Planned obsolescence through sabotaging a product (or at least its quality) is a universally bad thing in my opinion. Planned transition to an upgrade is not. Terms are probably going to muddy the conversation around the importance of these topics, I think. Maybe we shouldn't borrow the term of planned obsolescence at all.
Planned obsolescence can be looked at another way: using less expensive components because you know you don't need them to last longer than (say) 5 years, which results in cheaper, faster, smaller products.
Mechanically, this tends to be true. I don't know about for electronics. The vehicle engine is a good example - a diesel John Deere from the 70s has a massive block that will last through my grandchildrens' lifetimes. The newer engine blocks are not designed to last as long, and thus have tighter tolerances allowing them to build smaller, lighter, more powerful engines for less money - given, again, that they are not intended to last for as long.
There are a bunch of techniques here: market research, price discrimination (i.e. charging more for "enterprise"), engineering techniques (e.g. testing for mean time to failure, and making it two or three times higher than whatever your warranty is).
Right, but aside from the first those aren't techniques for knowing when your product would no longer be useful, they are techniques for forcing it to no longer be useful. That's not so much another way of looking at it as what forced obsolescence is by definition.
I disagree. I believe that the second and third are techniques that also give you a signal as to how strong the product needs to be.
For example, if users buy the more-expensive longer-lasting product, then that's a sign that those users feel they need it. (For example, "ruggedized" laptops sold for military and educational uses.)
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Planned obsolescence through sabotaging a product (or at least its quality) is a universally bad thing in my opinion. Planned transition to an upgrade is not. Terms are probably going to muddy the conversation around the importance of these topics, I think. Maybe we shouldn't borrow the term of planned obsolescence at all.
Planned obsolescence can be looked at another way: using less expensive components because you know you don't need them to last longer than (say) 5 years, which results in cheaper, faster, smaller products.
Cheaper is evident, but I don't know why "faster" and "smaller" are being taken for granted here.
Mechanically, this tends to be true. I don't know about for electronics. The vehicle engine is a good example - a diesel John Deere from the 70s has a massive block that will last through my grandchildrens' lifetimes. The newer engine blocks are not designed to last as long, and thus have tighter tolerances allowing them to build smaller, lighter, more powerful engines for less money - given, again, that they are not intended to last for as long.
This is begging the question. How do you know your customer won't need those components to last longer than your arbitrary timeline?
There are a bunch of techniques here: market research, price discrimination (i.e. charging more for "enterprise"), engineering techniques (e.g. testing for mean time to failure, and making it two or three times higher than whatever your warranty is).
Right, but aside from the first those aren't techniques for knowing when your product would no longer be useful, they are techniques for forcing it to no longer be useful. That's not so much another way of looking at it as what forced obsolescence is by definition.
I disagree. I believe that the second and third are techniques that also give you a signal as to how strong the product needs to be.
For example, if users buy the more-expensive longer-lasting product, then that's a sign that those users feel they need it. (For example, "ruggedized" laptops sold for military and educational uses.)