Does planned obsolescence still happen?

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Prelude_to_Fascination

I now have Revereware skillets and pots, as well as an iron skillet. None were unaffordably expensive, but the Revereware has been around 20+ years

I bought my Grandmothers Revere pots & pans when she sold her house & moved to assisted living – in 1976! (And thy were far from new then.) I’ve had to do one repair to them since then (fixing a bolt on a handle).

Some items really do have lasting quality!

[msmith537]

@RealityChuck

While a decent rule of thumb, there are plenty of counterexamples.

Note, too, that “planned obsolescence” was originally not a mechanical obsolescence, but rather a social obsolescence. A key example is the automakers, who in the 1950s came out with new models each year, with major design changes. The idea was that someone driving a three-year-old car would feel he was hopelessly out of style, and thus buy a new one.

Note that a lot of people complain how modern cars all tend to look alike. Well, the reason for that is you are looking at 50+ itterations of design changes that have basically produced the ideal shape and efficiency for the modern internal combustion engine driven sedan.

[Starving_Artist]

@Quercus

This is a complete fallacy, of course.
Pretend last month my car needed $200 in repairs, thanks to an intentional design flaw. If nothing breaks on my car this month, the $200 I didn’t spend on repairs doesn’t just vanish, sucking life out of the economy. What actually happens is that I’ll spend that $200 on something else I want more than a brand-new fuel injector (an iPhone, say). That iPhone spending will stimulate the economy just as much as the car repair, and at the end our overall wealth is higher (since I have an iPhone I didn’t have before). Or, if I decide I don’t need an iPhone, and stick the $200 in my savings accouint, it means someone else can borrow it from the bank and invest it in something productive that will make us all better off down the road. [*Yes, at certain points in the inflation-recession business cycle, there’s an excess of saving, but for the rest of the time, more saving is always a good thing in the long run].

There is simply no way that things breaking is good for the economy.

My post was speaking to planned obsolescence, in which products are designed to function well for a certain length of time, rather than intentional design flaws that are intended to make you spend money on needless repairs. There is a considerable difference between the two.

[ralph124c]

I think that the main driving force, in consumer goods, is the drive to reduce costs. This explains why small appliances are not fixable anymore-instead of a metal chassis, held together with screws, you now have one-piece plastic housings. In the old designs, you could undo the screws, take the thing apart, replace the defective part, and re-assemble it. You cannot do this anymore, so you toss the toaster/blender/radio, and buy a new one. This means that there is always a market for new appliances.
You can always buy an institutional appliance, which is repairable-but expect to pay 10X the price of the commercial type.
I’m not sure this is a good philosophy, because our landfills are filling up with junk.
I stiil have a few 1960’s appliances, which are all-metal. They work fine and can be fixed.

[Superhal]

After reading this thread, I can look around my house and see what will probably outlive me:

1. A bookshelf made of “real” wood instead of particle board. We bought it because I wanted to have one piece of furniture in the entire house actually made of real wood. Cost ~10X as much as the particle board version.
2. Temperpedic bed with memory foam: we bought it because at the time it was the only one on the market. It has the densest foam of any manufacturer, and probably will last the longest. Maybe 3X more expensive than a generic version.
3. Futon couch: Also real wood, like 5X more expensive than the metal versions we see abandoned on the street all the time.
4. Halogen desk lamp
5. Aiwa headphones: 5X more expensive than generics.
6. Real wood dining table/chair set: got it from my parents, we’ve been using it for 10 years now, no damage at all.

Wow, that’s about it.

[Xema]

@Superhal

All my computer equipment is less than 2 years old…

This is something of a special case. Computer equipment reliably becomes obsolete in just a few years, but not because of anything planned at the time it’s made - it’s the rate at which the technology improves that does it.

I actually have an old DOS computer that still works fine (I fire it up a couple of times a year, mostly out of nostalgia). It still does the job it was designed to, even though it’s hopelessly obsolete.

[Superhal]

@Xema

This is something of a special case. Computer equipment reliably becomes obsolete in just a few years, but not because of anything planned at the time it’s made - it’s the rate at which the technology improves that does it.

I actually have an old DOS computer that still works fine (I fire it up a couple of times a year, mostly out of nostalgia). It still does the job it was designed to, even though it’s hopelessly obsolete.

In my case my previous computer broke down. Through the 90’s, I used a 486 without a problem. In 1999, I bought a computer, in 2001 I bought a computer for my wife. In 2003, the '99 computer broke down and I frankensteined a new computer together with parts from my wife’s computer. This computer broke down in 2005, and I replaced the motherboard/cpu. This computer broke down in '08.

So, from 1999 to 2008, I actually only had 1 computer but it went through 4 major overhauls.

I wish it was only obsolescence.

[JRDelirious]

@kunilou

The other thing happened last week, when I accidentally picked up some blades meant for a Gillete Atra razor. Because they were cheaper than any of the 3 (or more) blade razors I had, I figured I’d just pick up a cheap Atra-type razor and use them up. After searching the local stores turned up nothing, I looked on the web. There are no razors currently being made that accept Atra-style blades.

Because instead you’d have to do a search for “Gillette Vector Plus”, a later-generation handle that is still backwards-compatible with Atras and is still available (at least online) but which they don’t actively advertise as Atra-compatible. Razors, like inkjet printers, work on the principle that the profit is in the consumables, but with the razor cartridge once the patent runs out it’s trivial to assemble a generic refill so Gillette has no incentive to make it easy for you to buy a “new” Atra handle.

But even then… an original Atra handle is a substantial object with a significant amount of metal content. A Mach3 or Fusion handle (what Gillette would rather have you buy) is virtually all lightweight plastic. In recent times there has been an additional trend, apart from “planned obsolescence”, which is what you call “de-contenting” – certain features that used to be selling points of the product, one good day are not there any more, and instead are now options or traits of an upscale model (e.g. lined trunk lids in some car models).

[Superhal]

One issue that came up in this thread that I thought about was the idea of cars having X life.

Seriously, are car makers that stupid to believe we would spend 20k-100k on anything that would last less than 10 years? For that matter, why do they think 10 years is some sort of limit?

Land or buildings sometimes don’t cost as much as car, and it has a much longer lifetime.

Absolutely nothing I own costs as much as my car, and very likely, everything I own put together costs less than my car.

My car is a 2007 Toyota Camry SE with leather package, ~24k. Do they think I’m renting my car for X years at $Y a year and will just throw it away?

While the argument “oh, the consumer will just buy a new one in X years” is fine when you’re talking about a $10 coffee maker, but not when you’re talking about $20k.

[JRDelirious]

Cars HAVE for quite some time (save for some truly wretched engineering calamities) been able to remain in useful functionality for decades, IF the owner invests in proper maintenance. My 1999 Camry CE was still in good working order after 10 years and will likely go another 10, my previous 1993 Mitsubishi is still in the street today, and my late stepfather’s 1985 Ford LTD was driving around 20 years and three owners later. Heck, there are Corvairs still street-drivable!

As has been mentioned, a big fraction of a modern car’s “obsolecense” is greatly in the owner’s head and another is in comparison to the equipment on later cars. The standards for what a driver expects out of the car may change with time, and so will their tolerance for putting in the effort to maintain it. The car I drive today has superior safety, comfort, fuel efficiency, performance and environmental-impact characteristics than its equivalent from 16 years prior, and unlike the 16-year-old car I can reasonably expect no major systems will need replacement for years yet to come. But the 16-year-old car is still perfectly adequate for driving from A to B. Does not having ABS, ESC, side airbags, Mp3 player or freon-free AC make the '93 car obsolete? Or merely outdated? And are consumers fools for wanting those features?

Is Apple intorducing the iPhone 3G and then the iPhone 3GS “planned obsolecense” or merely Moore’s Law?

[gaffa]

@Superhal

After reading this thread, I can look around my house and see what will probably outlive me:

1. A bookshelf made of “real” wood instead of particle board. We bought it because I wanted to have one piece of furniture in the entire house actually made of real wood. Cost ~10X as much as the particle board version.

All my bookshelves are real wood, but that’s because I built them all myself. My reasons were:

[ul]
[li]I’m cheap - the wood, screws and glue to make the shelves was less than even the cheapest shelves available.[/li][li]I couldn’t find shelves tall enough. Mine go all the way to the ceiling.[/li][li]They’re lighter than MDF (aka particle board). [/li][li]They’ll last forever. MDF falls apart.[/li][/ul]

[Alex_Dubinsky]

@Superhal

2. Is it possible, using this knowledge, to profit in the long run? For example, I was buying a laptop recently. My coworker said, “Whatever your budget is, divide it by 3, and spend that. Then, expect to buy a new laptop every year for three years rather than a new laptop for 3X as much money that will be obsolete by next year.” I bought a $400 laptop. If I had purchased a $1200 laptop, I may not get the full three years of use out of it, and definitely, it won’t work as well next year compared to next year’s computers.

That’s part of the logic, but not all of it. The deal with computers is:

the more you want to spend, the more often you should buy. If you’re buying a $2000 computer, buy one every year or every 9 months (you’ll have to, or else that marginally-faster-for-the-time-being-but-considerably-more-expensive-video-card was pointless). Never buy a very expensive computer and think it will last you “a long time.” But a $400 computer would be bought every four years by someone who’s not into computers or homeless.

[Uncertain]

@Quercus

This is a complete fallacy, of course.
…
There is simply no way that things breaking is good for the economy.

Agreed. I just wanted to add that the fallacy has a name: thebroken window fallacy.

Not that I believe that manufacturers intentionally make things break when, just as cheaply, they could make them not break.

[Alex_Dubinsky]

@RealityChuck

Note, too, that “planned obsolescence” was originally not a mechanical obsolescence, but rather a social obsolescence. A key example is the automakers, who in the 1950s came out with new models each year, with major design changes. The idea was that someone driving a three-year-old car would feel he was hopelessly out of style, and thus buy a new one.

Right. I’m a bit confused by this thread because “obsolete” doesn’t mean “broken.”

[Alex_Dubinsky]

@Uncertain

Agreed. I just wanted to add that the fallacy has a name: thebroken window fallacy.

Not that I believe that manufacturers intentionally make things break when, just as cheaply, they could make them not break.

This is quite an argument in itself. Are we at the point in our progress that if we stop throwing out old things we’ll accumulate so much that we won’t want to buy anything new (and consequently all lose our jobs)? I think yes, there is a real danger of that. Of course, the flipside is that if we all have everything we need, why work? But it’s not a fallacy.

[gaffa]

@Uncertain

Not that I believe that manufacturers intentionally make things break when, just as cheaply, they could make them not break.

How much does it add to the cost of a piece of glass to “temper” it? But none of the various expensive electronic devices I’ve carried around in my pockets seem to use it - maybe the iPod Touch, but the various Palm devices shattered like regular window glass. Why are the Panasonic Toughbooks the only laptops with tempered glass screens? I have seen so many broken laptop screens brought to me by parents (my advice is to always buy your teen the cheapest laptop possible because they will break the screen.)

Isn’t not tempering the glass used in a device costing hundreds of dollars a form of planned obsolescence?

[Balthisar]

@Superhal

Seriously, are car makers that stupid to believe we would spend 20k-100k on anything that would last less than 10 years? For that matter, why do they think 10 years is some sort of limit?
…
My car is a 2007 Toyota Camry SE with leather package, ~24k. Do they think I’m renting my car for X years at $Y a year and will just throw it away?

It’s not that you’re stupid, it’s that you’re irregular. People that buy new cars have certain expectations, and it’s not for their car to last 10 years. People that want 9 to 10 year old cars buy used cars, and those buyers don’t contribute directly to profitability. There’s the resale price issue, and so most manufacturers do tend to try to make their cars long-lived, but the common wisdom is, if you’re buying new, you’re not going to have your car for 10 years. The real metric isn’t “years,” by the way, but “miles.”