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Comment by swatow | Hacker News Reader

I doubt planned obsolescence is common. Think about the reaction of the consumer to something breaking down. Do they go "that was a great product, pity it broke, better buy the new version" or do they say "that was a shit product, I'm getting a different brand". And what about people figuring out which products break early from Amazon reviews?

I think this law is probably heavy handed and unnecessary. Especially in an age where most people spend their money on items like phones and laptops, which are reparable and become obsolete very fast anyway.

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I feel like planned obsolescence is much more common that we initially think. For example, on the phone market, battery lasts on day out of the box. If we consider the battery losing .05% of its total charge after each charge/decharge cycle, after 2 years of constant use, it already lost 30% of its total charge. Yet, despite everyone being annoyed with having to charge their phones at least everyday, apple, samsung and others keep making phones that last a single day on a charge. They make their phones bigger, bulkier, faster, but nothing on the battery side (I think there was an article linked here where the author claimed he cracked the apple battery equation and his thought was "they make it last a day, not more not less)". And we can add to that prohibitive repair price and refusal to support older platforms, even though it's often just a cross compilation away.

I get it that it's probably better for any company out there to sell new devices rather than support old ones for free. It just that the "I doubt planned obsolescence is common" strikes me as a bit naive

Everything is a tradeoff with phones. There is a tradeoff between phone size, battery life, and processor power. One day is a natural sweet spot since people charge their phones at night. Sure, this will result in a less-than-one-day battery life over time But people might have been happy to replace their phone anyway for other reasons.

Supporting old platforms is not just cross compilation, or at least the cross compilation involved is highly non-trivial.

I would say that excessive cynicism is as bad a bias as naivety. Everything you describe is actually consistent with perfectly informed consumers and profit maximizing companies. You are just not looking for explanations along these lines.

It's a feedback loop. The price wars made manufacturers cut every corner they could and now we have frail products. It's also a byproduct of fast evolving times. We want to try the new shiny, so every year, drop the older to buy the latest which is convenient for brands to roll production (the only part the mob talks about sadly).

I doubt you know what you're talking about.

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