> We BUY so much stuff. Most of it unnecessary.
Fixed it.
Fixed it.
And people have brand loyalty to Apple stuff because quality, or design, or something... but for a product like this, which to me is prima facie a ridiculous, impractical, high-priced, fast-fashion item, you know that the marketers are cashing in on that brand loyalty almost exclusively (in the absence of any intrinsic value).
Half-baked thoughts, I'm sure people have written properly about this. But the conclusion I leap to is that marketing people are the great Satan here. Fuck those guys.
Marketing guys just know and exploit a very well known human weakness. It's annoying because it's Apple, but everyone has been doing this forever.
Non-standardized phone chargers? USB-C and its patent hell? HDMI and its licensing? There's plenty of examples for creating wasteful items without them being fashion ones.
The materials themselves probably cost no more than a few tens of cents, so all the cost is going to be the in the manufacturing process. The knitting pattern does look somewhat advanced, so I guess it would require a relatively high spec knitting machine. I suspect what would drive up cost is a combination of throughput and somewhat that you need an expensive knitting machine. Since this is a high volume item that will probably bring down the average cost by quite a bit.
I would guess somewhere in the region of $2 to $5 per pocket to mass produce these? Anyone have a more qualified guess?
Clearly Ads work. You cannot blame the individual who has been brainwashed, addicted to buying things, by the hyper-capitalist advertising mega-monopolies around us. They are victims too.
Plus that kind of wasteful consumerism is only seen in certain developed countries in the world, while the brainwashing happens globally. So corporations are evil but a little individual accountability wouldn't harm.