Ever been caught in a hoax where a company sells you a product and a year later you have to replace it because it wasn't as durable as it should have been?
Let's take a look at what happened in 2017,
Apple made a soft ware update for iphones. That did not affect all iphones equally if you had a new model the difference wouldn't have been much, but the soft ware update slowed older models as soon as they updated. They began to crash more often and generally didn't work as well as they should.
The scenario above can be summarized to what is called PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE.
Obsolesence is the state of being that occurs when a practice, service, or object is no longer required or maintained despite beign in a good working order.
Therefore, planned Obsolesence is when producers or manufacturers deliberately and Unneccesrily design products to become functionaly usless or out of style.
Its concerning to think that companies are making their goods bad on purpose just to make more money.
We see this today in things like cars, fashion and electronics,
This tatic is more of a big deal than people take it to be
Here's a shocking piece of info I'm sure you might not even know.
The light bulb was invented in the early 1800's. scientists looked for ways to improve it and with each new improvement, the life span of bulbs increased. By 1920 some light bulbs collapsed up to 2500 hours this surely seemed to be a win for every one. But one specific group didn't think so. They held a secret meeting in Switzerland in 1924,containing executives of leading light bulb companies including Philips, General electric and others.
They knew long lasting bulbs wasn't a good Business strategy (even though it would be good for consumers) so they all agreed to reduce the lifespan of their bulbs making sure consumers buy light bulbs more often. any one of them who made more lasting bulbs would be fined by the other, they made sure they tested each others bulb to make sure this was effective. These companies actually instructed their developers to make their light bulbs worse. They did this by experimenting with less durable and less effective material's .
If you thought that was absurd, wait till you hear this part. The whole tatic of reducing durability wasn't affected in the price, so even though they properly made their product's worse these companies still charged the some amount!!!!
Which in turn made more money.
That's the main advantage of planned Obsolesence, to maximize profit
a scheme producers use to make more money, although some consumers are okay with this practice , they argue that planned obselescence keeps companies in business which in turns provide employment opportunities and livlihoods.
But then the disadvantages are more felt by the producers, because when they push consumers too far they risk back lash, their online chat rooms and social media platforms are filled with complaints of different forms, new smart phones that won't plug into older chargers, window soft ware release that doesn't work as well as the latest and sometimes law suits. A perfect example of the last example is France lawsuit against apple and funny enough this isn't the first time.
Eventually Some consumers may call it quits or prefer to continue with the older version of the product.
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