I'm sure everyone does know what it means but just in case: It's the practice of deliberatley designing products with shortened life spans to encourage consumers to buy more.
Do you ever wonder about this though? Do they all sit down at a table and discuss how to make their products fail after one or two years? They surely have to engineer faults that can't be life threatening. That would harm their reputation but, it must make it crap enough to use that the consumer will want something new. Or, that it will be cheaper to buy new. It has to be so precisely timed too. So that the product is just out of warantee when it fails.
In my experience and friends, they seem to time it perfectly often! My friend used to say- just as a new Apple watch was launched, she'd start having problems with hers. Coincidence or, design?
It seems so deceitful to me. Imagine spending all that money to train as an engineer or, a specialist in say pumps, motors, circuit boards. You presumably learn all that to make something that functions well. Only to be told- yes- it does need to function well initially but, it needs to break eventually! Replace that part with something substandard.
The most ridiculous part is when all these companies pretend to be so sustainable when I imagine they are all secretly building defects into their products to make them obsolete long before the whole item is unusable.
I suppose it's how they make money. It's just a shame they can't find another way of doing it.
Do you ever wonder about this though? Do they all sit down at a table and discuss how to make their products fail after one or two years? They surely have to engineer faults that can't be life threatening. That would harm their reputation but, it must make it crap enough to use that the consumer will want something new. Or, that it will be cheaper to buy new. It has to be so precisely timed too. So that the product is just out of warantee when it fails.
In my experience and friends, they seem to time it perfectly often! My friend used to say- just as a new Apple watch was launched, she'd start having problems with hers. Coincidence or, design?
It seems so deceitful to me. Imagine spending all that money to train as an engineer or, a specialist in say pumps, motors, circuit boards. You presumably learn all that to make something that functions well. Only to be told- yes- it does need to function well initially but, it needs to break eventually! Replace that part with something substandard.
The most ridiculous part is when all these companies pretend to be so sustainable when I imagine they are all secretly building defects into their products to make them obsolete long before the whole item is unusable.
I suppose it's how they make money. It's just a shame they can't find another way of doing it.
