enclosure and cools by convection. It's much more reliable than a fan. I have seen refrigerators with a fan, but I doubt they're more efficient, because the extra energy used to circulate the air, will probably outweigh the tiny saving in improved evaporator efficiency.

Frost free freezers use forced air convection so require a motor for the evaporator.

I don't have a problem with frost in my fanless refrigerator.

My freezer does frost up, but every couple of years, I take all the food out, cover it in bubble wrap and switch it off for an hour or so, with a bucket near the door. The ice quickly melts and can easily be removed using a butter knife. I don't see why anyone would bother with a frost free freezer. Doing this every year or two, is of little inconvenience.

[Zero999]

[...] No hate intended, just to be clear, just a bit of a collegial hard time. :p

OK I'll take the bait! 

Where did we get to...

We have established that an incandescent filament gets rid of its heat via radiation (yes, 20% escapes via other means including gas convection, we'll ignore this for now).

All else being equal:

1) Doubling the length of the filament essentially doubles its ability to emit radiation for a given current (think: two bulbs in series with a current source).

2) Doubling the thickness of the filament essentially halves its ability to emit radiation for a given current (think: two bulbs in parallel with a current source).

3) Doubling both the length and the thickness of the filament therefore balances out perfectly (think: four bulbs in series-parallel with a current source).  The 'problem' is that since the same radiation is now coming from 4x the original source area, the intensity (temperature/colour) of the radiation is now 4x lower per bulb... we do get the expected total amount of energy being radiated, but at a lower frequency / longer wavelength, shifted towards red (heat)!

The filament cools through radiation. The longer and thinner it is, the more it will radiate heat and cool.

Making the filament thicker doesn't drastically reduce the efficiency. It will be more robust, thus should be able to run hotter, given the same life time, although there might be a tiny increase in losses, if it conducts heat back through the electrical connections. In balance, the higher temperature should increase the efficiency.

Yes, it's true that a lower filament temperature is less efficient, as more radiation is in the invisible IR range.

Our ancestors, before the invention of planned obsolescence, came up with the idea of coiling the lamp filament, which reduces its ability to radiate (due to the inside of the coil "containing" the radiation) which means: the coiled filament runs hotter for a given current.  Thus, coiling the filament let them use a thicker, longer wire while still getting a good colour (wavelength) of the emitted radiation.

And that's still how mains powered filament lamps are made.

Lower voltage lamps don't use a coiled, coiled filament, because it's too thick.

One thing to bear in mind is that any light emitted, which hits the filament from neighbouring turns in the coil is not wasted. It prevents that part of the filament from losing heat, thus keeping it hot, enabling it to emit more light.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
One thing to bear in mind is that any light emitted, which hits the filament from neighbouring turns in the coil is not wasted. It prevents that part of the filament from losing heat, thus keeping it hot, enabling it to emit more light.

Exactly - this is the stroke of genius behind the coiled filament: it runs hotter for a given thickness of wire.   So, you can increase the thickness and length a little, which will lower the brightness a little - ending up where we were, but with a thicker filament that will therefore last longer!

The next step in the evolution was never taken by the cartel...  is the coil (or double, triple coil) really the last word in what is possible with this concept?

[tooki]

*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.

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.

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!)

Yes, the PC I'm currently typing this from was made in 2007. It's an Intel Duo, with 3GB RAM, upgraded from 1GB and a solid state hard drive. It still does all I need, since I don't game, edit videos, or use 3D CAD, I'll keep it, until it breaks, or someone gives me a new one.

And? Still doesn’t answer my question of why you disputed my claim, even though your experience is a perfect example of my claim!

I didn't dispute your claim. You imagined it.

No I didn’t, I simply read what you wrote. Ending a reply with “though” means you’re disputing the original statement to some degree.

I wouldn't consider buying a Mac. They seem overpriced, for what they are.

Well, “overpriced” is a value judgment, not an objective fact. (When comparing one product vs another from a different vendor.) Clearly, the millions and millions of people that buy Macs do think they’re worth it, or else they wouldn’t buy them!

And as I said, their TCO is actually quite favorable due to the high resale value and low support costs. (Some years ago, when hell froze over and IBM started letting their employees choose whether to be issued a PC or a Mac, they found out that the long term TCO of the Macs was appreciably lower than that of the PCs, because the Macs needed only a small fraction as much support as the PCs. And think about that: that’s the experience of a company that not only invented the IBM PC, but is now specialized in IT consulting. As I said: a product is more than the sum of its parts, and Apple has produced a killer product.)

To be clear: nobody is saying that ONLY Apple makes a good system. Nor is anyone saying that an Apple product is ALWAYS the best fit for a particular purpose or user. What just irritates me is the frequent attitude of “it’s not the right fit for me, therefore anyone who chooses it is an idiot”. :/

I'm neutral on Apple. A friend of mine gave me an old iPhone which I'm extremely grateful for, but I could no way in my right mind justify the cost of a new, or even second hand one. If you like Apple that's fair enough. I put it in the same category as designer labels, expensive cars, with custom number plates, posh frocks etc.

Except it’s a luxury car costing the same as the leading mainstream brand, since Apple and Samsung cost the same. The iPhone SE I’m using now is a $500 phone whose CPU/GPU performance exceeded any android phone available at any price at the time of release. (So it’s not as though wanting iOS forces you to buy a $1300 phone.) The difference between Apple and designer clothes is that the Apple products still have substance behind them: a $1000 MacBook is demonstrably and substantially superior to a $400 laptop. A $100 t-shirt is not any better made than a $40 one (nor is the $40 one any better than the $15 one).

[JohnnyMalaria]

There is no fan in my refrigerator. The evaporator is in the top of the enclosure and cools by convection. It's much more reliable than a fan. I have seen refrigerators with a fan, but I doubt they're more efficient, because the extra energy used to circulate the air, will probably outweigh the tiny saving in improved evaporator efficiency.

Frost free freezers use forced air convection so require a motor for the evaporator.

I don't have a problem with frost in my fanless refrigerator.

My freezer does frost up, but every couple of years, I take all the food out, cover it in bubble wrap and switch it off for an hour or so, with a bucket near the door. The ice quickly melts and can easily be removed using a butter knife. I don't see why anyone would bother with a frost free freezer. Doing this every year or two, is of little inconvenience.

Ambient humidity plays a role. In spite of the complaints, it never gets that humid in the UK.

[Buriedcode]

One of the problems I see when the phrase planned obsolescence is brought up is the vast difference in the examples.  Light bulbs, cables, tools, laptops etc..   it makes it almsot impossible to compare these.

Different products have different uses, different "duty cycles" (how often does one use/move a USB cable to charge a phone, vs a HDMI cable that sits behind their TV static for years), different enviroments, different operating parameters etc.. Add to this that pretty much all products - save a few niche ones - have markets that cater for a wide range of budgets.  Holding up the most high-end of one products, and comparing it to the absolute lowest is silly.

Example: light bulbs, LED or otherwise..  Outdoors or indoors? mounted down or up? Turned on/off how many times a day?  On for how many hours at a time? Humidity?

Other things can further muddy the waters making such discussions hard to draw conclusions from.
For example: one could assume that generally, with products that have several "teirs" of quality based on price point, the higher the price - the better the "quality" and therefore, presumably the greater the chance of that lasting longer.  But with certain products that are considered high-end (for example, Apple macbooks), they are marketed towards those who have a higher disposable income and are more likely to "upgrade" or obtain the latest gadget, meaning the lifetime of their product - for that particular demographic - can be rather short.    One could easily argue this is planned obsolescence, and perhaps it is, but is it a conspiracy?  The engineers are after-all meeting their spec - which includes the way their consumers will use the product.

Designers could then take this into account and improve functionality at the cost of longevity.  Reducing cost could be done, but then it would no longer be targetting the high-end market.  Lifespan is part of the spec.

And the much greater range of quality we have these days makes many points about "things were made to last" somewhat moot, as there were often very few choices in quality, if at all, so of course there were more products that lasted longer - if half were cheap and failed in a few years, the other half were the "high end" and lasted much longer.

Again I'm not claiming that planned obsolescence isn't a thing, I've no doubt it is - making things last forever isn't a great business model (unless that is the entire point of your product), but it is very difficult to know how much planned obsolescence there is when there's little in the way of similar operating conditions.

[helius]

It has very many convenient fig leaves to hide behind, in other words.
While physical objects are great examples that, well and truly, they don't make them like they used to, the new frontier (for decades already) has been planned software obsolescence. There are many examples in the "Eagle will be part of Fusion360" thread.

[amyk]

I could make the same statement about electronically commutated motors which replaced shaded pole motors in refrigerator evaporators because of EPA requirements.  I have never had one of these shaded pole motors fail, but I have had to replace the electronically commutated motor in my new refrigerator 6 times now in 10 years, and they cost $30 each.

I'm kind of surprised to hear they're THAT bad. Did you look into what actually failed? I've had the shaded pole motors fail before but it was only the bearings. My friend had a fridge in a rental house that would make weird chirping noises, I immediately identified it as bearing failure in the evaporator fan motor but they had no clue what it was.

Bearing wear after a year is insignificant.  The electronics are failing.  The original and all of the replacements except one come from Switzerland but the most recent one, which has lasted the longest so far, was made in China.   

I suspect power surges may be killing them. There's a video about those you might like:

[james_s]

There is no fan in my refrigerator. The evaporator is in the top of the enclosure and cools by convection. It's much more reliable than a fan. I have seen refrigerators with a fan, but I doubt they're more efficient, because the extra energy used to circulate the air, will probably outweigh the tiny saving in improved evaporator efficiency.

Frost free freezers use forced air convection so require a motor for the evaporator.

I don't have a problem with frost in my fanless refrigerator.

My freezer does frost up, but every couple of years, I take all the food out, cover it in bubble wrap and switch it off for an hour or so, with a bucket near the door. The ice quickly melts and can easily be removed using a butter knife. I don't see why anyone would bother with a frost free freezer. Doing this every year or two, is of little inconvenience.

Ambient humidity plays a role. In spite of the complaints, it never gets that humid in the UK.

We have a cabin that is on an ocean inlet and a few years ago the defrost thermostat failed intermittent open so it stopped defrosting. The evaporator froze into a solid block of ice and then without air circulating past the thermostat that controls the fridge temperature that ran constantly until the refrigerator section was frozen and a bunch of cans of soda exploded. I cleaned it all out and thawed the thing and then after only about 3 months it froze into a solid block of ice again and after that I figured out what was going on. In a high humidity environment not having automatic defrost would be a real pain.

[james_s]

Exactly - this is the stroke of genius behind the coiled filament: it runs hotter for a given thickness of wire.   So, you can increase the thickness and length a little, which will lower the brightness a little - ending up where we were, but with a thicker filament that will therefore last longer!

The next step in the evolution was never taken by the cartel...  is the coil (or double, triple coil) really the last word in what is possible with this concept?

The advantage of the coiled coil filament is that it takes a very long filament which would have high thermal losses into a small package that not only has lower thermal losses (which is what you just referred to) but it also enables a much simpler support structure. Early tungsten lamps used a cage filament where it zigzagged up and down between an array of radial support wires at the top and bottom of a stem. Expensive to manufacture, and high losses, not only from the lengthy exposed filament but from the large number of support wires conducting heat away.

The next step in evolution was the IR reflecting coating, it was taken and it did work, but it was too little, too late. Shortly after it was refined into a really good product LED bulbs started dropping in price and it was obvious that tungsten lamps were never going to compete even if massive gains were achieved. Several other innovative lamp types suffered the same fate, Electron Stimulated Emission, essentially a crude flood gun CRT with a lighting phosphor, electrodeless induction, ceramic metal halide and other HID lamps were all displaced.

It's a lot like the way carburetor development pretty much ceased once fuel injection became affordable. It was obvious that no matter how much development went into creating better carburetors they were never going to compete with EFI. Carburetors still have their uses, as do incandescent lamps, but they are no longer mainstream and it is not due to conspiracy but because other technologies offer compelling advantages in mainstream applications.

[james_s]

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 have a lot of light bulbs, including examples of gas filled and vacuum filled lamps of various sizes. The glass envelope is not really any different between them to my eye. It's possible that there are differences but if so I don't think it's significant. Just surviving the bumps from normal handling probably requires more strength than a small vacuum filled bulb holding off the ambient pressure. Something else to consider, the pressure inside a gas filled bulb changes considerably depending on the temperature of the bulb. Putting a burned out bulb in a microwave oven makes a pretty spectacular show from the fill gas ionizing, but don't leave it in there very long or it will explode due to the pressure created inside the bulb by the hot gas.

[David Hess]

I suspect power surges may be killing them. There's a video about those you might like:

That could be.  As I mentioned earlier, LED bulbs have an appallingly short operating life here.

[SilverSolder]

[...] Carburetors still have their uses, as do incandescent lamps, but they are no longer mainstream and it is not due to conspiracy but because other technologies offer compelling advantages in mainstream applications.

That is a good point, and obviously not an example of conspiracy (or, in modern parlance, "antitrust").   I was more thinking, if the cartel hadn't blocked progress at the stage where they thought "good enough to make money, let's shut down competition now", what could the humble light bulb have become before the advent of the LED?

[Zero999]

There is no fan in my refrigerator. The evaporator is in the top of the enclosure and cools by convection. It's much more reliable than a fan. I have seen refrigerators with a fan, but I doubt they're more efficient, because the extra energy used to circulate the air, will probably outweigh the tiny saving in improved evaporator efficiency.

Frost free freezers use forced air convection so require a motor for the evaporator.

I don't have a problem with frost in my fanless refrigerator.

My freezer does frost up, but every couple of years, I take all the food out, cover it in bubble wrap and switch it off for an hour or so, with a bucket near the door. The ice quickly melts and can easily be removed using a butter knife. I don't see why anyone would bother with a frost free freezer. Doing this every year or two, is of little inconvenience.

Ambient humidity plays a role. In spite of the complaints, it never gets that humid in the UK.

I can see how it would be an issue for a freezer, but a refrigerator? The evaporator on my fridge doesn't stay below freezing for long enough to ice over. When the compressor turns off, it thaws, the water drains off through a sump, going to a small tray on top of the compressor, at the back, where it evaporates. If the fridge is icing up, then it will be because the thermostat is set too low.

[madires]

No-frost fridges with fan have also a defrost heater in the evaporator unit plus a defrost sensor (NTC). And if you're lucky your no-frost fridge has a design fault causing the drain to clog up with ice (can be fixed with a piece of aluminum sheet).

[tooki]

For example: one could assume that generally, with products that have several "teirs" of quality based on price point, the higher the price - the better the "quality" and therefore, presumably the greater the chance of that lasting longer.  But with certain products that are considered high-end (for example, Apple macbooks), they are marketed towards those who have a higher disposable income and are more likely to "upgrade" or obtain the latest gadget, meaning the lifetime of their product - for that particular demographic - can be rather short.    One could easily argue this is planned obsolescence, and perhaps it is, but is it a conspiracy?

I think Apple is a spectacularly bad example of the point you’re trying to make. Statistically, Macs are replaced less frequently than PCs, and it’s not as though they’re even that much more expensive than competitor products of similar performance, size, weight, and fit and finish.

A much better example of “expensive but not durable because rich people can afford to replace it more often” is clothing, where there are expensive fabrics that are extremely fragile.

However, even that isn’t planned obsolescence, it’s what I’d call “tolerable fragility”, since it’s fragility tolerated in exchange for some other characteristic, like how a super thin fabric looks, pure exclusivity, etc.

Planned obsolescence means deliberately designing things to last less long than they inherently could. Designing fabrics that are delicate because there’s no way to make them durable (while maintaining other desired characteristics) doesn’t count. Making a laptop without user-replaceable batteries in exchange for extreme thinness doesn’t count.

In other words, design tradeoffs aren’t planned obsolescence.

The other thing people routinely misattribute to planned obsolescence is, well, plain old obsolescence. A computer getting bogged down with new software isn’t planned obsolescence, it’s plain old obsolescence.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Planned obsolescence means deliberately designing things to last less long than they inherently could.

There is something called antitrust or competition laws, where lawmakers have found it necessary to outlaw collusion between "competitors" that silently agree to not compete too hard (for example, by agreeing not to make their products "too good for the price" or, in other words, "too cheap").  Almost like a capitalist version of a trade union!  There are simply some situations that the "free market" can't fix.

[...] Making a laptop without user-replaceable batteries in exchange for extreme thinness doesn’t count.  [...]

I think it should count as planned obsolescence if the manufacturer doesn't offer a thicker alternative - and I think it edges into collusion and anti-competitive behaviour when no manufacturers offer it for love or money, all of a sudden, all at the same time...

The other thing people routinely misattribute to planned obsolescence is, well, plain old obsolescence. A computer getting bogged down with new software isn’t planned obsolescence, it’s plain old obsolescence.

It isn't as cut and dried as that...   it can certainly be planned obsolescence.  The physical equivalent is making a phone with a charge plug that doesn't fit the previous version for no particular reason other than increasing the sales of chargers (which has been made illegal in the EU, I believe).  It is so easy to do the same kind of thing with software - make sure it doesn't run on the old model (and make sure the old stuff doesn't run on the new one) and you'll be good.

Finally,  an examples of some scenarios that definitely don't qualify as planned obsolescence:   you open up a really big graphics project in Photoshop on an older computer, and find it is barely able to cope with the image given its limited resources in terms of memory, CPU, bus, and disk speeds.   Here, I would say that either your PC is obsolete, or, your PC is too slow, but faster/better ones were and are available, but you didn't want to pay for the performance to do what you want to do - so get out and get another one, either way, and don't blame the manufacturer for the scope of your projects growing in size!

[james_s]

The other thing people routinely misattribute to planned obsolescence is, well, plain old obsolescence. A computer getting bogged down with new software isn’t planned obsolescence, it’s plain old obsolescence.

That one is a gray area. My first iPhone (yeah, I know, more Apple, but whatever, it's the phone I had) became unusably slow after various updates to the OS and apps. It didn't DO anything new as far as I could tell, not one of those updates gave me tangible improvements, they were just slower. It has been my experience that they push the OS updates about one version further on old devices than they should and it results in them being very sluggish at that point. Personally I want to buy a phone, set it up with everything I want and then essentially freeze the configuration and use it like that forever. There is so much software (and websites) that are not any more useful than similar stuff 10+ years ago, they're just more bloated and slow. Some of this is "hardware is so powerful now that who cares, we don't need to optimize!" but my cynical side suspects that companies keep adding features of dubious value fully knowing it will make devices slower so people will upgrade to the latest model. PCs became a mature commodity around 10 years ago and the need to upgrade regularly dropped sharply, people interpreted that as the death of the PC but it was really just that nobody needed a new one every year or two anymore. Smartphones and tablets were selling like hotcakes at the time but now those are mature commodities, there is not much the latest model can do that a flagship from 3-4 years ago can't and that period is gradually extending.

[SilverSolder]

The other thing people routinely misattribute to planned obsolescence is, well, plain old obsolescence. A computer getting bogged down with new software isn’t planned obsolescence, it’s plain old obsolescence.

That one is a gray area. My first iPhone (yeah, I know, more Apple, but whatever, it's the phone I had) became unusably slow after various updates to the OS and apps. It didn't DO anything new as far as I could tell, not one of those updates gave me tangible improvements, they were just slower. It has been my experience that they push the OS updates about one version further on old devices than they should and it results in them being very sluggish at that point. Personally I want to buy a phone, set it up with everything I want and then essentially freeze the configuration and use it like that forever. There is so much software (and websites) that are not any more useful than similar stuff 10+ years ago, they're just more bloated and slow. Some of this is "hardware is so powerful now that who cares, we don't need to optimize!" but my cynical side suspects that companies keep adding features of dubious value fully knowing it will make devices slower so people will upgrade to the latest model. PCs became a mature commodity around 10 years ago and the need to upgrade regularly dropped sharply, people interpreted that as the death of the PC but it was really just that nobody needed a new one every year or two anymore. Smartphones and tablets were selling like hotcakes at the time but now those are mature commodities, there is not much the latest model can do that a flagship from 3-4 years ago can't and that period is gradually extending.

Yeah, I've never forgiven Apple for killing my iPhone 4s with their software update.  If it wasn't planned obsolescence, it was incompetence... for letting users upgrade to something that won't work on the hardware.  At least by accusing them of planned obsolescence, we are not insulting their intelligence!

[NiHaoMike]

I could make the same statement about electronically commutated motors which replaced shaded pole motors in refrigerator evaporators because of EPA requirements.  I have never had one of these shaded pole motors fail, but I have had to replace the electronically commutated motor in my new refrigerator 6 times now in 10 years, and they cost $30 each.

Just bodge in a computer type ball bearing fan? Maybe even try with a variable speed fan and see what speed yields the best overall efficiency.

[james_s]

I can see how it would be an issue for a freezer, but a refrigerator? The evaporator on my fridge doesn't stay below freezing for long enough to ice over. When the compressor turns off, it thaws, the water drains off through a sump, going to a small tray on top of the compressor, at the back, where it evaporates. If the fridge is icing up, then it will be because the thermostat is set too low.

There's only one evaporator in the conventional American style frost-free fridge. It's in the back of the freezer behind a cover panel and the fan is in the middle circulating the air. A portion of air is ducted down into the refrigerator compartment to cool that, the thermostat controls the temperature of the refrigerator compartment because that needs to be cold but not quite freezing and the freezer is always much colder due to the evaporator being located there, freezer temperature is less critical as long as it's always below freezing.

This is a picture of the cabin fridge from when I was working on it several years ago, this is the evaporator and fan in the freezer compartment with the cover panel removed. You can see the calrod defrost heater going around the perimeter on 3 sides and the termination thermostat at the top left. This fridge is from the early 70s but I don't think the modern ones are all that different.

[tooki]

[...]
Planned obsolescence means deliberately designing things to last less long than they inherently could.

There is something called antitrust or competition laws, where lawmakers have found it necessary to outlaw collusion between "competitors" that silently agree to not compete too hard (for example, by agreeing not to make their products "too good for the price" or, in other words, "too cheap").  Almost like a capitalist version of a trade union!  There are simply some situations that the "free market" can't fix.

[...] Making a laptop without user-replaceable batteries in exchange for extreme thinness doesn’t count.  [...]

I think it should count as planned obsolescence if the manufacturer doesn't offer a thicker alternative - and I think it edges into collusion and anti-competitive behaviour when no manufacturers offer it for love or money, all of a sudden, all at the same time...

The other thing people routinely misattribute to planned obsolescence is, well, plain old obsolescence. A computer getting bogged down with new software isn’t planned obsolescence, it’s plain old obsolescence.

It isn't as cut and dried as that...   it can certainly be planned obsolescence.  The physical equivalent is making a phone with a charge plug that doesn't fit the previous version for no particular reason other than increasing the sales of chargers (which has been made illegal in the EU, I believe).  It is so easy to do the same kind of thing with software - make sure it doesn't run on the old model (and make sure the old stuff doesn't run on the new one) and you'll be good.

Finally,  an examples of some scenarios that definitely don't qualify as planned obsolescence:   you open up a really big graphics project in Photoshop on an older computer, and find it is barely able to cope with the image given its limited resources in terms of memory, CPU, bus, and disk speeds.   Here, I would say that either your PC is obsolete, or, your PC is too slow, but faster/better ones were and are available, but you didn't want to pay for the performance to do what you want to do - so get out and get another one, either way, and don't blame the manufacturer for the scope of your projects growing in size!

1. Collusion has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Planned obsolescence does not in any way require collusion between competitors.

2. I completely disagree. A company choosing to not make thick, cheap, and heavy laptops doesn’t mean it’s engaging in planned obsolescence!    (Especially not when the company offers battery replacement service, including labor, for the same price as the user-replaceable batteries in prior models.)

3. No, changing a charger plug is not planned obsolescence unless it was done specifically to reduce lifespan, which doesn’t make a damned bit of sense, since a new model using a different plug doesn’t stop your old phone from charging with its existing charger. Don’t conflate this with the EU rule’s reason: it’s to reduce e-waste. (But until last year, yeeeears after that rule went into effect, no manufacturer actually dared do what the law’s actual intent was, which is for manufacturers to stop including a new charger with every new phone.)

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.

Choosing what types of products you sell? Not planned obsolescence.

[james_s]

2. I completely disagree. A company choosing to not make thick, cheap, and heavy laptops doesn’t mean it’s engaging in planned obsolescence!   

There's a lot of middle ground. My Macbook is I think significantly thinner than it needs to be, it's so thin that it is not particularly comfortable to carry and it sacrifices a lot to be that thin. Laptops haven't been what I would consider "heavy" in probably 10 years, unless you look at the gigantic gaming laptops. Anything less than about 3/4" thick is just making a fashion statement IMO. My holy grail laptop would be something in a similar form factor as my X250 in a magnesium housing with a touchpad that has physical buttons below it. Even at 6 years old on the original battery I still get substantially longer run time out of this thing than I do with the Macbook, that thing  can't even make it through an 8 hour work day without plugging it in. The Lenovo keyboard is far superior too, again because it does not make drastic compromises in the quest of unnecessary extreme thinness.

[tooki]

The other thing people routinely misattribute to planned obsolescence is, well, plain old obsolescence. A computer getting bogged down with new software isn’t planned obsolescence, it’s plain old obsolescence.

That one is a gray area. My first iPhone (yeah, I know, more Apple, but whatever, it's the phone I had) became unusably slow after various updates to the OS and apps. It didn't DO anything new as far as I could tell, not one of those updates gave me tangible improvements, they were just slower. It has been my experience that they push the OS updates about one version further on old devices than they should and it results in them being very sluggish at that point. Personally I want to buy a phone, set it up with everything I want and then essentially freeze the configuration and use it like that forever. There is so much software (and websites) that are not any more useful than similar stuff 10+ years ago, they're just more bloated and slow. Some of this is "hardware is so powerful now that who cares, we don't need to optimize!" but my cynical side suspects that companies keep adding features of dubious value fully knowing it will make devices slower so people will upgrade to the latest model. PCs became a mature commodity around 10 years ago and the need to upgrade regularly dropped sharply, people interpreted that as the death of the PC but it was really just that nobody needed a new one every year or two anymore. Smartphones and tablets were selling like hotcakes at the time but now those are mature commodities, there is not much the latest model can do that a flagship from 3-4 years ago can't and that period is gradually extending.

Ah, the “but the new version didn’t add anything!” trope... here’s the thing: we forget as little things get added.

Do I remember which version of Word added a specific feature? Of course not. And unless I happen to be authoring a document that needs that specific feature, I’m unlikely to even notice it’s missing if using a version one or two versions back. But put me on a version that’s many versions back and suddenly I notice there’s a lot missing. I’ll notice that it’s dumber about various behaviors.

I notice the same thing if I go to do something on my old iPhone 4S: there is tons of stuff missing.

Don’t get me wrong, I also hate how a lot of software, and definitely the web (so very much) has gotten slower without adding anything substantial. However, “of no tangible value” is a very loaded claim, because what it really means is “of no tangible value to me”. But just because something isn’t of value to you doesn’t mean it’s not really important to someone else. That’s why, for example, Word is such a beast: it has gazillions of features that most users don’t need, but which are critical to certain users. Years ago, when working on what would become Office 2007, Microsoft used the telemetry from Office 2003 to evaluate the usage patterns of millions of users. What they discovered is that while any given user uses just 20% of the features 80% of the time, the remaining 80% of rarely used features were practically all used regularly. So they couldn’t just say “Nah, nobody uses that anyway” and jettison a feature to streamline the interface.

A ton of the “bloat” in modern software is added abstraction and automation to make it easier to use. For example: Does it add “bloat” to, for example, have code for an email program to auto configure its server settings based on the email address? Yes. But it solves a very real problem, namely, that (speaking from years of experience in tech support) email client setup is one of the most difficult for non-expert users to perform.

I don’t know what version of iOS added automatic background indexing of photos, but goddamned do I love it. (I can type “dog” in the search field and it’ll show me my photos of dogs, without me ever having tagged them.)

I don’t remember which version added the ability for keyboards to allow two autocorrect languages simultaneously (without switching) but that fixed something that had been a thorn in my side the entire time prior.

What about all the code added to support thorough accessibility for the disabled? In iOS, which has very extensive accessibility features (including an entire alternate interaction model for the blind), that cannot be trivial. Does it benefit me directly? No. But it deserves to be there.


I’m writing this on an iPad Air 2, a model introduced in late 2014. It’s running the latest version of iOS, and it only rarely shows its age. (And when it does, it’s mostly in third party apps whose RAM requirements have gotten to the point that this iPad’s memory becomes the constraint.) Yes, there have been some versions of iOS that really did bring their respective minimum hardware to its knees. But they really put a ton of effort into that for many years now, hence this iPad (which is the minimum hardware for the current iPad OS) running very well with it.


There’s a lot I hate about current software and web design, like the giant amounts of whitespace with gigantic text, obliterating the entire point of the big screens we have. (Why have a 27” computer display? Why have a 6.5” phablet screen?) And it annoys the living hell out of me that websites take longer to load now than they did 20 years ago, and that 90% of page load time is ads and tracking, if you don’t use an ad blocker to stop that BS.

But it doesn’t mean all progress, and the costs that comes with it, is pointless.

[tooki]

2. I completely disagree. A company choosing to not make thick, cheap, and heavy laptops doesn’t mean it’s engaging in planned obsolescence!   

There's a lot of middle ground. My Macbook is I think significantly thinner than it needs to be, it's so thin that it is not particularly comfortable to carry and it sacrifices a lot to be that thin. Laptops haven't been what I would consider "heavy" in probably 10 years, unless you look at the gigantic gaming laptops. Anything less than about 3/4" thick is just making a fashion statement IMO. My holy grail laptop would be something in a similar form factor as my X250 in a magnesium housing with a touchpad that has physical buttons below it. Even at 6 years old on the original battery I still get substantially longer run time out of this thing than I do with the Macbook, that thing  can't even make it through an 8 hour work day without plugging it in. The Lenovo keyboard is far superior too, again because it does not make drastic compromises in the quest of unnecessary extreme thinness.

As someone whose back is highly sensitive to weight, to me, the weight of the 13” MacBooks, for example, dropping from ~5lbs to just 3lbs has been a noticeable quality of life improvement. (The thinness also means not having to use a gigantic, heavier backpack to fit it in with other stuff for class or when traveling.)

Again, your argument boils down to “I don’t need it, therefore it’s not actually important”, literally brushing it off as vanity. That common argument that people just buy Apple as a “fashion statement” is IMHO rather callously dismissive of people like me who definitely, categorically do not buy things as fashion statements. I buy them because it’s the better tool for me. And it’s a tool. And since it’s a tool I use a lot, I need it to be the best tool for me.


Now, as someone whose spine issues also cause hand problems which make typing painful, I’m sensitive to keyboards, and in this regard, I’ve been annoyed with Apple for quite some time. I would indeed rather have the machine 2mm thicker in order to accommodate a better keyboard. At least they’re phasing out that butterfly keyboard.

[james_s]

Ah, the “but the new version didn’t add anything!” trope... here’s the thing: we forget as little things get added.

Do I remember which version of Word added a specific feature? Of course not. And unless I happen to be authoring a document that needs that specific feature, I’m unlikely to even notice it’s missing if using a version one or two versions back. But put me on a version that’s many versions back and suddenly I notice there’s a lot missing. I’ll notice that it’s dumber about various behaviors.

I notice the same thing if I go to do something on my old iPhone 4S: there is tons of stuff missing.

But I DO go back to older devices and software pretty frequently and I rarely notice anything missing, except apps I don't have because I didn't install it back when the current version was supported on that OS. Word? I have Word 2003 on my personal laptop and Office 365 on my work laptop and I've never noticed anything missing, except for the ribbon which is something that I would LOVE to get rid of on the newer versions, after years of using it at work I STILL hate the ribbon. Sometimes stuff does get fixed, like when I finally updated to iOS14 it fixed the reminders FINALLY which had been hopelessly broken for several versions but the thing is, reminders worked flawlessly way back in iOS6. Unfortunately it also killed my battery life, I used to easily get through an entire day on iOS10, now it's rare that I don't have to plug it in sometime in the afternoon. And then in the opposite direction, I find things missing on the newer devices because there are so many apps that get abandoned and never updated to run on the later OS and in several cases I've never found a decent replacement.

End result is kind of a wash, sometimes I can run an app that I couldn't run before, though that same app would have probably been just fine if written for the older platform. What usually overshadows that is the apps that used to work just fine which now no longer work. The perception is that iOS upgrades take away functionality, make my device slower and reduce the battery life, while adding very little and most of what it does add is just the ability to run apps that arbitrarily require a newer OS version. It would bother me a lot less if it was possible to roll back, I've been burned multiple times by updates that broke functionality with no way to roll back. That has trained me to go out of my way to avoid updating anything.

[james_s]

Again, your argument boils down to “I don’t need it, therefore it’s not actually important”, literally brushing it off as vanity. That common argument that people just buy Apple as a “fashion statement” is IMHO rather callously dismissive of people like me who definitely, categorically do not buy things as fashion statements. I buy them because it’s the better tool for me. And it’s a tool. And since it’s a tool I use a lot, I need it to be the best tool for me.


Now, as someone whose spine issues also cause hand problems which make typing painful, I’m sensitive to keyboards, and in this regard, I’ve been annoyed with Apple for quite some time. I would indeed rather have the machine 2mm thicker in order to accommodate a better keyboard. At least they’re phasing out that butterfly keyboard.

Again I'll say there is a lot of middle ground between a 10 lb 1.5" thick battleship and a 3/8" (or whatever) thick MBP. Apple has their "Air" models which are sleek and thin, that cater to the crowd that want extreme thinness and portability ad the expense of battery life, cooling, upgradeability, ports, keyboard quality and other sacrifices. The MBP is thinner than it needs to be and sacrifices far too much to achieve that, and I say that as a daily user of one for several years now. If thin was the most important metric I would get one of the Air models, but to call a machine "Pro" while giving it a terrible keyboard, pathetic battery life, ridiculously limited complement of ports, zero upgradeability, cooling that causes it to throttle regularly is kind of ridiculous. I'm not saying they shouldn't make thin lightweight machines but come on, offer at least one model worthy of being called "Pro". Something with enough battery life to get through a full work day or an overseas flight, something with a really good keyboard is suitable for typing big documents or writing code, that isn't too loud to type on while in a remote meeting. Something with sufficient cooling to compile or render something without throttling back.

Obviously not everybody buys Apple products as a fashion statement. I've had iPhones since the 4, before that I had an iPod Nano (1st gen), I bought these devices because after evaluating my choices I decided they offered the best functionality for my needs. I'm not going to pretend though that Apple does not primarily market fashion accessories, and they market those toward wealthy people with money to blow on status symbols. That doesn't mean the products aren't good although most are IMO tuned heavily in that in that direction, and that doesn't mean everyone buys them for those reasons, but that is their target market, there is really no disputing that. Now it seems like everyone else has jumped on that bandwagon, trying to copy Apple and chase after that same high profit market.

[tooki]

Ah, the “but the new version didn’t add anything!” trope... here’s the thing: we forget as little things get added.

Do I remember which version of Word added a specific feature? Of course not. And unless I happen to be authoring a document that needs that specific feature, I’m unlikely to even notice it’s missing if using a version one or two versions back. But put me on a version that’s many versions back and suddenly I notice there’s a lot missing. I’ll notice that it’s dumber about various behaviors.

I notice the same thing if I go to do something on my old iPhone 4S: there is tons of stuff missing.

But I DO go back to older devices and software pretty frequently and I rarely notice anything missing, except apps I don't have because I didn't install it back when the current version was supported on that OS. Word? I have Word 2003 on my personal laptop and Office 365 on my work laptop and I've never noticed anything missing, except for the ribbon which is something that I would LOVE to get rid of on the newer versions, after years of using it at work I STILL hate the ribbon. Sometimes stuff does get fixed, like when I finally updated to iOS14 it fixed the reminders FINALLY which had been hopelessly broken for several versions but the thing is, reminders worked flawlessly way back in iOS6. Unfortunately it also killed my battery life, I used to easily get through an entire day on iOS10, now it's rare that I don't have to plug it in sometime in the afternoon. And then in the opposite direction, I find things missing on the newer devices because there are so many apps that get abandoned and never updated to run on the later OS and in several cases I've never found a decent replacement.

End result is kind of a wash, sometimes I can run an app that I couldn't run before, though that same app would have probably been just fine if written for the older platform. What usually overshadows that is the apps that used to work just fine which now no longer work. The perception is that iOS upgrades take away functionality, make my device slower and reduce the battery life, while adding very little and most of what it does add is just the ability to run apps that arbitrarily require a newer OS version. It would bother me a lot less if it was possible to roll back, I've been burned multiple times by updates that broke functionality with no way to roll back. That has trained me to go out of my way to avoid updating anything.

Well, just because you don’t notice things missing in Word 2003 doesn’t mean I don’t!

Yeah, I’ve been occasionally frustrated by abandoned apps. (In fact, I’m still trying to figure out my migration strategy from Aperture, even though it was officially discontinued in 2015, but was moribund from 2012, when it stopped getting anything but bug fixes.)

As for battery life: in my experience (as an iPhone user since 2007), iOS updates are mostly a red herring regarding battery life: yes, an iOS update that uses more CPU will use more power, but the bigger issue is that that minor increase in load comes at precisely the time the battery is starting to show its age. Especially in the non-plus-size iPhones, where the battery is being pushed to its absolute limits on a daily basis, it’s right around the year mark that the battery has hit its cycle count. And it’s right at the 1 year mark that the new iOS comes out. And to boot, it’s at the end of the year, where it’s cold in many places, which can severely reduce battery performance. (On my 6S with a worn out battery, the battery would plummet from 30% to zero shut down within 5 minutes of taking it out of my pocket and using it outdoors at around 0C ambient.) So add the slight increase in load and the cold, and suddenly the battery performs a lot worse. (I ever so much wish Apple would release an extended-battery compact iPhone version. I don’t need the extreme thinness, and indeed find a naked modern iPhone a bit too thin to grasp comfortably, so a phone with the footprint, thickness, and rounded profile of the original iPhone, with all that space going to triple the battery capacity, would be my choice.)

Now that they’ve added that feature in iOS that mostly keeps the battery charged at 80% until right before you begin your day, I’m curious to see how battery health is at the 1 year mark, which will be the end of June for my SE. iOS reports it as having 90% battery health, which is similar to my 6 and 6S at a year old, but we shall see how it actually behaves.

[tooki]

Again, your argument boils down to “I don’t need it, therefore it’s not actually important”, literally brushing it off as vanity. That common argument that people just buy Apple as a “fashion statement” is IMHO rather callously dismissive of people like me who definitely, categorically do not buy things as fashion statements. I buy them because it’s the better tool for me. And it’s a tool. And since it’s a tool I use a lot, I need it to be the best tool for me.


Now, as someone whose spine issues also cause hand problems which make typing painful, I’m sensitive to keyboards, and in this regard, I’ve been annoyed with Apple for quite some time. I would indeed rather have the machine 2mm thicker in order to accommodate a better keyboard. At least they’re phasing out that butterfly keyboard.

Again I'll say there is a lot of middle ground between a 10 lb 1.5" thick battleship and a 3/8" (or whatever) thick MBP. Apple has their "Air" models which are sleek and thin, that cater to the crowd that want extreme thinness and portability ad the expense of battery life, cooling, upgradeability, ports, keyboard quality and other sacrifices. The MBP is thinner than it needs to be and sacrifices far too much to achieve that, and I say that as a daily user of one for several years now. If thin was the most important metric I would get one of the Air models, but to call a machine "Pro" while giving it a terrible keyboard, pathetic battery life, ridiculously limited complement of ports, zero upgradeability, cooling that causes it to throttle regularly is kind of ridiculous. I'm not saying they shouldn't make thin lightweight machines but come on, offer at least one model worthy of being called "Pro". Something with enough battery life to get through a full work day or an overseas flight, something with a really good keyboard is suitable for typing big documents or writing code, that isn't too loud to type on while in a remote meeting. Something with sufficient cooling to compile or render something without throttling back.

Well, by all accounts, the M1 MacBook Pro delivers the performance, battery life and coolness. (Not cooling but coolness, in that it has one fan which apparently can’t even be heard, without throttling, under maximum load.) I guess since the CPU isn’t burning off tons of energy as heat...

The M1 MacBook Air has no fan at all, and apparently will throttle eventually, but does not get hot.

[Zero999]

But I DO go back to older devices and software pretty frequently and I rarely notice anything missing, except apps I don't have because I didn't install it back when the current version was supported on that OS. Word? I have Word 2003 on my personal laptop and Office 365 on my work laptop and I've never noticed anything missing, except for the ribbon which is something that I would LOVE to get rid of on the newer versions, after years of using it at work I STILL hate the ribbon.

Heck, I could probably go back to MS Office 97 and wouldn't miss any features. I also hate ribbon. It always takes more clicks to perform the same operation. I wish MS would stop butchering the user interface of their applications. They seem to do it to make it appear like they're adding new things to more recent versions, when in reality very little has changed. I find AbiWord and LibraOffice much easier to use. I've even done work at home, in my own time, because my work's PC only has M$ Turd on it, which is too much hassle to use for anything, but simple documents. This was before working from home came in, of course.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
1. Collusion has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Planned obsolescence does not in any way require collusion between competitors.

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? 

2. I completely disagree. A company choosing to not make thick, cheap, and heavy laptops doesn’t mean it’s engaging in planned obsolescence!    (Especially not when the company offers battery replacement service, including labor, for the same price as the user-replaceable batteries in prior models.)

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!

3. No, changing a charger plug is not planned obsolescence unless it was done specifically to reduce lifespan

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.

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.

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... 

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Now that they’ve added that feature in iOS that mostly keeps the battery charged at 80% until right before you begin your day [...]

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]

[...]
Now that they’ve added that feature in iOS that mostly keeps the battery charged at 80% until right before you begin your day [...]

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...

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

[Buriedcode]

...
In other words, design tradeoffs aren’t planned obsolescence.
..

And that was entirely my point.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Now that they’ve added that feature in iOS that mostly keeps the battery charged at 80% until right before you begin your day [...]

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...

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

I have some 10 year old Dells, on steroids with quad cores, 16GB RAM, 2TB SSD, etc.,  that flatly refuse to die or become obsolete! 

But they don't have the battery charging limit feature, so they tend to eat a battery every few years even if the battery is not used much. 

[JohnnyMalaria]

[...]
Now that they’ve added that feature in iOS that mostly keeps the battery charged at 80% until right before you begin your day [...]

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...

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

I have some 10 year old Dells, on steroids with quad cores, 16GB RAM, 2TB SSD, etc.,  that flatly refuse to die or become obsolete! 

But they don't have the battery charging limit feature, so they tend to eat a battery every few years even if the battery is not used much.

At least if they are that old you can readily change the battery (maybe?)

[Zero999]

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 used to like MS Office, before they started messing with the user interface. All versions since 2003 seemed to have gone worse, rather than better. I haven't used 365 yet, but. 2016 is installed om my work's PC and I hate it. I wish I was allowed to install something better. They can't pay me to use it. If I need to do something using a word processor. I go home and do it. I would turn down a job, if it involved using MS Office too much, regardless of the pay. I've used all sorts of spreadsheets and word processors before and they've all been easier to use than the recent MS Office versions, so it's not me struggling to learn new things. It's just really bad.

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... 

I'm glad you had success. I couldn't train my mum to use a computer. She found double clicking hard work and it wasn't obvious to her to pick the mouse up and move it back to the middle of the mouse mat, when it went over the edge.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Now that they’ve added that feature in iOS that mostly keeps the battery charged at 80% until right before you begin your day [...]

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...

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

I have some 10 year old Dells, on steroids with quad cores, 16GB RAM, 2TB SSD, etc.,  that flatly refuse to die or become obsolete! 

But they don't have the battery charging limit feature, so they tend to eat a battery every few years even if the battery is not used much.

At least if they are that old you can readily change the battery (maybe?)

Yes, they are user replaceable.  It is the only real wear item on a laptop, so changing them (something like 5 times now, LOL) means a very long service life.  It also shows how buying the fastest / best configuration can actually pay off in the long run, even if it seems eye bleeding at the time.

We are back to the discussion of whether it is better to buy cheap stuff and replace it often, vs. more expensive stuff that lasts longer.

[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 used to like MS Office, before they started messing with the user interface. All versions since 2003 seemed to have gone worse, rather than better. I haven't used 365 yet, but. 2016 is installed om my work's PC and I hate it. I wish I was allowed to install something better. They can't pay me to use it. If I need to do something using a word processor. I go home and do it. I would turn down a job, if it involved using MS Office too much, regardless of the pay. I've used all sorts of spreadsheets and word processors before and they've all been easier to use than the recent MS Office versions, so it's not me struggling to learn new things. It's just really bad.

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... 

I'm glad you had success. I couldn't train my mum to use a computer. She found double clicking hard work and it wasn't obvious to her to pick the mouse up and move it back to the middle of the mouse mat, when it went over the edge.

Recently, some genius at Microsoft has had the idea of messing with the "Save" dialogs in Office, so you end up clicking a million times on a poorly discoverable user interface just to save a file in a location you want.  I hate it when they try to solve a problem that doesn't need solving.   The "Save" and "Open" dialogs are standardized across Windows for a reason...  a reason that the current team of n00bs appear incapable of grasping:  it means you don't have to learn how to Save a new way in every single application...  we are back to the bad old DOS days with these clowns.

If the "Save" dialog needs improving, do it for the entire OS, FFS.

[james_s]

I used to like MS Office, before they started messing with the user interface. All versions since 2003 seemed to have gone worse, rather than better. I haven't used 365 yet, but. 2016 is installed om my work's PC and I hate it. I wish I was allowed to install something better. They can't pay me to use it. If I need to do something using a word processor. I go home and do it. I would turn down a job, if it involved using MS Office too much, regardless of the pay. I've used all sorts of spreadsheets and word processors before and they've all been easier to use than the recent MS Office versions, so it's not me struggling to learn new things. It's just really bad.

At least the Mac version has retained the menu bar, because Apple mandates it, you can ignore the ribbon and use it more or less the way you're used to. I still have not forgiven them for removing the classic menu on the Windows version. It was already there, it already worked, there was no reason to force the ribbon on everyone and eliminate the menu bar. Especially when the menu bar still has to be developed and tested for the Mac version. Years and years later I still hate the ribbon. People always said I'd get used to it, I never did. It takes up more space and requires more clicks to do anything, I hate it.

[BrokenYugo]

I've always thought whoever pushed for that ribbon crap should have, at minimum, been permanently imprisoned.

Speaking of MS office, software as a service could certainly be argued as a form of genuine planned obsolescence.

[james_s]

I've always thought whoever pushed for that ribbon crap should have, at minimum, been permanently imprisoned.

Speaking of MS office, software as a service could certainly be argued as a form of genuine planned obsolescence.

It was Julie Larson-Green. It was based on "usability studies" which obviously did not include me. I think they focused on non-technical people, at the expense of everyone who knew what they were doing. She was also a major player behind the "Metro" UI concept in Win8. Both total disasters if you ask me.

[JohnnyMalaria]

The vast majority of Office users aren't technical.

[james_s]

The vast majority of Office users aren't technical.

But a lot of them are technical, or at least technical enough to figure out a menu. Adding the ribbon to make it more discoverable was fine, removing the menu was inexcusable.

[SilverSolder]

The funny thing is, the newest version of Office has a "reduced Ribbon" mode that looks a lot like the toolbars we used to have in the older versions...  we have almost come full circle!  (we are just missing the textual menus now.)

[JohnnyMalaria]

My two main gripes with Office 365 are:

1. The File "menu" and trying to defeat automatically saving to OneDrive (rather than the local repository)
2. A general Windows 10 thing - system modal menus hidden behind the desktop. The number of times I've killed an unresponsive Office app in Task Manager only to discover a system modal dialog buried at the bottom of the pile escapes me. More recently, this annoyance occurs with the MS Authenticator for Outlook.

But I can live with the ribbon. It's been there for 14 years...

[SilverSolder]

[...]  A general Windows 10 thing - system modal menus hidden behind the desktop. [...]

Yes, that is incompetence on an intergalactic level...  you feel like the app has frozen, and all that's wrong is that the Windows 10 crew has broken something that worked in Windows v1.0 - makes you wonder about the quality of the code that you can't directly see working...

[jonovid]

planned obsolescence 
I have found that if you run LED at a lower voltage it will quadruple it's life
in a desk lamp that had failing LED's in it's ring after just one year of it's operation
with this mod I see barely any noticeable dimming in its light output on many of my projects

 found this yt video about
Hacking an extra trashy Poundland LED lamp with schematic

this video by show how maybe you can mod a bolb for a longer life!  by a  resistor on its pcb that controls the driver ic

[SilverSolder]

planned obsolescence 
I have found that if you run LED at a lower voltage it will quadruple it's life
in a desk lamp that had failing LED's in it's ring after just one year of it's operation
with this mod I see barely any noticeable dimming in its light output on many of my projects

 found this yt video about
Hacking an extra trashy Poundland LED lamp with schematic

this video by show how maybe you can mod a bolb for a longer life!  by a  resistor on its pcb that controls the driver ic

It is pretty clearly intentionally limiting the life of the "trashy" bulb, compared to the better one.   I really don't understand how people can be so good-hearted as to think planned obsolescence isn't a "thing"...

[james_s]

It is pretty clearly intentionally limiting the life of the "trashy" bulb, compared to the better one.   I really don't understand how people can be so good-hearted as to think planned obsolescence isn't a "thing"...

Because it isn't designed to fail, it's designed to be *cheap* and they don't care if it fails. You don't gain repeat customers by making a product so bad that it fails quickly, but you can pick up a certain market segment by shaving every last fraction of a cent off the cost. Including a timer that causes the lamp to stop working after 10,000 hours would be planned obsolescence. Shaving 3 cents off the cost with the result being a lamp that craps out after 1,000 hours but not caring is just cost cutting.

[NiHaoMike]

The cheaper bulbs would be good for things like closet and refrigerator lighting that is only turned on for short periods of time every once in a while. They won't have time to heat up or even accumulate very many hours of runtime.

[SilverSolder]

It is pretty clearly intentionally limiting the life of the "trashy" bulb, compared to the better one.   I really don't understand how people can be so good-hearted as to think planned obsolescence isn't a "thing"...

Because it isn't designed to fail, it's designed to be *cheap* and they don't care if it fails. You don't gain repeat customers by making a product so bad that it fails quickly, but you can pick up a certain market segment by shaving every last fraction of a cent off the cost. Including a timer that causes the lamp to stop working after 10,000 hours would be planned obsolescence. Shaving 3 cents off the cost with the result being a lamp that craps out after 1,000 hours but not caring is just cost cutting.

I guess this is a matter of definitions to some extent...

To my mind, if you design a product to last 1,000 hours, you have planned its lifetime...   

Sticking with the specific example of these two bulbs:  if the better one lasts 2,000 hours and the cheaper one lasts 1,000 hours...   they both have a planned useful service life, not just the cheaper one!

Perhaps the real question is whether a planned/expected useful service life is the same as planned obsolescence...  and if not, what is the difference?

[madires]

The cheaper bulbs would be good for things like closet and refrigerator lighting that is only turned on for short periods of time every once in a while. They won't have time to heat up or even accumulate very many hours of runtime.

Osram offers special LED bulbs for fridges. Anyhow, they need to be designed for many on/off cycles which is another important parameter.

[andy2000]

I would argue that having a short support period is a form of planned obsolescence.  People are forced to replace rather than repair when parts are no longer available, or when necessary software updates are artificially limited even though the hardware is still capable. 

Apple won't sell parts to end users, and once they decide a product is "end of life" they won't fix it for any price.  Thanks to their "innovative" designs, standard off the shelf parts won't fit, so you have to either replace the product, or find another way (like used, or aftermarket parts).  Based on the high price people are paying for things like used power supplies, people still want to use their older Macs, but Apple would rather sell you a new Mac. 

While Apple is better than many at providing software updates, I am annoyed by how they enforce a hard cutoff for OS upgrades.  They often do this, even when a particular Mac is still technically capable of running the newer OS.  While I'm sure part of this is not wanting to QA against older models, it's still frustrating.  There are workarounds to bypass the model check which can often add years to the useful life.  I would much rather they allowed you to continue at your own risk unless there is a real reason such as missing a required CPU feature, or not enough RAM. 

[james_s]

I guess this is a matter of definitions to some extent...

To my mind, if you design a product to last 1,000 hours, you have planned its lifetime...   

Sticking with the specific example of these two bulbs:  if the better one lasts 2,000 hours and the cheaper one lasts 1,000 hours...   they both have a planned useful service life, not just the cheaper one!

Perhaps the real question is whether a planned/expected useful service life is the same as planned obsolescence...  and if not, what is the difference?

I would argue no, it is not the same. With virtually any consumer product, one of the design parameters is the expected service life, you decide the minimum amount of useful life a product needs to have, and then you engineer the cost down as low as possible without cutting the useful life below that minimum threshold. If it was free to make it last twice as long you're not going to engineer the life to be shorter, but in the real world it is almost never free to make something last longer and cost is absolutely king in the capitalist consumer market. It is the single most important aspect because for better or worse most people shop based primarily on price. Reduce the cost of making something by 1 cent per unit and if you sell millions of units that starts to add up to serious money. Reduce it too far and quality suffers to the point that people stop buying it, but there's a sweet spot where something lasts "long enough" while the cost is as low as it can be without compromising that.

Then there are things like aviation where an airframe is designed to last a specific number of cycles after which it must either be scrapped or extensively overhauled. One could argue that this is planned obsolescence since the number of pressurization cycles before end of life is defined from the start. The goal is not to limit the number of cycles though, the goal is to get the right balance of weight and cost while having an acceptable lifespan during which the chance of catastrophic failure is acceptably low. If they could build a plane that would last twice as long without making it prohibitively heavy or expensive they would, but in the real world engineering is full of compromises. An improvement in one aspect comes with a cost in some other aspect.

[SilverSolder]

I guess this is a matter of definitions to some extent...

To my mind, if you design a product to last 1,000 hours, you have planned its lifetime...   

Sticking with the specific example of these two bulbs:  if the better one lasts 2,000 hours and the cheaper one lasts 1,000 hours...   they both have a planned useful service life, not just the cheaper one!

Perhaps the real question is whether a planned/expected useful service life is the same as planned obsolescence...  and if not, what is the difference?

I would argue no, it is not the same. With virtually any consumer product, one of the design parameters is the expected service life, you decide the minimum amount of useful life a product needs to have, and then you engineer the cost down as low as possible without cutting the useful life below that minimum threshold. If it was free to make it last twice as long you're not going to engineer the life to be shorter, but in the real world it is almost never free to make something last longer and cost is absolutely king in the capitalist consumer market. It is the single most important aspect because for better or worse most people shop based primarily on price. Reduce the cost of making something by 1 cent per unit and if you sell millions of units that starts to add up to serious money. Reduce it too far and quality suffers to the point that people stop buying it, but there's a sweet spot where something lasts "long enough" while the cost is as low as it can be without compromising that.

Then there are things like aviation where an airframe is designed to last a specific number of cycles after which it must either be scrapped or extensively overhauled. One could argue that this is planned obsolescence since the number of pressurization cycles before end of life is defined from the start. The goal is not to limit the number of cycles though, the goal is to get the right balance of weight and cost while having an acceptable lifespan during which the chance of catastrophic failure is acceptably low. If they could build a plane that would last twice as long without making it prohibitively heavy or expensive they would, but in the real world engineering is full of compromises. An improvement in one aspect comes with a cost in some other aspect.

Let's do a thought experiment:   We want to make cheap LED bulbs.  The bulb has an IC that controls the current.  Marketing decides that the cheap bulb should last 500h, and the expensive bulb 2000h.  In Engineering, we work out that the cheapest way to do this overall is to put a run counter in the IC that controls the current, so all the bulbs can be made with the same machines and the same parts, and we prove to the management that we will save money overall by doing it this way.

In another company, they achieve the same results by using a completely different design for the cheap bulb, with terrible quality LEDs - and soon run into problems with some of them failing before the 500h mark while others live far longer - the marketing department is now calling for the resignation of the chief engineer who "just doesn't seem get what we are trying to do"...

Is either or both of these planned obsolescence?  - is the honest "you pay for 500 hours and get 500 hours" better, worse, or no different from "we make garbage lamps and you may get 500 hours, give or take"?  (Edit: Both are of course sold at the same price, which is whatever the market will bear.)

[BrokenYugo]

 I think any functional test for the presence of "planned obsolescence" has to include an intent to deliberately limit a product's lifespan. Engineering choices made that reduce lifespan and have no other plausible explanation. Otherwise everything built to a price point is planned obsolescence, and the term becomes meaningless. 

Like these overdriven led bulbs aren't planned obsolescence, because while you can turn down the current and increase lifespan, you won't be getting 800+ lumens out of it doing that. You can't fit that much led and driver in the requisite A19 shaped package like people want, and have it run cool as would be ideal, and have it be cheap. Making the whole thing a big heatsink would likely require a more expensive isolated driver design, the better higher power ones line the inside with aluminum, but that puts the filter cap in even more of an oven.

As I said near the beginning it's a lot like "entrapment", where (under US law) it only applies if law enforcement convinces someone to commit a crime they would not have otherwise committed. Buying contraband from an undercover cop is not entrapment, being coerced to do so is. The fact that the police were involved, or something was built in such a way it doesn't last forever, is not in and of itself a problem.

[james_s]

The first is planned obsolescence, the second is not. The first is deliberately trying to limit lifespan in order to prevent someone who paid for the cheaper product from using it for a longer period of time than they paid for even if product quality is sufficient to allow it. The second is cutting costs to the bare minimum, while hoping that the vast majority of the bulbs will last at least as long as claimed, they do not care that some last much longer, they already saved the money on the manufacturing end and if some people get some bonus life that reflects positively on the company. If too many people pay for 1000 hours and only get 500 hours that is a disaster, but if 99% of the people who pay for 1000 hours get between 1000 and say 3000 hours you're doing really well. If a large percentage of people who paid for 1000 hours are getting 10,000 hours then you were too conservative in your cost engineering, or you should talk to marketing about increasing the rated life.

A tangent related to lighting, many HID lamps, particularly mercury vapor and metal halide lamps don't really "burn out" like incandescent. Instead the lumen output gradually depreciates over time until they reach a point referred to as L70, which is 70% of initial rated lumens at which point they are considered worn out. Power consumption remains constant or actually increases with many so the result is the lamps become dimmer and less efficient as they age and will often burn out the ballast in the process. Eventually they will fail completely, occasionally, especially in the case of metal halide, that failure comes in the form of a rupture of the pressurized arc tube. In a few cases it gets even more exciting and the rupture shatters the outer envelope spraying out red hot shards of quartz, an event referred to as a "non-passive" failure. The problem is people see a light that is still lighting up and they say it's still good, it hasn't burned out yet! They may claim the advice of replacing these lamps as planned obsolescence because in their mind the lamps haven't burned out yet, nevermind the fact that they are only producing half or less as much light as they are designed to while consuming the full rated power or more, and the risk of a dangerous failure mode is steadily increasing, as is the chance of needing an expensive ballast replacement.

LEDs have pretty much made this moot though, HID is dead for all practical purposes, all development and marketing has ceased and the quality of currently available lamps is dropping.

[SilverSolder]

I think any functional test for the presence of "planned obsolescence" has to include an intent to deliberately limit a product's lifespan. [...]

That seems as good a definition as any, but games can be played with this too...

For example:  is potting a pair of batteries into a set of earbuds "planned obsolescence" when conceivably, the batteries could have been made replaceable?

What would you think of a car where the brake pads were not replaceable, but instead required changing the front suspension?

[BrokenYugo]

I think any functional test for the presence of "planned obsolescence" has to include an intent to deliberately limit a product's lifespan. [...]

That seems as good a definition as any, but games can be played with this too...

For example:  is potting a pair of batteries into a set of earbuds "planned obsolescence" when conceivably, the batteries could have been made replaceable?

What would you think of a car where the brake pads were not replaceable, but instead required changing the front suspension?

Fully potting a set of wireless earbuds increases water resistantance and means you can just shove the biggest lipo pouch possible in there, rather than a smaller lower capacity one in a consumer friendly package. There are fine reasons to do it besides screwing the consumer.

I guess that would count, but it would almost certainly be ineffective and doesn't seem feasible to me. It is not uncommon in automotive to see otherwise serviceable things (like ball joints in the front end) riveted in, you just grind/drill the rivets, pound em out, and bolt the new part in with the included hardware. That's arguably a cost thing though. I can't think of how such a thing would be implemented for brake pads. The way that stuff goes together and works requires a bolted joint somewhere and the pads to more or less float, at most you'd be changing out a whole loaded caliper/bracket assembly, but it wouldn't take long for a workaround to be developed. Something like an aftermarket caliper bracket to use some other caliper and pads from the parts bin. There are companies who primarily exist to develop such improved aftermarket parts.

[james_s]

What would you think of a car where the brake pads were not replaceable, but instead required changing the front suspension?

I would want to know the rationale behind that decision. It would strike me as a very unusual way of getting someone to buy another car from that company so I would start by looking for another explanation, is there something very unique about the design of the front suspension that makes it a consumable wear item? Is it likely to wear out at about the same rate as a set of brake pads? It's hard with a hypothetical situation like this because I've never heard of such a car, but at the same time planned obsolescence wouldn't be my first thought because it would be such an unusual way of going about that.

In my mind "planned obsolescence" is a deliberate attempt at limiting useful lifespan without achieving any savings in cost or improvement in the product. It involves engineering effort specifically for the purpose of causing predictable failure, or making something completely dependent on some outside system despite no real need for that to be, as in the case of some of the cloud based hardware in recent years. In many cases there is a gray area where there is potentially some advantage to the approach they took, but it also results in guaranteed obsolescence. In those cases it may be impossible to know what the true motivation behind it was, and there may have been multiple motivations.

[tooki]

I think any functional test for the presence of "planned obsolescence" has to include an intent to deliberately limit a product's lifespan. Engineering choices made that reduce lifespan and have no other plausible explanation. Otherwise everything built to a price point is planned obsolescence, and the term becomes meaningless.

Yes! This. So much this!

That’s exactly why I say that 99% of the accusations of planned obsolescence actually aren’t: value engineering is not planned obsolescence.

The criterion people forget is that planned obsolescence means artificially reducing a product’s lifespan to less than its inherent lifespan. Engineering tradeoffs do not count!

But indeed, people end up crying “planned obsolescence!” any time they disagree with an engineering decision. It doesn’t matter to them whether they are actually aware of what the actual design rationale was, or if they are aware, they dismiss it. There’s never, ever any “oh, yeah, I guess that does make sense”.

[SilverSolder]

[...] artificially reducing a product’s lifespan to less than its inherent lifespan. [...]

So potting the battery into a laptop, you would call an "Inherent life span" design decision,  i.e. the customer shouldn't have bought it if they didn't think this design was acceptable?

[David Hess]

I could make the same statement about electronically commutated motors which replaced shaded pole motors in refrigerator evaporators because of EPA requirements.  I have never had one of these shaded pole motors fail, but I have had to replace the electronically commutated motor in my new refrigerator 6 times now in 10 years, and they cost $30 each.

Just bodge in a computer type ball bearing fan? Maybe even try with a variable speed fan and see what speed yields the best overall efficiency.

I may just install the old style shaded pole motor next time.

[james_s]

So potting the battery into a laptop, you would call an "Inherent life span" design decision,  i.e. the customer shouldn't have bought it if they didn't think this design was acceptable?

That depends. Was it glued in there in order to make it uneconomical to replace the battery even though it wouldn't have been any harder to make it replaceable? Or is it glued in because it is an effective way of mounting a form-fitted pouch cell in an extremely thin laptop? Personally I care a lot more about having a replaceable battery than I care about a laptop being as thin as possible but a lot of consumers seem to prioritize extremely thin and don't care about user replacement because they'll pay to have it replaced or upgrade to the latest model by then.

So yes, the customer shouldn't have bought it if that design compromise did not fit their needs. Engineering is full of compromise, nothing is free. When it comes to laptops you can optimize for powerful, thin, serviceable, pick any two you want to optimize for, or compromise on a balance somewhere in the middle. I don't care about super thin, so I bought a Lenovo with user replaceable parts but I recognize that many people don't care about that, at all. They want super thin, sleek and sexy, and are willing to forego some other traits.

[BrokenYugo]

Based on how even the high end business class laptops have gone to soldered ram and built in batteries I don't think anyone of any importance (i.e. large customer groups) cares that laptops aren't as user serviceable as they used to be.

[SilverSolder]

The direction things are headed is that you don't really own products any longer...   If you think about a modern electronic product with a potted battery that cannot be replaced when it wears out after 2-3 years, it looks a lot like you are just buying a service for 2-3 years rather than buying something that you can keep for as long as it serves your purposes.

This trend is married with easy monthly payments...  sometimes with cloud service dependencies to keep you in check.  You are literally paying for the service as you go.

I find it difficult to divorce these trends from the concept of "planned obsolescence", although I do appreciate there are subtle differences...   too subtle for me?  After all, the goal of planned obsolescence is the same - keep people coming back, keep them paying at regular intervals - by having the product fail fast, you can keep the payments lower and more acceptable...

As long as all the waste gets efficiently recycled, maybe it isn't a problem?

[tooki]

[...] artificially reducing a product’s lifespan to less than its inherent lifespan. [...]

So potting the battery into a laptop, you would call an "Inherent life span" design decision,  i.e. the customer shouldn't have bought it if they didn't think this design was acceptable?

Since Apple will install a new battery at the same price as they used to charge for a user-replaceable battery, and they do not charge for labor to install it, and this service remains available for the same number of years as user-replaceable batteries were, this is a complete non-argument.

I replaced the battery in my 2012 MacBook Air a year or two ago, just made an appointment, went in, sat around browsing the web on my iPad for half an hour and came out with the new battery installed, plus a free internal cleaning and hinge adjustment. At that point, it’s of zero importance to me whether they’ve used adhesives inside that make the job more difficult for the technician: they can replace it, and do so affordably and quickly.

An artificial lifespan limitation would be something like disabling the battery after a fixed number of charge cycles, regardless of its health.

A built-in battery for the purposes of thinness is a design decision. You can disagree with whether that should be their priority, but it is theirs, and that doesn’t make it planned obsolescence.

[tooki]

Based on how even the high end business class laptops have gone to soldered ram and built in batteries I don't think anyone of any importance (i.e. large customer groups) cares that laptops aren't as user serviceable as they used to be.

Not to mention that laptops were never particularly serviceable to begin with, compared to desktops. So few laptop parts are interchangeable anyway (beyond RAM and storage, and occasionally GPUs) that they may as well be closed boxes anyway.

Another aspect to consider is whether modern laptops actually need as much service as old ones did. Back when I worked as a computer tech, hands down the most commonly replaced component in laptops was hard disks, some as upgrades, many to replace failed or failing drives. But we’ve reached a point where even base models have enough storage for a LOT of applications (especially in business, where data tends to be server based anyway), and SSDs are proving to be much better suited for portable devices, with their inevitable bumps, jostles, and drops.

[james_s]

Another aspect to consider is whether modern laptops actually need as much service as old ones did. Back when I worked as a computer tech, hands down the most commonly replaced component in laptops was hard disks, some as upgrades, many to replace failed or failing drives. But we’ve reached a point where even base models have enough storage for a LOT of applications (especially in business, where data tends to be server based anyway), and SSDs are proving to be much better suited for portable devices, with their inevitable bumps, jostles, and drops.

Hard disks, followed by RAM are the most common parts I've had to replace. Even in modern systems I've had to replace several failed SSDs and at least one RAM module so personally I would not spend my own money on a laptop that had soldered RAM and storage if there was any alternative.

[SilverSolder]

Another aspect to consider is whether modern laptops actually need as much service as old ones did. Back when I worked as a computer tech, hands down the most commonly replaced component in laptops was hard disks, some as upgrades, many to replace failed or failing drives. But we’ve reached a point where even base models have enough storage for a LOT of applications (especially in business, where data tends to be server based anyway), and SSDs are proving to be much better suited for portable devices, with their inevitable bumps, jostles, and drops.

Hard disks, followed by RAM are the most common parts I've had to replace. Even in modern systems I've had to replace several failed SSDs and at least one RAM module so personally I would not spend my own money on a laptop that had soldered RAM and storage if there was any alternative.

Funny you should say this:  today, a friend stopped by with a non-booting Dell laptop that I had helped purchase a while back.  It turned out to have a faulty RAM module.  It took something like 30 seconds to fix with another module that I had laying around -  because this laptop does not have soldered RAMs.   If it had...   it would likely have been junked, because it is too much hassle to replace, even on a cosmetically nice and still completely usable laptop that would still cost a lot to replace with a similar new one (16GB RAM, Quad core, 1TB SSD).

@Tooki,  I think you are giving too much benefit of the doubt to some manufacturers.  Most consumers are not as knowledgeable as the people participating in this thread...  they are going to buy the shiny looking product that they see in the showroom, and assume that it is state of the art and the best available if they pay a lot for it.   Deep down you must know this is true...   just stand in an Apple store for 20 minutes and you will see all the evidence of this that you could ever wish for.  Apple has made the design decisions on their behalf, basically, and you know it!

So the real question is if Apple's decisions/tradeoffs on behalf of their average consumers are reasonable.  I would say that by and large, for the average non-technical consumer, the decisions are indeed reasonable...  not many n00b consumers will be able to keep any portable device working for more than 2-3 years without breaking things on it (ports, screens, wires, covers, etc.) so the idea of removing as much of that as possible and just replacing the whole thing periodically will work fine for those consumers just as much as it does for Apple. They deserve each other, basically! 

If you are a customer for a Dell Precision laptop with a hex core Xeon and 32GB RAM, don't buy a potted tablet and complain that it isn't upgradable or even fixable, or doesn't have enough ports, etc. etc. - the potted device was not made for you.  I get it!  Truly, I do.   But that doesn't mean the potted device was not designed to be semi-disposable!

[amyk]

On the topic of laptop planned obolescence: a post in another thread reminded me of the infamous NEC Tokin "Proadlizer" CPU decoupling capacitor - rated for only 1000h at 105C, and placed right under the hot CPU. A search here and online shows the massive amount of failures that resulted.

[madires]

I think that we interpret too much into 'planned obsolescence'. Are cheap no-name electrolytics planned obsolescence or a way to make the product cheaper or the profit larger? Or was an inexperienced youngster designing the circuit? Or is a greedy assembly house making some extra money by swapping parts with cheap no-name stuff? The result is the same in all cases, i.e. the product breaks early. Is it planned obsolescence only when there was the intention to design the product to fail early?

[SilverSolder]

There isn't 100% agreement on what planned obsolescence actually is, but in order for it to be meaningful it has to involve intention...    like the law:  murder requires an intention / premeditation to kill the victim, otherwise it is called manslaughter (which in turn can be voluntary e.g. heat of the moment crime of passion, or involuntary e.g. reckless driving ending with the death of someone).

Seen in this light, any product that has a "planned" lifetime (e.g. a product with a lithium ion battery that cannot be replaced) is an example of premeditated murder (planned obsolescence).   A murder can take many forms - the victim can be shot, poisoned, stabbed, clubbed, etc. -  in the same way, there are many ways to commit a pre-meditated product murder (planned obsolescence) too.  Then there are the "clever" murderers that get away with a lot of killings before anyone notices or takes offence, and the "dumb" ones that get caught right after their bad deed, and all kinds in between.

Against this, there is the fact that we all die, and all products die too.  One source of confusion is, "what is the expected natural life of a product?".   For cars, we know that all the components are designed for a life of 10 years / 100K miles, and we expect at least minor repairs to start becoming necessary when they get more than about 3 years old.  -  But there is nothing natural about 10 years / 100K miles.  We could have chosen to build cars to a 20 years / 300K miles standard instead.  But no car maker competes by claiming a significantly higher life than the standard figures.  So, arguably, cars are designed with a planned obsolescence life of 10 years.  Moreover, there is "collusion" between the car and component makers that they all build to the same standard.

Obviously if we made cars last 100 years, they would become technologically obsolete and unsafe to drive compared to modern designs.  So you could argue that there is a good reason not to make products last significantly longer than the speed of evolution/improvement in the industry.   -  but even if you (correctly) argue that, we are still talking about "planned" obsolescence!

...

The example of cheap capacitors placed in a hot location were probably "manslaughter", reckless component selection and placement, whoever did the layout/selection were not doing it to a sufficiently professional level.  I doubt that was planned obsolescence, because the "murder" was simply so badly executed! 

[tooki]

@Tooki,  I think you are giving too much benefit of the doubt to some manufacturers.  Most consumers are not as knowledgeable as the people participating in this thread...  they are going to buy the shiny looking product that they see in the showroom, and assume that it is state of the art and the best available if they pay a lot for it.   Deep down you must know this is true...   just stand in an Apple store for 20 minutes and you will see all the evidence of this that you could ever wish for. 

Huh, funny you mention that, with the tone implying I know nothing about retail customers... I worked in sales at the fruit stand, so [runs numbers] I’ve spent about 200,000 minutes at Apple Stores interacting with customers who were interested in buying. And I can say with absolute certainty that most customers aren’t there because of “ooh shiny”, but because their friends who switched have told them “I’ve been way happier with a Mac than with a PC”, that it’s worth the slightly higher upfront cost in order to have something that gives them less grief. Most customers are price sensitive, and definitely do not want to spend any more than they have to. (The exceptions are so rare they’re quite memorable.)

Apple has made the design decisions on their behalf, basically, and you know it!

You say that as if that were a bad thing! Of course they do, every manufacturer does! It’s their job. A mass-market manufacturer can’t expect its customers to be engineers. Many of the usability problems in Windows (and the Windows ecosystem) boil down to Microsoft (and those who follow their ethos) not having the balls to make a lot of design decisions, so they force end users (most of whom are technically clueless) to make them instead.

So the real question is if Apple's decisions/tradeoffs on behalf of their average consumers are reasonable.  I would say that by and large, for the average non-technical consumer, the decisions are indeed reasonable...  not many n00b consumers will be able to keep any portable device working for more than 2-3 years without breaking things on it (ports, screens, wires, covers, etc.) so the idea of removing as much of that as possible and just replacing the whole thing periodically will work fine for those consumers just as much as it does for Apple. They deserve each other, basically! 

Well, more like 3-4 years on average for business users and 4-5 years average for home users, but yeah: by and large, Apple products will work for (and beyond) their full lifetime without trouble, and if trouble arises, Apple really is good about dealing with it. (The horror stories, while sadly a nonzero number, are wildly outnumbered by the success stories that never make the news. Apple could not sustain its pricing if its product reliability and after-sales support were subpar.)

Businesses are, in my experience, no less likely to replace whole systems (as opposed to upgrading) than consumers. If anything, businesses often have fixed replacement cycles that preclude upgrades, and happen whether the machines need replacing or not. (Many businesses simply lease, so as to turn computer purchasing into a fixed expense.)

The fact is, while people like you and me like to swap out parts and peripherals freely, the vast majority of users do not. Like when people complain of how silly all-in-one desktops are, since you can’t replace the computer without replacing the screen, but the fact is, by the time the iMac came around, the overwhelming share of computers were sold with an included display, so people replaced the whole system (including display) even though they absolutely could have kept using the old one in theory.

If you are a customer for a Dell Precision laptop with a hex core Xeon and 32GB RAM, don't buy a potted tablet and complain that it isn't upgradable or even fixable, or doesn't have enough ports, etc. etc. - the potted device was not made for you.  I get it!  Truly, I do.

But that doesn't mean the potted device was not designed to be semi-disposable!

Aside from that they’re not potted... what consumer gadget isn’t designed to be semi-disposable?!? Pretty much the only place where true long-term serviceability is a primary design concern is industrial and commercial machinery, where the device is expected to have a long service life with high reliability under heavy usage. But you pay for that up front, without even including the cost of said maintenance and repair. That’s why a consumer washing machine costs 1/8-1/4 of the price of a commercial one with the same specs.

It’s simply unreasonable to expect products to be built with the precision and repairability of a commercial jet airplane, but be priced like a paper plane. Yet that’s what consumers do, and then whine that their sleek, objectively insanely-cheap-for-what-it-is doodad cut some corners that impact its repairability. (I mean, objectively speaking, it’s insane how much computing technology we get for the price, considering the nutso crazy amounts of precision manufacturing that goes into them.)

So instead, we design things to be as cheap to manufacture as possible, while still being able to exceed the expected lifetime of the product. For example, there’s no point in designing a cellphone to last 10 years when we know that the average phone is replaced after, say, 2 years even though it’s still working fine. (Before smartphones took off, it was actually an industry average of just 18 months!) So you design it such that the overwhelming majority of failures occur after the 2 years, because warranty fulfillment is very expensive. Some will still fail sooner, but many more will far outlive the required 2 years. But there’s certainly no point in increasing the manufacturing cost (and thus product price) to target 10 year reliability, since statistically, that extra 8 years simply goes unused.

[tooki]

I think that we interpret too much into 'planned obsolescence'. Are cheap no-name electrolytics planned obsolescence or a way to make the product cheaper or the profit larger? Or was an inexperienced youngster designing the circuit? Or is a greedy assembly house making some extra money by swapping parts with cheap no-name stuff? The result is the same in all cases, i.e. the product breaks early. Is it planned obsolescence only when there was the intention to design the product to fail early?

Yes, absolutely. Hence why it’s called planned obsolescence. It boggles my mind that people can’t understand this distinction.

[tooki]

There isn't 100% agreement on what planned obsolescence actually is, but in order for it to be meaningful it has to involve intention...    like the law:  murder requires an intention / premeditation to kill the victim, otherwise it is called manslaughter (which in turn can be voluntary e.g. heat of the moment crime of passion, or involuntary e.g. reckless driving ending with the death of someone).

Exactly.

Seen in this light, any product that has a "planned" lifetime (e.g. a product with a lithium ion battery that cannot be replaced) is an example of premeditated murder (planned obsolescence).   A murder can take many forms - the victim can be shot, poisoned, stabbed, clubbed, etc. -  in the same way, there are many ways to commit a pre-meditated product murder (planned obsolescence) too.  Then there are the "clever" murderers that get away with a lot of killings before anyone notices or takes offence, and the "dumb" ones that get caught right after their bad deed, and all kinds in between.

Ehhhh, no. A battery that can’t be replaced is where you expect the device to be gone sooner anyway. A human death analogy might be that someone starves to death because your ship ran out of food after 6 months at sea, even though the trip was only scheduled to last 3 months.

Against this, there is the fact that we all die, and all products die too.  One source of confusion is, "what is the expected natural life of a product?".   For cars, we know that all the components are designed for a life of 10 years / 100K miles, and we expect at least minor repairs to start becoming necessary when they get more than about 3 years old.  -  But there is nothing natural about 10 years / 100K miles.  We could have chosen to build cars to a 20 years / 300K miles standard instead.  But no car maker competes by claiming a significantly higher life than the standard figures.  So, arguably, cars are designed with a planned obsolescence life of 10 years.

Definitely not planned obsolescence. Not to mention being a terrible example, since the reliability and useful lifespans of cars have improved dramatically over the years. Reliability absolutely is one of the things car manufacturers boast about. (Less so now that the overall reliability has improved so much.)

Like... it used to be that a car was junk by 100K miles: the engine was shot, the body was rusted out, etc. Nowadays, rusting is practically never the reason for scrapping a car. Engines last far longer, and do so while requiring oil changes 1/3 as frequently. At the same time, fuel efficiency is higher, we have more creature comforts, and crash safety has dramatically improved.

Oh, and warranties are longer than they used to be.

Is 10 years the target lifespan? Probably. But they certainly aren’t taking parts that would last 20 or 30 years and then strategically weakening them to fail at 10 years.

Moreover, there is "collusion" between the car and component makers that they all build to the same standard.

It’s “collusion” for car manufacturers to adhere to the same regulatory standards? It’s “collusion” for a car manufacturer to specify how they want their parts made? 

Obviously if we made cars last 100 years, they would become technologically obsolete and unsafe to drive compared to modern designs.  So you could argue that there is a good reason not to make products last significantly longer than the speed of evolution/improvement in the industry.

Right!

but even if you (correctly) argue that, we are still talking about "planned" obsolescence!

No, then it definitely isn’t! The obsolescence is clearly external, you literally listed the externalities!!
This is literally my point from above: “ordinary” obsolescence absolutely does not count as planned obsolescence.

Again: If we know that the planned voyage is 3 months, why would you pack the ship with enough food for a year? Sure, you pack some extra, perhaps for 6 months. But there’s simply no point in packing more, as it simply won’t get eaten.

[tom66]

For car makers, one of the most important factors in their business is the value of their used vehicles.

Why?  Because this determines how much they can charge for leases.  All lease vehicles get sent to auction at the end of their lease, and it is the (cost of manufacture - used sale price + interest) that determines how much they can lease their vehicles for.  The sale of a used vehicle is based on how the market feels it is worth, and reliability factors into that. People would not pay as much for a second-hand vehicle if parts availability, serviceability and reliability were poor.

About 50% of cars sold nowadays are leased, for some it's an attractive way to own an expensive or new vehicle, for others it's just for vanity.

So you can get a rough idea for how people view vehicle reliability by looking at the price of a used vehicle. A 10-year-old Peugeot will cost about £4,000, whereas an equivalent Volkswagen will set you back about £10,000.  This means despite a higher manufacturing cost, VW can lease their cars for a comparable rate to that of PSA.

I also suspect this is one reason car manufacturers have been reluctant to start making EVs en-masse -- battery reliability is very difficult to get right.  Nissan's approach with the Leaf was tragic.  Kia/Hyundai have a billion-dollar recall due to battery fires during fast charging.  Tesla have capped charging and capacity limits for old Model S's.  All of these things represent liabilities and reduction in long term residual value, which affects their ability to lease vehicles.  The leasing companies are essentially hedging the market, following trends and estimating the future residual values for cars that haven't even left the factory yet.  So there is a strong incentive for manufacturers to improve quality & reliability, and batteries will form part of that. 

[madires]

Is 10 years the target lifespan? Probably. But they certainly aren’t taking parts that would last 20 or 30 years and then strategically weakening them to fail at 10 years.

They do it in a little bit different way. Let's say a car running on gasoline lasts 250,000 km on average. So it doesn't make sense to put unnecessarily expensive parts which last much longer into that car. So the engineers are looking for alternative solutions which are cheaper to produce and last 250,000 km. More profit for the car manufacturer.

[SilverSolder]

[...] I worked in sales at the fruit stand, so [runs numbers] I’ve spent about 200,000 minutes at Apple Stores interacting with customers

That might explain a lot! 

[...] Businesses are, in my experience, no less likely to replace whole systems (as opposed to upgrading) than consumers. If anything, businesses often have fixed replacement cycles that preclude upgrades, and happen whether the machines need replacing or not. [...]

Back in the early days of the PC revolution, I worked as the IT manager for a well known corporation, which shall remain nameless to protect the innocent...

I implemented a clear "planned obsolescence" policy of replacing 1/3 of the company's PCs every year, with the idea being that no PC ever got to be more than 3 years old.  Back then, the speed of evolution in the space was so fast that 3 years was actually too long, but the oldest/slowest machines were always usable in some situations (typically, senior executives that were totally computer illiterate in those days, but liked the status of having a PC on their desks - they never knew the difference!).

At the end of the 3 years, I'd auction off the old PCs to staff, who lapped them up - it became an annual event in the company canteen! 

Today, things are a lot more uptight, of course, and I doubt I'd get away with this approach...

[...] what consumer gadget isn’t designed to be semi-disposable?!?  [...]

In the past, consumer items were actually often designed to be very durable,  like the 1971 Maytag clothes dryer that's still doing our family laundry after what...  50 years now? (It was standing in the house when we got it, abandoned by the previous owners.  I tried turning it on, it ran perfectly, so I decided - why not keep it?).  Hey, it is a round birthday this year!  It even measures the resistance of the clothes inside the drum to know that the humidity has dropped far enough to know to shut down automatically, based on what it senses!  Pretty hi-tech for 1971...  and it still works!

This thing is built of solid materials - a fairly serious gauge of sheet metal,  the bearings are big and over-dimensioned for the job, the motor is larger than it needs to be for its power output, the resistive heating element is bigger than it needs to be, etc. etc. etc. -  it all adds up to something that "just works" for 50 years, and ends up costing the consumer almost nothing to own per month.

It is just a completely different philosophy to modern products, it is so far away from modern products that it is probably difficult for a younger person to even imagine it today.  Back then, you expected a fridge, washer, dryer, freezer, whatever, to last at least 20 years and hopefully more....    today, not so much! 

[...] any product that has a "planned" lifetime (e.g. a product with a lithium ion battery that cannot be replaced) is an example of premeditated murder (planned obsolescence).

Ehhhh, no. A battery that can’t be replaced is where you expect the device to be gone sooner anyway. A human death analogy might be that someone starves to death because your ship ran out of food after 6 months at sea, even though the trip was only scheduled to last 3 months.

For products that people throw out for other reasons than the battery dying, I would agree...  but what if the battery dying is the reason it gets thrown out?   

My phone (a Galaxy S5) is on its 5:th replacement battery (so far!).  The battery is a wear item that gets replaced when it gets worn, which takes me less than 2 years, typically (constant heavy use, phone gets hot, etc. etc.).  Other than the batteries wearing out, nothing else on the phone shows any signs of wear, it runs the apps I want at an "OK" speed...  so, how high on my list of priorities should a new phone be?   The day I get so old that I can't think of something more fun to spend my $$$ on than upgrading a phone that doesn't need upgrading, I will volunteer for euthanasia! 

Like... it used to be that a car was junk by 100K miles [...] Is 10 years the target lifespan? Probably. But they certainly aren’t taking parts that would last 20 or 30 years and then strategically weakening them to fail at 10 years.

At one point in my professional life, I worked in the automotive industry - as QA manager for a major component/subsystems maker.  Granted, this is long ago now, but things change very slowly in the auto industry.  Basically, all components are specced for a 10 year, 100K mile life, no matter who manufactures them.  No car maker uses a different spec.  If the car maker has to remove a component that has failed in service before its contractual expected life span, it is the component maker that has to "eat it", including the labour costs for replacing it...   so, QA gets taken very seriously and is a pretty exact science.

The way it plays out is that everything gets engineered to last the required time, but no more.  For example, metal components get subjected to salt spray tests to see how fast they corrode.  The thickness of the anti-corrosive coating is related to cost...  so the plating is applied only exactly as thick as needed to pass the tests...  and no thicker.   The same philosophy applies to every other design and manufacturing decision.

So you see how we don't actually take "good" parts and strategically weaken them -  what we do is make "good" parts that last exactly as long as they should, under the worst case use conditions specified by the customer (the car manufacturer).

What then happens in the real world is that our highly optimized 10 year life parts can last a lot longer if the operating conditions are more benign than the worst case they were designed for.  So, you can make a car last much longer than the 100,000 mile spec if adult driven and well taken care of, in a benign climate.  But in the worst case specified conditions - 10 years is all you can expect.

Moving on from how good engineers are at hitting a lifetime target (very good!), we also have the policies of the automakers, for example, they will rarely stock spare parts for much longer than 10 years - the best ones do 15 years, depending on the popularity of the model in question.  So, at some point, even a perfectly preserved car becomes literally obsolete due to no spares being available any longer...

Seen in the bigger picture, the whole concept of planned obsolescence is not actually evil.  It is always going to be a matter of striking a good balance overall, and how to strike that balance is worth a whole bunch of posts on its own...  this one is already long enough! 

[james_s]

Is 10 years the target lifespan? Probably. But they certainly aren’t taking parts that would last 20 or 30 years and then strategically weakening them to fail at 10 years.

They do it in a little bit different way. Let's say a car running on gasoline lasts 250,000 km on average. So it doesn't make sense to put unnecessarily expensive parts which last much longer into that car. So the engineers are looking for alternative solutions which are cheaper to produce and last 250,000 km. More profit for the car manufacturer.

A car can last a very long time if you take care of it though, these days even a lot of cheap cars will last. The key is *IF* you take care of them, which most people don't. I'm consistently shocked at the number of <5 year old cars I see that are filthy, banged up, something gets broken or damaged and the owner just leaves it like that because "it's only cosmetic" or whatever and pretty soon the whole car looks like a piece of crap.

My Volvo 740 is 31 years old and is the newest car I've ever owned. It has 268k miles on it, runs strong and still looks good inside and out. Prior to this I had a 1987 model that had 330k on it and other than a spot where the clearcoat was beginning to fail it still looked good when a semi truck rear ended me and totaled it. Keep the oil changed and more importantly make sure there's always oil in there, change the other fluids and wear items on a reasonable schedule and fix minor problems before they become big problems and you can drive the same car for 15, 20 or even more years without resorting to heroics.

[james_s]

In the past, consumer items were actually often designed to be very durable,  like the 1971 Maytag clothes dryer that's still doing our family laundry after what...  50 years now? (It was standing in the house when we got it, abandoned by the previous owners.  I tried turning it on, it ran perfectly, so I decided - why not keep it?).  Hey, it is a round birthday this year!  It even measures the resistance of the clothes inside the drum to know that the humidity has dropped far enough to know to shut down automatically, based on what it senses!  Pretty hi-tech for 1971...  and it still works!

This thing is built of solid materials - a fairly serious gauge of sheet metal,  the bearings are big and over-dimensioned for the job, the motor is larger than it needs to be for its power output, the resistive heating element is bigger than it needs to be, etc. etc. etc. -  it all adds up to something that "just works" for 50 years, and ends up costing the consumer almost nothing to own per month.

It is just a completely different philosophy to modern products, it is so far away from modern products that it is probably difficult for a younger person to even imagine it today.  Back then, you expected a fridge, washer, dryer, freezer, whatever, to last at least 20 years and hopefully more....    today, not so much! 

They were built much better back then, and they cost a LOT more. Being a substantial investment, people expected them to last a long time and paid to have them repaired when they broke. I was going through some boxes of paperwork recently and found the receipt for the 25" console TV my grandfather purchased in 1983. It was a floor model so he got $100 off but after tax and delivery and all that it was still almost $800 and that was a lot of money back then. I don't know how much a washing machine cost in 1971 but I bet if you adjusted for inflation it would be at least twice what a typical one costs today. It would last a lot longer and be more repairable, but put it side by side with a modern looking thing that has trendy styling, a touchscreen, WiFi, all that garbage consumers go nuts for and costs half as much and guess which one at least 9 out of 10 people are going to buy? People vote with their wallets and they have consistently voted for cheap over long lived and serviceable.

[tom66]

They were built much better back then, and they cost a LOT more. Being a substantial investment, people expected them to last a long time and paid to have them repaired when they broke. I was going through some boxes of paperwork recently and found the receipt for the 25" console TV my grandfather purchased in 1983. It was a floor model so he got $100 off but after tax and delivery and all that it was still almost $800 and that was a lot of money back then. I don't know how much a washing machine cost in 1971 but I bet if you adjusted for inflation it would be at least twice what a typical one costs today. It would last a lot longer and be more repairable, but put it side by side with a modern looking thing that has trendy styling, a touchscreen, WiFi, all that garbage consumers go nuts for and costs half as much and guess which one at least 9 out of 10 people are going to buy? People vote with their wallets and they have consistently voted for cheap over long lived and serviceable.

I find modern washing machines to be easier to service.

They use mostly off-the-shelf parts which can be acquired for very little.  My mother's washing machine had its door lock fail recently.  A replacement was sourced for about £10 delivered next day.  It wasn't the easiest thing to replace,  but took only half an hour.  Similarly, I repaired our ice-maker.  The tray motor had failed - it was just a microwave turntable motor. Again, a pain to get out,  but once fitted back up and running.

If anything, the commoditisation of these components makes them *more* repairable, not less.

[Miyuki]

In the past, consumer items were actually often designed to be very durable,  like the 1971 Maytag clothes dryer that's still doing our family laundry after what...  50 years now? (It was standing in the house when we got it, abandoned by the previous owners.  I tried turning it on, it ran perfectly, so I decided - why not keep it?).  Hey, it is a round birthday this year!  It even measures the resistance of the clothes inside the drum to know that the humidity has dropped far enough to know to shut down automatically, based on what it senses!  Pretty hi-tech for 1971...  and it still works!

This thing is built of solid materials - a fairly serious gauge of sheet metal,  the bearings are big and over-dimensioned for the job, the motor is larger than it needs to be for its power output, the resistive heating element is bigger than it needs to be, etc. etc. etc. -  it all adds up to something that "just works" for 50 years, and ends up costing the consumer almost nothing to own per month.

It is just a completely different philosophy to modern products, it is so far away from modern products that it is probably difficult for a younger person to even imagine it today.  Back then, you expected a fridge, washer, dryer, freezer, whatever, to last at least 20 years and hopefully more....    today, not so much! 

They were built much better back then, and they cost a LOT more. Being a substantial investment, people expected them to last a long time and paid to have them repaired when they broke. I was going through some boxes of paperwork recently and found the receipt for the 25" console TV my grandfather purchased in 1983. It was a floor model so he got $100 off but after tax and delivery and all that it was still almost $800 and that was a lot of money back then. I don't know how much a washing machine cost in 1971 but I bet if you adjusted for inflation it would be at least twice what a typical one costs today. It would last a lot longer and be more repairable, but put it side by side with a modern looking thing that has trendy styling, a touchscreen, WiFi, all that garbage consumers go nuts for and costs half as much and guess which one at least 9 out of 10 people are going to buy? People vote with their wallets and they have consistently voted for cheap over long lived and serviceable.

Exactly appliances used to cost a fortune back then plus the efficiency increases
Just recently I was replacing the dryer and washing machine a little over 20 years old
Both new has 10 years warranty and I don't see a reason it won't work again 20 years
And of course, both have much lower consumption

Same with the fridge. I think it will be about that 20 years soon and still works just make weird noises from time to time and have little rust at the bottom part. But again New unit will be more efficient. Just look what fridge used to take like 40 years ago. Some of them might still work. But the new unit will easy pays itself in electricity consumtyion.

Same with the car. Also about 20 years. So is it a coincidence or just natural evolution 
It still somehow runs without big maintenance and I will keep it "until the wheels fall off", even automatic gearbox still shifts 
It is noisy, everything rattles and produce a terrible smell. But I can leave it anywhere even with keys in and no need to worry about it.
A newer car will be much more comfortable, safer, and cleaner.
Fuel consumption will be more or less equal as new cars trade fuel efficiency for lower emissions. (With diesel engines. Gasoline ones have lower consumption)

So I can see most things are engineered to about 10 years of useful life and 20 years to fall apart. But after that time everything evolved significantly.

Like with computers or any electronics after 10 years it will work and might be okay. After 20 years it still might work but won't be nice to use compared to the modern equivalent.
//edit: like trying to read this post on 20 year old computer 

[SilverSolder]

[...]
If anything, the commoditisation of these components makes them *more* repairable, not less.

There is still a difference between a product engineered for a 10 year life, and one engineered for a 25 year one.

According to a service technician that came to look at our fridge:

1) A fridge compressor used to come with a 10 year or more warranty.  Now they come with a 1 year warranty, so are they worth the effort to replace compared with just buying another fridge?

2) It used to be possible to change evaporators, condensers, etc., if they leaked.  Now they are so integrated ('potted') in the design that if they go, the amount of labour to change them can be crazy high -  again, is it worth it compared to just buying another fridge?

[james_s]

Technically it was possible to replace an evaporator or condenser, but I have never heard of somebody doing that with a domestic fridge. The vast majority of refrigerator problems have nothing to do with the hermetic system.

[BrokenYugo]

Yeah, they started embedding the condenser under the outer skin of consumer fridges and frezers decades ago. Seems problems in the electrical system (defrost or the thermostat) are usually what kills them anyway, or just general wear tear and filth triggers replacement.

I find techs in general are often the last people you want to ask about opinions on the design history of stuff, their main interest is making their job easier. That's not necessarily a consumer friendly bias. They often figure the older model as better, because they already knew all the common faults and procedural shortcuts for the old model.

[SilverSolder]

Yeah, they started embedding the condenser under the outer skin of consumer fridges and frezers decades ago. Seems problems in the electrical system (defrost or the thermostat) are usually what kills them anyway, or just general wear tear and filth triggers replacement.

I find techs in general are often the last people you want to ask about opinions on the design history of stuff, their main interest is making their job easier. That's not necessarily a consumer friendly bias. They often figure the older model as better, because they already knew all the common faults and procedural shortcuts for the old model.

They also know which models cause problems, and which are reliable...

E.g. the technicians that service the 40 year old furnace in this house, all unanimously say "Don't change it...  it will outlast anything new you put in its place"....  This is something like five different men, over the years, all with the same opinion about this brand of furnace.  You'd kind of have to take their views into account, it seems to me.  Certainly, I do.

[SilverSolder]

Technically it was possible to replace an evaporator or condenser, but I have never heard of somebody doing that with a domestic fridge. The vast majority of refrigerator problems have nothing to do with the hermetic system.

I think the issue in this case, was that he was worried that a bad compressor had spewed metal particles all over the place.

With the fridge declared uneconomical to repair, I had a go myself and changed the SSR that powers the compressor...   - the fridge is still working fine today!

[james_s]

I think the issue in this case, was that he was worried that a bad compressor had spewed metal particles all over the place.

With the fridge declared uneconomical to repair, I had a go myself and changed the SSR that powers the compressor...   - the fridge is still working fine today!

Well that's just faulty diagnosis. It makes no difference whether those components can be replaced if there isn't anything wrong with them. Any fault in the hermetic system normally means a refrigerator is uneconomical to repair. Fortunately only a very small percentage of real world faults have anything to do with that. The closest it gets is usually a failed PTC starter.

[SilverSolder]

I think the issue in this case, was that he was worried that a bad compressor had spewed metal particles all over the place.

With the fridge declared uneconomical to repair, I had a go myself and changed the SSR that powers the compressor...   - the fridge is still working fine today!

Well that's just faulty diagnosis. It makes no difference whether those components can be replaced if there isn't anything wrong with them. Any fault in the hermetic system normally means a refrigerator is uneconomical to repair. Fortunately only a very small percentage of real world faults have anything to do with that. The closest it gets is usually a failed PTC starter.

In defense of the technician, he did change the SSR but when it still didn't work after that, he concluded there was something wrong with the compressor.  Being a cynical believer in planned obsolescence, I didn't trust that the component was any good out of the box (an extreme form of planned obsolescence!) - and that turned out to be true! 

[tom66]

I've never had a fridge die from a condenser or evaporator leak, or any kind of refrigeration leak.  I'm sure this would be considered a more serious concern if fridges did this because the gases inside fridges are pretty bad for the atmosphere, and they're flammable which could cause a house fire in the right circumstances.

In two cases of fridges I've owned, it's been the thermostat.  Understandable, given it's switching an AC universal motor with almost no inrush protection.  But, it's a relatively easy repair to accomplish.  On one fridge I replaced the thermostat with a digital controller, which keeps the temperature more precisely around 1-2C.

[james_s]

I've never had a fridge die from a condenser or evaporator leak, or any kind of refrigeration leak.  I'm sure this would be considered a more serious concern if fridges did this because the gases inside fridges are pretty bad for the atmosphere, and they're flammable which could cause a house fire in the right circumstances.

In two cases of fridges I've owned, it's been the thermostat.  Understandable, given it's switching an AC universal motor with almost no inrush protection.  But, it's a relatively easy repair to accomplish.  On one fridge I replaced the thermostat with a digital controller, which keeps the temperature more precisely around 1-2C.

There is only a tiny quantity of gas in a fridge, you're not supposed to just vent it to the atmosphere but that has not really been a problem since back when R12 CFC Freon was used. While not legal in the US, a lot of European refrigerators use propane, butane or other hydrocarbon that is not a problem to release. It is flammable, but again it's only a very small amount of gas.

Refrigerators don't use universal motors, hermetic compressors use induction motors. Either way they are hard on thermostat contacts as you point out.

[Zero999]

1) A fridge compressor used to come with a 10 year or more warranty.  Now they come with a 1 year warranty, so are they worth the effort to replace compared with just buying another fridge?

Quite often it is worth replacing the compressor, with a better one, even if the cost is not far off the price of the fridge. My mum once had her fridge repaired, because the compressor went. The technician say, I can replace it, like for like, or with a more robust compressor, with a 10 year warranty and she smartly chose the latter. The fridge is still working some 25 years later.

[Miyuki]

1) A fridge compressor used to come with a 10 year or more warranty.  Now they come with a 1 year warranty, so are they worth the effort to replace compared with just buying another fridge?

Quite often it is worth replacing the compressor, with a better one, even if the cost is not far off the price of the fridge. My mum once had her fridge repaired, because the compressor went. The technician say, I can replace it, like for like, or with a more robust compressor, with a 10 year warranty and she smartly chose the latter. The fridge is still working some 25 years later.

Just wonder. If I look at compressor prices. Electrolux one for fridge cost about 100$ (Is it a good brand, I don't know, but prices wary 50-200$) How can you get to the price of a new fridge for something that is less than 1 hour work?

[SeanB]

In my experience the gas circuit is a pretty reliable part, though in general your compressor will almost never fail, unless you have had a period of sustained overvoltage, as the typical failure mode is built in, as the manufacturers use a steel welded wall pipe to make the refrigeration system, using the steel for all the evaporator and condenser circuit, except for those small parts that might be in the freezer with a coated aluminium coil. Invariably the steel pipe will rust, especially in the condenser and evaporator, hidden under the urethane foam, which in the condenser breaks down with time to form an acid sludge which rusts through the coil. You will see, once you destructively strip the case, the rusted section by the hottest part of the condenser, and a similar part by the evaporator start, where water condensed to corrode the steel.

This is impossible to repair, as the coils are foamed in place during assembly, and the only copper in the system is perhaps 20cm of 6.3mm tubing joining the compressor to the steel, and 30cm of capillary tube by the drier to provide the expansion device. Once they start to leak, you are going to buy a new one, though I can still get the condenser coils for old chest freezers, and the evaporator on them is copper pipe, which lasts a long time.

New fridge or freezer, the coils are integrated and the whole appliance is disposable, though I tend to keep the compressor around after pinching off the entries, as just in case spares for testing. Yes the PTC starter can fail, though they are common, and you can tell it is dead if it rattles, as the PTC element inside has shattered.

Inverter fridge or freezer there is a 10 year warranty on the compressor alone, because the manufacturers absolutely know the faulty ones will fail in the first week, and then the unit will be replaced complete. After the 1 year statutory warranty the most common failure is the electronics, which are as expensive as a new fridge, so they are rarely replaced. Most manufacturers will only sell you a new inverter board with a compressor, and you replace both, as they are unable to guarantee the board otherwise, as a failing board will send off the compressor, and likewise for the compressor. Your spares then com in at 70% of the cost of a new unit, and there is no warranty the rest of the unit will last another 5 years then, as the steel pipe will be well corroded.

Yes flammable refrigerant, but in most cases the same volume of refrigerant as in 3-8 cigarette lighters, around 60- 150g, and you can buy lighters in packs of 50 all over at the China mall, where the pack is cheaper than buying 5 retail. Plus any leak is in general slow, 1g a day at start, so you find the unit starts cooling poorly a week before it stops entirely.