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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

  Planned obsolescence should be illegal

Is there a clear line between planned obsolescence and just making a cheap, low-quality product?

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Yes. The distinguishing feature of planned obsolescence is that the customer doesn't know the real design lifespan of the product. Just require companies to declare that and the problem goes away. Looks like the EU already does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence#Regulatio...

Thats kind of how warranty works only that usually the product lasts much longer than the warranty.

Definitely. A key example is phones whose batteries cannot be replaced by the end-user (and end-user repairability in general). Forcing users to update their phone's OS to newer versions which require more power from the newer models is another example. Printer ink cartridges often contain chips whose only purpose is to disable the cartridge - even if it's still got plenty of ink - after a certain amount of time passes. Also consider video games which require an internet connection to play, but do all of the logic on the client - when the servers disappear, well, time to buy this year's game instead.

Legislation against this practice isn't unheard of, there are fines and jail time for it in France.

Do you think that Apple will be fined for not making the battery replaceable? I don't see this happen, and certainly not in the US.

My guess is that Apple will simply claim that they can't make the phone as small/thin when the battery has to be replaceable.

350,000 phones were being into landfills every day in 2010. Fuck Apple's "thinnest phone ever", it's not worth the social cost. Dumb consumer vanity isn't the metric for optimization here.

I'm not sure Apple is the one to yell at here. The iPhone is one of the only phones that continues to get updates and is useful beyond 18-24 months. Short of destroying the motherboard, few iPhones are likely sent to landfills until they are many years old. They certainly do not end up in landfills because the lack of a user replaceable battery.

iPhone users either get the battery replaced, sell the phone, or they trade the phone in. The trade in then gets sold again, and likely again after that. The iPhones resale value makes sure it is a long time before any are simply thrown in the trash.

Apple will recycle any Apple product for free just by handing it to them in any of their stores. An Apple phone ending up in a landfill is the consumer's fault.

These recycled phones either end up as refurbished phones in other markets, or are taken apart by their special robots down to the individual pieces, which are then recycled themselves.

By recycling they likely mean burning the phone and getting about 10% of the valuable material back out of it.

Apple will pay you to not throw your old iPhone in the trash.

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