"They don't make 'em like they used to."
It's a tired old adage-typically spoken in a sigh, accompanied by a rueful shake of the head-used by people who always came from a better time when the men were men and the women were also, when you had to walk to school, uphill both ways, through snowstorms in July. Kids, this was a golden age when 12-year-olds pulled themselves up by their bootstraps (physically impossible as that may be), before the dark times when lifetime warranties largely became an alien concept and everything needed to be "updated" constantly.
It's interesting how the past has a way of being both brutal and tough, yet blissfully happy and innocent at the same time-but, digressions aside, old-timers may have a point. They don't make things like they used to and there may be a name for the problem, or at least part of it: planned obsolescence.
Planned obsolescence is the practice of intentionally designing products to have shorter use lifespans. It's based on the idea that people will continue to replace a product again and again, so long as they feel they need the product in their lives. As one can imagine, the profit margin is exponentially higher when consumers are shelling out cash repeatedly for short-term replacements, instead of making a one-time payment for a dependable, long-term product.
Recently, the concept of planned obsolescence made headlines when a French advocacy group-simply and aptly called Stop Planned Obsolescence-filed a criminal complaint against tech megagiant Apple in December. It filed an earlier complaint against Epson, HP, Canon and Brother. The complaint alleges Apple intentionally designed their iPhones to perform more and more poorly (slower processing speed, shorter battery life, etc.) as they aged. Stop Planned Obsolescence argued Apple did this to increase sales and, in doing so, violated France's robust anti-planned obsolescence law enacted in 2015.
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It should be noted Apple responded to this complaint and others by stating that through a process called "smoothing" it scales down the battery life and performance speeds of its older iPhones to protect their aging circuitry from the rigors of new and continually innovating programming, applications or updates. At the same time, Apple has offered consumers the option to replace their batteries for a reduced fee. Recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook said a new iOS developer update will arrive next month allowing iPhone users to see their battery's health. It will give users the option to turn off the throttling feature that prevents older devices from shutting down when the batteries become too weak, USA Today reported.
This case-as well as a slew of other cases on planned obsolescence-has yet to give a concrete verdict on whether these corporations are selling a purposefully sub-par product to their consumers. That being said, judging by the predatory tactics of companies in a litany of fields, it's difficult to swallow the idea planned obsolescence isn't a real and imminent concern for consumers.
Perhaps there should be some distinctions. Often, when people think of planned obsolescence, they imagine a complex product like a smartphone or computer with a key component that self-destructs after an allotted amount of time and sabotages the whole system.
But, what if planned obsolescence can be characterized by using weaker materials or substandard manufacturing? It's no secret many everyday staples-from wrenches to washing machines to full-size pickup trucks-are not as durable as their predecessors from decades past, yet this has little to do with a malicious design feature as much as it's a shift from metal alloys to weaker materials like plastic or Plexiglas.
Still, if it's cheaper to produce and promises a cycle of replacements down the road, who is to say the manufacturer wouldn't benefit? Is that, by definition, a weaker and less effective product by design? Is it planned obsolescence?
The key here is how consumers can judge if they're being victimized or not. When a mechanic pops open the mechanism of a ratchet wrench, even an unpracticed eye can see pretty quickly if the parts are properly lubricated, what the components are made of and whether or not they were assembled in a tight, compact way that functions properly. A quick turn of the wrist should reveal if the mechanism is a sturdy and smooth operation.
Can the same assessment be made for an iPhone, where the functions are largely abstract and the parts in question, more often than not, are parts unseen? And that's to say nothing of the complexity of such a product: The phone in your pocket has more diverse functions and more computing power than the Apollo 11 spacecraft that first landed men on the moon.
These are assessments that need to be made. The question is can they be made. As technology takes leaps and bounds beyond the grasp of everyday people, is it fear-mongering to wonder if consumer protections are slipping out of our hands and getting lost in a quagmire of rhetorical arguments, legal loopholes and tech lingo?
