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Comment by smacktoward | Hacker News Reader

This sort of thing isn't unique to the storage business. In the auto industry, they call it "decontenting":

http://www.autoweek.com/car-shopping/articles/2012/01/decont...

... but it works pretty much the same way: early models of a particular car, the ones that make that car's reputation, come loaded with all sorts of nice touches. Then as time passes the manufacturer slowly strips those touches out, replacing them with cheaper alternatives or just dropping them altogether. The price of the car stays the same, though, so the manufacturer gets to keep the difference as extra profit. (Or the price actually goes up, when the dropped features that used to be standard become optional add-ons instead.)

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At least in that case they only make changes in a new model year. In the electronics industry substitutions are often made while retaining the the exact same SKU. So even savvy consumers have no way of knowing exactly what they are going to get. For example sellers of blank optical media will sometimes switch to a different supplier and the only way to tell is to check the MID after you have purchased them. Hard drive manufactures will will also switch to a totally different "cost reduced" design while retaining the same model number. Then there's the infamous panel lottery when buying a monitor from certain unscrupulous companies.

I'm mildly surprised there hasn't been a high profile class action lawsuit over these practices.

I also forgot about consumer routers which sometimes ship totally different hardware under the same model number.

Samsung has been known to ship Android tablets containing completely different SoCs under the same model. For example, the new Galaxy Tab S might contain an Exynos SoC or a Qualcomm SoC. They're essentially two completely different tablets with the same name and exterior.

Though, my understanding is that in their case it's not so much a bait-and-switch as a supply chain issue: they actually want to sell more units than any one SoC provider can deliver.

Big pain for developers, though, when they're trying to track down a user-reported bug on one of these things.

Another reason is 4G, for awhile (still maybe?) Samsung wasn't building any Exynos Chipsets with 4G radios, so markets where that mattered (US, etc.) they used Qualcomm

My understanding is that it's due to the Exynos SoC not supporting 4G, while the Qualcomm does. If you buy the 4G version you'll always get the Qualcomm version, and if you buy the wifi version you always get the Exynos version. So it's not like it's completely random what SoC you end up with.

Ah, that makes sense too. I've heard (from Android engineers I know) that supply chain issues have been the reason in the past, but I honestly don't know if that's the case for this particular device.

You are right, and they have different SKU numbers.

Except Samsung has different model numbers for different SOC's (Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 in N9005/Exynos 5420 in N9000) and those are in comparable speed.

It's extremely common to swap out major components without changing the name and number the router is advertised under, but in every instance I'm aware of there was a version number that was incremented on the packaging, eg. WRT54G v4.0 to v5.0 halved the memory (and v7.0 switched from Broadcom to Atheros and v7.2 switched back). It doesn't really help if you're buying online, but if you're buying from a brick-and-mortar store you can pretty much always know what you're getting if you read the fine print.

> Then there's the infamous panel lottery when buying a monitor from certain unscrupulous companies

You mean like Apple using two different LCDs in retina MacBook Pros, with the LG model being junk?

I can't tell if this is sarcasm (in which case it deserves a downvote, plus it's a bad sarcasm), or if it's true (in which case you should've included a source/explanation.

There was a situation not long ago with some Macbook monitors going bad and it turned out Apple was getting the panels from Samsung and LG and it was the LG ones going bad. I'm not sure if there was much scandal around it though.

Plus, the colors/gamma were weird on one of them... You have to install a special color profile or else the contrast would be really screwy.

It's true, but it doesn't apply in this case.

Here's the backstory:

When Apple released the retina MBP in 2012, they had 2 suppliers for the 15 inch retina screen: Samsung and LG. To be fair with Apple, isn't gaming the system by giving earlier review models better quality screens. More likely, this is to ensure that instead of relying on one supplier, they can diversify their screen manufacturing so they don't get screwed if one manufacturer has production difficulties.

At the time, I had purchased a retina MBP with the LG screen that summer. (You don't know what screen you will get when you buy it). The LG screen, as it turned out, had very bad burn-in problems. After complaining to the Apple store a few times, they finally relented and switched it out for me to the better Samsung screen.

The customer service at the time wasn't the best, since Apple should have gone "This is a real issue, if you can show proof of screen burn in on your LG screen, we'll immediately replace it for you" rather than try to brush it under the rug. However, it wasn't a malicious case of screwing over customers after sending better units to reviewers.

The problem is that consumers could not know whether they were buying a defective product or not, even if they knew about the problem. Two different products were sold without any means of differentiating them, which is inexcusable. It would have been very easy to construct different serial numbers for the different models. It could have been as simple as adding an A or B or adding something to the tiny print on the back of the laptop or and the packaging.

To what end should hardware manufactures be required to inform their customers of component changes? One big advantage of Apple products compared to other competitors is that there are very limited number of decisions for average consumers to make. It will cause huge amount of confusion if a new model name and change list is generated each time any of the thousands of components in an MBP changes.

It seems to me that focusing on component changes is completely missing the point. The real problem was not that Apple had two subtly different versions of their MacBook Pro with no way to tell them apart. The real problem was that Apple was shipping seriously defective hardware. Imagine if Apple hand standardized entirely on the defective LG panels. That eliminates the "panel lottery" complaint, right? And yet the actual problem, in terms of what you get when you buy one, is worse, not better.

Manufacturers need to ship products that are fit for purpose and that perform as advertised. As long as that's maintained, swapping components shouldn't be a problem. If swapping components affects that, then it's the bad products, not the swapping, that are the real problem.

I totally agree with you. For this particular article, if there is a clear and comprehensive specification on how the drives should perform (IOPs, latency, BW, etc), the problem will be resolved immediately with no controversy. The comment I was replying to implied that Apple should provide a means for customers to distinguish the products, which I do not believe is a realistic solution because swapping components is quite common in hardware world.

I agree with you too! I'm just expanding on that a bit, and saying how even if distinguishing the products was somehow realistic, it's solving the wrong problem anyway.

Apple already has different model identifiers and different model names for their MacBook Pros. That's because they don't sell only one version of each laptop; they usually offer two or three versions that have different processors and different amounts of RAM. There were 6 different model numbers and 9 different configurations (across two different sizes and two different batches) of the MacBook Pro sold in 2013 alone:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4132

I'm not suggesting that they advertise the MacBook Pros by their model numbers. My point is that they already have to differentiate between different models and different configurations, so it would not be difficult for them to make the model numbers different (it could be simple as one letter or digit change at the end) when they change such a significant part component.

I turned in my July 2012 MBPr about a month ago for the screen burn in issues. It went almost exactly like this: "This is a real issue, if you can show proof of screen burn in on your LG screen, we'll immediately replace it for you" Except that I watched them run the test on it instead of proving that it had burn-in myself. Got it back a few days later with a new screen :)

So I guess it just took a bit of time for them to admit the issue.

while apple's customer support is generally pretty good for ordinary requests, they are known for never admitting fault. i.e. "you're holding the phone the wrong way"

It's not sarcasm. A class action lawsuit was filed in March 2013. It seems that LG screens on a certain model(s?) of a 15.6 inch Retina MacBook Pro suffer from burn in, and that there is no way for a consumer to tell whether the screen was manufactured by Samsung or LG before buying the laptop.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/macbook-pro-retina-lg...

It's not just the retina Macbook screens, the image retention issue affects basically every LG IPS laptop panel manufactured before 2013. It's just that Apple wasn't using the IPS panels until the Retina.

What would be the grounds for a class action suit? In all the examples you give, they sell you a good that meets the advertised specs. If someone is advertising generic blank DVDs, for instance, and they happen to sell you TDK media one day, I don't see how you can make a legal case that this binds them to only selling you TDK media. If you want TDK media, you should be buying from someone who advertises TDK media.

Interesting note at the end:

"Don't think decontenting is limited to just cars. Next time you're at the grocery store, stop by the freezer case and check out your favorite carton of ice cream. Most brands have quietly gone from a half-gallon (two-quart) container to 1.75 quarts--without changing the price."

I'm pretty sure I've seen the higher-end brands dropping to 1.5 quarts now. Sodas are pushing 1.25L and 1.5L containers when it used to just be purely 2L. There are a lot of four-packs in the beer aisle. A fair number of meats are being sold in fixed-sized packages, invariably less than one pound per package, rather than being sold by the pound.

At least it's clear enough if you look for it. In the SSD case, it sounds like they're making important alterations to things that aren't discussed in the specs. Of course, you shouldn't buy something depending on anything that isn't listed in the specs, but if all the manufacturers have the same crappy set of incomplete specs, you don't have a lot of choice.

Worse yet, some ice-cream brands (e.g., Breyer's) are also reformulating their recipes to use cheaper ingredients -- meaning they no longer meet the standard to be called "ice cream", but instead must be called "frozen dairy dessert": http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/dining/remembering-when-br...

An upshot of this is that staples like ice cream, mayonnaise, and cheese are some of the most label-regulated industries. The existence of terms like "processed cheese food" is a good thing.

Ice cream, mayo and cheese are staples? I'm guessing you're based in North America. :)

Maybe that fake cheese they eat on pizzas and the like.

Can't pass up that chance to take a cheap shot at an entire continent of people! After all, everyone knows that people who live in North America are all fat, lazy, and too stupid to know it!

That's a case of the labeling law working nicely though.

I like it when package prices have to be shown next to sensible unit prices, it really simplifies the comparison, regardless of any psychology that has been built into the packaging.

This really makes me hate the half-assed use of the metric system in the US. It seems like my local stores go out of their way to use different imperial units for different products, making it harder to compare. Unit prices are great, but when one package is $/oz and another is $/gallon, it defeats much of the purpose.

Oz is weight and gallon is volume. This is not a metric vs standard issue.

Oz most certainly can be used for volume. It's called the "fluid ounce".

But both oz and gallon are still imperial units. In metric they would use liters. So this isn't caused by half-assed use of the metric system, but rather by not using it at all.

In your rush to be pedantic, would it kill you to engage your brain for a few seconds first?

The US uses the metric system in many places. However, adoption has been half-assed, and non-metric units remain in common use in many situations. I buy soda and wine in liters but milk and juice in gallons, for example.

The fact that any non-metric units remain at all is due to the half-assed nature of metric system adoption in this country.

What's with the hostility? I was pointing out that WalterBright was down voted for the perfectly valid point that the problem you spoke of is not caused by half-assed use of the metric system. No matter how much I use my brain, it won't become such either. There may be other problems caused by that (I wouldn't know; I'm not American), but you specifically brought up one that is not related to metric in any way.

The hostility comes because you're going out of your way to interpret what I said in a way that makes me wrong, rather than seeing how I'm right.

And you're doing it again. Did you just ignore my explanation above, about how any use of non-metric units in the US is ultimately due to the half-assed adoption of the metric system in this country?

Hey, I understand what you are saying. But he did have a point, why use hostility? You could have made the same comment without the first line saying 'use your brain' and kept everything civil. Even if you are right, do you need to denigrate others who have gotten something wrong?

Pedantry is an inherent part of nerd-dom. It's often a good thing. Computers and other such things don't work on "well, you know what I meant".

However, there's a nasty subset of pedantry which basically consists of pattern-matching words without truly grasping the meaning and using that as a launching point for a "you're wrong" reply. This kind of pedantry derails conversations and wrecks communities.

That's the kind of pedantry I got above with this nonsense reply about how "in metric they would use liters". As if I didn't know that! A moment's thought would indicate, hey, maybe this guy is not a complete idiot who doesn't know anything about metric, and he probably already knows that neither ounces nor gallons are metric, so let's figure out what he actually meant instead of doing a mindless pattern-matching "you're wrong" reply. That is hostility too. Especially when you keep on going even after the guy explains it.

And of course I get the usual internet double standard, where it's perfectly OK to to write a really bad comment as long as you don't outright use upsetting words, but calling that behavior out is criticized.

I don't subscribe to this idea that "civil" is equivalent to "use nice words". To me, "civil" is about how you behave. If you curse but treat other people with respect, that's civil. If you use nothing but benign words arranged in a way that treats other people without respect, that's "not civil".

I suppose any argument in the internet can feel hostile if you care about the subject, but my apologies for any distress I may have caused anyway. My message is not intended to be about whether you are wrong, but whether the example you gave is valid. I did read your explanation, and I find it mistaken. Let me rephrase my argument, and you can point out the part you think is wrong.

If we say that a problem is caused by half-assed adoption of X, it implies the problem can be solved in two ways: (1) Properly adopting X, or (2) Reverting back to no adoption at all. The example you gave can only be solved by 1, because it is an inherent problem of the imperial system. If you take metric out of the equasion, the situation is not affected. While you may have meant to say "the imperial system has problems, let's use metric", one can also understand it as "the transition to metric is causing problems, let's stop it".

Your mistake is thinking that any statement of the form, "I hate X, for example because Y" implies that Y can be solved by any action that eliminates X.

For example, "I hate how they're serving a 50/50 mixture of coffee and urine, makes the coffee taste like urine." This does not imply that the problem can be solved by eliminating the coffee.

The grocery store I usually visit shows the price for all of its products both per unit and (much smaller, below it) in price per kilogram. I look at that all the time, and it's often surprising which of the products is actually the cheapest, and how large the differences can be between seemingly very similar products.

> I like it when package prices have to be shown next to sensible unit prices, it really simplifies the comparison, regardless of any psychology that has been built into the packaging.

This is standard consumer protection law in many places such as the EU and Australia.

You know, I have just been noticing this from a lot of "ice cream" brands in the grocery store: some of their flavors say "ice cream" while others say "frozen dairy product". Mind you, these are different flavors from the same brands, so you can't just go for a specific brand and assume you're getting ice cream, you have to read the fine print.

Keep in mind this is a brand-specific change. Unilever, the owner of Breyer's, is the worlds largest ice cream manufacturer and also owns Ben & Jerry's, Klondike, Popsicle, Magnum, and a host of other brands. Breyer's being one of their non-premium brands, it's one of the few they have that's so price sensitive that they'd risk so blatantly using filler substitutes.

My father told me that before and during the Depression there was a chocolate bar that sold for a nickel. The price stayed the same, but the size of the bar varied with the changing price of chocolate.

That actually seems like a good idea - as long as they market as "one nickels worth of chocolate".

found a link: http://www.hersheyarchives.org/exhibits/default.aspx?Exhibit...

It's not clear why, but the fourth wrapper in the link (1906-1911) actually says "10 cents" (possibly the wrapper is slightly larger)

Part of this is for cost, and part is for consumer taste. Starting in the early 80s through 90s, consumers started seeking out products based on the amount of fat per serving, leading to the rise of "fro yo" and low-fat high-sugar formulations which had to move away from creamy, low-overrun ice creams. Ice cream is defined by high butterfat content and low air injection (overrun), but as people have started to recognize that sugar is as bad for you as fat, perhaps the market will tilt again.

Can we stop already with this fat is bad for you? There is so much nutrition misinformation that no wonder there is an obesity epidemic... Fat is not bad for you, in fact it's critical to living a healthy life. Sugar is much easier to abuse because it's absorbed too quickly (which is why fruit juice is bad, no fiber slowing down the absorption) and provided in such vast quantities.

We need to real governance here, bring back some real nutritional science in to the consumers attention and make organisations legally liable for spreading dangerous misinformation. It could save more lives than stopping smoking/alcohol/drugs, gun violence, wars and car accidents combined.

Saturated fat is bad for you - and dairy has saturated fat.

Canola = OK Butter = Bad

There is no evidence Saturated fat is bad.

Go get the current issue of Tine Magazine[1]. This thinking was never backed up with good science 40 years ago and has been totally debunked in literature in the last decade. Saturated fat is very much a part of a healthy diet.

1. No, I don't consider that the "literature", but it's a good jumping off point to start learning what is true in nutrition versus what is dogma.

Dietary Fat is not bad for you, neither is it the same thing as body fat which is an indicator for excessive energy intake (most often from sugary drinks) and being generally misinformed (99% Fat Free? Awesome! Nevermind that added sugar to cover the lack to flavour we took out). What is bad for you is too much, EXCESS. Except this goes for everything. Such as too much sugar, protein, hormones, almost any drug & water can be a detriment, even lethal to you. I'll only give you that trans-fat is terrible.

The market hasn't and never will teach you that moderation is healthy because it's against their business model of selling excess. See meal portion sizes and how they have increased over the last few decades. I hope you're not taking fish oil supplements as well. Anything with this much marketing behind it should be cautioned with much skepticism.

Edit: I stand behind my criticism of anti-fat culture.

It is more likely that you are down voted as you went on a rant about fat to a parent who was talking about consumer tastes I the 80s and 90s. It would feel that both these replies are likely noted as off topic to the general conversation going on here.

Consumerist has been tracking this for years:

http://consumerist.com/category/grocery-shrink-ray/

http://www.mouseprint.org/

I remember noticing this as an 10-year-old with bags of chips -- $0.79 bags would become bigger $0.99 "big grab" bags with a big exclamatory balloon, then the size would later go down to before, but the price would stay the same.

Even as a kid, it seemed kinda sleazy

I agree, but I think it's just a way for the producers to mask inflation. My gut feeling is that people are more likely to consciously notice a price increase of 20% than a 20% decrease in volume/weight.

I've seen this with assorted products offered in "new and improved" packaging that offers less than before, while the price stays the same.

The new "E-Z pour" bottle is an excuse to reduce the contents.

Sometimes these shrinkings are (accidentally) synchronized. In the early 2000s almost everything available from big manufacturers in Brazilian groceries shrunk while keeping the same prices (e.g. cookie bags going from 300g to 290g).

Last year and a half yogurt not only shrunk but started vanishing from the malls, being replaced by almost identically-looking bottles of "fermented milk", as the new formulation did not met the mandatory labeling standards to be called "yogurt". Of course, the prices were kept or raised.

That's everywhere.

Intellectually, I know that "fermented milk" is a perfectly accurate way to describe cheese, yogurt, and similar products, but I don't know if I could bring myself to buy and eat something that had it right on the label....

How about fermented grape juice or fermented grain?

Oddly, I have no problem with those. Something about fermented milk specifically sounds bad. Even though I'll happily eat all sorts of cheese.

For what it's worth, I decided this might be because I've had far too much experience with disgusting sour milk that sat in the refrigerator too long, while my only experience with rotten grain or grapes is with the nicely packaged kind where it was done on purpose.

Intel sort of does it, too. Like they have started calling some of their Atom CPU's "Celeron", while they still serve more powerful Haswell Celerons on the market, and the naming is just slightly different (a letter). They don't exactly replace it in the same model, though, so I guess they are not quite that bad yet, but they try to be misleading about it, too.

And I think Atoms has gotten better since the old days too.

Well that sucks. It should not happen, yet it does. And it should not definitely spread to more industries.

But that really is no argument. I am sure the car manufacturers did not downgrade the car so that it runs at half its speed/milage. Then they came up with a fake benchmark to prove to the world that it actually does (even if it does not). Come on that is an insult to one's intelligence. These guys are ripping their customers. Whatever reviews for the product exist are based on the specs that no longer are. That is pure evil.

What can someone do to stop this ? Besides not buying their products.

This isn't always a 'gotcha' scenario in which the OEM acts in bad faith to the customer. In hardware, when you're under a lot of pressure to be deliver products on time, teams will be risk averse and over design to meet timing. As time goes on, engineering learns of the over design, or over capacity, and corrects the issue to save cost or optimize performance. This becomes an issue when teams trade off performance for cost.

That article first claims that prices stay the same, but then contains this:

"They're grateful that the Jetta's base price is down $1,740."

Then you're just getting less value for less money, which seems fair to me.

It's only fair if you know you are getting less value. Otherwise it's false advertising.

I'm currently trying to buy a pair of shoes on amazon, and many reviewers are calling out the fact that after giving the shoes a five star, they go to buy a second pair of the same shoe to find that it is completely different and of terribly quality.

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