You know what scares the hell out of corporations? People like me. We replace the wonky rubber harmonic balancers with aluminum ones, we replace phone batteries using a heat gun to remove the screen, we replace capacitors in 90’s era Walmart CD players because it still works. We are the anti consumers. We fix what you throw away. We will build our future golden city with the refuse from your broken appliances. We are the future and it terrifies the consumer corporations.
Big capacitor loves you though
When smartphones first appeared, batteries were always removable.
Glances at Gen 1 iPhone
The iPhone 3g would be the first modern “smartphone” from Apple; before that it didn’t allow adding more applications, same as the “dumb phones” before it. It just had a capacitive touchscreen and a better web browser
Even then, the batteries weren’t glued in and it was significantly easier to replace
The App Store was there since the first gen. Steve jobs announce already included it and there were dummy apps like pretending to drink a beer from the iPhone. With the iPhone 3G they changed the SDK in a way that either you released apps for the first two gen or for the newer generations that made the fist two generations almost useless (planned obsolescence you said?)
Jobs was specifically against the App Store when the first gen came out
It was added as an update to the first gen after the 3g came out
That has been a thing for longer than most of us have been alive.
Planned obsolescence isn’t even in my top 10. The worst things about Big Tech are existential, like its use for mass espionage and murder by evil regimes.
That’s because you’re a proud consumer who doesn’t realize how maximizing profit is the motivation for everything you’ve mentioned.
Do you think you’re being insightful or something? That’s not even true, states sometimes compel and coerce firms for that information even when it may harm the profit incentive through reputational damage.
Right. It can’t be that you’re a proud consumer, because then you’d have to acknowledge your own contribution to the problem and criticize a culture you’re dependent on.
Can’t have that.
Planned obsolescence helps those things too, creating many more targets to support for open projects aiming for compatibility with proprietary hardware, or proprietary formats, or even proprietary software (for Wine), or de-facto proprietary Web.
planned obsolescence wastes precious resources and massively contributes to climate change and our enslavement through consumption. its absolutely in my top 10
The biggest existential threat is still ecological destruction. Old growth forest are raised to the ground, the ocean is warming and acidifying as it absorbs CO2, and it’s all to make computers and toasters that don’t even last a decade.
Exactly. Planned obsolesce is an annoyance to my pocketbook. Violations of my privacy can completely screw me over for life.
We should absolutely solve both, but if I had to pick one, I’d go for privacy every time.
It’s connected. When there’s no planned obsolescence, one can stop buying electronics until companies or some specific company regains reason. When there is planned obsolescence, you can’t easily start ignoring the vendor, usually. Your device quickly becomes both dangerous and kinda useless without support.
This requires sort of an Ulysses’ pact from companies. Sun would do such things. Sun would also develop fundamentally important technologies for literally every level of the industry. Unfortunately Sun went down.
And the way many companies went down in late 90s and 00s, I can’t blame others for trying to find some way to exist without such unfortunate events. One can’t rely on Ulysses’ pacts anyway. Those work to a limited extent when supported by other mechanisms.
It’s really a case of philosophy being required to find the solution. Not conflicting interests, to which (even in theory, with dialectics on one side’s extreme and fascism on another’s) both left and right movements reduce reality.
Said philosophy is that property rights are intended to share either finite resources or unique resources, and information is not a finite resource, however it is a unique resource.
The “conflicting interests” point of view means that everything unique should be a property and this is how things are done well, that means that everything has an owner who feeds from it, and a crowd of angry apes who think that fighting IP and copyright is evil theft making hardworking people hungry.
The “philosophy” point of view means that only finite resources should have owners, because ownership is a way for those who need a resource to have it, nothing more. Ownership and markets are a distribution mechanism, where those applying more energy to get a resource get more of it. It’s superficial for things which are not finite, and superficial means “bad”.
However work to develop new things and creation are finite resources. But those can actually be commodified. Trade secrets are the way it was called for all of history.
Patents allow rapid modernization and scale, which is an advantage over trade secrets, but patents can be issued for practical time periods, instead of practically indefinite, as it is now.
But I think for a decade or so the Western world can exist without patents at all, before reintroducing them in that improved form. It’s not hard to notice that in the current global economy IP and patents are one of the most powerful assets of the West, so it may seem a leap of faith. But it has to be done. Patents in such a situation are derived from human work, so the “designing” countries won’t lose strength compared to the “manufacturing” countries. The power is not in the patents. It’s roughly similar to the way decolonization in the XX century counterintuitively revitalized old empires when and where done softly and hurt them when and where done harshly.
This has almost nothing to do with privacy and misses the point behind planned obsolescence. The goal behind both are the same: maximize recurring revenue. The goal behind patents is different: obstruct competition. Fixing one has almost no impact on the others.
patents can be issued for practical time periods, instead of practically indefinite, as it is now.
Patents aren’t “practically indefinite,” they’re 20 years (15 for design patents). I don’t think that’s egregious, but I do think it’s a little too long, especially since there’s no requirement to actually produce the thing.
My preference is 5 years, with renewal if they can prove they’re building the thing and need more time, or have built the thing but need an extension to recoup R&D (i.e. renew from date of release). If they’re not building the thing or intentionally delaying, renewal should be denied.
That doesn’t help planned obsolescence or privacy at all, because neither is particularly related to patents.
The goal behind both are the same: maximize recurring revenue. The goal behind patents is different: obstruct competition. Fixing one has almost no impact on the others.
Obstructing competition has impact on every agreed policy, first. Second, it obviously has direct impact in maximizing revenue.
but I do think it’s a little too long, especially since there’s no requirement to actually produce the thing.
20 years ago some people in developing countries still used DOS.
My preference is 5 years, with renewal if they can prove they’re building the thing and need more time, or have built the thing but need an extension to recoup R&D (i.e. renew from date of release). If they’re not building the thing or intentionally delaying, renewal should be denied.
My preference would be just 5 years with no conditionals. Simpler things are harder to abuse.
That doesn’t help planned obsolescence or privacy at all, because neither is particularly related to patents.
That’s stupid, sorry. Like saying tanks are not related to air force. They are components of the same system.
20 years ago some people in developing countries still used DOS.
I don’t see your point. I’ve seen DOS used in inventory systems in developed countries, and any patents related to DOS expired 25 years ago. Patents aren’t why developing countries use old tech, in fact most don’t enforce or even recognise US patents (or any IP law, for that matter).
What you seem to be talking about is copyright law, which is a completely different topic.
Simpler things are harder to abuse.
If patents are too simple, they’ll be ineffective at actually solving valid business concerns and companies will just lobby for longer protections. Pharmaceuticals, for example, often need longer than 5 years to get a product to market, and creating a generic drug from a patent can take much less time and can piggyback off the studies the original company went through and get fast-tracked through the regulatory process. If they’re able to reset the clock when they go to market, they may be okay with a shorter duration.
Any policy change needs to balance the very real concerns of all interested parties.
They are components of the same system.
Only in the very abstract sense of trying to sell more stuff.
But patents have nothing to do with the main areas of planned obsolescence people are annoyed at, like TVs, laptops/phones, software, etc. Nor do they have anything to do with privacy issues people are concerned about, like Microsoft Recall, data breaches, or data brokers. It’s a completely separate system from any of those concerns.
I mean normal people for daily stuff still used DOS sometimes. As an idea of how long 20 years is. OK. 20 years ago people were renting VHS tapes. 20 years ago Revenge of the Sith came out.
It’s not a different topic, it’s about patents expiring fast enough to not allow an entrenched oligopoly, but not fast enough to make innovation not worth it.
5 years after market entry, OK.
Yes and no, balance of concerns leads to something like politics, with no principle at all, just power games. It’s what we have now.
Reducing competitiveness is pretty directly connected to planned obsolescence. It’s possible because of oligopoly and because of a few companies making the fashion of what one can use in year 2024 and what is from year 2004 and isn’t normal.
Reducing competitiveness is pretty directly connected to planned obsolescence.
Not really. TVs, phones, laptops, appliances, etc are all really competitive markets, and all of them have issues with planned obsolescence. The reason for this has nothing to do with patents at all, but the manufacturer cutting corners to keep costs down, or in the case of phones and some laptops, blocking their manufacturers from selling parts.
That’s what the right to repair movement is all about, and it has nothing to do with patents but schematics and contracts. They’re intentionally making things harder to repair. They would rather their customers come to them for repairs (where they can upcharge), buy their protection plan (recurring revenue), or replace the device (chance at an additional sale) instead of repairing it themselves. None of that is related patents whatsoever.
5 years after market entry, OK.
Then we need rules on how long they can take to bring it to market. Hence 5 years, with an optional renewal if they need more time. One renewal, that’s it, so a maximum time of 10 years if they use full 5 years to bring it to market.
Planned obsolescence is a symptom of something which is, or aught to be, in your top 10 issues with big tech.
Unless your planning on running your own infra for everything… I would argue planned obsolescence is a much greater and immediate threat.
Research is never long term. Imagine if the last 20yrs had been invested in increased ram and battery storage. Instead we have had a 20 halt on innovation in the residential side. Why big Phone wanted to stick with 4gb phone. And then 8gb so much so the reason they stopped was because it was becoming more expensive to make 8gb chips.
Unless you only pay cash, dont use Amazon to ship, google to research, Microsoft to compute… You are being tracked, the only difference now is the focus of the companies were for greed.
One day we’ll wake up from this absolute nonsense. A star, long worshipped, will burn in the red. Disused and empty shell: icon of an old world.
Conscience awakened, we’ll take it from there.
The pessimist in me asks “will we ever have the chance?”.
By the time we “wake up” would we even have the opportunity to do anything about it? Or just accept it like other rising costs like, rent and food, because let’s be honest, technology is a necessity.
My interpretation of the closing lyrics of this song are “by the time we’ve fully understood the destruction we’re causing, the Sun will be about as close to death as it can be. Once the Earth is a husk, then we’ll start to make a change.”
The “upside” of planned obsolescence is that devices are markedly cheaper if you’re willing to not live on the bleeding edge (which is itself just marketing fomo bs…)
Case in point… recently had to replace my phone. Since I now feel like a liability carrying around newish £500 one I took a look at some 2-3 years old. I eventually picked one I sort-of wished I’d gone for last time around except now I was spending 20% of what it would have cost me back then. So it’s a little closer to the point of being obsolete than what it’s replacing. But seriously. The amount of money people spend desperate to stay at the pinnacle of camera technology (that they can’t really tell the difference on) or for Apple “AI” (I mean… god… really… you’re a smart independent person. How has Apples marketing team gotten this far into your brain?) is crazy. But the massively cheaper deals for what are, objectively, still amazing devices is something that only happens because of technology churn and “planned obsolescence”.
That’s not true. Businesses charge the most people are willing to pay.
I’m sorry you’ve been convinced that lowering your standards resulted in cheaper prices. It did not. It only resulted in worse products for us and higher profits for businesses.
I’m sorry you’ve been convinced that lowering your standards resulted in cheaper prices.
It literally resulted in a cheaper price
There isn’t much progress in phones.
There was a period between 07 and 2016 (maybe) where each new generations of phone was a big leap in quality and capabilities, so I admit being in tech, so well paid and actually professionally concerned by the evolution I was on a 1 to 2 year cycle for a while. That reminded me of the evolution of computers in the 80s/90s…
Now, I recently I broke my galaxy S8 from 2017 and went to check new phones and of course looked at the current flagships and … meh… Yeah they are better I mean it’s 6 generations later but they are not that much better. My old phone could already do 90% of what they do and 100% of what I need and it’s just not worth it, especially since I’m pretty sure my income hasn’t followed the same curve as flagship phones prices.
So yes, nowadays even a 7 year old phone is more than enough for the vast majority of the population except for people who need a status symbol or some weird use at the margin I can’t think of. (An no, your photo sucks donkey balls and no one cares about them and you don’t need 12 sensors and an AI coprocessor for your tiktok stories that only 3 peoples watch)
I’ve got an S9+ and find most newer phones worse in some way or other. Either no expandable memory or no headphone jack. And I’ve already come to terms with losing my am/fm radio receiver and IR blaster. I intend to use this device until it becomes more expensive to repair than to just buy a new one.
Hopefully some manufacturer can notice there’s still a niche demand for these things by the time that happens.
You’re totally correct and I forgot about that. My S8 could actually do more than the latest flagship if we consider the headphone jack and removable storage. So yeah… progress…
And the s8 had a 3.5mm headset jack.
I stayed on my phones longer when I had a replaceable battery and expandable storage. 5yrs was typical only replacing when they stopped turning on or I couldn’t get new batteries for them.
The “upside” of planned obsolescence is that devices are markedly cheaper if you’re willing to not live on the bleeding edge (which is itself just marketing fomo bs…)
Except the pace with which said edge moves too depends on how frequently most people replace their devices.
Meaning that without planned obsolescence combined expenses for tech of an average person per period of time would be the same.
people spend desperate to stay at the pinnacle of camera technology (that they can’t really tell the difference on)
Yes. People pay actual money for things they can’t explain in words other than “new cool” or “3.141 times faster” or “14.88% better”. I’m of an opinion that this concerns all computer things. Not even only personal computing. It’s a tulip bubble that hasn’t yet burst. A very big one.
If the essence of things we do with PCs hasn’t changed since year 2003, but we do it the harder and more wasteful way due to vanity, there has to be an implosion.
or “14.88% better”
🤨
What? I always felt there’s something Nazi-like about Apple.
One thing to keep in mind on this topic is that there is both planned and unplanned obsolescence and they often get conflated.
Planned is when the companies actively plan for it by making things difficult to repair or intentionally implementing minimal specs with an intent for failure. The former is often done by making batteries and other commonly switchable hardware permanently attached, although sometimes reliability improvements make the concepts understandable. The latter is often caused by improvements in cost reductions or simply better tech availability at a reasonable price.
As an example I’ll use phones. Improvements to cameras is mostly due to improved tech. But memory can be either. When a phone gen has three levels of storage, the top level increasing is because of reduced tech prices. But inclusing a base model where the majority of memory is used by the OS and installed apps before storage of photos and other stuff is planned obsolecence because they want you to run out of space quickly so you will either upgrade or buy the next gen to get two sales in a short period of time. The fact that they don’t list how much space is left after the OS is evudence of intent, because they are not making it easy for an informed decision.
The other changes for sealed cases and lack of removeable batteries or easy upgrades to memory is both planned and slightly justifiable for reliability. Sealing the case and permanently attaching hardware does improve phone survivability if it gets wet or dropped. But, the way they attach and seal it are done in a way that intentionally makes it harder to repair while being cheaper to manufacture. This is the most frequent planned obsolescence in my experience, going cheap on a reasonable sounding improvement, but in a way that makes it harder to fix when needed.
Eventually, the world is going to become absolutely insufferable to exist in, and I only hope guns are still legal throughout the worst of it so people have a viable exit without spending 40 years in a detached level of insanity.
My Oppo Reno z only got one year of updates, so pretty much one or two updates in total, I still love the heck out of using that thing, it’s built well, it’s fast and comfortable, it’s just that they didn’t intend for me to use it after 2020.
Even though it has a cracked screen, I intend to replace it in possibly 2027, because I really don’t mind the cosmetic damage or outdatedness, it works for me, just like how my 9 year old ThinkPad 11e was before I replaced it.
Thankfully, phone updates are just a software problem. It’s sad we’ve reached this point, but there’s nothing really stopping us from updating phones like we update our computers.
People need to collectively have higher standards if they want businesses to meet those standards.
