Computers/software planned obsolescence cheeses me off!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Not pit worthy, but I’m really, really harboring a hate-on for computer and software manufacturers. My first year of college, I had the typerwriter my dad used when he was in high school. The typerwiter was over 30 years old and did its job.

Just this week a core function that is part of my day-to-day office work suddenly stopped working. We need to replace my entire computer, all because I need the latest Flash plug-in, a free download. The plug-in only works with latest version of Firefox which only works with Intel chipped Macs and this Mac was bought right before the Intel Macs were available in Canada.

I can think of no other industry that gets away with this! You’d think there would be consumer protection laws that wouldn’t allow it. It’s not simple “depreciation” it’s fundamental functions ceasing to work altogether rendering it useless for its intended purpose. Imagine if it happened with every other industry. Like your car:

You are a nighttime delivery driver so your car is the key to your livelihood. It’s a 2006 Mitsubishi in mint condition, only 25,000 miles on it. You’re driving on a deserted road in the middle of the night and suddenly your headlights just stop working. You’re stranded until morning - suck!

“Your headlights won’t ever work again because you need the free headlight upgrade!” the mechanic says and disappears into the back. He comes back out and says “Well, what do you know! Before you can get the free headlight upgrade you need the free dashboard upgrade.” And he disappears again.

He comes back out and says: “The dashboard upgrade is only available for 2007 models and newer. If you want working headlights, you’ll need to buy a new car.”

Aghast, you say “I can’t afford a new car! My car is in mint condition.”

The mechanic calls Toyota.

Mechanic: “They said to buy a new car or only use your car in the daytime.”

That’s what I’m dealing with today. For want of a free plug-in I have to buy a new computer. At least my office has a tech budget. I don’t know how people manage with tighter purse strings.

2

This has nothing to do with planned obsolescence. No one at Apple, Mozilla and Adobe got together and plotted that this new Flash would force you to upgrade Firefox, which would force you to upgrade to an Intel Mac. If anything, if you asked Apple, they would tell you this is a prime example of what they’re talking about when they say Flash is a piece of shit and you shouldn’t build your business around it. Adobe would just point fingers back at them for abandoning their pre-Intel customers. Microsoft, if you asked their opinion, would tell that they wished they could implement planned obsolescence but instead they’re stuck supporting legacy XP apps and IE6. Mozilla would look sheepish and explain that they’re switching to a rapid upgrade plan in order to serve you better.

And Mozilla wouldn’t be wrong, either. Five years is an eternity in computing years. The machine you buy today will run circles around your old box, even if you go for the basic Macbook or Mini. The only way to get your wish, for computers that lasted as long as your Dad’s typewriter, would be if everyone agreed that the computer industry would stop developing. It’s not happening and you woudn’t want it to.

So go buy a new machine, and maybe don’t buy the $2500 model this time, and understand that in another five years, you’ll be replacing it with something even more powerful and amazing.

3

A better analogy would be if you took your 2006 Mitsubishi in and asked them to add some new feature that never even existed in 2006, like some sort of blind-spot detection system only offered in 2012 models by Volvo and Mercedes. Then you ask why they can’t put it in your car, and they explain that it relies on another feature that was introduced in 2010, and that feature relies on something created in 2008, and that none of them can be implemented in a 2006 Mitsubishi.

After all, you only need the latest Flash plug-in to use some new feature of Flash right? You can keep using the computer indefinitely for its intended purpose, which was to operate with computer hardware and software in existence when it was made.

4

What they said. We don’t use Flash at my workplace - well, there might be a few scattered employees who got clearance for it, but it’s not standard on our computers. I’m running IE 7 and we only recently upgraded to Office 2007. I got a new computer a year ago; the one I was using before that was new in 2001, and was still running fine, just slowly.

5

Nope, the program we’ve been using everyday has decided to “upgrade” its user interface and it now requires Flash, they will not support legacy versions. This very simple tool now has a mandatory fancy-schmancy Flash requirement for a very, very basic tool. It’s like adding a mandatory musical laser light show function to a hammer.

Perhaps “planned obsolescence” was the wrong term. I still find it appalling that so much software isn’t backwards compatible.

Edit: Mind you, I’d probably pay for a hammer that made light sabre noises when I swung it.

6

I don’t think innovation would be stiffled if software was backwards compatible. As much as I detest Microsoft, I will give them credit for at least making the effort of creating the docx format so that legacy versions of Word can still open the documents.

Ditto for programs that allow you to choose “Classic” version of user-interfaces or similar (like Gmail offers a basic HTML mode if your computer can’t hack the newer stuff.)

7

IOW, the problem is your software vendor. They shouldn’t be programming in that Flash garbage.

So why are you bitching about the computer, again?

8

If you’d quit eating office electronics, I bet the IT managers would be much more accommodating. They probably just blamed it on Flash problems rather than fish through the plumbing to retrieve your mouse, USB drive, or whatever other pica-induced gobbling you did.

9

Well, there’s your problem. The mechanic’s an idiot!

In a way, I can sympathize. When I got a new (Win7) computer, I discovered that, because I hadn’t gone through the XP to Vista to Win7 stage, my $500 eight-color photo printer had no usable drivers.

10

Firstly, I’m pissed with computers and software - predominantly the latter. But I’m pissed about the Mac Apple doesn’t support its own product anymore either. I’m glad this is a work computer because its version of iTunes is no longer supported by Apple or the iTunes store. To update I’d need the Mac with the Intel chip.

It’s not one random software vendor. As a lot of business functions migrate to the cloud, people are relying on web interfaces more. Sucks to be you if you log in one day and everything is fine, but log in the next and you can’t do squat because someone decided to update the GUI.

A lot of small businesses have limited resources for IT and hang on to older machines longer. The window of time between “purchase” and “useless” is getting shorter and shorter. Our previous budget was based on computers being viable for 7 years. Now the Powers That Be in our office are trying to find ways of allocating resources to try replacing computers after 3 or 4.

If I invest $1,400 in a product, I’d really like it to last longer than 4 years.

It seems to be a general trend with electronics. Like our Blu Ray player. We got sick and tired of renting Blu Rays to have them say we need to download the latest software to watch it. We bought it two years ago. At least we can update it. (Yes, we still rent DVDs when we don’t want the compressed look of Netflix.)

11

You would be wrong. It’s not always possible to make software backwards compatible if you plan to work with new features. You can’t just keep slapping old code on top of your new code indefinitely and expect it all to play nicely. There’s a point where, if you want to progress, you need to start clean with a new set of features and focus on making those work. At that point, you have two options: a) drop support for the older version or b) maintain separate versions, which is expensive and a support nightmare and worst of all, takes developer attention away from exciting new possibilities. Unless you’re Microsoft or Google, it’s too expensive to maintain support for legacy code beyond a few years and doing so genuinely impedes your ability to implement new ideas.

As for you, OP, I get that this is aggravating. But it’s not going to change. The computer industry is not going to slow down. Software demands will continue to evolve as the machine’s capability evolves. IT spending habits will have to adjust. And the truth is, if you bought a machine for $1400 in 2006 - you overpaid for it.

In your shoes, since you’re making some changes, I would probably switch to Microsoft computers, because they do backwards compatibility better, and they’re cheaper. Seriously. Instead of spending big money on a machine today, spend under $750 and plan on upgrading more frequently. Honestly, any $500 off the shelf machine you can get at Best Buy is more powerful than that $1400 machine you bought five years ago. Windows 7 is a great OS. Making the switch should be simple.

Then find an alternative to your software that isn’t based on Flash - which really is as flaky as Steve Jobs says it is. If you tell us what it is, we can probably give you suggestions.

12

No, this computer was a bargain at the time given what it was originally required to do. It’s not your run-of-the-mill PC running Windows. It was a designer’s machine for massive graphics and hi-rez video. At the time, Apple was selling it for $2,500, the next one down did not have the graphics capabilities for our designer at the time. Nowadays a Mac-Mini probably has 10x the power. I got the machine when the designer had to upgrade.

I don’t think software needs to be backwards compatible forever, but as with the case of the Blu Rays, it’s stupid if you have to upgrade after a mere six months (which is approximately the first time we got the update nag). Imagine if we had to upgrade our browsers to read the SDMB every six months. Dopers would be pissed. That’s about the rate I was seeing it on our Blu Ray. Now we rent DVDs exclusively.

Unfortunately, I can’t describe the software it is part of an ESP’s web interface, which totally, completely does not. need. Flash. I don’t even understand what the hell they are using it for. When I log on from home there still isn’t anything that ought to be Flash-based! Nincompoops! The best you could do is find me a new suppler. Their support blog looks very angry right now, so we’re not the only ones.

13

In the early days of the automobile they broke down all the time. You had to be an amateur mechanic if you wanted to take a cross-country road trip. But as the technology matured, cars became more reliable. However, major innovations also became more infrequent.

Right now, computer technology is changing amazingly quickly. The rate of change means that before all the kinks are worked out of a particular piece of hardware or software, there’s already something newer and faster to replace it. But this progress will not continue forever. Eventually we’ll hit some hard limits on processor speed and memory density, and when that happens software will become more stable and reliable as well.

14

You are at the unfortunate end of receiving an end of life computer, just after a major architectures change. The machine after that had a Core Duo processor, and while it won’t take OS X Lion, it would at least be functional for another year or so…

To expect a (cheap) windows laptop to have much more than a three year life expectancy is unrealistic. The business class laptops that will stand the test of time are every bit as expensive as their Mac equivalent. Lenovo makes an excellent laptop, and Windows 7 is an excellent operating system. The current stable of Apple laptops are excellent, as is OS X. I dunno what to tell you, but obsolescence is part and parcel of the industry, if it’s any consolation, the machine you purcase today weighs half as much, last twice as long on battery (if not longer) and stores ten times the bits. On the downside, you will ask it to do more, because it CAN do more.

15

I would write to this company and tell them that since their new and useless flash-based version has broken compatibility you are now switching to company x’s competing software which you are assured will not have the same issues. I would say this whether it is true or not, since they will have no way of checking to see if you are serious.

Having said that, I would still upgrade your computer. It will break eventually. Fans wear out, connections get warped from heat, dust accumulates, hard drives die off, et cetera. Every single moving part will eventually break. So I would try to upgrade and write it off on your taxes if you have that option. But I would still complain to this other company about their purposeless use of Flash and how it has made you think good thoughts about their competitors.

16

If the computer otherwise works swimmingly, is there some sort of remote server cloud browser you can use to access your work? I managed to keep my IBM Aptiva with a 1GB hard drive and 75MhZ processor running as my main PC until about 2004. I’d be inclined to find a workaround in your position.

For me, I long realized that my “needs” for new computers were often based on the obsolecene of new parts. My Toshiba Netbook is a perfectly good little machine with a loose AC pin. Because of the build, and the economy of scale, it’s actually MORE expensive to have it re-soldered and fixed up, then it was to go out and buy a new laptop. I don’t NEED anything more than that. I type and use a bit of internet. So it’s annoying to have to get a new laptop every 3 or 4 years, when I’m convinced that I shouldn’t have to!

I think I posted this last night but it never came up. Anyhoo, here it is now!

17

Your problem with the A/C pin is a common one. Cheaper laptops go cheap on the internal structure that supports the guts, than means that over time, the components flex, leading to bad USB plugs, wonky display behavior, broken A/C pins, etc.

It’s one of the reasons I feel so highly about apple products, a single milled chunk of aluminum does an awesome job of shielding the innards…

18

You are getting a brand new Intel Mac and you are bitching?