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<rant> What? Apart for ink cartridges, for which some manufacturers are know to have some hard counters, this list is beyond ridiculous. Planned obsolescence means a conscious design to fail at a certain mark, a carefully evaluated MTBF in order to extract financial gain. 1. Just a description: "planned obsolescence" is wilful design into failure that makes one turn a greater profit at the expense of consumers. 2. Some ink cartridges are know to have hard counters, so that's one OK, but the recommendation is about taking a risk: third party ink might not be up to spec and clog things up (happens). 3. Backwards compat on SNES would have meant including the NES hardware into the SNES, driving costs up. Plus this happened in a modular way with addons such as the Super Game Boy. Also, the PS2, X360 and PS3 shelf life are a testament to the dedication of keeping things up and running. Also also, suddenly not keeping the old hardware around to throw it away somehow contradicts later claims of "buying used instead of new". 4. This is only valid with the cooperation of lazy teachers: "refer to exercise 4 on page 32". I've been using 10+ years old books to learn and teach math, physics, french, history... New editions strive to streamline the experience, fix mishaps, and comply with legal requirements and state-mandated education programs. 5. Fashion, by definition, is zeitgeist. Culture and style evolve, there's no conspiracy at play, this is human nature creatively plowing forward. 6. What's the benefit for MS to make people buy new computers? I don't see the logic here. If anything, people are less inclined to buy new software if it makes them buy a new computer. Do you really think there's a shady deal between Adobe and Dell so that Adobe makes its software hungrier and receive a cut on sales because Dell sales would go up? Maintaining old versions has a cost, and unless you want to ceaselessly accrete dead weight like a black hole you have two choices: go forward and cut dead weight at some point, or not go forward and be stuck in the past (because obviously everything was better back in the day, y'know). Also, software is made by people, and those people need to eat (even FOSS folks!), plus increasingly said software rely on services that need to be kept up running, and that has a cost too. Nothing entitles you to receive a lifetime of upgrades after paying a couple bucks (if at all). Expecting (almost coercing!) people to do what you want for free has a name: exploitation. 7. Nothing prompts you to buy a new car every year. People would be surprised at the number of common parts cars share if they were even remotely interested in mechanics. Not only the whole statement contradicts 3. but how would you buy used if nobody bought new cars and resold them? Also, there's not just old cars pollute more and are less safe. 8. I've yet to see a battery that outright disables itself after a set number of cycle use. Batteries are designed to last at least a given number of cycles, not at most. LiPo, which has taken the world by storm due to its lack of memory effect and outstanding performance and durability, is extremely dangerous to handle. Requirements as well as improvements in hardware have been plateauing, which makes it less appealing to have things componentized for upgrades. Hardware durability has dramatically increased too. The whole thing contributes to people changing stuff less often instead of more because it just works, for longer stretches of time. Again there is no wilful intent to cripple things. There is one egregious case that can be made about Android phones, but that's got more to do about lack of focus, misguided bullet-point differentiation strategy and subsequent lack of resource to keep phones up to date than a grim large scale scam. 9. Ah, light bulbs. Great example. You know, if you get cheap, badly engineered crap, it has a high probability of both being less efficient and not last long. That's not a grand evil scheme, that's just "Want cheap? Get crap." So, we get it, turning a profit is bad, corporations are evil and conspire to exploit the masses. Because that's what "planned obsolescence" is about: wilful design into failure that makes one turn a greater profit at the expense of consumers. How cynical a view is that, pushed by people that have no clue about what engineering is: designing within terrible, unfathomable physics, monetary and human constraints the best product you can. Abusive practices do exist, but seriously, most of the time it's just cost pressure or bad design (probably one driving the other). This kind of list is way too superficial and does nothing to make things better. |
True story: I was ICDCS '98, perusing the textbooks with my advisor and some of his ex-students, and see the new (6th?) edition of Silberschatz's OS book. "Oh, yeah", one of my advisor's older students says, "Avi does have another kid going to college this year."