March 29, 2021 • 46 mins
Do companies really implement planned obsolescence to get you to buy more stuff? (Spoiler: yes). And do they really resist giving you the option to repair gadgets? (Spoiler: Also yes).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and a love of all things tech and I recently
did a series of episodes about General Motors, and one
(00:25):
of the many things I talked about in those episodes
was how Alfred Sloan, who was an absolutely critical leader
of GM early on, established a practice of planned obsolescence.
That is part of Sloan's market strategy was creating a
company that every year would release cars that had updated
(00:47):
styling and features in order to entice not just first
time car buyers, but people who had already, you know,
purchased a car in the past. And that got me
to thinking that I should really talk about planned obsolescence
in general and examine the facts and consider the myths,
and also chat a bit about the right to repair
(01:08):
movement and recycling, because all of this is kind of
connected together. We're talking about casual consumption of electronic goods,
almost a disposable approach to them, and electronic goods are
not necessarily the best thing in the world to treat
as disposable, so let's just start off by defining what
(01:30):
planned obsolescence is really all about. Now. Generally, people talk
about planned obsolescence as a strategy in which the maker
of a thing, whether it's a physical good or an
app or whatever, builds into that thing a predetermined end
of life. In other words, you've already determined how long
(01:52):
this thing is supposed to last. And the purpose of
planned obsolescence is to not just sell one thing to
each cut stomer one time, but to sell many of
that same thing to every customer over time. It's the
same reason why a lot of software companies will migrate
toward a subscription based revenue model, because it's more profitable
(02:16):
to get customers to regularly give you money than to
bank on selling them a lot of the same thing
to a huge customer base. Like if I'm selling a
software package for two hundred dollars, I'm going to get
you know, X number of customers, and chances are they're
not going to buy another product for me for a while.
(02:36):
If I offer a subscription fee for a much lower
monthly plan, I might get people locked into that system
for years and thus make way more money off of
them in the long run than I would if I
had gone with the big ticket item up front. This
can actually manifest in lots of different ways. Now, typically
I get the sense that the popular perception of you know,
(03:00):
planned ups lessons is that companies make stuff that's just
designed to stop working after a certain number of hours
of operation. So, in other words, the manufacturer isn't making
products that are meant to stand the test of time. Rather,
these are products that will at some point break down
and either require repairs or a replacement. Now, repairs were
(03:22):
great if you happen to be the not only the
company that's selling the thing, but you're also the company
that provides maintenance and repair services. Car dealerships often fall
into this category. You can purchase a car at a dealership,
and then most dealerships have service centers as well, or
they have you know, an agreement with a service center,
(03:45):
so the dealership can continue to make money off of
a sale if the salesperson can convince the customer to
bring the car back to the dealership's service center for
regular maintenance or repair work. But not all technology has
the value you of a car. Obviously, there's a lot
of tech out there that's fairly inexpensive to make, and
(04:05):
companies might price that technology. It's such a relatively low
cost that a repair might set you back the same
amount or more than buying just a new version of
whatever that tech is. For a lot of us, I
figure the reaction to that as well, I might as
well buy a new one if I'm going to be
spending that kind of money. Heck, the new thing of
(04:27):
a jig might have more features than the old one,
or it might look a little different, you know, more stylish,
and so we toss aside whatever old thing of a
jig we have and then we go out and buy
a new one. Or maybe you would actually like to
do repairs yourself. That's something we're going to chat about
more towards the end of this episode. But some companies
(04:47):
have been known to make it challenging or maybe even impossible,
for the end customer to really repair the technology they purchase,
whether it's through using proprietary screws that need up specific
tool to remove them, or actually sealing components into compartments
with glue and rivets and solder or other fasteners, making
(05:09):
it impossible to open without risk of causing further damage.
Companies have used a few different ways to obscure or
impede repairs. M apple or You could also get to
a point with stuff like cars where it just becomes
harder to make repairs because it's hard to even determine
(05:29):
what is wrong with the thing without a special diagnostic
device like a computer. This is the case with a
lot of modern cars. You might be able to lift
the hood and look around a little bit, but some
vehicles have various covers or engine configurations that make it
really challenging for the average person to access specific parts
(05:50):
of the motor, let alone do any work on it. Again,
this limits what you can do with tech once it
starts to fail, and all tech does fail time, because well,
entropy is something we just can't avoid. It's it's a
fundamental law of the universe, particularly when it comes to
(06:10):
cheap technology. This sort of disposable approach has a lot
of negative drawbacks, including what to do with old tech
that no longer works. I mean, a lot of technology
contains stuff that's pretty toxic, so throwing it out in
the garbage could lead to it ending up in a
landfill somewhere, and then harmful stuff like lead or mercury
(06:32):
could leach into the environment. Because of that, that's not great.
So we'll touch a tiny bit on electronics recycling in
this episode two. But I have done full episodes about
e waste recycling, so I'm not going to spend too
much time on it. And there are often ways to
make older tech obsolete that are not necessarily obvious on
(06:54):
the face of it. So let's talk about smartphones, for example.
That's an easy one. One of the big trends we
see in technology is that as devices or components within
devices get more powerful, the software developers end up making
software that eats up that extra power. Nicholas Worth wrote
about this pro problem back in the ninety nineties. He
(07:17):
wrote a paper titled a Plea for Lean Software, and
his point has essentially boiled down into what we now
call Worth's law, which is that software is getting slower,
that is, it's getting more resource hungry at a rate
that's faster than hardware is getting faster. So while subsequent
(07:39):
generations of hardware are getting more powerful, the requirements of
software are outpacing that progress, and the end result is
that we often feel our shiny new devices just aren't
keeping up as much as we expected them. To. We're
basing our perception on what the new device should be
able to do based on what we have right now,
(07:59):
and that's just not how stuff works. Unfortunately, gamers who
want to be on the bleeding edge of computing capability
experience this a lot. A top gaming rig would cost
thousands of dollars. It requires a powerful central processor or CPU,
and quite likely multiple powerful graphics processing units or GPUs. Plus,
(08:22):
you need a power supply that's capable of providing the
juice that these components need, and you need a killer
cooling system to make sure the whole thing doesn't overheat.
And just as you get all of this stuff set
up and running, the latest games, developers start making games
that are so resource hungry that even with your killer rig,
you might have to knock a few of the game's
(08:44):
settings down a couple of notches just to make it
run smoothly. Meanwhile, you're already anticipating the next big development
in hardware that will let you move all those sliders
all the way to the top. That's going to set
you back a few more thousand dollars, which is brew
roll with smartphones. We see this happen a lot as
newer models use better processors, and typically new processors are
(09:08):
usually more powerful and hopefully more efficient, So in other words,
you're not seeing battery life just plummet from one generation
to the next, or phones get way bigger because you
need a bigger battery in order to make them last
long enough. Processor technologies follow pretty close to Moore's law,
and we typically interpret that as meaning that a processor's
(09:30):
capabilities effectively double every two years or so. Not the
same processor, but rather new processors on the market end
up being twice as powerful as the processors that came
out two years earlier. That's generally what we mean. More's
laws more subtle than that, but we won't go into it.
Battery life does not follow this same trajectory. It's again
(09:55):
a law of physics. We're talking about electro chemical reactions,
and so there's not a magic way to make batteries
just last longer. It requires more incremental improvement. So if
we only concentrated on making processors more powerful, they would
just pull more juice per hour than older processors, and
soon we would have smartphones. They would only have a
couple of hours of useful battery life. So there is
(10:18):
a balance to be made here. Meanwhile, smartphone apps still
follow Worth's law. The apps drawn more processor power or
the interact with more components, and smartphones like GPS receivers
or accelerometers or the camera or microphone or some combination
of all of these and more, and the smartphone operating
systems themselves evolved to support these apps and provide more functionality. Well,
(10:44):
older smartphones just can't keep up with this all the time,
and so you will often see companies make a cutoff
for operating system updates. Older phones might stall out at
a certain OS version and be unable to install more
recent update of the operating system. So you could have
an Android smartphone that's maybe a few years old, and
(11:05):
it's running a version of Android that's several generations old
at this point because Google has determined that the hardware
you're using simply cannot meet the needs of later operating systems. Meanwhile,
the app developers are focusing on what they can do
with the most recent OS version, which means you might
not be able to run a new app with all
(11:28):
of its features, or you might not even be able
to run the app at all if you're using an
older phone. And since apps are what makes smartphones smart.
That ends up being a big problem, and so now
the incentive is there for you to upgrade your phone
even if your old phone still works, so that you can,
you know, just use your smartphone the way you want
(11:49):
to and you're not stuck on older versions of apps.
And that's particularly important because sometimes these older versions of
apps end up being tied to servers that could go offline,
or they might swap over to a new process, and
then you have an outdated smartphone that has a bunch
of inactive apps stored on it and it becomes practically useless.
(12:10):
On a related note, battery life decreases over time and use,
so older batteries just don't hold as much of a
charge as newer batteries, and they drain faster, which means
that your older battery operated devices will need recharging more frequently.
Apple famously tried to address this problem by purposefully throttling
(12:31):
the processing speed of older iPhones. The processors would work
more slowly so that they would consume less battery power,
thus extending the usefulness of a battery at the cost
of smartphone performance. But Apple didn't, you know, tell anyone
about it, and a lot of users figured out that
their devices were slowing down due to age. That's what
(12:53):
they assumed. It's just, oh, this is older, that's why
it's getting slower. And in a way that was kind
of true, but not in the same way that these
users thought. They just thought, this thing is getting old.
I need a new one, So they opted to buy
a new, later generation iPhone. But in iPhone, users figured
out that their phones were being throttled and they had
(13:14):
no choice in the matter, and that led to a
big class action lawsuit. As users said, had they known
what was going on, they would have opted to replace
the battery in their old iPhone rather than buy a
brand new iPhone. And I should add that Apple does
not make it easy for you to do this. You
really can't replace a battery in your iPhone, at least
(13:36):
not without violating your warranty. But under certain circumstances, like
if you enroll in Apple Care Plus, then Apple actually
will replace an iPhone battery free of charge. I say
free of charge, really, I should say that price is
included in your enrollment into Apple Care Plus. So for
(13:57):
those users, the people who had enrolled an app Care Plus,
they could have chosen to have a new battery put
into their older iPhone and it would have extended the
life of that device, but they weren't told about what
was going on, so instead they opted to buy a
brand new phone, which was way more expensive. In Apple
reached a settlement agreement, actually to settlement agreements for two
(14:20):
different class action lawsuits brought against the company about this
very issue. The first settlement was for five hundred million dollars,
a princely some and the second was for another one
d thirteen million dollars. In both cases, prosecution argued that
Apple was deliberately hiding the fact that it was throttling
(14:40):
processing output and that the battery was degrading over time,
and they knew that most users would opt to upgrade
to a newer iPhone as long as they didn't realize
that there was an alternative path they could have taken. Now,
that pretty much hits the planned obsolescence definition right on
the nose. So it turns out there are a lot
(15:00):
of different approaches to planned obsolescence. While the phrase might
make you think that the company is purposefully making stuff
that just won't stand the test of time, as in
the company is choosing to create substandard products, knowing that
these products will break down and the customer is likely
to come back and buy another one. Really, that's just
the tip of the iceberg, and it's usually not even
(15:23):
the case. If a company's reputation gets tied to the
idea that the stuff they make breaks easily, that's not
good for business. And the rest of this episode, we're
going to take a closer look at some historical examples
of planned obsolescence and what was going on from different perspectives,
and we'll also get into the right to Repair movement
(15:44):
and what it might mean to the tech industry moving forward,
assuming the movement actually achieves its goals. But first let's
take a quick break. We're back and on December twenty three,
(16:04):
nineteen twenty four, a group of elite entrepreneurs met to
establish some shady guidelines, which was pretty ironic because they
were all in the lightbulb business. That's sort of a
pun I guess. Anyway. The leaders represented some of the
largest light bulb manufacturers in the world. There was General Electric,
(16:27):
the grand daddy of big tech companies in the United States.
There was the company Phillips from the Netherlands. As Rum,
a company from Germany, had a representative present, and the
French had their place too, with executives from the company
de Lump, and together they created a powerful idea which
we can represent as a very large lightbulb turning on
(16:50):
behind their heads, or at least we could if this
were a video and not an audio podcast. Their idea
was to form a new company, an organization that would
core innate how light bulbs should work, as in how
bright they should be and how long they should last,
as well as which company would be allowed to sell
its products in certain specific regions. It was collusion of
(17:13):
the highest order, and it violated pretty much every antitrust
law you can think of. And it became known as
the Phoebus Cartel. Cute huh, because Phoebus is another name
for Apollo, the god of the sun. Before the cartel,
manufacturers were making light bulbs that could last between fifteen
hundred and two thousand hours of operation. But the cartel
(17:36):
collectively decided that their light bulbs should have a life
expectancy of one thousand hours of use. A ha. These
companies were producing a technology that already had a limited
lifespan just because of how it works. You know, the
filaments and light bulbs, the part that actually gives off light.
They eventually burned through and break, and that's what makes
(17:57):
incandescent lightbulbs die. Clearly, this group of people were all
agreeing to a worldwide limit on the useful number of
hours a light bulb would operate in in order to
sell more light bulbs. Right, they were making a predetermined
end of life cycle for light bulbs, and by making
everyone agree to this limitation, no manufacturer would be able
(18:19):
to defy the others and start selling bulbs that had
longer lifespans, which would ruin it for everybody else. Now
you can see the appeal of that narrative, right, rich
fat cats are cynically limiting a technology just to sell
more light bulbs, while simultaneously creating pressure to prevent any
(18:40):
other company from offering up a superior product. You could
just hear the thumbs twiddling, you know, the mustaches waxing,
and the chorals chortling. Heck, the cartel would even test
lightbulbs from each manufacturer, and if any of those lightbulbs
proved to have a lifespan that as well beyond those
(19:01):
one thousand hours of operation, the cartel would find the
responsible manufacturer keep those light bulbs lives shorter or else.
But if we want to be a little more fair,
we should take into consideration another factor. As light bulbs age,
they would give off less light. Incandescent bulbs, they are
(19:23):
less luminously efficient in other words, And so the counter
argument was made that by limiting the lifespan to one
thousand hours, it was more about maximizing luminous efficiency. It
was to make certain that the light bulbs were providing
enough light throughout their lifespans and not just turning into
increasingly dim light sources. So there was an argument being
(19:47):
made that the restriction of the lifespan was more about
improving the quality of the performance of light bulbs rather
than speeding up the need to replace those light bulbs.
It was a compelling enough argument to lead the u
K's Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission to give the companies
some slack with that regard, though there were many other
(20:09):
things the Phoebus Cartel did that did not get a
free pass, but those are more market focused than tech focused,
so I'm not going to go into them. The cartel itself,
by the way, dissolved in the late nineteen thirties, not
because of government pressure, or at least not the kind
of regulation pressure, but because of a little thing called
World War two. Now, I suspect that the decision to
(20:33):
arrive at one thousand hours of useful life was guided
both by practical considerations and good old fashioned greed. So
I suspect there is some truth to both of the
scenarios I mentioned, or if you listen to ridiculous history scenarios,
and considering that some of the other moves that the
(20:55):
cartel made, like namely price fixing, you definitely cannot count
greed out because that was the primary motivator for those decisions.
But there are at least some people who are a
little more charitable toward the idea of limiting bulb lifespan
in an effort to favor better luminous efficiency. So we'll
move on. The next big example is the one that
(21:18):
I mentioned earlier and talked about a little bit in
my episodes about General Motors. This was the GM under
Alfred B. Sloan, the man who took a big mess
of companies that were acquired by GM founder William C. Durant,
and then he organized all of this mishmash into individual
business units looking over specific makes of car, and each
(21:41):
of those units had a great deal of autonomy between them.
He was also a consummate capitalist, and I don't necessarily
mean that in a flattering way. He had a habit
of focusing on profits and ignoring people. But you can
learn more about that in the GM episodes. One of
Sloan's many contributions to the automotive industry was the introduction
(22:03):
of stylistic changes to various car models year over year.
In the early days of automobiles, the dominating manufacturer was
the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford's company produced the famous
Model T. Ford and first introduced that Model T in
nineteen o eight, and it remained in production until nineteen
(22:25):
twenty seven. By n this was a mass produced cars,
so on a huge scale. Ford dominated car sales in
the United States for like decades now. Allegedly, Ford himself
once said that there was no use in overtaking and
passing a Model T on the road, because you would
(22:46):
just find yourself behind a different Model T. That's how
commonplace they were. He also reportedly said that a customer
could get a Model T and whatever color they wanted
as long as it was black. While the company would
offer Model T s and other colors up to nineteen fourteen,
between nineteen fourteen and nineteen Ford only churned out black
(23:10):
Model T cars. This meant that Ford's factories could build
nearly identical cars, one right after the other, using mass
production techniques, thus increasing efficiency and keeping costs down. And
it also meant that Ford could sell these cars at
affordable prices. They were meant to be practical, durable, and reliable.
(23:31):
That's how he made so many early sales. Now there
was a big emphasis on uniformity and consistency, in other words,
because those are things that make it easier to mass
produce something. And Alfred Sloan saw an opportunity to appeal
to people on a different level over at General Motors.
He thought it would be a good idea to change
(23:51):
up the style of a model of car on a
regular basis. At a glance, you would be able to
give a ballpark estimate of the year when a certain
model came out due to distinguishing features that were on
that car. You know, maybe the headlights are in a
slightly different spot, or maybe the car has a different
kind of grill on the front of it, or maybe
(24:13):
you put a pair of big old tail fins on
the back of the thing. That's the sort of thing
that Sloan was thinking about. Harley Earl, a man whom
many historians credit as the first professional designer to work
in the automotive industry, worked was Sloan to make this
vision a reality, and Earl would sculpt models out of
clay and then mold them in different ways to create
(24:36):
new features, and as tastes changed, he could reflect that
in different car body designs, and now cars could appeal
to people by embodying certain design trends. This approach meant
that cars now had a sort of planned obsolescence. As
time passes, fashions change and older cars will pass out
(24:58):
of fashion. Out of style, they'll become unfashionable, and that
creates a psychological lever that GM could lean on to
convince people to come in trade in their older cars
and buy newer ones. The older cars might still work
perfectly well from an operational point of view, but they
could be seen as being old fashioned, and that was
(25:19):
enough to push some people to upgrade to a new vehicle.
It was still important for GM to make cars that
were perceived to be reliable and powerful. If the cars
were known to break down quickly, that kind of reputation
would hurt sales. So while you could keep driving the
same car for many years, assuming you took good care
of the car, Sloan's goal was to make you feel
(25:41):
like a kind of a social pariah if you did
that for a really long time, Like, Oh, that poor
so and so they can't afford a new car. Look
at them driving that old, you know, Chevy or whatever
it might be. Sloan's approach accelerated car pun the role
of a car as a stat symbol. GM offered several
(26:02):
different makes of cars, and each make targeted a different
economic demographic. So on the cheaper end was the Chevrolet
line and on the opposite side of the spectrum was
the Cadillac. But no matter which make of car you
talked about, that strategy of planned obsolescence was at play.
You can see Sloan's impact in consumer products across the board,
(26:24):
and not just in tech, though it tends to be
particularly evident in the tech world. It's why Apple releases
a new iPhone every year, or more to the point,
it's why companies like Apple hold really big exclusive press
events to hype the release of a new model of
iPhone every year. And to be clear, Apple does this
(26:46):
with lots of its products, not just the iPhone. It's
just the iPhone event tends to get the most attention.
So let's think about that yearly schedule for a moment,
and also think back to how phones were marketed in
the US when the iPhone first launched in two thousand seven.
So at that time, Apple had signed an exclusive agreement
(27:07):
with the carrier A T and T here in the
United States. Now, the reasons behind that agreement are fascinating,
but they also go beyond what I'm going to talk about,
so I'll save that for some future episode. You're welcome.
But back in those days, it was pretty common practice
in the United States for carriers like A T and
T to offer subsidized phones in return for signing two
(27:31):
year contracts where you agreed that this was your carrier
for two years. You were locked into a carrier. That
made the initial purchase price of phones a little bit
more affordable, at least initially, so rather than shelling out
a thousand dollars for a phone, you might spend a
couple of hundred by signing onto a two year agreement
(27:53):
with the carrier. Typically, those agreements would limit your options
when it came to upgrades. Normally you would have to
wait out the two years to get to the point
where you would renew your agreement or sign whatever newer
version of the agreement the carrier was offering, and then
you could upgrade to a new phone at a reduced cost,
or sometimes the phone would be included as part of
(28:16):
the agreement. But Apple was releasing a brand new iPhone
every year, and each new iPhone would have new features
and new styling, so the phones were following Sloan's approach
to product design. A new iPhone wasn't just flashy technology,
it was also a status symbol, and a lot of
folks would choose to upgrade to the new version, even
(28:38):
if it meant they had to pay more to do
it because they were only a year into a service
agreement with their carrier and they could not yet qualify
for a subsidized phone. Now, this happened for a few years,
but gradually US carriers kind of phased out those two
year contract plans, which also meant that the subsidized phone
(28:58):
model began to disappear. Customers had more freedom to choose
whichever carrier they wanted to without getting locked into things.
But it also meant that they often had to pay
full price for phones for those who had been upgrading
to a new iPhone every year despite the limitations of
two year contracts. This was actually probably a welcome change
(29:19):
to the rest of us. It was a bit of
an adjustment, not a bad thing, but it did take
some time to adjust to it. The brilliant thing about
Sloan's approach, the thing that Apple often relies upon, is
that you're encouraging customers to crave the new. There's this
built in desire in the market to get the coolest
(29:41):
new toy with the latest features and the latest options.
Companies don't have to trash the older technology. They just
help the new things that the latest version can do.
And it might mean that companies take steps to roll
out new features very carefully. So in some cases a
company might be read to implement a brand new feature,
(30:02):
at least from a technological level. However, the hold back
they'll make a market based decision to wait and sit
on that technology for a little bit in order to
maximize sales. You might say, well, we could install these
three new features in our next phone. But if we
only install one of them, and then the phone after
that we add a second one, and the phone after
(30:24):
that we add the third one, we are able to
keep boosting sales year over year. If we do all
three right now, we might not have enough of an
improvement to get that same boost next year. So it
becomes this kind of game of chess. So why would
you put in all the bells and whistles if you
can hold back a few of them and then make
(30:44):
many more sales in the next update. Now is this insidious?
I don't really think so. I mean, from a business perspective,
it does make a lot of sense. From a consumer perspective,
I say, what this should do is teach us that
jumping on a brand, a new technology, or even just
a new model of an existing technology, might not be
(31:05):
the best option right out of the gate. We might
need to use some self control before we buy the
next shiny thing. Of course, this approach requires moderation as well,
or else you would never buy anything at all. If
I need a new phone and I know that I'm
three months out from the release of something that I
think is really worthwhile, then I can wait that out.
(31:27):
But if I'm perpetually waiting for a phone that blows
me away with all the features, I'll probably be worried
that I'm going to experience buyer's remorse if I jump
in right. So, in other words, if I buy something
and I don't feel like it's really what I was
waiting for, then maybe the next thing that comes out
the next month makes me feel badly about it, and
(31:48):
so that can actually become a bit of a crisis.
It can It can prevent you from taking action because
you're always worried that once you take action, you're committed,
and then the next day you find out there was
a better option. But yeah, that desire for the new
is something that's really ingrained in the tech world. Companies
don't have to make products that will break after a
(32:11):
certain amount of time. They don't have to have that
kind of planned obsolescence because with lots of tech, just
the desire to have the latest thing is enough all
on its own. That means the companies just have to
focus on offering up products that are different enough from
the previous generation to spark our desire. When we come back,
I'll talk a little bit more about this and then
(32:32):
we'll learn about the right to repair. But first let's
take a quick break. So if manufacturers are actually giving
the people what they want, that is updates to technology
that flesh out what it can do, at least in
(32:53):
the ways that consumers desire, then we can't really put
all the blame on manufacturers for planned obsolescence. We are
somewhat responsible for it too. It's good to keep in mind,
and if we recognize that part of us, we can
try to make a better balance of when we actually
need something new and when we just want something new.
(33:16):
I struggle with this all the time, whether it's a
new flagship phone. I mean, when Android comes up with
a brand new flagship phone, I feel the temptation to
jump on it. Not literally jump on it, but you
know what I mean. However, in most cases, the phone
I have at the time tends to be perfectly fine
(33:36):
for my needs. The last time I did upgrade a phone,
it was because the microphone on my phone had broken.
I could use Bluetooth devices and talk on the phone,
but I couldn't use my phone as a phone just
on its own, so I did have to upgrade then.
But I tend to stick to getting a new phone
just every few years as the older one starts to
(33:57):
lag behind, especially when it comes to what apps you
can run. And the same is true for game systems.
I've gotten a lot better about that too. It used
to be that as soon as a game system came out,
I felt the urge to rush out and buy it.
I usually didn't because I usually didn't have the money,
but I always wanted to. However, now I actually prefer
(34:17):
to hang back, both so that any bugs in those
early versions can be worked out. I mean, I do
not want another Red Ring of Death situation ever again,
and also so that game developers can release more titles
for the system. It's not much fun pouring a bunch
of money into a technology and then having to wait
around for it to become useful. But now we also
(34:39):
have to talk about the issue of right to repair.
So earlier I talked about the ways companies make it
challenging or impossible for the average person to repair stuff,
and initially my reaction to that kind of thing is
this is how they get you. They want you to
get back to them and bring all the stuff to
get it fixed by them the cells. But there can
(35:01):
be other reasons for this that, while you may or
may not agree with them, can be a little more subtle. So,
for example, let's take Apple again. For most of the
company's history, Apple products have been largely inaccessible to those
who wish to do their own repairs, at least to
do so without violating a warranty. But one of the
big reasons for that is that Apple has a specific
(35:24):
vision as to how consumers are supposed to experience Apple products.
This was a philosophy that Steve Jobs had pushed pretty hard.
The goal was to create a controlled experience from beginning
to end. The company would have an enormous amount of
authority in deciding this, from hardware configurations to the kinds
(35:44):
of software that would be allowed to run on the device.
We see this reflected in the iPhone app store, where
developers have to get approval from Apple before their apps
will actually appear on the market. This level of control
helps a company deliver con extant quality to users. The
challenge is then selling users on the idea that the
(36:05):
company's approach is what the customer actually wants. Jobs was
amazing at this. He could bring a device to a
crowd and by the end of a presentation have that
crowd convinced that Apple's product is exactly what the crowd
wanted and needed. But Apple relinquishing control in any way
wouldn't make that more difficult to do, because a third
(36:28):
party might not perform up to Apple's standards and it
would reflect poorly on Apple. But that also meant that
Apple products were difficult to modify. Early consumer computers came
out as kits, and the people who bought those kits
would typically put them together themselves. You could also pay
to have some of those kits come fully assembled. You
(36:51):
would have to pay extra for that, but a lot
of early computer owners actually enjoyed the experience of building
the computers from the kits, and this meant that really
enterprising hobbyists could even make little tweaks to the design
to change the performance of the end machine a little bit.
This was the early era of the hacker, as people
(37:11):
figured out how these systems worked, and then they modified
those systems in different ways. And it was pretty common
practice along many different computer manufacturers to have components that
you could swap out, like RAM chips. So if you
wanted your computer to have more memory, you could open
up your computer case and install more RAM, assuming your
(37:32):
computer's motherboard and processor could support the additional RAM, but
Apple typically made this really hard to do. If you
wanted an Apple computer with more RAM, you were going
to have to pay extra to buy a computer model
that was a step up from whichever one you were
looking at. And that also extends to making it really
(37:53):
hard to repair Apple computers if something were to go wrong.
And thus we get to the birth of the genius bar.
So we get companies creating complicated electronic devices, many of
which have proprietary fasteners and such holding them together, and
the message that the customer is to bring any of
those devices that aren't working, you know they might need
(38:13):
some repair. You're supposed to bring those back to the
company or maybe an authorized service vendor. Critics of this
approach say it's anti competitive and it hurts the consumer. Ideally,
the consumer would have an open choice as to whom
they could bring a broken device for a repair. So
if I were particularly talented at repairs, I would be
(38:35):
able to open up a shop and work on all
sorts of devices. I might offer more competitive rates than
what people might find going through the original manufacturer or
enrolling in an extended care or warranty program, and these
ideas are the underlying principles of the right to Repair movement.
There are a lot of organizations that advocate for the
(38:56):
right to repair, and they work to lobby governments to
ask legislation that would mandate it. Primarily we see the
movement in the United States and even more prominently in
the European Union. This is also tied to the problem
of electronic waste. As I mentioned earlier. According to the
Public Internet Research Group, which I should add is not
(39:17):
an unbiased source of information, but according to them, Americans
throughout four hundred sixteen thousand cell phones a day. I
find that number a little hard to believe. Maybe it's true.
I didn't find, you know, other sources that back this up,
but I did find other sources that had similar eye
popping statistics. Only a fraction of the electronic devices we
(39:41):
throw away, ever, end up in recycling centers. I mean,
that's mostly on us. If we just toss it in
the garbage, then that's where it's gonna go. It takes
effort to find good recycling centers. Not all of them
are ethical, by the way. It takes some research. So
considering all the stuff that's in electronics and valuable metals.
(40:01):
I mean there's like gold and copper in this stuff.
It's a real shame to just throw them out. And
then you consider the environmental impact and it gets worse.
Right to Repair groups want to see companies include access
to stuff like repair guides, so make it possible to
understand how these things work and how to fix them.
Make it repair tools accessible if any proprietary tools are needed,
(40:24):
and also make us accessible parts needed for repairs. Sell
the parts individually as well, so none of this would
be free. You know, the companies could still make money.
They could actually offer repair kits that you could purchase.
But imagine that instead of having to bring back your
smartphone to some store or send it off to a
manufacturer through the mail, you instead could order a repair kit,
(40:47):
and if you have steady hands, maybe you replace that
crack screen or that dead battery by yourself. That's the
appeal of the right to repair movement. But as electronics
get more complicated, it's more challenging to meet that kind
of standard. Some devices are complex enough that it requires
a person with specialized knowledge and skill in order to
(41:11):
tackle the problem, and a lot of us, myself included,
would probably find ourselves popping into an independent repair shop
to have our stuff fixed rather than take it on
ourselves and risk breaking it more. Look, all I'm saying
is I know what my track record is for taking
stuff apart versus putting it together again, and that ratio
(41:33):
is way out of balance. We're seeing this movement embrace
not just consumer goods like smartphones, but really big stuff
like farming equipment and tractors. Farmers have criticized manufacturer John
Deer for including essentially the equivalent of a digital lock
and those limit who can actually make repairs to a machine.
(41:54):
For farmers who depend upon these big vehicles for their livelihood,
that represents a lack of freedom and lack of options,
and it really does feel anti competitive. It's saying you
have to go to people of our choosing if you
want to have the thing you bought repaired. And this
also gets into that weird area we find ourselves in
(42:17):
in the digital age. In the old days, you would
buy something and you would just think this is mine, right,
Like you bought a watch, that's your watch. You could
repair that watch however you liked. But these days things
are being sold not just as a product, but as
an ongoing service. And it's not so much that you
(42:37):
own the thing, it's that you own access to that thing,
and some ownership is retained by the original manufacturer. This
is an idea that I'm not super keen on because
it does put a lot more power back in the
hands of the manufacturers and and takes a lot of
power away from consumers. Well, in the United States, twenty
(43:01):
states have filed legislation in an effort to address these
kinds of issues, and in the EU some progress on
this front has already been made. This month a series
of regulations that apply to manufacturers that make appliances like
washing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers, I think computer monitors too. It
(43:21):
goes into effect and those regulations state that companies need
to offer products that have replaceable components, and moreover, that
anyone would be able to make these replacements using common tools.
You shouldn't need anything special in order to do this
repair work. So, in other words, companies are not supposed
to solder stuff together or otherwise make it impossible or
(43:44):
difficult to access components without causing further damage. And you
shouldn't need a number seventy three spanner up to iconological
wrench or something in order to work on it. The
EU has yet to pass regulations that would cover stuff
like cell phones, computers, and tablets, though, and that is
a big problem because these are some of the most
(44:05):
common and harmful forms of consumer waste. People go through
these types of devices on a pretty regular basis, and
some of the member nations of the EU have gone
on to move ahead and pass their own regulations since
the EU as a whole has been a little slow
on this. So, for example, in France, a new piece
(44:25):
of information will be included with consumer electronics. It's essentially
a repair index, is a score that ranges between one
and ten. The index gives consumers the idea of how
easy or difficult it is to disassemble a device, whether
or not you can find information on how to repair
the device, you know, if it's readily available or not,
(44:46):
whether or not you can find spare parts for that
kind of device, how expensive those spare parts are. So
you know, the the more difficult it is to repair something,
the lower that score is going to be for that
particular item. Now, where we go from here will depend
upon how governments either past legislation or they opt not
(45:07):
to plus how they intend to enforce legislation. Companies have
very little incentive to offer up, you know, repair options
to the end user because those can end up hitting
revenue down the line. Now, personally, I would love to
see a lot more options for repair. I'd like to
see an approach similar to what it was like to
(45:28):
buy a car twenty years ago, because yeah, you could
bring your car back to the dealership for maintenance, but
chances are you might find a great mechanic who is
more convenient to where you live, or maybe they have
more competitive rates and that might end up being your
first choice instead of bringing it back to the dealership,
or maybe you invest the time and energy to learn
(45:51):
how to do the repairs yourself. I think the options
should all be there, and I definitely think that's an
improvement over the status quote we have. Now. Well, that
wraps up this episode. I hope you enjoyed learning about
planned obsolescence and the right to repair. If you have
suggestions for topics I should tackle in future episodes of
tech Stuff, let me know. The best way to reach
(46:14):
out is over on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff
h S. W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and a love of all things tech and I recently
did a series of episodes about General Motors, and one
(00:25):
of the many things I talked about in those episodes
was how Alfred Sloan, who was an absolutely critical leader
of GM early on, established a practice of planned obsolescence.
That is part of Sloan's market strategy was creating a
company that every year would release cars that had updated
(00:47):
styling and features in order to entice not just first
time car buyers, but people who had already, you know,
purchased a car in the past. And that got me
to thinking that I should really talk about planned obsolescence
in general and examine the facts and consider the myths,
and also chat a bit about the right to repair
(01:08):
movement and recycling, because all of this is kind of
connected together. We're talking about casual consumption of electronic goods,
almost a disposable approach to them, and electronic goods are
not necessarily the best thing in the world to treat
as disposable, so let's just start off by defining what
(01:30):
planned obsolescence is really all about. Now. Generally, people talk
about planned obsolescence as a strategy in which the maker
of a thing, whether it's a physical good or an
app or whatever, builds into that thing a predetermined end
of life. In other words, you've already determined how long
(01:52):
this thing is supposed to last. And the purpose of
planned obsolescence is to not just sell one thing to
each cut stomer one time, but to sell many of
that same thing to every customer over time. It's the
same reason why a lot of software companies will migrate
toward a subscription based revenue model, because it's more profitable
(02:16):
to get customers to regularly give you money than to
bank on selling them a lot of the same thing
to a huge customer base. Like if I'm selling a
software package for two hundred dollars, I'm going to get
you know, X number of customers, and chances are they're
not going to buy another product for me for a while.
(02:36):
If I offer a subscription fee for a much lower
monthly plan, I might get people locked into that system
for years and thus make way more money off of
them in the long run than I would if I
had gone with the big ticket item up front. This
can actually manifest in lots of different ways. Now, typically
I get the sense that the popular perception of you know,
(03:00):
planned ups lessons is that companies make stuff that's just
designed to stop working after a certain number of hours
of operation. So, in other words, the manufacturer isn't making
products that are meant to stand the test of time. Rather,
these are products that will at some point break down
and either require repairs or a replacement. Now, repairs were
(03:22):
great if you happen to be the not only the
company that's selling the thing, but you're also the company
that provides maintenance and repair services. Car dealerships often fall
into this category. You can purchase a car at a dealership,
and then most dealerships have service centers as well, or
they have you know, an agreement with a service center,
(03:45):
so the dealership can continue to make money off of
a sale if the salesperson can convince the customer to
bring the car back to the dealership's service center for
regular maintenance or repair work. But not all technology has
the value you of a car. Obviously, there's a lot
of tech out there that's fairly inexpensive to make, and
(04:05):
companies might price that technology. It's such a relatively low
cost that a repair might set you back the same
amount or more than buying just a new version of
whatever that tech is. For a lot of us, I
figure the reaction to that as well, I might as
well buy a new one if I'm going to be
spending that kind of money. Heck, the new thing of
(04:27):
a jig might have more features than the old one,
or it might look a little different, you know, more stylish,
and so we toss aside whatever old thing of a
jig we have and then we go out and buy
a new one. Or maybe you would actually like to
do repairs yourself. That's something we're going to chat about
more towards the end of this episode. But some companies
(04:47):
have been known to make it challenging or maybe even impossible,
for the end customer to really repair the technology they purchase,
whether it's through using proprietary screws that need up specific
tool to remove them, or actually sealing components into compartments
with glue and rivets and solder or other fasteners, making
(05:09):
it impossible to open without risk of causing further damage.
Companies have used a few different ways to obscure or
impede repairs. M apple or You could also get to
a point with stuff like cars where it just becomes
harder to make repairs because it's hard to even determine
(05:29):
what is wrong with the thing without a special diagnostic
device like a computer. This is the case with a
lot of modern cars. You might be able to lift
the hood and look around a little bit, but some
vehicles have various covers or engine configurations that make it
really challenging for the average person to access specific parts
(05:50):
of the motor, let alone do any work on it. Again,
this limits what you can do with tech once it
starts to fail, and all tech does fail time, because well,
entropy is something we just can't avoid. It's it's a
fundamental law of the universe, particularly when it comes to
(06:10):
cheap technology. This sort of disposable approach has a lot
of negative drawbacks, including what to do with old tech
that no longer works. I mean, a lot of technology
contains stuff that's pretty toxic, so throwing it out in
the garbage could lead to it ending up in a
landfill somewhere, and then harmful stuff like lead or mercury
(06:32):
could leach into the environment. Because of that, that's not great.
So we'll touch a tiny bit on electronics recycling in
this episode two. But I have done full episodes about
e waste recycling, so I'm not going to spend too
much time on it. And there are often ways to
make older tech obsolete that are not necessarily obvious on
(06:54):
the face of it. So let's talk about smartphones, for example.
That's an easy one. One of the big trends we
see in technology is that as devices or components within
devices get more powerful, the software developers end up making
software that eats up that extra power. Nicholas Worth wrote
about this pro problem back in the ninety nineties. He
(07:17):
wrote a paper titled a Plea for Lean Software, and
his point has essentially boiled down into what we now
call Worth's law, which is that software is getting slower,
that is, it's getting more resource hungry at a rate
that's faster than hardware is getting faster. So while subsequent
(07:39):
generations of hardware are getting more powerful, the requirements of
software are outpacing that progress, and the end result is
that we often feel our shiny new devices just aren't
keeping up as much as we expected them. To. We're
basing our perception on what the new device should be
able to do based on what we have right now,
(07:59):
and that's just not how stuff works. Unfortunately, gamers who
want to be on the bleeding edge of computing capability
experience this a lot. A top gaming rig would cost
thousands of dollars. It requires a powerful central processor or CPU,
and quite likely multiple powerful graphics processing units or GPUs. Plus,
(08:22):
you need a power supply that's capable of providing the
juice that these components need, and you need a killer
cooling system to make sure the whole thing doesn't overheat.
And just as you get all of this stuff set
up and running, the latest games, developers start making games
that are so resource hungry that even with your killer rig,
you might have to knock a few of the game's
(08:44):
settings down a couple of notches just to make it
run smoothly. Meanwhile, you're already anticipating the next big development
in hardware that will let you move all those sliders
all the way to the top. That's going to set
you back a few more thousand dollars, which is brew
roll with smartphones. We see this happen a lot as
newer models use better processors, and typically new processors are
(09:08):
usually more powerful and hopefully more efficient, So in other words,
you're not seeing battery life just plummet from one generation
to the next, or phones get way bigger because you
need a bigger battery in order to make them last
long enough. Processor technologies follow pretty close to Moore's law,
and we typically interpret that as meaning that a processor's
(09:30):
capabilities effectively double every two years or so. Not the
same processor, but rather new processors on the market end
up being twice as powerful as the processors that came
out two years earlier. That's generally what we mean. More's
laws more subtle than that, but we won't go into it.
Battery life does not follow this same trajectory. It's again
(09:55):
a law of physics. We're talking about electro chemical reactions,
and so there's not a magic way to make batteries
just last longer. It requires more incremental improvement. So if
we only concentrated on making processors more powerful, they would
just pull more juice per hour than older processors, and
soon we would have smartphones. They would only have a
couple of hours of useful battery life. So there is
(10:18):
a balance to be made here. Meanwhile, smartphone apps still
follow Worth's law. The apps drawn more processor power or
the interact with more components, and smartphones like GPS receivers
or accelerometers or the camera or microphone or some combination
of all of these and more, and the smartphone operating
systems themselves evolved to support these apps and provide more functionality. Well,
(10:44):
older smartphones just can't keep up with this all the time,
and so you will often see companies make a cutoff
for operating system updates. Older phones might stall out at
a certain OS version and be unable to install more
recent update of the operating system. So you could have
an Android smartphone that's maybe a few years old, and
(11:05):
it's running a version of Android that's several generations old
at this point because Google has determined that the hardware
you're using simply cannot meet the needs of later operating systems. Meanwhile,
the app developers are focusing on what they can do
with the most recent OS version, which means you might
not be able to run a new app with all
(11:28):
of its features, or you might not even be able
to run the app at all if you're using an
older phone. And since apps are what makes smartphones smart.
That ends up being a big problem, and so now
the incentive is there for you to upgrade your phone
even if your old phone still works, so that you can,
you know, just use your smartphone the way you want
(11:49):
to and you're not stuck on older versions of apps.
And that's particularly important because sometimes these older versions of
apps end up being tied to servers that could go offline,
or they might swap over to a new process, and
then you have an outdated smartphone that has a bunch
of inactive apps stored on it and it becomes practically useless.
(12:10):
On a related note, battery life decreases over time and use,
so older batteries just don't hold as much of a
charge as newer batteries, and they drain faster, which means
that your older battery operated devices will need recharging more frequently.
Apple famously tried to address this problem by purposefully throttling
(12:31):
the processing speed of older iPhones. The processors would work
more slowly so that they would consume less battery power,
thus extending the usefulness of a battery at the cost
of smartphone performance. But Apple didn't, you know, tell anyone
about it, and a lot of users figured out that
their devices were slowing down due to age. That's what
(12:53):
they assumed. It's just, oh, this is older, that's why
it's getting slower. And in a way that was kind
of true, but not in the same way that these
users thought. They just thought, this thing is getting old.
I need a new one, So they opted to buy
a new, later generation iPhone. But in iPhone, users figured
out that their phones were being throttled and they had
(13:14):
no choice in the matter, and that led to a
big class action lawsuit. As users said, had they known
what was going on, they would have opted to replace
the battery in their old iPhone rather than buy a
brand new iPhone. And I should add that Apple does
not make it easy for you to do this. You
really can't replace a battery in your iPhone, at least
(13:36):
not without violating your warranty. But under certain circumstances, like
if you enroll in Apple Care Plus, then Apple actually
will replace an iPhone battery free of charge. I say
free of charge, really, I should say that price is
included in your enrollment into Apple Care Plus. So for
(13:57):
those users, the people who had enrolled an app Care Plus,
they could have chosen to have a new battery put
into their older iPhone and it would have extended the
life of that device, but they weren't told about what
was going on, so instead they opted to buy a
brand new phone, which was way more expensive. In Apple
reached a settlement agreement, actually to settlement agreements for two
(14:20):
different class action lawsuits brought against the company about this
very issue. The first settlement was for five hundred million dollars,
a princely some and the second was for another one
d thirteen million dollars. In both cases, prosecution argued that
Apple was deliberately hiding the fact that it was throttling
(14:40):
processing output and that the battery was degrading over time,
and they knew that most users would opt to upgrade
to a newer iPhone as long as they didn't realize
that there was an alternative path they could have taken. Now,
that pretty much hits the planned obsolescence definition right on
the nose. So it turns out there are a lot
(15:00):
of different approaches to planned obsolescence. While the phrase might
make you think that the company is purposefully making stuff
that just won't stand the test of time, as in
the company is choosing to create substandard products, knowing that
these products will break down and the customer is likely
to come back and buy another one. Really, that's just
the tip of the iceberg, and it's usually not even
(15:23):
the case. If a company's reputation gets tied to the
idea that the stuff they make breaks easily, that's not
good for business. And the rest of this episode, we're
going to take a closer look at some historical examples
of planned obsolescence and what was going on from different perspectives,
and we'll also get into the right to Repair movement
(15:44):
and what it might mean to the tech industry moving forward,
assuming the movement actually achieves its goals. But first let's
take a quick break. We're back and on December twenty three,
(16:04):
nineteen twenty four, a group of elite entrepreneurs met to
establish some shady guidelines, which was pretty ironic because they
were all in the lightbulb business. That's sort of a
pun I guess. Anyway. The leaders represented some of the
largest light bulb manufacturers in the world. There was General Electric,
(16:27):
the grand daddy of big tech companies in the United States.
There was the company Phillips from the Netherlands. As Rum,
a company from Germany, had a representative present, and the
French had their place too, with executives from the company
de Lump, and together they created a powerful idea which
we can represent as a very large lightbulb turning on
(16:50):
behind their heads, or at least we could if this
were a video and not an audio podcast. Their idea
was to form a new company, an organization that would
core innate how light bulbs should work, as in how
bright they should be and how long they should last,
as well as which company would be allowed to sell
its products in certain specific regions. It was collusion of
(17:13):
the highest order, and it violated pretty much every antitrust
law you can think of. And it became known as
the Phoebus Cartel. Cute huh, because Phoebus is another name
for Apollo, the god of the sun. Before the cartel,
manufacturers were making light bulbs that could last between fifteen
hundred and two thousand hours of operation. But the cartel
(17:36):
collectively decided that their light bulbs should have a life
expectancy of one thousand hours of use. A ha. These
companies were producing a technology that already had a limited
lifespan just because of how it works. You know, the
filaments and light bulbs, the part that actually gives off light.
They eventually burned through and break, and that's what makes
(17:57):
incandescent lightbulbs die. Clearly, this group of people were all
agreeing to a worldwide limit on the useful number of
hours a light bulb would operate in in order to
sell more light bulbs. Right, they were making a predetermined
end of life cycle for light bulbs, and by making
everyone agree to this limitation, no manufacturer would be able
(18:19):
to defy the others and start selling bulbs that had
longer lifespans, which would ruin it for everybody else. Now
you can see the appeal of that narrative, right, rich
fat cats are cynically limiting a technology just to sell
more light bulbs, while simultaneously creating pressure to prevent any
(18:40):
other company from offering up a superior product. You could
just hear the thumbs twiddling, you know, the mustaches waxing,
and the chorals chortling. Heck, the cartel would even test
lightbulbs from each manufacturer, and if any of those lightbulbs
proved to have a lifespan that as well beyond those
(19:01):
one thousand hours of operation, the cartel would find the
responsible manufacturer keep those light bulbs lives shorter or else.
But if we want to be a little more fair,
we should take into consideration another factor. As light bulbs age,
they would give off less light. Incandescent bulbs, they are
(19:23):
less luminously efficient in other words, And so the counter
argument was made that by limiting the lifespan to one
thousand hours, it was more about maximizing luminous efficiency. It
was to make certain that the light bulbs were providing
enough light throughout their lifespans and not just turning into
increasingly dim light sources. So there was an argument being
(19:47):
made that the restriction of the lifespan was more about
improving the quality of the performance of light bulbs rather
than speeding up the need to replace those light bulbs.
It was a compelling enough argument to lead the u
K's Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission to give the companies
some slack with that regard, though there were many other
(20:09):
things the Phoebus Cartel did that did not get a
free pass, but those are more market focused than tech focused,
so I'm not going to go into them. The cartel itself,
by the way, dissolved in the late nineteen thirties, not
because of government pressure, or at least not the kind
of regulation pressure, but because of a little thing called
World War two. Now, I suspect that the decision to
(20:33):
arrive at one thousand hours of useful life was guided
both by practical considerations and good old fashioned greed. So
I suspect there is some truth to both of the
scenarios I mentioned, or if you listen to ridiculous history scenarios,
and considering that some of the other moves that the
(20:55):
cartel made, like namely price fixing, you definitely cannot count
greed out because that was the primary motivator for those decisions.
But there are at least some people who are a
little more charitable toward the idea of limiting bulb lifespan
in an effort to favor better luminous efficiency. So we'll
move on. The next big example is the one that
(21:18):
I mentioned earlier and talked about a little bit in
my episodes about General Motors. This was the GM under
Alfred B. Sloan, the man who took a big mess
of companies that were acquired by GM founder William C. Durant,
and then he organized all of this mishmash into individual
business units looking over specific makes of car, and each
(21:41):
of those units had a great deal of autonomy between them.
He was also a consummate capitalist, and I don't necessarily
mean that in a flattering way. He had a habit
of focusing on profits and ignoring people. But you can
learn more about that in the GM episodes. One of
Sloan's many contributions to the automotive industry was the introduction
(22:03):
of stylistic changes to various car models year over year.
In the early days of automobiles, the dominating manufacturer was
the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford's company produced the famous
Model T. Ford and first introduced that Model T in
nineteen o eight, and it remained in production until nineteen
(22:25):
twenty seven. By n this was a mass produced cars,
so on a huge scale. Ford dominated car sales in
the United States for like decades now. Allegedly, Ford himself
once said that there was no use in overtaking and
passing a Model T on the road, because you would
(22:46):
just find yourself behind a different Model T. That's how
commonplace they were. He also reportedly said that a customer
could get a Model T and whatever color they wanted
as long as it was black. While the company would
offer Model T s and other colors up to nineteen fourteen,
between nineteen fourteen and nineteen Ford only churned out black
(23:10):
Model T cars. This meant that Ford's factories could build
nearly identical cars, one right after the other, using mass
production techniques, thus increasing efficiency and keeping costs down. And
it also meant that Ford could sell these cars at
affordable prices. They were meant to be practical, durable, and reliable.
(23:31):
That's how he made so many early sales. Now there
was a big emphasis on uniformity and consistency, in other words,
because those are things that make it easier to mass
produce something. And Alfred Sloan saw an opportunity to appeal
to people on a different level over at General Motors.
He thought it would be a good idea to change
(23:51):
up the style of a model of car on a
regular basis. At a glance, you would be able to
give a ballpark estimate of the year when a certain
model came out due to distinguishing features that were on
that car. You know, maybe the headlights are in a
slightly different spot, or maybe the car has a different
kind of grill on the front of it, or maybe
(24:13):
you put a pair of big old tail fins on
the back of the thing. That's the sort of thing
that Sloan was thinking about. Harley Earl, a man whom
many historians credit as the first professional designer to work
in the automotive industry, worked was Sloan to make this
vision a reality, and Earl would sculpt models out of
clay and then mold them in different ways to create
(24:36):
new features, and as tastes changed, he could reflect that
in different car body designs, and now cars could appeal
to people by embodying certain design trends. This approach meant
that cars now had a sort of planned obsolescence. As
time passes, fashions change and older cars will pass out
(24:58):
of fashion. Out of style, they'll become unfashionable, and that
creates a psychological lever that GM could lean on to
convince people to come in trade in their older cars
and buy newer ones. The older cars might still work
perfectly well from an operational point of view, but they
could be seen as being old fashioned, and that was
(25:19):
enough to push some people to upgrade to a new vehicle.
It was still important for GM to make cars that
were perceived to be reliable and powerful. If the cars
were known to break down quickly, that kind of reputation
would hurt sales. So while you could keep driving the
same car for many years, assuming you took good care
of the car, Sloan's goal was to make you feel
(25:41):
like a kind of a social pariah if you did
that for a really long time, Like, Oh, that poor
so and so they can't afford a new car. Look
at them driving that old, you know, Chevy or whatever
it might be. Sloan's approach accelerated car pun the role
of a car as a stat symbol. GM offered several
(26:02):
different makes of cars, and each make targeted a different
economic demographic. So on the cheaper end was the Chevrolet
line and on the opposite side of the spectrum was
the Cadillac. But no matter which make of car you
talked about, that strategy of planned obsolescence was at play.
You can see Sloan's impact in consumer products across the board,
(26:24):
and not just in tech, though it tends to be
particularly evident in the tech world. It's why Apple releases
a new iPhone every year, or more to the point,
it's why companies like Apple hold really big exclusive press
events to hype the release of a new model of
iPhone every year. And to be clear, Apple does this
(26:46):
with lots of its products, not just the iPhone. It's
just the iPhone event tends to get the most attention.
So let's think about that yearly schedule for a moment,
and also think back to how phones were marketed in
the US when the iPhone first launched in two thousand seven.
So at that time, Apple had signed an exclusive agreement
(27:07):
with the carrier A T and T here in the
United States. Now, the reasons behind that agreement are fascinating,
but they also go beyond what I'm going to talk about,
so I'll save that for some future episode. You're welcome.
But back in those days, it was pretty common practice
in the United States for carriers like A T and
T to offer subsidized phones in return for signing two
(27:31):
year contracts where you agreed that this was your carrier
for two years. You were locked into a carrier. That
made the initial purchase price of phones a little bit
more affordable, at least initially, so rather than shelling out
a thousand dollars for a phone, you might spend a
couple of hundred by signing onto a two year agreement
(27:53):
with the carrier. Typically, those agreements would limit your options
when it came to upgrades. Normally you would have to
wait out the two years to get to the point
where you would renew your agreement or sign whatever newer
version of the agreement the carrier was offering, and then
you could upgrade to a new phone at a reduced cost,
or sometimes the phone would be included as part of
(28:16):
the agreement. But Apple was releasing a brand new iPhone
every year, and each new iPhone would have new features
and new styling, so the phones were following Sloan's approach
to product design. A new iPhone wasn't just flashy technology,
it was also a status symbol, and a lot of
folks would choose to upgrade to the new version, even
(28:38):
if it meant they had to pay more to do
it because they were only a year into a service
agreement with their carrier and they could not yet qualify
for a subsidized phone. Now, this happened for a few years,
but gradually US carriers kind of phased out those two
year contract plans, which also meant that the subsidized phone
(28:58):
model began to disappear. Customers had more freedom to choose
whichever carrier they wanted to without getting locked into things.
But it also meant that they often had to pay
full price for phones for those who had been upgrading
to a new iPhone every year despite the limitations of
two year contracts. This was actually probably a welcome change
(29:19):
to the rest of us. It was a bit of
an adjustment, not a bad thing, but it did take
some time to adjust to it. The brilliant thing about
Sloan's approach, the thing that Apple often relies upon, is
that you're encouraging customers to crave the new. There's this
built in desire in the market to get the coolest
(29:41):
new toy with the latest features and the latest options.
Companies don't have to trash the older technology. They just
help the new things that the latest version can do.
And it might mean that companies take steps to roll
out new features very carefully. So in some cases a
company might be read to implement a brand new feature,
(30:02):
at least from a technological level. However, the hold back
they'll make a market based decision to wait and sit
on that technology for a little bit in order to
maximize sales. You might say, well, we could install these
three new features in our next phone. But if we
only install one of them, and then the phone after
that we add a second one, and the phone after
(30:24):
that we add the third one, we are able to
keep boosting sales year over year. If we do all
three right now, we might not have enough of an
improvement to get that same boost next year. So it
becomes this kind of game of chess. So why would
you put in all the bells and whistles if you
can hold back a few of them and then make
(30:44):
many more sales in the next update. Now is this insidious?
I don't really think so. I mean, from a business perspective,
it does make a lot of sense. From a consumer perspective,
I say, what this should do is teach us that
jumping on a brand, a new technology, or even just
a new model of an existing technology, might not be
(31:05):
the best option right out of the gate. We might
need to use some self control before we buy the
next shiny thing. Of course, this approach requires moderation as well,
or else you would never buy anything at all. If
I need a new phone and I know that I'm
three months out from the release of something that I
think is really worthwhile, then I can wait that out.
(31:27):
But if I'm perpetually waiting for a phone that blows
me away with all the features, I'll probably be worried
that I'm going to experience buyer's remorse if I jump
in right. So, in other words, if I buy something
and I don't feel like it's really what I was
waiting for, then maybe the next thing that comes out
the next month makes me feel badly about it, and
(31:48):
so that can actually become a bit of a crisis.
It can It can prevent you from taking action because
you're always worried that once you take action, you're committed,
and then the next day you find out there was
a better option. But yeah, that desire for the new
is something that's really ingrained in the tech world. Companies
don't have to make products that will break after a
(32:11):
certain amount of time. They don't have to have that
kind of planned obsolescence because with lots of tech, just
the desire to have the latest thing is enough all
on its own. That means the companies just have to
focus on offering up products that are different enough from
the previous generation to spark our desire. When we come back,
I'll talk a little bit more about this and then
(32:32):
we'll learn about the right to repair. But first let's
take a quick break. So if manufacturers are actually giving
the people what they want, that is updates to technology
that flesh out what it can do, at least in
(32:53):
the ways that consumers desire, then we can't really put
all the blame on manufacturers for planned obsolescence. We are
somewhat responsible for it too. It's good to keep in mind,
and if we recognize that part of us, we can
try to make a better balance of when we actually
need something new and when we just want something new.
(33:16):
I struggle with this all the time, whether it's a
new flagship phone. I mean, when Android comes up with
a brand new flagship phone, I feel the temptation to
jump on it. Not literally jump on it, but you
know what I mean. However, in most cases, the phone
I have at the time tends to be perfectly fine
(33:36):
for my needs. The last time I did upgrade a phone,
it was because the microphone on my phone had broken.
I could use Bluetooth devices and talk on the phone,
but I couldn't use my phone as a phone just
on its own, so I did have to upgrade then.
But I tend to stick to getting a new phone
just every few years as the older one starts to
(33:57):
lag behind, especially when it comes to what apps you
can run. And the same is true for game systems.
I've gotten a lot better about that too. It used
to be that as soon as a game system came out,
I felt the urge to rush out and buy it.
I usually didn't because I usually didn't have the money,
but I always wanted to. However, now I actually prefer
(34:17):
to hang back, both so that any bugs in those
early versions can be worked out. I mean, I do
not want another Red Ring of Death situation ever again,
and also so that game developers can release more titles
for the system. It's not much fun pouring a bunch
of money into a technology and then having to wait
around for it to become useful. But now we also
(34:39):
have to talk about the issue of right to repair.
So earlier I talked about the ways companies make it
challenging or impossible for the average person to repair stuff,
and initially my reaction to that kind of thing is
this is how they get you. They want you to
get back to them and bring all the stuff to
get it fixed by them the cells. But there can
(35:01):
be other reasons for this that, while you may or
may not agree with them, can be a little more subtle. So,
for example, let's take Apple again. For most of the
company's history, Apple products have been largely inaccessible to those
who wish to do their own repairs, at least to
do so without violating a warranty. But one of the
big reasons for that is that Apple has a specific
(35:24):
vision as to how consumers are supposed to experience Apple products.
This was a philosophy that Steve Jobs had pushed pretty hard.
The goal was to create a controlled experience from beginning
to end. The company would have an enormous amount of
authority in deciding this, from hardware configurations to the kinds
(35:44):
of software that would be allowed to run on the device.
We see this reflected in the iPhone app store, where
developers have to get approval from Apple before their apps
will actually appear on the market. This level of control
helps a company deliver con extant quality to users. The
challenge is then selling users on the idea that the
(36:05):
company's approach is what the customer actually wants. Jobs was
amazing at this. He could bring a device to a
crowd and by the end of a presentation have that
crowd convinced that Apple's product is exactly what the crowd
wanted and needed. But Apple relinquishing control in any way
wouldn't make that more difficult to do, because a third
(36:28):
party might not perform up to Apple's standards and it
would reflect poorly on Apple. But that also meant that
Apple products were difficult to modify. Early consumer computers came
out as kits, and the people who bought those kits
would typically put them together themselves. You could also pay
to have some of those kits come fully assembled. You
(36:51):
would have to pay extra for that, but a lot
of early computer owners actually enjoyed the experience of building
the computers from the kits, and this meant that really
enterprising hobbyists could even make little tweaks to the design
to change the performance of the end machine a little bit.
This was the early era of the hacker, as people
(37:11):
figured out how these systems worked, and then they modified
those systems in different ways. And it was pretty common
practice along many different computer manufacturers to have components that
you could swap out, like RAM chips. So if you
wanted your computer to have more memory, you could open
up your computer case and install more RAM, assuming your
(37:32):
computer's motherboard and processor could support the additional RAM, but
Apple typically made this really hard to do. If you
wanted an Apple computer with more RAM, you were going
to have to pay extra to buy a computer model
that was a step up from whichever one you were
looking at. And that also extends to making it really
(37:53):
hard to repair Apple computers if something were to go wrong.
And thus we get to the birth of the genius bar.
So we get companies creating complicated electronic devices, many of
which have proprietary fasteners and such holding them together, and
the message that the customer is to bring any of
those devices that aren't working, you know they might need
(38:13):
some repair. You're supposed to bring those back to the
company or maybe an authorized service vendor. Critics of this
approach say it's anti competitive and it hurts the consumer. Ideally,
the consumer would have an open choice as to whom
they could bring a broken device for a repair. So
if I were particularly talented at repairs, I would be
(38:35):
able to open up a shop and work on all
sorts of devices. I might offer more competitive rates than
what people might find going through the original manufacturer or
enrolling in an extended care or warranty program, and these
ideas are the underlying principles of the right to Repair movement.
There are a lot of organizations that advocate for the
(38:56):
right to repair, and they work to lobby governments to
ask legislation that would mandate it. Primarily we see the
movement in the United States and even more prominently in
the European Union. This is also tied to the problem
of electronic waste. As I mentioned earlier. According to the
Public Internet Research Group, which I should add is not
(39:17):
an unbiased source of information, but according to them, Americans
throughout four hundred sixteen thousand cell phones a day. I
find that number a little hard to believe. Maybe it's true.
I didn't find, you know, other sources that back this up,
but I did find other sources that had similar eye
popping statistics. Only a fraction of the electronic devices we
(39:41):
throw away, ever, end up in recycling centers. I mean,
that's mostly on us. If we just toss it in
the garbage, then that's where it's gonna go. It takes
effort to find good recycling centers. Not all of them
are ethical, by the way. It takes some research. So
considering all the stuff that's in electronics and valuable metals.
(40:01):
I mean there's like gold and copper in this stuff.
It's a real shame to just throw them out. And
then you consider the environmental impact and it gets worse.
Right to Repair groups want to see companies include access
to stuff like repair guides, so make it possible to
understand how these things work and how to fix them.
Make it repair tools accessible if any proprietary tools are needed,
(40:24):
and also make us accessible parts needed for repairs. Sell
the parts individually as well, so none of this would
be free. You know, the companies could still make money.
They could actually offer repair kits that you could purchase.
But imagine that instead of having to bring back your
smartphone to some store or send it off to a
manufacturer through the mail, you instead could order a repair kit,
(40:47):
and if you have steady hands, maybe you replace that
crack screen or that dead battery by yourself. That's the
appeal of the right to repair movement. But as electronics
get more complicated, it's more challenging to meet that kind
of standard. Some devices are complex enough that it requires
a person with specialized knowledge and skill in order to
(41:11):
tackle the problem, and a lot of us, myself included,
would probably find ourselves popping into an independent repair shop
to have our stuff fixed rather than take it on
ourselves and risk breaking it more. Look, all I'm saying
is I know what my track record is for taking
stuff apart versus putting it together again, and that ratio
(41:33):
is way out of balance. We're seeing this movement embrace
not just consumer goods like smartphones, but really big stuff
like farming equipment and tractors. Farmers have criticized manufacturer John
Deer for including essentially the equivalent of a digital lock
and those limit who can actually make repairs to a machine.
(41:54):
For farmers who depend upon these big vehicles for their livelihood,
that represents a lack of freedom and lack of options,
and it really does feel anti competitive. It's saying you
have to go to people of our choosing if you
want to have the thing you bought repaired. And this
also gets into that weird area we find ourselves in
(42:17):
in the digital age. In the old days, you would
buy something and you would just think this is mine, right,
Like you bought a watch, that's your watch. You could
repair that watch however you liked. But these days things
are being sold not just as a product, but as
an ongoing service. And it's not so much that you
(42:37):
own the thing, it's that you own access to that thing,
and some ownership is retained by the original manufacturer. This
is an idea that I'm not super keen on because
it does put a lot more power back in the
hands of the manufacturers and and takes a lot of
power away from consumers. Well, in the United States, twenty
(43:01):
states have filed legislation in an effort to address these
kinds of issues, and in the EU some progress on
this front has already been made. This month a series
of regulations that apply to manufacturers that make appliances like
washing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers, I think computer monitors too. It
(43:21):
goes into effect and those regulations state that companies need
to offer products that have replaceable components, and moreover, that
anyone would be able to make these replacements using common tools.
You shouldn't need anything special in order to do this
repair work. So, in other words, companies are not supposed
to solder stuff together or otherwise make it impossible or
(43:44):
difficult to access components without causing further damage. And you
shouldn't need a number seventy three spanner up to iconological
wrench or something in order to work on it. The
EU has yet to pass regulations that would cover stuff
like cell phones, computers, and tablets, though, and that is
a big problem because these are some of the most
(44:05):
common and harmful forms of consumer waste. People go through
these types of devices on a pretty regular basis, and
some of the member nations of the EU have gone
on to move ahead and pass their own regulations since
the EU as a whole has been a little slow
on this. So, for example, in France, a new piece
(44:25):
of information will be included with consumer electronics. It's essentially
a repair index, is a score that ranges between one
and ten. The index gives consumers the idea of how
easy or difficult it is to disassemble a device, whether
or not you can find information on how to repair
the device, you know, if it's readily available or not,
(44:46):
whether or not you can find spare parts for that
kind of device, how expensive those spare parts are. So
you know, the the more difficult it is to repair something,
the lower that score is going to be for that
particular item. Now, where we go from here will depend
upon how governments either past legislation or they opt not
(45:07):
to plus how they intend to enforce legislation. Companies have
very little incentive to offer up, you know, repair options
to the end user because those can end up hitting
revenue down the line. Now, personally, I would love to
see a lot more options for repair. I'd like to
see an approach similar to what it was like to
(45:28):
buy a car twenty years ago, because yeah, you could
bring your car back to the dealership for maintenance, but
chances are you might find a great mechanic who is
more convenient to where you live, or maybe they have
more competitive rates and that might end up being your
first choice instead of bringing it back to the dealership,
or maybe you invest the time and energy to learn
(45:51):
how to do the repairs yourself. I think the options
should all be there, and I definitely think that's an
improvement over the status quote we have. Now. Well, that
wraps up this episode. I hope you enjoyed learning about
planned obsolescence and the right to repair. If you have
suggestions for topics I should tackle in future episodes of
tech Stuff, let me know. The best way to reach
(46:14):
out is over on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff
h S. W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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