Planned Obsolescence?

Lossless

Super Member
I was responding to some other post when I threw out the words "Planned Obsolescence". It has been a documented fact that major electronic companies have issued software "upgrades" to "better end user experience". I was one of the millions that fell victim to Apple's iPhone 6s "CPU throttling" iOS update. If you updated to iOS 11 it made your phone run extremely slow to the point of NOT being usable.

Get out the tin-foil hats!

The real reason is to deliberately slow your device in order make you believe you need a new computer/phone etc. Thoughts?
 
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In the long term, the only way a manufacturer can survive is to keep making and selling product. If there is no compelling reason to buy teh latest and greatest, I, and I suspect many other consumers won't bite.

So yes, planned obsolesence is real.
 
With the advent of "smart technology" planned obsolescence must be more alive and well than it's ever been. Not that long ago when home entertainment was king of the consumer electronics hill, major companies knew exactly what they would be offering down the road.


I spent many years in that business and it was commonly talked about during trade shows. Even though a company the size of let's say Sony could put something new/improved/radically different into production tomorrow, it was better business wise not to offer cutting edge state of the art untill such time as their business plan dictated it should.

There was potentially too much money at stake if products became obsolete overnight - it had to be planned.

I have avoided thinking about 21'st century devices and capabilities because I firmly believe that the real powers that be have their own plan mapped out. I have no wish to contribute informatin to those who's agenda is making me spend, spend, spend.

It seems life has become nothing but marketing - it's all about the money. I've never seen an episode of Madmen but do remember Darren & Larry in Bewitched.

Kind of an innocuous occupation back then but it's sinister now.
 
Take a walk in their shoes. Build the perfect product that will last forever first time around, and you're out of business fast. Main difference for me when it comes to audio is I can rebuild and restore the "classics", but newer stuff is basically built to self destruct AND be non-repairable. Even if you can by some chance repair one, it's not like you can find parts or the firmware to make it work again.
 
For those that don't know "The Lightbulb Conspiracy" is a video on YouTube. It covers time/planned
obsolescence. If you've never seen the program it is really worth the 55 minutes.
Definitely one of the BEST documentaries Iv'e seen.:idea: I always knew about the "printer ink chip"; Time to buy a $50 ink cartridge.:eek: So sad and a shame about Ghana.:no: It's even more of a shame that this YouTube video only had 67k views.
 
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Like most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The trick is to educate one's self to know what to spend money on and what not to.

Yes, a washing machine maker can make a machine that lasts almost forever, but it will cost so much that virtually nobody could afford one......so is it sinister to make them so they only last 10 years and a lot of people can afford them? Of course not.

There are people that MUST have the latest cell phone etc and those people are ripe to picked clean. If they want to spend their money on something like that, let them. I choose not too however. That is the piont, nobody forces anybody to buy anything most of the time (Apple Excluded). Did I NEED the 4K TV and Marantz AVR I bought last year? Nope, but I waited until enough boobs that had to have the latest things to buy them and drove the price down.

The market is full of choices. One product does not last? 99% of the time there is another one to choose from.
 
The potential is certainly there, with the possibilities becoming more scary than ever. Just the same, there are also plenty of examples where companies have gone above and beyond to support their products the right way. Creative for example. It took them only about a month after Windows 10 was released (2015) to come out with Windows 10 drivers for their X-Fi sound cards even though the first X-Fi sound cards were released 10 years before Windows 10 was (2005), and they have continued to release several more Windows 10 driver updates for those cards since then. That has allowed me to use my X-Fi titanium HD for a very long time now. Has that cost them money (from me not buying a new card)? Maybe. Would I have bought another Creative card if my reason for needing a replacement was lack of driver support for my previous card? Probably not. Has my existing card being so well supported granted them brand loyalty that has caused me to recommend them to others? Certainly.

Another example that comes to mind is with Nvidia, though not really audio related. They just recently opened up Raytracing support to cards other than their RTX series. It is to be done in software on older, non-RTX cards. On a technical level, all that is required for software raytracing is for the card to be fully DirectX 12.1 compliant. Strangely, when they enabled it via a recent driver update, they only enabled it on their more recent 1000 series. So you end up in a situation where, for example, you can do software raytracing on a GTX1060 but not on a GTX980ti, even though a GTX980ti is at least as fast as a GTX1070 in most cases and is fully DX12.1 complaint. Obviously they would rather have those people simply buy newer cards.

Best bet probably is to always keep it in mind, and evaluate each situation on a case by case basis. If certain brands develop a habit, you can bet it won't remain hidden for long.
 
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There's nothing sinister about it. Longer life costs more. If it's too expensive, customers get annoyed and won't buy the product.

Shorter life is cheaper for both the manufacturer and the consumer, but if it's too short it doesn't survive the warranty period and/or it annoys customers.

Either way, annoyed customers are bad.

So, businesses spend time, effort, and money on optimising the relationship between longevity and cost. That means minimising cost so products are affordable whilst maximising life so customers aren't pissed off when products wear out.

The end result of doing this well is products that are affordable but wear out some reasonable (for an undefined value of "reasonable") period after the warranty expires.
 
There's nothing sinister about it. Longer life costs more. If it's too expensive, customers get annoyed and won't buy the product.

Shorter life is cheaper for both the manufacturer and the consumer, but if it's too short it doesn't survive the warranty period and/or it annoys customers.

Either way, annoyed customers are bad.

So, businesses spend time, effort, and money on optimising the relationship between longevity and cost. That means minimising cost so products are affordable whilst maximising life so customers aren't pissed off when products wear out.

The end result of doing this well is products that are affordable but wear out some reasonable (for an undefined value of "reasonable") period after the warranty expires.
I'll sum it all up in one word; "Capitalism". Sorry mods:dunno:
 
I was responding to some other post when I threw out the words "Planned Obsolescence". It has been a documented fact that major electronic companies have issued software "upgrades" to "better end user experience". I was one of the millions that fell victim to Apple's iPhone 6s "CPU throttling" iOS update. If you updated to iOS 11 it made your phone run extremely slow to the point of NOT being usable.

Get out the tin-foil hats!

The real reason is to slow your device in order make you believe you need a new computer/phone etc. Thoughts?
These are to blame https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilian_humanoid
Don’t beilive me ?:eek:

Some call them frog men !!:rockon: But Tesla loved them :king:
 
Basically a device, or manufacturer is good, if you think you got your money's worth, if it lasts longer, the manufacturer gets a great rep, but looses some of the profits from the next sale, if it doesn't last as long so the customer feels cheated, the company gets a bad rep, and loses customers.
Craftsman hand tools come to mind, they last almost forever, have a lifetime warranty, and even outlasted Sears. i would certainly go out of my way to buy them, but my toolbox has all I need, so unless I lose something, I am not buying. Then there are always new customers, and word of mouth is great advertising.
 
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