Some are. I have a… I don’t know, 25 year old calculator that’s still trucking along. My stud finder is at least 10 years old and works great. The light programming and battery charging circuits in my headlamp are great, and as long as the lamp is working, I’ll presumably be content with them.

There are plenty of basic circuits like this which don’t really need to adapt or improve over time. I like these a lot. What concerns me are those which rapidly go obsolete or lose utility.

I’m also not so sure things need to be useful forever. Many older technologies are totally obsolete and therefor not practically useful anymore. The key thing is, if this is no longer useful, how can we recycle it? How can we remove it from the world without it being a burden?

That’s probably the hardest part.

Edit: just realized a calculator is arguably a perfect candidate for being an app. I suppose my point was that it is still working well, though. A stud finder or an oven as someone else suggested is a much better example.

I suppose it depends on the product thermostats? watches? ovens?. The lifecycle of an unmaintained iOS app is about 18 months. So that's what we are comparing.

Most of the apps I have purchased in the past no longer honor it and have switched to a subscription because it doesn't pay for yearly maintenance.