[protimewaster]

This kind of thing drives me crazy, and I think it helps to highlight some of the money-grubbing nature of the tech industry.

Years ago, you'd buy a cheap thermostat and it'd last 30 years or whatever. But the tech industry had to improve that by instead making them last less than half as long and cost substantially more.

I understand the idea that smart stuff is cool or whatever, but it feels like it'd be smarter if it lasted as long as the thing they're trying to replace...

[Fezzik]

Those same bulletproof thermostats are still sold everywhere. And are dirt cheap. I blame the consumer more than the producer for the proliferation of these products. This is one area where your options were never limited and you’d have to be a dunce and/or been paying zero attention to how tech companies have operated for decades to think these devices were not going to be made useless at a regular rate.

[anon6362]

It's one of the problems created by allowing billionaire technofeudal overlords to do whatever they want. They believe they are entitled to anything and everything, and so everything they make turns to shit to fool you into maintaining it and rebuying it faster and faster.

[daymanstep]

Planned obsolescence is as old as the light bulb.

[anon6362]

That's a given. It is, but it's not a binary on/off. It's a sliding continuum of enshitification and the current trend is to rapidly increasing towards worse. It rarely/never goes back the other way.