[rkangel]

People just don't seem to realise that moving parts are hard. Phones are incredibly complex but (mostly) just keep working until you drop them on a hard floor. Cars have lots of moving parts and need maintenance. Screens use complicated technology and (mostly) just keep working. Printers have moving parts and break a lot.

Moving parts are inherently unreliable. We've just got really used to the incredible reliability that you get from solid state electronics.

My point is that you may well be right. Fusion power is an easier challenge than mechanical things not breaking because you can do it without moving parts (give or take a turbine).

[vbezhenar]

My iPhone 4S has 0 moving parts, yet it had failed WiFi after 1 year. My Macbook has 0 moving parts, yet it had failed SSD. My Renault Logan has quite a lot of moving parts, yet I use it for a few years and almost 100 000 kilometers (and that's quite a lot of movement in extremely different weather conditions, from -40 to +40) and I had very minimal maintenance outside of regular oil change.

While I generally agree, the point is, even when there are no moving parts, there's a lot of failure points (temperature, vibrations) and manufacturers will create faulty devices, no matter what. If device is too good, they will cut expenses, until it'll be "good enough".

[Spooky23]

The MTBF is way lower. I've done this analysis for racks of server equipment and client devices. Failure rates are way lower -- low enough at scale to spend extra money on desktop SSD for low end use cases.

That said, environmentals are important. Hot solid state electronics fail.

[mrdavid]

The iPhone has a home button, power button, and volume buttons that all move. The Macbook's keyboard is comprised of moving parts. There's also the screen hinge which used to be a very common point of failure in laptops.

[zimpenfish]

Minor nit - the iPhone 7 doesn't have a physical "home button" - it's a force-sensitive area with haptic feedback.

[agumonkey]

I didn't meant it as a mean time before failure. I don't mind thing breaking with usage, at all. I meant it as headache free tools. These products are bending backward to provide useless crap while ignoring more basic features. Also driver support is short lived now, I had to do ninja stuff to make a 2014 HP printer work on Win10. This kind of things.

[cleeus]

As a counter example: My Kyocera Mita FS1020-D is working well since 2004. Reliable things (printers) with moving parts can be built.

[agumonkey]

To get back on the build solidity point, I've yet to have a mechanical failure on a printer. Problems are often fluid dynamics (clogged pipes, heads). Outside of these parts, a printer is pretty simple device, geometrically speaking.

[digi_owl]

Then how come when the failure happens it is more often in the firmware rather than any of the mechanical parts.

For some reason we take more care when building mechanical devices, because we can observe and measure the complexities and wear and tear of use.

Software on the other hand, with firmware being a variant of software, can apparently neither be properly observed nor tested.

[xupybd]

It's often connecting to the printer that's the hard part. In my office we have two printers because some pcs can't connect to one but can the other. It's inconsistent as to who can connect to which.

[rkangel]

That sounds a lot like issues with network config rather than anything else. Potentially a duplicate IP address somewhere.

[xupybd]

Nah it tends to be operating system and printer driver related. It is possible to setup a PC to connect to both. But it's a lot work.

[tremon]

People just don't seem to realise that moving parts are hard

Do you realize that you're making this comment on a thread about a global problem that involves no moving parts at all?