Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Products designed to fail, a documentary
doctorfrog:
Personal conspiracy of mine: here's an easy way to see if an electronic product you have is designed to fail:
Try using it without a battery inside it, but hooked up to a charger. If it doesn't work, it's designed not to function without a battery. Rechargeable batteries stop working in a satisfactory way after a couple years. Then you find out that the battery either isn't made any more, is overpriced, or in the case of most Apple devices, can't be replaced by the user at all. So you either go through an un-fun process in which you renew the life of your 'old' product, or you go through a 'fun' process of buying a new one.
I have an iPod Nano, about two years old. Fun fact: when it's charging, the backlight stays on. How much you want to bet the backlight runs off of the battery, even as it is charging?
In the meantime, there is no flat-pack battery standard. Nice round AA's, AAA's, but no flat-pack battery standard. And every device uses a different battery.
It is, however, impossible to complain about batteries without feeling mighty old. I better buy a new phone soon.
IainB:
@doctorfrog: Spot-on.
I have worked for different computer manufacturers and been well-trained in their product marketing strategies and their software marketing strategies.
This training so far covers Control Data, IBM, ICL, DEC, digital, HP. (I think that's all.)
There are two absolute basic marketing objectives which are almost always applied:
1. Lock-in (that doesn't necessarily mean "forever", just "as long as possible").
2. Built-in obsolescence.
Because neither objective in practice is illegal - in fact, they are arguably both "rights of self-survival" for any Corporation - they are exercised to the Nth degree.
You provided some perfect examples of both.
Whilst it is illegal for Corporations to form syndicates to do something such as, for example, establishing non-competitive agreements, or establishing retail price maintenance agreements(*1), it is not illegal for them to collaborate to sustain the two objectives above for each other, for mutual and non-competitive benefit in new and potential aftermarket sales. Laptops and their batteries are a classic example, and there is an interesting and relatively new twist in the branding of some HP laptops with the "DR Beats" logo and even for the DR Beats headphones sometimes being a compulsory and extra-cost component in the laptop package deal.
It sometimes seems like you have to think like a good corporate psychopath to be able to dream up some of these ideas. HP and their inkjet printer ink cartridge design - and cost - are a classic example of this - very clever/devious marketing. HP invented the idea of locking you into their expensive ink brand by embedding part of their proprietary inkjet printer technology in the ink cartridge. And it's quite legal. ;)
Ink cartridge sales form a huge and profitable revenue for the HP consumable products division. That's why they almost give the printers away to the consumer market (and don't forget Objective #2 either). The principle of consumable-driven product marketing like this was, I think, originally dreamed up or developed by Gillette. It was the case study we were taught about in Marketing 101 at any rate. With razor blades, the obsolescence is managed through blades getting bunt and needing to be replaced, and by increasing the number of blades in a razor head every so often. I think we are up to 5 now, and that would seem to be near any practical limit.
Footnote *1: These things have always seemed to be made illegal by statute (e.g., antitrust legislation) after the event of several cases where large Corporations had done exactly these things in order to exploit the market and/or the consumer from the vantage of an unfair oligopoly or monopoly market position.
IainB:
I think that's just being dramatic...
-Renegade (November 02, 2011, 12:10 AM)
--- End quote ---
No, honestly, I only intended to be scathing about the video.
Sorry, my point was probably not clear: The subject was so well-known as being a "natural bodily function" within the Capitalist system that I was astonished that anyone could refer to it as:
...the secret mechanism at the heart of our consumer society
--- End quote ---
- which seems to me to be a laughable statement.
"Secret"?! How the heck could that be a "secret"?
It seems to me that it could no more be a secret than that the characteristic of water running downhill is a secret or a "new discovery".
The film-makers would surely have known this, but were presumably deliberately fostering alarmism, to get publicity for their documentary. (I think it seemed quite well-made, by the way.)
...the fact that it goes on is utterly beyond comprehension.
-Renegade (November 02, 2011, 12:10 AM)
--- End quote ---
Well, I'm not so sure that you could substantiate that statement at all.
For example, I find it easy to comprehend, and it is arguable that probably most people would if they had a passing sense of history for the theory and practice of the development of capitalism in western economies - especially those of us who have been alive and awake and living in those economies for most of our lives.
Failing that, would it not be easily comprehended if you had read Vince Packard's book, and especially if you had watched and understood The Corporation?
Renegade:
I think that's just being dramatic...
-Renegade (November 02, 2011, 12:10 AM)
--- End quote ---
No, honestly, I only intended to be scathing about the video.
Sorry, my point was probably not clear: The subject was so well-known as being a "natural bodily function" within the Capitalist system that I was astonished that anyone could refer to it as:
...the secret mechanism at the heart of our consumer society
--- End quote ---
- which seems to me to be a laughable statement.
"Secret"?! How the heck could that be a "secret"?
It seems to me that it could no more be a secret than that the characteristic of water running downhill is a secret or a "new discovery".
The film-makers would surely have known this, but were presumably deliberately fostering alarmism, to get publicity for their documentary. (I think it seemed quite well-made, by the way.)
-IainB (November 02, 2011, 01:36 AM)
--- End quote ---
Meh. Not sure. It seemed to me like they were simply shocked when the found out, then trying to communicate that same sense of outrage.
...the fact that it goes on is utterly beyond comprehension.
-Renegade (November 02, 2011, 12:10 AM)
--- End quote ---
Well, I'm not so sure that you could substantiate that statement at all.
For example, I find it easy to comprehend, and it is arguable that probably most people would if they had a passing sense of history for the theory and practice of the development of capitalism in western economies - especially those of us who have been alive and awake and living in those economies for most of our lives.
Failing that, would it not be easily comprehended if you had read Vince Packard's book, and especially if you had watched and understood The Corporation?
-IainB (November 02, 2011, 01:36 AM)
--- End quote ---
I think you give people to much credit.
Yeah... I've known about this for years. You've probably known about it for longer. But I don't think that most people are aware. Or rather, I don't think that anyone is *CONSCIOUSLY AWARE* of it. It's like crossing the road - you never consciously think about the possibility of getting hit, but you do know that it is a possibility. The *realization* of something you know... I think that's more what I'm talking about above there.
Like, how in Hell do we allow this to go on? It's insanity.
And these same people will try and tell me that they're "green" and "environment-friendly"? WTF? Ahem. BS. They're the worst enviro-terrorists on the planet.
My take on it is this... No. Not appropriate. Skip it.
Suffice it to say that I find it fraudulent, deceitful, malicious, and lower than drug dealers. At least with drug dealers, they are honest in their business. PO is far from that.
IainB:
My take on it is this... No. Not appropriate. Skip it.
Suffice it to say that I find it fraudulent, deceitful, malicious, and lower than drug dealers. At least with drug dealers, they are honest in their business. PO is far from that.
-Renegade (November 02, 2011, 05:37 AM)
--- End quote ---
Absolutely.
It gets me hopping mad whenever I feel that I have been ripped off.
So, to have to live in what is arguably a broken version of what could be an ideal (if we changed it) system, so that we are currently obliged to let Corporations legally rip us off whenever they want (i.e., all the time) - well, it makes me unspeakably annoyed too.
Yes:
"...fraudulent, deceitful, malicious, and lower than drug dealers. At least with drug dealers, they are honest in their business. PO is far from that."
--- End quote ---
And WE created this monster! (Ain't democracy grand?!)
Do you see anyone working to change it?
...No, I thought not.
That's because IT controls us, its creators.
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