Planned Obsolescence is your fault

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(12-30-2018 10:38 PM)cdmackay Wrote:  I wonder whether the media plays a significant part, in telling users what they should expect from new models.

In a way certainly. On the other hand, the media are constantly fed with "sensational news" about the new products from the manufacturers - who happen to be their main advertising clients and without whom those media might not exist at all... If I look at the display of an airport or train station newsagent I see dozens of glossy smartphone-, tablet-, computer- and camera-magazine titles. These need to be fed with "news" constantly and sell those onward to us stupid herd of customers.

For me, whatever the author of this original article claims, planned obsolescence is clearly manufacturer driven. There are not only trendy products like smartphones out there, where customers might actually be one of the driving forces behind that obsolescence. There are also washing machines and vacuum cleaners. People generally don't like to shop for those. They rather spend a little more money on their purchase in the hope that the product will last many years. Unfortnunately this is seldom the case, apart from some lucky exceptions. I just repaired my mothers battery-powered hand held vacuum cleaner. Made by a well known manufacturer (don't want to name-and-shame here) and certainly not the cheapest one. Middle price segment I would say. It had failed because the charging connector is of the flimsiest possible kind, even micro-USB-connectors of typical smartphones are more solid!. To prevent it from being ripped off the PCB when the connecting plug is pulled, they had used two drops of glue together with the two soldered connectors (very thin wires). The glue has failed shortly after the warranty ended of course and the connector came off the PCB. For 99.9% of these products this would have meant "sraight to the landfill". Luckily I was around at the right time to resolder the plug and fix it in place with a decent amount of epoxy. Using a proper amount of proper glue (or a more robust connector) in the first place would have added 2 or 3 cents to the manufacturing cost. Planned obsolescence, nothing else. And certainly not driven by customer demand.

Regards
Max

NB: And I hope to live long enough to see (worldwide!) laws coming in force about making electronic devices with non-replaceable batteries. As described in the article.