# Is planned obsolescence dead and gone (and did it actually exist in the first place?) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 3, 2010, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893 "2010-10-03T05:15:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2010, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893/41 "2010-10-04T22:09:57Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > tv sets are used as video (NTSC and direct input) display devices all over the USA for cable, satellite, dvd, vcr and will for their useful lifetime. with a digital tuner they are still being used for terrestrial broadcast for their lifetime. > > people selling tv sets hoped you would think they were obsolete. > [@Odesio](#): > > I admit it. I overstated their obsolescence. > [@Ludovic](#): > > Not really. I got at least 4 channels before the switchover, and now I have none. Even a digital antenna doesn’t pick anything up, and I live on the ground floor of an apartment so even if I were motivated enough to climb up and install an antenna on the roof, I couldn’t (plus, it’s a step backwards anyway when you get fewer channels unless you install something on your roof, and even then I still might not get any and then be out however many hundreds a rooftop antenna costs) there is no such thing as a digital tv antenna. there are antennas for VHF and UHF TV bands, old antennas still work. things sold as digital antennas are often poor performing UHF antennas. you need to find if your stations real channel numbers (not necessarily their old analog channel number) to know if you want a UHF antenna of a UHF/VHF antenna. you also need to find the quality of antenna you need. indoor antennas can be tricky, direction as well as placement in the room matters, even moving 12 inches to the right spot can make a difference. often your local tv stations will have a person that can give advice. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893/42 "2010-10-07T06:06:27Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > There is a subtle difference between designing in failure and not designing and testing out failures. Sending out products with insufficient reliability may not be the same as sending out products you designed to fail, but consumers see them as equivalent. > > Detroit, you remember, improved their quality very rapidly when they decided it made business sense. I’ve been part of the dramatic increase in IC quality over the past 30 years. In the early 1980s the Japanese told us that we produced crap, and they were right. The Teletype factory in Little Rock used to record the serial numbers of Intel memories in 1980 or so, because if they didn’t they might get a rejected lot back. They were hardly the worst supplier. This kind of thing does not happen today. Nobody designed faults in, but they get in unless you test for them and modify your design and manufacturing processes to catch defects more effectively. I lecture on the economics of this - it is not as slam dunk a thing as you might think. I would think the economics would be as follows. Don’t bother with reliability as long as you don’t have competitors who make products that are significantly more reliable. But if you do face such competitors then pray, because improving such business processes will take years and your counterparts won’t just stand still. ## I assume it’s more complicated than that of course. Perceiving product reliability is difficult in the absence of something like _Consumer Reports_ which most don’t read. I’d be interested in your discussion of the trade-offs. JK Galbraith mentioned planned obsolescence once in _The Affluent Society_,(2nd ed, 1968). > [@John Kenneth Galbraith](#): > > …we are bound to observe that much of the research effor --as in the automobile industry-- is devoted to discovering changes that can be advertised. The research program will be built around the need to devise "selling points’ and “advertising pegs” or to accelerate “planned obsolescence.” All this suggests that the incentive will be to allocate research resources to what, in some sense, are the least important things. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893/43 "2010-10-07T07:21:24Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > .. Vacuum tuibes burned out because they generated so much heat. … This is not correct. Tubes tolerate heat well. Other components in the circuit may suffer due to the heat generated by tubes. Real or virtual leaks are a common source of tube failure, as is reduced emission due to cathode depletion. Severe overloading could warp internal structure causing shorts, but this is typically due to problems other than hot environments. Tubes were expensive, so you tried to get the most out of each one, with as few support components as possible. (“Muntzing”) The result was that the circuit would start to malfunction with even a small amount of age related degradation of the tubes. New tubes had much tighter specifications than transistors and circuits were designed with the expectation that the tubes would perform to these tight specs. When transistors first arrived on the scene, engineers would use a curve tracer to design a circuit for each individual transistor, that was the only way “tube think” designs could work. Eventually they learned to design circuits that would self compensate for the wide variations both unit to unit, and with temperature, and as a side effect, with aging. Curve tracers gathered dust. Transistors were cheap, so you had some budget left for the rest of the circuit, and you could use more stages. Point being that transistors are not just more reliable, but they require design techniques that tolerate wide performance variations of the transistors without impacting the performance of the complete circuit. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893/44 "2010-10-07T19:02:00Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > I would think the economics would be as follows. Don’t bother with reliability as long as you don’t have competitors who make products that are significantly more reliable. But if you do face such competitors then pray, because improving such business processes will take years and your counterparts won’t just stand still. > > I assume it’s more complicated than that of course. Perceiving product reliability is difficult in the absence of something like _Consumer Reports_ which most don’t read. I’d be interested in your discussion of the trade-offs. Detroit may have run into trouble with competition, but changing customer requirements is more the cause of the IC quality story. If one customer starts demanding higher quality, or point out low quality, then others must follow or risk being taken advantage of, and the whole industry will ramp up. This was the Bell System, and we had our own requirements, and were big enough to enforce them. We also paid for them, but since the rate of return was computed based on our capital base, building expensive equipment was not an issue. At some point though customers start to wonder why they are paying a premium for not being shipped crap. I think this was partially the case for Detroit also. The Japanese had been better for a while, but after the oil crisis and the rise in gas prices people started buying Japanese cars for the MPG and discovering they were also of better quality. Market requirements changed, and Detroit got clobbered. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893/45 "2010-10-07T22:22:12Z")
> [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#): > > I don’t think “planned obsolesence” means what you think it means. It does not mean the deliberate design of things so that they break and have to be repaired. It means the deliberate design or marketing of things to get consumers to replace them often [snip] > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > [big snip]There are almost no examples in which designing products to fail so that people will buy new ones is a successful business strategy. People will avoid that company if at all possible. [snip] Price is far more important than almost anything else.[snip] I’ve got one pretty minor product with designed defects that have driven me crazy from just a few months after I bought it… my vinyl, grommet-free shower curtain! I selected it because of its decorative pattern and colors (shower curtains are mostly chosen for their appearances and price considerations as opposed to expectations of functionality, I’m guessing), although I had some initial misgivings about its quality (no reinforcing grommets to protect the ring holes at the top). Well, not only did it not have grommets, but the holes were scored with spoke-like perforations emanating from them (to accomodate unconventionally wide curtain rings, I suppose, but perhaps also an expression of planned structural failure), which promotes tearing. The first hole was torn within months of purchase, even though I’ve taken considerable care from the beginning to not yank hard on the damn thing. In the few years since, I’ve had to re-punch several holes, rig a metal binder clip to grab the degraded corner in an always-temporary fix, and even the holes in the center of the curtain are stressed and stretched – due primarily to the weight of the curtain, I think, rather than lateral & downward stresses due to use. BTW, if anyone knows how to add grommets to a vinyl curtain, I’m all ears. The thing is, even though this curtain is a cheap piece of crap, it’s a cheap piece of crap with a mid-century-modern design I love, in colors that’s perfect for my bathroom. Finding a replacement of equal aesthetic appeal won’t be easy. ---
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893/46 "2010-10-07T23:07:42Z")
Yes, Apple does this shit all the time. That iPad people are buying, is fucking WIRED for a camera, it even has a cutout spot for a camera in the frame of the device ready to go, all it needs is the actual camera, the OS even has the function built in but just no hardware in it yet. So yeah Apple does this shit all the time. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893/47 "2010-10-07T23:18:23Z")
> [@ChrisBooth12](#): > > Yes, Apple does this shit all the time. That iPad people are buying, is fucking WIRED for a camera, it even has a cutout spot for a camera in the frame of the device ready to go, all it needs is the actual camera, the OS even has the function built in but just no hardware in it yet. So yeah Apple does this shit all the time. This was exactly what I was going to post. Wasn’t shuffling a big deal when it got added to iPods? Wow, randomization. New to Apple as of 200X! It’s like Dilbert and the “Gruntmaster 6000”. What is the Gruntmaster 6000? Well, it’s got less features than the Gruntmaster 9000 but is a big upgrade from the Gruntmaster 4000. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893/48 "2010-10-09T17:14:52Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > > [@ChrisBooth12](#): > > > > Yes, Apple does this shit all the time. That iPad people are buying, is fucking WIRED for a camera, it even has a cutout spot for a camera in the frame of the device ready to go, all it needs is the actual camera, the OS even has the function built in but just no hardware in it yet. So yeah Apple does this shit all the time. > > This was exactly what I was going to post. > > Wasn’t shuffling a big deal when it got added to iPods? Wow, randomization. New to Apple as of 200X! > > It’s like Dilbert and the “Gruntmaster 6000”. What is the Gruntmaster 6000? Well, it’s got less features than the Gruntmaster 9000 but is a big upgrade from the Gruntmaster 4000. > > -Joe > **[The Evidence for the Mac Tablet](https://www.macrumors.com/2003/02/21/the-evidence-for-the-mac-tablet/)** > > In early 2003, the pre-expo hype of MacWorld San Francisco brought to surface many rumors of an Apple-branded Tablet. Scattered rumors of Apple PDAs... New iPad, which was designed while the current one was and has just been sitting in a wharehouse ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2010, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893/49 "2010-10-11T13:24:11Z")
> [@Kevbo](#): > > > [@kunilou](#): > > > > .. Vacuum tuibes burned out because they generated so much heat. … > > This is not correct. Tubes tolerate heat well. Other components in the circuit may suffer due to the heat generated by tubes. Real or virtual leaks are a common source of tube failure, as is reduced emission due to cathode depletion. Severe overloading could warp internal structure causing shorts, but this is typically due to problems other than hot environments. > > Tubes were expensive, so you tried to get the most out of each one, with as few support components as possible. (“Muntzing”) The result was that the circuit would start to malfunction with even a small amount of age related degradation of the tubes. New tubes had much tighter specifications than transistors and circuits were designed with the expectation that the tubes would perform to these tight specs. When transistors first arrived on the scene, engineers would use a curve tracer to design a circuit for each individual transistor, that was the only way “tube think” designs could work. Eventually they learned to design circuits that would self compensate for the wide variations both unit to unit, and with temperature, and as a side effect, with aging. Curve tracers gathered dust. Transistors were cheap, so you had some budget left for the rest of the circuit, and you could use more stages. Point being that transistors are not just more reliable, but they require design techniques that tolerate wide performance variations of the transistors without impacting the performance of the complete circuit. As was mentioned, vacuum tubes generate tremdous heat. This heat has bad effects on other components (it cooks resistors and causes the metal-resistor contacts to degrade). It also cooks capacitors (dries out the electrolyte and causes shorting). That is why one would fix a tube radio (by replacing defective tubes), and a few days later, the whole circuit would fail catastrophically (shorted caps, open resistors). Because transistors operate at such low temperatures, the reliability is fanstastic-I have a 40 year old Grundig radio that sounds like new. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2010, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893/50 "2010-10-11T13:50:29Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > …Customers instead demand whiz bang features and low cost. Saying that this is “planned obsolescence” is blaming the manufacturers, but really it’s the consumer’s fault. Manufacturers only make what they can sell… Exactly. Marketers can manipulate consumers to some degree but what they are really doing rather than manipulation is exploitation. Human psychology responds to change better than it responds to sameness, so that’s why no woman will buy last year’s dress (except the bargain hunters who realize that the same dress at half price is a better deal, and even a year later \*it’s still the same dress–\*looks just as good.) People upgrade their OS to take advantage of new features, but if XP was good enough for me four years ago, why isn’t it good enough today? (Please don’t answer, it’s rhetorical.) > [@](#): > > …Some manufacturers of printer cartridges have been caught making cartridges that falsely indicate that they are out of ink once they get past a certain date, forcing you to buy a new cartridge whether you’ve used it up or not… Printer manufacturers are constantly being beaten up over this sort of accusation and there is one simple thing that doesn’t add up. If they want us to replace the cartridges more often, why would they resort to tricks like falsely indicating they are out of ink, or incorporating features that deliberately waste ink? Wouldn’t it be easier to just put less ink in the cartridge to begin with? You’re not buying that stuff by the gram, after all. I don’t think all these accusations really hold water. People are just pissed off because ink is so expensive. It’s just like razor blades. We went from straight razor to safety razor to Trac II to five-bladed razors, some of which cost about $3 per cartridge. > [@](#): > > …Even though consumers are demanding cheaper and cheaper crap, the reliability of many things has surprisingly gone up. This is because modern electronics are miniaturized, and condensing entire circuit boards onto a single efficient chip means that the electronic components are under much less stress and last a lot longer. True, but my iPod Mini electronics outlived its battery, which after four years won’t hold a charge anymore. But it would have been the simplest design change to allow the battery to be replaceable, like every mobile phone handset ever made. That’s what I call “planned obsolescence.” ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2010, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893/51 "2010-10-13T00:21:09Z")
The printer ink thing does make sense, though. They don’t want you refilling the cartridge, so they build in a feature that will make it seem like it’s out of ink even if you refill it. That it happens to people who don’t refill it is a bonus. My printer has said it is extremely low on ink for at least a month. Also, it can be cheaper to use more rather than less. If you have a backup, you don’t have to be as precise with your measurements. ---
**Author:** ![SanibelMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2010, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893/52 "2010-10-13T00:37:23Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > Wasn’t shuffling a big deal when it got added to iPods? Wow, randomization. New to Apple as of 200X! Actually, every iPod since the original one has had the option to shuffle songs. The newest iPods offer the “Shake to Shuffle” option, which is new. I do agree that the iPad camera thing is just stupid, though, and was done to 1) save money now and 2) make people buy the new one when it comes out with a camera. And you know they will. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-planned-obsolescence-dead-and-gone-and-did-it-actually-exist-in-the-first-place/555893.md?page=2)