PM_ME_Dog_PicsPls t1_iscwunb wrote on October 15, 2022 at 12:18 AM

Yeah Jfc the amount of times I have to say planned obsolescence doesn't exist in the way people use it is nuts.

NWO_Eliminator t1_isd3rqt wrote on October 15, 2022 at 1:14 AM

Making a design as cheap, light, and flimsy as possible with a built in short lifespan IS planned obsolescence! My 50 year old Maytag washer/dryer are still going strong. I could still get every single part for it up until 8 years ago (Whirlpool bought out Maytag and discontinued some of their parts) and still get most of the running gear that's important. Dishwasher is the same age. Yes, they were very expensive during their time period but were designed with reliability and serviceability in mind. Also, Maytag still cranked out parts for everything they made going back 50 years. You could still get every single part for their very first automatic washer in 1999 that was made in 1949. Nobody does that anymore.

https://www.postlandfill.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/PlannedObMeme-960x675.jpg

PM_ME_Dog_PicsPls t1_isd5ghs wrote on October 15, 2022 at 1:28 AM

No it's not. That's the nature of making something inexpensive.

How much did your 50 year old Maytag cost then and what is that adjusted for inflation? A comparably priced unit today is likely well built too.

You can absolutely still get parts for stuff today too. Not sure where you're getting the idea that you can't get parts for any new items from.

And one guy saying a thing doesn't make it true. Like y'all downvote people who actually design products telling you planned obsolescence isn't a thing because you get your info from memes.

Decimator714 t1_isew9f4 wrote on October 15, 2022 at 1:23 PM

One engineer saying it doesn't exist doesn't make it true.

Planned obselecense isn't necessarily "planned"

If an engineering team is told to focus less on repairability/reliability and focus on cheapest cost, it has the same effect as planning your product to fail.

BoilerButtSlut t1_isdpwur wrote on October 15, 2022 at 4:31 AM

You're looking at this the wrong way. They aren't being designed purposefully to fail. I don't know of any engineer that has ever been told to make something fail prematurely. This is especially true because consumers don't typically buy the same brand appliance to replace the one that just died a few months after you got it.

I've been on the engineering side, and this is how it actually works:

A manufacturer or a big box store or whoever will have a lot of data showing that if an appliance is priced at $X, then they can expect to sell Y number of them. So from that you can plan out your margins and costs. Well, the most sales happen (surprise) when the appliance is at the cheap end. But that also means your margins are very thin, so you need to cut costs everywhere.

So the engineer will cut back on materials or durability as long as it still keeps it working within the warranty period. So a plastic tub instead of metal. Or thinner metal. Sometimes a new technology, manufacturing method, or outsourcing, will save money without reducing build quality, but most of the time it does.

The solution to this is pretty simple: if you want better quality then you will just need to pay more for it. You simply can't have an appliance that lasts decades without spending way more than you probably think is reasonable. Just take some of your examples from 50 years ago and plug their prices into an inflation calculator. If you want a long-lasting replacement, then that number is about what you should spend for about the same number of features.

Long-term parts support costs money. Keeping those parts in the supply chain and on a shelf somewhere for years costs money. Long term customer support for a product costs money. Making that part better built to last longer costs money. It all adds up. That's why when a smaller-scale manufacturer tries to scale larger (ie. go to the bigger market with smaller margins), long term parts support is usually one of the first things to go.

You can still absolutely buy very durable and long-lasting appliances. They just cost a lot more. And the higher cost you go, the more your market shrinks.

Decimator714 t1_isewvh9 wrote on October 15, 2022 at 1:28 PM

Yep you hit the mark on this one.

Planned obselecense also has an entirely different meaning in the tech world. A company could plan to only provide software updates for only a few years. This is planned obselecense, especially if the software communicates with other devices. Eventually the outdated software will become forcibly obselete, and cannot communicate with newer software.

This is pretty big as I heard about certain washing machines having specific features that are exclusively controlled by an app. I would be willing to bet that it won't work after a decade or two.

But of course, like you said, it costs a lot of money to keep that stuff running. You can't expect them to be forced to do so.

It's up to the consumer to be informed and not buy shit products like that.

BoilerButtSlut t1_isfi7uc wrote on October 15, 2022 at 4:12 PM

Legacy software support and falls under the same boat. Going back into old code to add functionality for a legacy product is basically uneconomical to do, unless it's something you specifically promises a customer.

It's especially true because after an initial software release and support period, the team might be broken up and everyone goes to different projects. Bringing them back to add functionality or fixing non-critical bugs costs money and could easily delay new releases.

People look at these decisions as sinister, and they aren't. This is simply a case of consumers getting what they pay for: you want decades long parts availability/support? Well you're going to pay for that. You want updates software for years/decades? That's also going to cost you.

Decimator714 t1_isevrm4 wrote on October 15, 2022 at 1:19 PM

Deliberately making a business decision not to sell parts needed to repair something you own is basically the definition of planned obselecense. Of course engineers aren't going to design something with the plan for it to fail.

BoilerButtSlut t1_isfhep4 wrote on October 15, 2022 at 4:06 PM

Then literally everything everywhere is planned obsolescence. There is no business that promises parts availability forever, and there never has been. And if your definition is that broad, then it is effectively meaningless.

Making parts for years after a product has ended costs money. Keeping a working supply chain costs money. Keeping those parts on shelves somewhere, ready for replacement, costs money. Keeping inventory and track of all of this costs money. And you normally have to overproduce them because trying to go back 10 years later to put an old part back into production is enormously expensive.

Most consumers are simply not willing to pay for that. This is one of those things that consumers say they care about, but when it comes to pony up money for it, they suddenly don't care about it. What consumers say and what their behavior actually is are two different things.

That's why you have to go to companies where you're paying for that part support and quality up-front: Miele guarantees parts availability for 10 years after discontinuing of a model appliance (though 15 years is standard). Commercial manufacturers can guarantee even longer availability most of the time (mostly because their designs change to little over time).

But you simply won't find that for cheap shit appliances. The whole point of cheap shit appliances is to have razor thin margins, and keeping an active supply chain open goes against that.

Decimator714 t1_ish6z3c wrote on October 15, 2022 at 11:27 PM

Eeeh okay yes but I have a counter.

Apple recently has ensured their products can remain obselete when they fail, by ensuring chip manufacturers do not sell their chips to consumers for hardware level motherboard repair.

Now you might be thinking, "well apple made the chip they can do what they want with it". That's not the case. They literally take a consumer purchasable chip, tell the manufacturer to change the pinout, to make it proprietary so you can't replace the voltage regulator or whatever that is a known failure point of the computer.

If that is not planned obselecense, then we clearly are taking the definition of the words in a completely different way. No, they didn't plan on changing the pinout to directly cause their laptops to fail, but they clearly made an anti consumer decision to incentivise throwing your old computer away and getting a new one. Thus, planned obselecense. The executives know exactly what they're doing when they make this decision. They know it will result in more profit for the company.

In my opinion the trend of anti repair is equivalent to planned obselecense. The end goal is the same. Get the consumer to "just buy a new one".

BoilerButtSlut t1_ity878l wrote on October 27, 2022 at 4:25 AM

Apple does this because they want total control over their ecosystem and that includes control over the hardware. There's a variety of business reasons for this (some reasonable, some asinine), but that's what it is. One reason for this policy is because they are so highly desirable around the world and they are expensive. People will literally buy broken phones, shoddily repair them, and then sell them as new in some bumfuck country somewhere else, and when it stops working they want apple to fix it.

Apple is far from the only company doing this with their products, though most other companies are doing it for other reasons.

And no that is not planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence (at least in the textbook definition) is designing something to fail sooner or to not function after some period of time. Unless I'm missing something, Apple isn't doing that. They just aren't supporting repair outside of their ecosystem.

The whole concept of causing something to fail quicker in some vain hope that consumers will go back to you to get their next version never made sense to me: if I have an appliance or phone that breaks within a few months, the very last thing I'm going to do is go back to the same manufacturer for a new one. It's just a guaranteed way to drive people to your competitors. The only time it could even work is if you have a total monopoly on that product.

>but they clearly made an anti consumer decision to incentivise throwing your old computer away and getting a new one. Thus, planned obselecense.

Anti-consumer is not the same thing. Those are two totally different concepts. I completely agree that Apple is awful to its customers, but their customers keep coming back so they get away with it. Walmart isn't much different in that regard. But they aren't designing their stuff to fail quickly.

I mean, if they wanted to do planned obsolescence, why even bother with all of this? They could literally just make the phone self destruct at two years on the dot and people would still come around to buy more.

Dishwasher keeps going

BoilerButtSlut t1_isc7ukh wrote on October 14, 2022 at 9:10 PM