• "Enough is enough" - German Politicians might have had enough with planned electronics obsolesce.
    58 replies, posted
Source: [URL]http://www.murks-nein-danke.de/blog/studie/#English[/URL] (although the on-site translation tool is wonky, so here's a Google Translate link: [URL]http://translate.google.dk/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.murks-nein-danke.de%2Fblog%2Fstudie%2F&act=url[/URL]) Long story short, Some German politicians are increasingly annoyed by devices which are completely non user serviceable, and also have a short lifespan compared to the pricetag. Among those devices are most of Apple's product portfolio, although other manufacturers are starting to adopts Apple's product assembly methods. I would appreciate if someone who's fluent with translating German to english would help at translating the documents attached to the linked article: [URL]http://www.murks-nein-danke.de/blog/download/Studie-Obsoleszenz-BT-GRUENE-vorabversion.pdf[/URL] [URL]http://www.murks-nein-danke.de/blog/download/Fachgespräch Vortrag Schridde.pdf[/URL]
Good, it's completely idiotic that something you pay for is completely unrepairable without taking it to the companies own repair service because it's designed to prohibit home repairs.
Hopefully this goes through and then gets EU adoption. For manufacturers, this would be the biggest slam since Space Jam.
[QUOTE=Murkrow;40022139]Hopefully this goes through and then gets EU adoption. For manufacturers, this would be the biggest slam since Space Jam.[/QUOTE] And then they'd have to actually make good, reliable devices! Or, far more likely, they'll just [I]stop selling them in the EU[/I].
Is planned electronics obsolesce really a thing? I always thought that it was something tinfoil hats thought existed.
[QUOTE=Van-man;40022003] I would appreciate if someone who's fluent with translating German to english would help at translating the documents attached to the linked article: [URL]http://www.murks-nein-danke.de/blog/download/Studie-Obsoleszenz-BT-GRUENE-vorabversion.pdf[/URL] [URL]http://www.murks-nein-danke.de/blog/download/Fachgespräch Vortrag Schridde.pdf[/URL][/QUOTE] Nothing relevant to the politics. It's basically talking about the industry and business.
[QUOTE=Desuh;40022188]Is planned electronics obsolesce really a thing? I always thought that it was something tinfoil hats thought existed.[/QUOTE] It's been in the car market since the late 80's / early 90's See all those cheap & small tincans of cars? yeah, they don't last long even without collisions.
[QUOTE=Ray-The-Sun;40022164]And then they'd have to actually make good, reliable devices! Or, far more likely, they'll just [I]stop selling them in the EU[/I].[/QUOTE] Cutting of the Euro market would be like commiting suicide. Imagine Apple if they lost all of their European sales except for Norway and some shitty Balklan States?
[QUOTE=Desuh;40022188]Is planned electronics obsolesce really a thing? I always thought that it was something tinfoil hats thought existed.[/QUOTE]It definitely exists as a business and engineering concept, though the existence of things like killswitches that brick a device after a certain period of time are far less provable. Usually it's just making the device non-user repairable, cheapest manufacturing possible and in such a way it wears itself out quickly. [editline]24th March 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Ray-The-Sun;40022164]And then they'd have to actually make good, reliable devices! Or, far more likely, they'll just [I]stop selling them in the EU[/I].[/QUOTE]The EU is a gigantic common market of over 500 million people. It's the sheer value of the EU as a market that allows us to force businesses to stop dicking customers about.
[QUOTE=Ray-The-Sun;40022164]And then they'd have to actually make good, reliable devices! Or, far more likely, they'll just [I]stop selling them in the EU[/I].[/QUOTE] Yeah, either be forced to improve products and make decent profit, or lose it all. HMMMM
[QUOTE=Sgt Doom;40022236]It definitely exists as a business and engineering concept, though the existence of things like killswitches that brick a device after a certain period of time are far less provable. Usually it's just making the device non-user repairable, cheapest manufacturing possible and in such a way it wears itself out quickly. [/QUOTE] How exactly are they preventing users from fixing their products themselves except making the warranty void? Depending on the device fixing it yourself can be impossible because one simply lacks the tools and knowledge. Don't they shoot themselves in the foot by making their products last less? If a brand has a reputation of making products with a very short lifespan I would avoid it.
This is comparable to religion holding back medicine, complete idiocy.
[QUOTE=Pierrewithahat;40022114]Good, it's completely idiotic that something you pay for is completely unrepairable without taking it to the companies own repair service because it's designed to prohibit home repairs.[/QUOTE] If you know that a company makes products which are not user-serviceable (and assuming this is an important factor to you), then why would you buy that company's products?
On the note of service life for its price/utility: [url]http://www.amazon.com/Apple-classic-Black-Generation-NEWEST/dp/B001F7AHOG[/url] The gen 6 iPod Classic 160gb is incredibly durable. I've had other iPods over the years, and most of them have broken (most notably to fucking iPod touch with it's goddamned flat glass screen that breaks oh so easily. The gen6 classic is the only iPod I've had that has lasted a substantial amount of time: 6 years. The only fault mine has is that its battery reader has recently stopped telling me the right battery level, but that doesnt really bother me. My iPod has battlescars; it's seen some shit. I've dropped it several hundred times by now but it refuses to quit. The fact that the battery alone has lasted this long is a testament to its craftsmanship. Out of all the apple products, the iPod classic gen6 is by the far the most sustainable and the most superior to all other apple products. edit: also on top of that, the iPod classic (and iPod video) is easily repairable if you [I]do[/I] break it. As long as you know what you're doing (and have replacement parts), both the scroll wheel and the screen can be replaced if you're careful not to break anything. it's just a matter of connecting/disconnecting ribbons. Anybody could do it.
I hope this causes Epson to rethink their sponges :D watch The Light Bulb Conspiracy for a detailed documentary on Planned Obsolescence
[QUOTE=Noble;40022804]If you know that a company makes products which are not user-serviceable (and assuming this is an important factor to you), then why would you buy that company's products?[/QUOTE] I don't, what I'm saying is that no company should be able to expressly design their products to be unrepairable by anyone but themselves so they can continue to abuse any design flaws to get more money out of their customers.
[QUOTE=Ray-The-Sun;40022164]And then they'd have to actually make good, reliable devices! Or, far more likely, they'll just [I]stop selling them in the EU[/I].[/QUOTE] you'd have to be a [b]gigantic fucking idiot[/b] if you think manufacturers would stop selling products to one of the biggest markets in the world.
And if the companies say "fuck you we won't sell our shit in your country then" (very unlikely, but still a remote possibility), the world can at last get a new taste of German Engineering with German manufacturers producing quality products that can last long and easily be repaired. In this dark age of dwindling resources, planned obsolescence should be made illegal, since a crappy device that doesn't last long is not only a waste of precious resources, but a detriment to the whole of humanity, dragging us down into a pit of scrap metal. You couldn't get away with planned obsolescence for important things on a moonbase; you'd get thrown out the bloody airlock for such criminal waste. Actually you'd probably be cut up and turned into plant food for the hydroponic farms; wasting organic matter in a contained environment with severely limited resources would probably be almost as criminal as selling a faulty oxygen recycler or using a rocket engine that'll only last half a year before breaking.
[QUOTE=JustExtreme;40023454]I hope this causes Epson to rethink their sponges :D watch The Light Bulb Conspiracy for a detailed documentary on Planned Obsolescence[/QUOTE] I can confirm this is an excellent documentary, everyone should watch it.
[QUOTE=Noble;40022804]If you know that a company makes products which are not user-serviceable (and assuming this is an important factor to you), then why would you buy that company's products?[/QUOTE] In fields like computers, consumer electronics, and automobiles, there are no manufacturers that don't use planned obsolescence as a main part of their business model. Implying that we should somehow find manufacturers that don't do this is naive and/or dumb. It's going to take government intervention to stop it.
[QUOTE=Noble;40022804]If you know that a company makes products which are not user-serviceable (and assuming this is an important factor to you), then why would you buy that company's products?[/QUOTE] modern manufacture techniques and materials used contribute in part to products in general being more difficult or impossible to service for example, let's say you make a device of some sort originally it was all screwed together, but you decide that you want to just glue it together, or make it from bits of plastic that clip together really easily, but end up breaking if anyone tries to open them (not necessarily on purpose, but more as a side effect of the design changes that make the manufacture cheaper) this device is now cheaper for you to make, but very difficult to fix (perhaps it's even just easier and quicker to make a new one than to spend time trying to fix a broken one) the problem is that everybody wants to be able to make the manufacture as cheap as possible
[QUOTE=Zambies!;40022225]Cutting of the Euro market would be like commiting suicide. Imagine Apple if they lost all of their European sales except for Norway and some shitty Balklan States?[/QUOTE] Norway wouldn't be far behind in adopting the EUs customer protection laws, seeing as we do love our civil rights.
[QUOTE=Uber|nooB;40023754]modern manufacture techniques and materials used contribute in part to products in general being more difficult or impossible to service for example, let's say you make a device of some sort originally it was all screwed together, but you decide that you want to just glue it together, or make it from bits of plastic that clip together really easily, but end up breaking if anyone tries to open them (not necessarily on purpose, but more as a side effect of the design changes that make the manufacture cheaper) this device is now cheaper for you to make, but very difficult to fix (perhaps it's even just easier and quicker to make a new one than to spend time trying to fix a broken one) the problem is that everybody wants to be able to make the manufacture as cheap as possible[/QUOTE] That and with mechanized assembly lines, things are smaller. The simple fact of the matter is that robots can get into tighter spaces than humans can, and they are only improving in this regard as tech improves. There's a lot of grey area in this sort of stuff. Things like apple changing the screws to not be a standard Philips head, and the difficulty of swapping batteries on far too many modern laptops are asinine, but there are a lot of legitimate and semi legitimate reasons that things are not easy to service.
[QUOTE=Van-man;40022215]It's been in the car market since the late 80's / early 90's See all those cheap & small tincans of cars? yeah, they don't last long even without collisions.[/QUOTE] I disagree, we had a little Ford car, 2 door, tiny little fucker, and it died a few weeks ago, but it had over 300K miles on it, and there's many more cars here that have that or more miles, and work fine. It was the second car we've ever had that broke the 300K mark, and every car we've ever owned has made it past 100K just fine. I don't think cars have any sort of Planned Obsolescence, at least then.
[QUOTE=zombini;40024552]I disagree, we had a little Ford car, 2 door, tiny little fucker, and it died a few weeks ago, but it had over 300K miles on it, and there's many more cars here that have that or more miles, and work fine. It was the second car we've ever had that broke the 300K mark, and every car we've ever owned has made it past 100K just fine. I don't think cars have any sort of Planned Obsolescence, at least then.[/QUOTE] I was hinting at tincans like Toyota Aygo's or worse. Especially the dirt cheap Korean cars. Ford is funny enough one of the few exceptions.
[QUOTE=SubbyV-2;40022658]This is comparable to religion holding back medicine, complete idiocy.[/QUOTE] Excuse me, the door is over there, would you please make your way out swiftly.
Fuck your planned obsolescence, apple. This mac is going to be running for the next half-decade at least
[QUOTE=Desuh;40022188]Is planned electronics obsolesce really a thing? I always thought that it was something tinfoil hats thought existed.[/QUOTE] Yes it's a thing and was hilarious with HP laptops for a time. [QUOTE=Van-man;40022003]Source: Long story short, Some German politicians are increasingly annoyed by devices which are completely non user serviceable, and also have a short lifespan compared to the pricetag. Among those devices are most of Apple's product portfolio, although other manufacturers are starting to adopts Apple's product assembly methods. [/QUOTE] Imho I'm not entirely sure if I would list apple's portfolio under this. While their machines are incredibly not user repairable, they are fairly robust and are generally one of the better ones as faults and breaks go.
If this passes prices will just go up because more expensive manufacturing materials and techniques will have to be used. If people wanted longer lasting products they would just buy products that are known to last longer. It's amazing to me that politicians think they know what people want more than the people themselves.
[QUOTE=Van-man;40024631]I was hinting at tincans like Toyota Aygo's or worse. Especially the dirt cheap Korean cars. Ford is funny enough one of the few exceptions.[/QUOTE] Ford wasn't always like that. Back in the '80s it stood for [b]F[/b]ound [b]O[/b]n [b]R[/b]oad [b]D[/b]ead.
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