Two weeks ago I got back from Montreal with a sickly iPhone. It transpired, when I took the case off, that this had become structural: the back if four year old phone was literally falling to pieces within it. Repair would have cost over £200: a Samsung A3 is now doing the job for less than that.
Yesterday my Macbook's charger failed: it's blowing fuses faster than I can put them in the plug. It is also four years old. As, I hope, the now mute MacBook is still OK I am in a visit to the Apple Store in Manchester this morning en route to the Co-op Practitioners conference to talk about tax governance.
Am I getting old and rough, or is this built in obsolescence? Apple's repair pricing policy certainly suggests they have no interest in products of this age and I can't be alone in wanting to keep otherwise functional IT going.
PS: In fairness an update at 12.30pm. The Apple Store in Manchester made it work - devoting some time to the task at no charge - so credit where it is due on this one.
But even they agreed I'm on borrowed time: they almost laughed that I was still using a Macbook so old
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You answered your own question a while back. If as you say the tech companies have no big innovations to sell us, what is left to keep them afloat except producing goods with a short lifespan?
Good point
And in many ways true
What struck me when facing the decision was actually how little of a phone I use compared to what it supposedly can do
The built in obsolescence is also in the over-spec
The over spec and constant innovation is driven by the commercial divisions of all producers in large part to maintain/increase the price point (which in turn is driven by their shareholders need to maintain/increase their return).
Just think how cheap you could buy a car/washing machine/computer etc that just did what you needed and could easily be repaired for a long and cheap life!
It’s odd that there are so few manufacturers that focus on this business model, in fact at the moment I can’t think of any? I suppose there’s just not enough profit in it!
Agreed
I always find it annoying that things I used to be able to do on cars now seem impossible
It is all about control of the spare parts market and conspicuous consumption
We are carried along within the capitalist model of the world order and obsolesce is a fundamental part of this dynamic process, as Schumpeter pointed out, see — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction. We buy into it in all sorts of ways and to sidestep it we need to make conscious decisions regarding innovation and the purchasing of new stuff whether it’s cars, computers, kitchens or toys for the kids, or ourselves.
As we don’t live in bubbles of isolation, the psychological pressures are enormous and subtle. In George Marshall’s current book “Don’t Even Think About It
Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change” http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/dont-even-think-about-it-9781620401330/, we can substitute the words Global Capitalism for Climate Change in almost every paragraph and then begin to understand some of the psychological reasons why we persist in accepting the current status quo imposed on us in the search for “Growth”.
On a personal level, my 6 year old iMac is getting really slow and that’s a problem that the computer industry has a no interest in solving. Along with my 19-year-old Volvo, these machines can be repaired by people in the know, and thanks to the huge benefit of the Internet, they are easy to find.
Its also about `economies of scale` which can sometimes be good for consumers but are always good for manufacturers. If a nut and bolt on a car can be replaced with a clip then the manufacturer can save a few pence in time and materials. For a small company this sort of saving is not worthwhile but if you are churning out 1000 units a week then these little bits add up and translate into a nice little earner. However for the sake of saving say £100 (on a £10,000 car)the consumer has a product which is a lot less fixable than a Morris 1000.
While it is tempting to tell you “The surveillance guys are SO hamfisted these days” the truth is, as you say, buikt-in obsolescence.
Two or three years back my youngest lads AppleMac computer, which was less than two years old, went faulty. It booted up OK but the screen was just a mess of coloured pixels and lines.
We took it to the Apple store who told us that the video card hardware on the PCB had broken. The good news was that the part required to fix the problem would “only” cost just under £300 plus labour. The bad news was that Apple no longer produced that part for that model as the model was now obsolete. Would we like to purchase one of their newer models?
I’m still not sure if they’ve ever figured out why it is we have never set foot in an Apple store since. Not that they would bother wasting much time thinking about it. There are just too many other mugs out there easily impressed by shiney design exteriors and flashy advertising who have deluded themselves that they are hip because they are into Apple products.
I admit tgat if the MacBook has failed there is no guarantee I will buy another
It wouldn’t be so hard to accept the inevitable fact that obsolescence is almost always built into capitalist production and marketing techniques if the manufacturers (of any products) offered a decent trade-in deal for their defunct equipment. Having bought the product at an over inflated price (you can be sure that there is collusion over the price points of similar items that are kept artificially high by major producers), it would only be fair to return some of that excess value to the purchaser for the scrap value at least plus an additional incentive to encourage them to buy another of their newly high priced products. The motor industry does that to a limited extent, no reason the IT industry should not do the same. The pace of technological change should not be forced upon consumers pockets alone.
Interesting idea
I thought I would buy Apple again – have g used all Aple kit for some time
The repair price out me off doing so
And the result is I have found the Samsung A3 is cheaper and quite possibly a lot better – although I have never had the latest iPhone – the improvement is in the apps on Android too, not the hardware
When the over 18 month old obsolescent Apple Computer finally gives up the ghost, which it will, it might well be worth trying out one of the retailers that let’s you choose what specs. you want (RAM, sound card, video card, HDD, screen etc) and builds it for you, such as for example PC Specialist.
It’s not expensive for a reasonable spec. machine and if you know what you are doing or know someone who does you don’t even have to load a duff OS like Windows which always needs so many patches and has so many back door vulnerabilities. It’s just as easy and a lot less expensive to use a Linux distribution. Linux Mint for example costs less than £10 to buy, although you can download it for nothing, whereas Windows is a lot more expensive and you need to fork out extra for other software such as an Office suite etc.
I tried Linux five years ago and found it really buggy
Maybe it isn’t now
But tax software rarely runs on it….
In a sane society the cost of externalities would be built into all products by law. Being built to last would make economic sense.
(written on a 12 year old computer – I have a phone that ONLY makes calls, cost me £5 about 6 years ago)
As I see it, that’s part of the deal with Apple. I don’t think it’s a cynical as planned obsolescence but they do prioritise the design flare over repairability. They do use top quality components and 4 years is pretty good going for a smartphone – I’ve never got more than 3 years out of a mobile phone.
Maybe I am on optimist but I think spending iPhone prices demands long life
I have gone elsewhere as a result
The whole Apple philosophy is built around built-on obsolescence. For one thing, the batteries in iPhones and iPads gradually hold a charge less and less over time (2 years into having my iPhone 5, it held a charge for about two hours of use, if that). But whereas on Samsung phones (for example) you can change the battery yourself fairly easily (at least you could on my old Galaxy S3), the iPhone and iPad cases are sealed and the battery can’t be changed without extensive servicing by a specialist.
Furthermore, successive updates of iOS are designed to run more and more slowly – and eventually not to run at all – on older devices (for example if you’re on an iPhone 4 I don’t think you can get anything higher than iOS 7).
For phones and tablets this is annoying but I tend to upgrade every 3 years or so anyway so I don’t mind too much. But for computer hardware it’s much more of a concern. I prefer Windows 7 to Mac for laptops and desktop as I know the systems inside out and can assemble a bespoke desktop PC from my own chosen components. Of course Microsoft are now trying to force users to upgrade to Windows 10…. it’s enough to make me want to throw the goddamn computer out the window! Arrrgg!
Howard
You have succeeded in persuading me I am not just being grumpy on a long ride to Manchester
Although actually I like long train rides: lots written this morning although I missed Grantham – was sound asleep I think! Nothing to do with Thatcher’s birthplace at all, I promise
Richard
Aaaaaahhh Grantham………….salad days……
I believe that the old buffet there on Platform 1 used to make the best mug of tea in the whole of British Rail. The only problem was that the doors used to burst open whenever a non-stopper used to thunder through the station on the way to London.
Ah! Reggie Perrin was about 40 years ahead of his time.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bZSN_pkhAFEC&pg=PT120&lpg=PT120&dq=Reggie+Perrin+Built+in+obsolescence&source=bl&ots=HnmADmegpF&sig=-FcG3GGTejCzt4G093q0pQhCAcI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAWoVChMIndr0i7OcyQIVBkwUCh0nBATm#v=onepage&q=Reggie%20Perrin%20Built%20in%20obsolescence&f=false
Reggie was a genius
Brilliant stuff
“I didn’t get where I am today without knowing Reggie Perrin was brilliant stuff” – C.J.
🙂
My Samsung phone is nearly 5 years old and spent its first 2 years in the hands of my teenage son. It is on its 3rd battery and doesn’t have the best camera but otherwise works fine.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never needed more power than has been offered by a £200-300 second hand Lenovo (used to be IBM) ThinkPad business type laptop. They’re certainly not as shiny or strokeable as a MacBook, but they’ve got much better keyboards, are more robust, less tempting to the light fingered and almost every component can be replaced or upgraded, either by you or someone local.
Also, I’m not sure if things have changed in the last decade or so, but I’ve found when starting a new position in an academic establishment (as you have), it’s always worth finding an excuse to introduce yourself to the IT people — one of them will likely have ‘just the spare part you’re looking for — or at least won’t mind fitting it. A box of cream cakes that ‘just happen’ to be on your desk may facilitate the exchange.
🙂
On a slightly different but related subject, this Guardian article is an excellent (if not also shocking and/or amusing) example of why “free market” advertising is as much in need of strict regulation as free market finance, production or anything else for that matter….
http://www.theguardian.com/media/gallery/2015/nov/18/racist-sexist-rude-crude-worst-20th-century-advertising-in-pictures
i noted it
Quite right Richard. It is all a neo-liberal conspiracy to force us to buy more. It is time we all accepted that there is no need to replace every piece of technology.
I have an iphone 4S.
I replaced the broken back at a massive cost of £4..
I replaced the battery (3-years old) at a massive cost of £5.
It runs IOS 9.1 (a few things do not work…I’ll live without them)
If people want nice thin phones, with HD displays, and low weight, they have to accept that things will change. Screws will go, glue is thinner/lighter/faster.
My tablet is an ipad2, quite old…nearly 4 years. Battery replacement is via un-glueing the glass, changing batteries, re-glueing the glass (well, taping it with double-sided sticky)
Android?
Yeah….love the security features….I’ll stick with IOS thanks!
As a matter of fact, iphones have a longer life than Samsung/etc….my last one, an iphone3GS, is still working quite well….on IOS 6….at nearly 7 years of age.
Design obsolescence, or advancement obsolescence, that is the question!
Quite frankly, a couple of years is enough to see a laptop/desktop stop performing well, and be very laggy…hardware falling behind software/firmware….the latest game needing much more graphics performance etc.
My desktop is dual-boot (well, two fixed disks actually) one running windows 7, the other mint 17…some (lots) of windows stuff won’t run on the linux OS (No, I’m not running a virtual machine, which are buggier than a room full of fleas).
There is little incentive for microsoft to be kind, and linux devs would have to pay for any windows stuff they write to work on linux….so you either load software that is..errmm..not quite legal, or hope that some kind open-source developer has done it for you.
My laptop is windows 10….fun….
All the comments above illustrate the weaknesses of capitalism. These are probably acceptable for non essentials – but does society really want this to extend to essentials.
To illustrate the point very succinctly. Take food production. Do we want the likes of Monsanto cornering the market when they sell terminator seeds ie plants with built in obsolesence?
I don’t think so when there are 7.5 billion people in the world to feed properly!
I fear that the path the world economy is on – one of deindustialsiation in the West etc etc is eventually going to lead to massive shortages. I am not convinced that in combination, the agendas of the UN, The World Bank, the IMF etc are constructive instead I fear that they are destructive.
The ills of our modern age seem to me to be linked in one way or another, directly or indirectly, immediately or with delayed effect, to the concentration of wealth and power in too few hands.
Technical innovation has been very slow in the last 30 years – I studied what used to be called Computer Science many moons ago so am rarely in awe of technology-we should have moved behind digital by now so although speeds have improved the interface is still as crap as it was 20 years ago. What use is it getting a message like: ERROR234%67*9/890C flashing on the screen when something goes wrong?
Most technology is rehashed versions of the same sort of thing-people don’t often realise that the pace of technological change was much greater in the second half of the 19th Century and the period 1945-75 than in more recent decades.
Built in obsolescence and throwaway devices are an environmental disaster (not to mention the humanitarian one involved in mining the minerals).
here’s David Graeber on the subject:
“The Internet is surely a remarkable thing. Still,
if a fifties sci-fi fan were to appear in the present and ask what the most dramatic
technological achievement of the intervening sixty years had been, it’s hard to imagine the
reaction would have been anything but bitter disappointment. He would almost certainly
have pointed out that all we are really talking about here is a super-fast and globally
accessible combination of library, post office, and mail order catalog. “Fifty years and this
is the best our scientists managed to come up with? We were expecting computers that
could actually think!”
All this is true, despite the fact that overall levels of research funding have increased
dramatically since the 1970s. Of course, the proportion of that funding that comes from the
corporate sector has increased even more dramatically, to the point where private
enterprise is now funding twice as much research as the government. But the total increase
is so large that the overall amount of government research funding, in real dollar terms, is
still much higher than it was before. Again, while “basic,” “curiosity-driven,” or “blue skies”
research–the kind that is not driven by the prospect of any immediate practical
application, and which is therefore most likely to lead to unexpected breakthroughs–is an
ever-smaller proportion of the total, so much money is being thrown around nowadays that
overall levels of basic research funding has actually gone up. Yet most honest assessments
have agreed that the results have been surprisingly paltry. “
As Paul Mason notes in his recent book, Post Capitalism, with wage and social costs stagnating alongside rising profits; and the shrinking of the public/State involvement, there is no longer any incentive to invest for further waves of new technologies which have driven Capitalism, both industrial and mercantile, over the past few centuries.
Everything is now short term rent maximisation. A deliberate attempt to end history and progress by a sociopathic minority and their useful idiot forelock tugging hangers on.
As I now see it, there are only three serious problems facing us as a species — Population Growth, Global Warming & Global Capitalism. This blog helps me/us to understand the last one, but the population at large is not pushing for serious innovation to alleviate Global Warming or to curb the use of fossil fuels. There’s too much vested interest in digging or pumping greenhouse gas generating stuff out of the ground and not enough serious attempts to limit extraction — in fact quite the opposite.
So if the Graeber is right about innovation and “most honest assessments have agreed that the results have been surprisingly paltry”, it must be because there is no urgency from government, corporations and people to get innovate to solve the real and massive problem of Global Warming. Is it that we are all complicit in our tacit acceptance of the status quo because Global Capitalism has such a strong hold on our lives?
To effect change, Richard’s blog helps with the most important thing of all and that’s education. So, thanks Richard for helping me to gain a little enlightenment of a huge & complex phenomenon so that I can in turn influence a few friends, family and acquaintances so that they may in turn understand some of the solutions.
I assure you, this blog is simply my own way of trying to come to terms with many of these issues
30 years ago my PC had 640K of ram.
My fixed disk had a few hundred megabytes capacity.
Now it has a small fixed disk of 120 thousand megabytes, which is physically half the size of my old 100 megabyte disk. It has 2 thousand megabytes of ram…..
The internet consisted of …. not much, when it staggered along it was 1200/75 baud.
Now my data speed is a [very] slow 4.3 megabits per second….
In 2000 a dollar purchased around 2.6 million transistors (on a chip), now it is around 20 million per dollar.
Now we have transistors with gate sizes almost measured in molecules….not measured by rulers [almost!]
The technical innovation, at least in electronics, has been staggering in 30 years.
We now, almost routinely, send spacecraft across and around our solar system to rendezvous, and land devices on, comets and asteroids: Driven by advances in electronics and communication systems.
People are not so easy to upgrade.
People are the problem.
I know
I did ask if it was me getting old
I have a seven year old MacBook. It no longer takes updates and will not display some web pages, so I have supplemented it with an iPad. What really upsets me is that I did the very stupid thing of recording nearly all my CD collection onto the MacBook and then getting rid of the CDs. Now everything is stuck on the obsolete vesrion of ITunes and there seems to be no way I can transfer it to anything else. Secondary problems like a perfectly good but now unusable printer pale into insignificance beside the prospect of having to re-buy all my music.
Whn I was younger and just starting out in my own place I was given a Zanussi washing machine that our neighbour was throwing out, having upgraded to a shiny new machine. It was 17 years at the time and it lasted for another 5 years in my house.
Zanussi of course was bought out and ony the name remained the same because their white goods don’t last anywhere near as long now. A friend of mine who worked for them said that built in obsolescence is a must so that companies can still make money.
It appears to be a sad fact that we are forced into a throw-away lifestyle not of our choosing, even when we are being berrated for our wastfull habits and not recycling.
Such is the neo-lib con.
Try Bosch washing machines.
Whatever they make seems to go on for ever. You have to break it on purpose if you want a new one.
Miele vacuum cleaners are superb and also seem to last forever although the Miele brand is more expensive than Bosch.
‘People are the problem’
What a statement!! It’s ‘people’ who create these superb feats of technology and put them to use is it not? And the technology will be imbued with the limitations of their makers.
It was ‘people’ who fixed Richard’s ‘phone I believe!
When we use an Apple or Microsoft product are we not being drawn into the designers’ own world view of how these things should operate? It’s so easy to blame the user just like it is so easy to blame the poor or unemployed etc., for their problems.
When – in fact – it is the operating system (or systems) that is the problem. I’ve got to say that in IT in particular a lot of it is just not intuitive. Yet a face to face discussion with a person – even of a differing opinion – offers more opportunity to be intuitive.
The only obsolescence I’m worried about is that we begin to use so much technology that human labour is made obsolescent. And what then?
I-Phones, laptops, watches and the like are more like techno-bling really. What we need to be focussing on is using the technology to sustain life on this planet – green energy and safe methods to grow food are a couple of examples.
In 30 years technology has advanced massively.
People, not so much.
Still fighting the same wars, but using technology to do it better! (In fact, most of the tech advances have been, and are being, driven by “defence” research, or are offshoots of same.
Unfortunately, to sustain life on this planet we have to match resource to people.
There are too many people.
There is no easy resolution to the problems.
Roll-on fusion energy.
I have hopes for fusion
“are we not being drawn into the designers’ own world view of how these things should operate?”
Precisely-a lot of what is called ‘innovation’ is more like ‘renovation.’ Research is going on into post-digital systems but if we were truly innovative we would have got there by now. As you say, PSR, most of what we have is what I would call ‘blingy techno-crap.’
On smartphones, 39 replies and much talk of obsolescence and company ethics, but no one has yet mentioned the Fairphone!!
http://www.fairphone.com/
Bob, duly noted, thanks for that.
Some good posts here. My Citroen recently broke and needed a part called a motor starter – £600 for a small box (think matchbox size). The garage apologised for the cost.
What we need is an EU wide regulation that limits the amount of profit that any business can make on repairing an item. If you sell an item for £1,000 and a part on it breaks that costs 5p to make you should not be able to charge £100 on the basis that the part is unavailable elsewhere. Ideally, the EU should also pass regulations standardising certain products: I had to buy a dedicated screwdriver to repair a bulb on my Citroen!
The terrible thing is that our planet is being depleted and many of our young, particularly men, have no jobs because nothing is repairable any more. As Huxley prophesised, “Ending is better than mending”. One of the most interesting books of the last five years is mentioned in this article: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/may/08/working-hands-happiness-burkeman
I know we all get bombarded by links but here is one of the salient paragraphs if you haven’t got time for the whole:
I’ve travelled to Chichester to test the argument made by the American philosopher Matthew Crawford in his book, The Case For Working With Your Hands: Or Why Office Work Is Bad For Us And Fixing Things Feels Good. Crawford has a doctorate in political philosophy and used to work for a thinktank; now he runs a motorbike repair shop in Richmond, Virginia, and he knows which life he prefers. His short, passionate book is an effort to show that this doesn’t just apply to him: the way we’ve come to devalue manual competence, he argues, explains why so much modern work feels empty and unfulfilling. He’s not really suggesting that we white-collar workers should all abandon our desk jobs in favour of rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty. But his firm conviction is that the skilled trades — car repair, plumbing, carpentry, electrical work, stonemasonry — offer a way of thinking about life, and relating to the world, that we could all do with adopting. “The important thing,” he says, “is whether a job entails using your own judgment or not.”
This last paragraph reminds me of much of the content and argument which can be found in Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
Android.
Now, if it was straight linux, without googles heavy presence. Or iOS..
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/three-alternative-fusion-projects-that-are-making-progress