The entire conspiracy is explained away when you consider that manufacturers are giving consumers exactly what they’re asking for, which is often compromising the product in different ways. So how is this NOT planned obsolescence? It’s Consumer Demand And especially (I’m looking at you, Samsung and Apple) you see products that are upgraded every year or two with fancy new features and operating systems that make the current version look like a potato. You see parts or consumables that are discontinued, rendering the product useless. You see products that don’t have user-serviceable or replaceable parts. You see products that break after a period of time. We can point to microwaves that are older than we are that still function fine and say “see, back then they built gadgets that last, why don’t they do that anymore?” There are lots of manifestations of this phenomenon. Why build a product that lasts a long time and only get one sale when you can build a product that breaks after a few years and get a few repeat sales? The idea makes sense some bigwigs in marketing realized that if they sell a product that will expire, break, or become unserviceable after a certain period of time (long enough that people won’t complain), then the consumer will return and buy a newer, better product. Dig in and get your flamewar fingers fired up. In truth, we’re all to blame for the signals our buying habits send to manufacturers. When we buy the hottest, shiniest, smallest, and cheapest new thing we join the wave of consumer demand that is the cause of what often gets labelled as “Planned Obsolescence”. This conspiracy theory isn’t true there’s a perfectly good explanation for this phenomenon, and it was caused by the consumers, not the manufacturers. The common belief is that big companies are out to get the little people by making products that break after a short period, or with substantially new features or accessories that make previous models obsolete, requiring the user to purchase a new model.
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