this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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They didn't lose money, which is what they care for. They also don't lose much power on people because these who are leaving are most likely smart people that twitter and other companies don't want in the first place. Their business plan is to rely on stupid people, just like apple do selling their overpriced products, they know that no matter what as long as they stay relevant there will be idiots following the trend. Purging smart people benefits them because they can create a bigger circlejerk and keep at bay potential troublemakers. Their fail is in the total lack of foresight but big tech and capitalism never ever gave a shit about what's not directly under their nose.
You almost had me there - until you claimed Apples business plan was to sell to stupid people.
“Known to scam people”, “designed to stop working”.
I am fully aware that people can say anything on the internet, but clearly you are not objective at all.
Obviously any further attempt at discussion is pointless. Enjoy your fruit-less life, may it treat you with software updates until the next flagship device is launched.
The scam part notwithstanding, Apple products are designed to stop working. Or, at least, degrade more quickly than they might otherwise. That's just planned obsolescence though, and Apple certainly isn't the only one.
Should Apple support their products longer?
Yes, definitely.
But there’s a big difference between not supporting old devices with software updates and designing them to stop working which you allege to.
If you ask me theres way worse fish out there than Apple, and if you look at phone support Apple is the golden standard by a mile with most Android devices still not being supported for more than a year or two tops.
What we should have is a requirement to support devices for at least ten years.
Yes, I know, ten years is a long time, but we’ve gotten to a point where we should expect a device that’s been treated well to last that long.
My 2013 MBP runs just fine, so does my 2011 MBA, my dad’s Fujitsu-Siemens laptop from 2008 even still works. But only one of those is running an updated operating system. Guess which one?
Doesn’t mean that the product is designed to fail, just that Apple chose not to support them any longer.
Mind that I'm not the person you originally responded to. I don't think Apple installs a time bomb that bricks your device at a certain point.
But it's disingenuous to say they aren't intentionally reducing product life spans, and degrading the experience in the meantime. I don't necessarily mean support either!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate
You're free to decide if you take their statements on this at face value. But it's really not just Apple. It's everyone. Cars today have a shorter lifespan than they used to. Fridges. Laptops. Competitor phones.
Like are you saying planned obsolescence isn't a thing generally, isn't a thing for Apple, or just that it isn't that bad with them?
I’m saying that anyone singling out Apple for planned obsolescence and disregarding the rest of the market is playing into someone’s playbook.
I’m also fully aware of the so-called batterygate (oh, how I loathe how people add a “gate”-suffix to things to make a “scandal” completely clueless to the fact that Water_gate_ was the name of a fucking hotel. Anyways…), and while we may only speculate wether or not Apple was trying to push people to buy new phones, from appearances it would seem that they were acting in the (somewhat*, I’ll get back to that later) best interest of the consumers, but just failing to communicate it in a good manner.
Now let me get back to my asterisk:
*: There are different types of battery chemistries, and while Apple thumped their own chests back in the day that their MacBook batteries took 1000 charge cycles to get to 80% of factory capacity.
Apple willingly choose to use cheaper chemistries for iPhone batteries than they could use if they wanted longevity to be higher.
So yes, in that regard you can argue planned obsolescence. The amount of money Apple charge for their phones they could definitely put better batteries in, but on the other hand there’s likely arguments for why they choose these batteries, such as capacity or other characteristics. I’m not going to claim to be an expert on battery chemistries, and will leave that to someone else.
With regards to some of your comments on longevity then and now; note that we used to use the best material to make something, regardless of its impact on people and environment. Some environmental concerns do actually reduce product longevity.
Combined with increased technological complexity and a higher rate of improvement in the digital era than in the analog era it’s been a long period where don’t think it’s too bad to replace a device after a few years time.
However, we’re now seeing so good performance from a lot of our tech products that an upgrade feels much more incremental than it used to.
I definitely think we should demand more lifetime from our products, but this needs to be through regulation and not just left to consumers.
Louis Rossmann also had some good points here: https://youtu.be/l27_75pDvd4
We should be able to use cloud features without being locked to the manufacturer. Especially if they go belly-up.
He mentions a Chinese car manufacturer, and Arlo cameras, but it could just as well be Norwegian EV charge box manufacturer Easee, or a cell phone manufacturer like RIM (BlackBerry) or a TV manufacturer, etc.
So many products today depend on cloud services for basic functionality, and for a lot of those devices their planned obsolescence will be the cloud service they’re connected to.