I'm a product manager. "Product Lifecycle Management" is a skillset you put on your resume. It is literally the planning and strategy to necessary to continue existing in a world where each day your products get older, more customers find new problems in your existing products, and competitors are one day closer to having something new. Saying "planned obsolescence does not exist" is literally saying that "product managers make no plan for what happens as our devices get older, they just make it all up on the fly and sometimes we decide to increment and release a new device and it just so happens to occur annually for devices that take 2 years to develop".
Or like fast food restaurants spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to find ways to "convince" more people to buy their product but then cite personal responsibility as a reason they aren't directly responsible for the poor health of their customers. I guess they just spent those millions on something that didn't exist.
@@Syncrotron9001 No, that's nothing alike. Ultimately it's your own choice to purchase the product no matter what (non-violent) methods of persuasion are used. Were you waiting to find a tangentially related place to make your post because you were just dying to say it? I mean, saying 100s of different ways throughout the years that companies do things to convince you to purchase their products isn't really very insightful nor is it really a point to condemn them on unless it involves deception that precludes properly informed consent.
@@Sonny_McMacsson Then the shareholders should sue the corporation for throwing that money away on something that the corporation claims doesnt do anything. You cant have it both ways. Wasting money on purpose is illegal for a publicly traded company.
@@Syncrotron9001 Just because you claim something to the public to CYA doesn't mean you believe it. Like you said, they're beholden to the shareholders, not the public, beyond any regulatory concerns. Just think about how far Disney had to slide for that sort of thing to start happening.
@@CD-vb9fithere is actually a conspiracy tho. research adullam films, read Behold a pale horse by bill cooper, the dulce book by branton, or Cosmic conspiracy by stan deyo. written in like the 70s. there nwver actually been a debate about whtether or not there is one just lack of brain for some
"You wouldn't want to be called a CONSPIRACY THEORIST, would you? You know who else is a conspiracy theorist? People with tin foil hats and flat earthers. ...oh god please tell me that shut him up..."
@@hungrymusicwolf Yes, that is why Carlin said it that way. There is no "formal" conspiracy meaning that the players involved have not sat down and negotiated one but the players are "consciously behaving" in a fashion as if one exists "hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge" which leads to exactly what you are saying. "Evidence for a conspiracy". It still "IS" a conspiracy... just an informal one.
As George Carlin once put it: "You don’t need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities and fraternities, they’re on the same boards of directors, they’re on the same country clubs, they have like-interests. They don’t need to call a meeting; they know what is good for THEM, and they are getting it. And there used to be seven oil companies. There are now three. It will soon be two. The things that matter in this country have been reduced in choice: there are two political parties, there are a handful of insurance companies, there are six or seven information centers. But if you want a bagel there are 23 flavors because you have the ILLUSION, you have the ILLUSION of choice. You don’t get the real important choices. No freedom of choice."
The world needs George Carlin back. Unfortunately, if it were possible to bring him back, I KNOW what he would say. He would take a look around, in about 30 seconds he would say "Put me back in the fucking ground, right fucking now!" George saw this stuff coming 30 years ago.
As a computer tech who used to repair cathode ray tvs, computer components in the 80s and 90s i can absolutely tell you that we went from reuse/refurbish to planned obsolesence in the early 90s.
@@ReaIHuman prove that what they do has any evil intentions behind it and increasing profits is not evil onto itself so got give me more then just that
@qazhr you're ignorant of US manufacturing. In the 50's and 60's things were made to last. Unlike today, thing are engineered to fail. Hence the term: mean time between failures. Get a clue.
"Planned obsolescence ISN'T REAL" Oh that's good. Then we can make it Illegal in Law with no issues, right? Since it doesn't exist. That way, if it ever DID exist, we could Sue the heck out of whatever company that did such a thing!
Yeah, if it’s not even real and doesn’t happen, surely we could just make it an offence punishable by disolving a company and ceasing the assets of everyone responsible, i mean, no one is gonna be hurt by that law then
@@KozelPraiseGOELRO just don't use firing squads or the rifles will break (their cup holder electrical circuit exploded after 2 weeks and it made the whole thing unusable)
I don't know man, planned obsolescense isn't real in the conspiracy sense, what companies plan for is making something that a) lasts as long as their majority of customers expect it to and b) last as long as legislation or certificates dictate (if applicable) for as cheap as possible (in order to make the most amount of profit possible). So when planning for a X year lifecycle on a product, they aren't prioritizing on making sure it breaks after X years, they are prioritizing on making sure it doesn't break in X years with the lowest manufacturing cost possible. The intent isn't malicious, though you could argue that being profit driven is (I don't think so). I think we, the customers shouldn't just shout "planned obsolescence" every time we see something like this but demand higher quality products and better support. As long as the majority of society doesn't care, there isn't really much to do about this, other than supporting manufacturers who do focus on better quality and reusability and not buying product from companies that don't care about it. I personally just buy cheap things that I know I can fix myself if something breaks (for example cheap xiaomi phones, now I have a Poco F3 that I got for ~300 USD 2+ years ago. It's due for a battery replacement which I already ordered from aliexpress).
I know you're tired of talking about it Louis, especially when it just seems like no one cares and nothing changes, but I'm always appreciative of you fighting the fight. Like they say, "all it takes for evil to win is for good men to do nothing".
It does make me feel sick. The capitalist system is broken. It is like having a system where once in a while, you have to break all the window panes in your house and buy new window panes. Then, they ask me to recycle the glass. Why would I do that? To create jobs? We would be wasting energy and wasting human time. Shorten the worker’s hours and increase their pay. But wait a minute. Most of the work is done by robots anyway and as time goes by, more parts of industry are being taken over by robots.
No no. That's fine. The issue is that they are LYING to the group Representing the CITIZENS and making the LAWS, it should be HEAVILY ILLEGAL to LIE, TWIST THE TRUTH, or LEAVE OUT CONTEXT. The General Public should be able to SUE these Lying Lobbyist that are MANIPULATING those who are making the laws, and making them take actions that HARM the General Public and Citizens.
Conspiracy: Two or more people acting on accord to commit a crime. If conspiracies are not real. Then why do police departments have have departments for organized crime? After all if conspiracies do not exist. Then it would be a waste of resources to have one.
@@RicardoSantos-oz3uj The word 'conspiracy theory/theorist' was coined by the CIA in the aftermath of the JFK assassination. It was developed as a means of discrediting people without having to address their specific charges. Their psychological operations division (and, yes, this was/is a real thing) theorized that by lobbing together everything from the ludicrous (big foot, little green men from space, ghosts) to the plausible (Kennedy was whacked by the CIA), it would cause the general public to view anyone they charged with that term as a complete nutter. Well, it worked. And to this day ANYONE who so much as even hints that there's backroom dealings going on at high levels of governance is treated as being a half-step removed from someone who ought to be in an institution.
In (East) Germany, we went from refurbish/repair to planned obsolescence when the Berlin Wall fell. As long as resources were scarce and expensive, it was in everyone’s interest to build machines everybody could repair - if they ever broke in the first place. Most of the gadgets from that time still work due to their robustness and their repairability.
Same in Yugoslavia - Slovenia. It wasn't so much that the products were better made, they generally weren't, but they were made to be easily repairable, and replacement parts were available for decades.
Make repairs as hard as possible. Had a dejuicer that broke ...was really loud. Taking it apart...oh, special screwdriver required...rust drilled the heads out to have a look, inside normal screws, taking it apart with normal tools...what was the problem, a ball bearing went out, plastic transmission that was about to fall apart...why not brass? Replaced the ball bearing and of it would go.
I've heard Soviet airliners are uncompetitive for the similiar reasons. Airbus and Boeing work with much thinner safety margins, which leads to lower weight and consequently reduced fuel consumption. Soviet aircraft are built like tanks, but heavy on the juice.
@@justsomeguy5103 that is not true at all. SU planes have way higher crash rates than pretty much any other planes. Just look at all the pile of garbage that is tupolev planes and you''ll see how wrong are you.
They're *also* forcing things to go obsolete. It's becoming more and more obvious with smartphones. A couple of system updates and suddenly it's running slower. They keep forcing a lot of unnecessary bloat and always on features people don't use to make them upgrade because the updated are not optional.
Hewlett Packard literally released a printer with a page counter inside it that bricked the machine once they wanted you to buy a new one. European machines would be packed with a note to ignore all the "errors" that popped up that were fake ways to make you buy more ink than you used.
Every inkjet printer has a purge sponge and keeps an internal purge counter (ink must be purged every week or it dries and clogs). Once the printer thinks the sponge is "full", the printer is bricked. Every manufacturer does this. Some have been RE'd so you can get software to reset the counter if you replace the sponge, some you can't.
@@jessicav2031 Similar with a Dell printer.. it had a counter on the imaging drum. Once it reaches 50.000. stop, nada.. it will refuse to print with it and tell you to replace it. ya, ya, sure to "to ensure expected quality".. btw. this is not the part where the toner is in, on this machine it was separate. there was just no way to say, its fine. It will likely print another 10.000 just fine, Im totally okay with the current qualty. No. Somebody sold 3rd party replacement chips you could solder on instead, so it would think it was a new drum. Still the chip costed about 30$ and a soldering job.. its just crazy.
I'm glad that I own an old HP Laserjet 2050DN that works absolutely fine with the generic Universal HP driver. Unfortunately, I also own the not so-enviable so-called Envy 4520 that uses the HP 🤮Smart driver that wants you to create an HP account to scan a page locally over WiFi. I'll just use a third party app to scan, thank you very much.
Louis, you may not have "moved the needle much" but you HAVE spread incredible awareness and helped many people become far more educated regarding what is happening out there and the consequences of losing out on ownership of our property. I understand if you want to stop and cant blame you for it, but youre genuinely providing a very helpful service.
As the late great George Carlin said, "You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge." These people know what makes them money, and they know what doesn't. Sure, they didn't "plan" for things to become obsolete quicker, but they sure as heck noticed that by making these changes, and seeing their competitors make these changes, that things becoming obsolete quicker made them more money. If consumers can notice it, are we supposed to believe these manufacturers are completely stupid and haven't noticed it, and how much money it makes them? That they don't understand why consumers choose to throw them more money year after year? This is honestly frustrating beyond belief just how much smoke they're trying to blow up our collective asses.
Planned obsolescence is a real thing in my engineering school we had an entire class about it, we had a test about how we would plan for components to break after a specific amount of time
One thing I have heard is that parts are often engineered with a very specific lifespan in mind. For example, a company like BMW tells it engineers: We consider the lifetime of our vehicles to be 50000 miles, please engineer X part so it's as cheap to produce as possible, while maintaining that minimum durability of 50000 miles. In that respect, with modern computer modelling and manufacturing capabilities, engineers can be incredibly precise with their designs.
@@joshuagibson2520I mean, parts tell you what lifetimes and environments they're rated for, they have specific ICs rated for cars because they're required to not fail for like 20-30 years. On the flip side you get disposables like pregnancy test readers where it just has to read the line once. What's evil is engineers intentionally building devices that are *supposed* to last 10+ years and using cheap parts that are rated for 5 years (or otherwise shortening their lifespan).
Dont think for a minute that (Insert govt. alphabet agency, here FBI, CIA, NSA ETC.) can't or won't use your cell phone for surveillance, they can and do. If you can't take out the battery thatsa plus for them because if they turn somethung on covertly have cam or audio on secretly, and you can ull the plug on their oper.ation it's a bad thing if you can't pull tge battery they can use it as a full blown surveillence tool . So, it stands to reason these agencies were all for non removable batteries and possibly were behind it becoming a thing . If not actually involved in pushing phone mfg. towatd a glued in battery standard, I'm sure they liked seeing it happen, and would fight tooth and nail against any mfg reverting back to the easily removable variety.
Imo, there's nothing wrong with underclocking the system to reduce power consumption if the battery is old(5-8 years), not still new which they tend to do anyway But honestly it's so funny that a fresh battery would just boost the system back to new
Seriously , F... companies that glue the "highly-flammable when punctured" batteries into the device. There's absolutely ZERO reason for it , yet almost everyone does it.
@@tydshiin5783 Imagine if they presented the facts and gave owners a choice? - "Your battery is getting old. If we slow down the machine, it will extend the life of that battery. Do you accept this slowdown? [Y/N]* * This decision can be changed at will in the settings menu. - Wouldn't that be fantastic?
tell them several times if you need that you dont accept that. I got a tick when i noticed that tiktok was installed on a new phone as well and im happy that my phone dont get tiktok (not old but old modell). The facebook issue is solved with adguard, i block both tiktok and facebook with it. No computer or phone in my network can reach those nasty places.
I have no Facebook app , yet *Meta App Installer* , *Meta App Manager* and *Meta Services* were all installed and enabled by default on my Samsung (I would be none the wiser , had I not accidentally stumbled upon "Running Services" option) - It's a problem across the board, it doesn't matter if you have an iPhone , Xiaomi or Samsung - Zuckerborg paid to have his crap pre-installed in most of devices on the market.
There's also the fact that 80% of failed devices that are still under warranty are replaced by the newer and shinier model without any warranty claim. At best. Because if you make a warranty claim as painful as possible, virtually none will be returned. (e.g. Request RMA, Ship at own expense in original packaging, provide original receipt, wait for determination whether misuse caused the failure, then receive a beat up "refurbished" unit that has 90 day or less warranty).
My tv broke 3 hours before the warranty went out lol. Dead serious. I ordered a repair after I found out 50 minutes before the warranty was gone. It went through.
The sad thing is, this isn't just happening in the industry where Mr. Rossmann works in, it's happening also at a large scale in the auto industry as well
Power tools and saws have been saved from this fate due to the nature of competition right now. Those that have tried are quickly identified and replaced with cheaper better products. They’ll probably get their way eventually.
@@glenbenton4855 100%. And consumers have gotten so used to being uninformed that they will literally argue with you because they are fooled by useless flashy junk. Its sad.
@@moldyzucchinis3251I have been complaining about the right to repair/planned obsolescence/bullshit in cars since I noticed they started making the intake manifolds plastic in the early 00s. It really is an across the board thing and to my eye, it really accelerated/got more brazen in the 21st century. Being able to get schematics and things pretty much stopped by 2010 ish. My old man has power drills from his father from the mid 20th century. My new craftsman drill didn't make it through the renovation of my second floor. Yeah, it's across the board. They have no incentive to make things that last. They only have an incentive to make you buy more. And the shittiest part about all of this: People would tell me I am paranoid, or that only geeks really care...it is so wildly frustrating. I understand Louis. You may not have moved the needle at the federal level, but you've given some energy back to this old geek.
As an engineer I can tell you that the design process includes likely lifespan, the parts that are the most time limited should be made to be easily replaced. If they are not, or those parts are particularly expensive then that is planned obsolescence. When the repair cost is more than the value of the item that is effectively end of life of that item.
One of the most heartbreaking truths I've had to come to grips with is that the truth will have to constantly fight against the lie that only needs to be spoken once. Thank you Louis for all the time and energy you've put into the cause over the years. It may not seem like it sometimes but you're absolutely making a difference in the world and we can see that even if other people don't, can't or won't!
Idk man, you got me fired up about the right to repair movement despite not being able to repair anything nor living in the U.S. I think making more and more people aware of this is exactly what they do not want, and it seems to be exactly what you're doing. You may feel like you're not moving the needle, but that's only cuz we're still on the stage of getting it unstuck. And you, sir, are the master at keeping it unstuck.
That's a good way of looking at things, I have always been wary of "spreading awareness" because it creates the illusion of progress but it never occurred to me in some cases it might be the other way around where there is an illusion of no progress as we first need to break through a buffer.
@@Twist3rOfficalWhat I think he/she meant is the legal battle Louis has faced is in the US and he deals with American companies. By the way, I am in the same case, I don’t repair anything other than what’s easily done and sometimes not even that. But, at least for me, it makes a huge difference to be able to pay less for a repair than to replace something or pay overpriced repairs.
What they have is a special kind of engineering. They spend a lot of time testing their design to make sure that it lasts the warranty period + 1 y. If the product lasts too long, then it becomes disastrous for their investors. Also, all companies have to more or less do that so that they can reduce the cost of the product. If the product will last too long, then it is a quality product and they have to increase the price of the product. The consumer tends to compare prices and chooses the cheaper product. As a result, quality products disappear from the market. You get bad products, with short lives, that cost less. Note: the above is my conspiracy theory.
Its been real for ages. The most obvious example I've seen was with lightbulbs. In east Germany they created lightbulbs that basically never burned out, but were shunned by the international light industry due to creating a product that would put them all out of work. Even outside of East Germany, there is a lightbulb in California that has been on since 1901. That tech was solved ages ago but still somehow i've replaced many lightbulbs in my life 💆🏿
@@ImAlxxy @Yaivenov Technology Connections actually has an argument against the particular case of incandescent busb not being planned obsolescence if you want to believe it. You should watch that video. It boils down to a fundamental tradeoff between bulb hours and performance after the process was perfected. 1000 hours is right in the middle. Higher and you get dim bulbs and shorter you get short life. The 1901 Centennial bulb runs so dim you can't use its light.
The current Doctor Who series had an episode, in 2012, entitled "The Snowmen". After hearing and responding to questions, Clara Oswald is asked: "Do you understand what I am saying to you?". Clara answered: "Words". That sequence and that answer is the epitome of "Believe what you see, not what you hear." I learned a long time ago: Words are meaningless, actions are everything.
that catchphrase is insane and misleading words have a very real power and they alter actions all the time, and if actions inherently have meaning, thus words have too, at the very least indirectly "words are meaningless" sounds deep but is actually just stupid
I work for a fabricator. There's a lot of smoke, moisture, iron particles, high heat and low temps in the winter. We have a green (now completely coated i dust) GE fridge that's was my grandparent's in the 60s. Its been running without maintenance in the fab shop for over 2 decades now. That machine is a beast that cannot be killed. Well at least not by anyone except its creator.
To me one big example of planned obsolescence is when device manufacturers stop releasing software updates for a device even though there's not technical reason to do so. There are lots of Android phones that could be updated to multiple Android versions beyond what they ship with but the most you can expect is like two upgrades for the higher end devices and between 0 and 1 upgrades for lower end devices. The TPM requirement in Windows 11 is another example of this. This results in lots of perfectly usable devices being replaced simply to get more up to date software.
I think you went one step further than Louis is going. Releasing software updates actually costs money (developers and testing and whatnot). Locking the firmware so even hobbyists can't release the update is the anti-repair stance, Same with TPM, you can't expect them to not increase security (which is a selling point for operating systems) just to keep supporting legacy hardware. If they took steps to lock bootloaders so you can't use linux, for example, that would be anti-repair.
@@eazegpi I can see that however as you alluded, not locking the firmware of smartphones and tablets and thus allowing users to install an OS of their choice (whether third party or simply a newer version of Android) wouldn't cost the device manufacturers anything. As for the TPM the fact is that for most people not having a TPM made no difference and we know that Windows 11 can work without it because people have been installing it on "unsupported hardware" since the pre-release versions were made available. Also it's not like MS not requiring TPM would prevent the technology from becoming more widespread as both AMD and Intel had firmware based TPM solutions long before Windows 11 was even a thing meaning that each year there are more devices with TPM support than not. Even ignoring the TPM, the CPU requirements being limited to 2nd AMD Ryzen or later and Intel 8th gen or later are a much better example of something that will cause people to replace perfectly usable devices even though it not doing this wouldn't cost MS anything. I fail to see how Ryzen 7 1800X doesn't meet the Windows 11 requirements while a Ryzen 3 2200G does (the same applies to i7-7700K and i3-8100 respectively).
Blame the component manufacturers like Qualcomm for the lack of drivers and firmware which then impacts the Android OEMs do make an effort. Also, Buy a cheap Chinese phone like Asus Zenfone then don't expect too long of a support on the software side. Heck, a lot of cheaper Android OEMs couldn't be arsed with releasing timely updates
The android ecosystem seems really stupid in of itself. Every single phone requiring device specific updates when windows/linux systems can all get standardized updates from one source is so unnecessary. It would be great if every phone was 'stock' android and every phone could update without any additional support required
If making the phone out of titanium, a space age material and cheap ass glass on the same phone so it shatters the moment you press it isn't planned obsolescence, idk what is. 😂😂😂😂 . Or You can't account something as malice if it's already accounted for in stupidity 😅😅😅😅
@@austinhernandez2716 not really seeing it as intentional bad design and alot of you seem to rush to malice when it more likely nobody thought someone would bend it like that
@@qazhr Their engineers aren't stupid, they know those are bad materials. "We'll just keep making flaws in all the ways that align with our interests and none in the other direction, but it's all a coincidence", sorry mate but that won't fly with any person still with their wits about them. Those flaws are intentional.
Louis: This video will be short because I'm not excited to talk about this any more. Louis: People should be judged by their actions, not by their talk. Video: Long. People: Judge that Louis is actually still excited to talk about this topic.
No conspiracy they say. Planned obsolescence isn't real they say. Well history says a different story. If they did it once, corporations are gonna do it again. The *Phoebus cartel* was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took over market territories and *LOWERED THE USEFUL LIFE OF SUCH BULBS* . Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips, incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva, as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting"). Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955), it ceased operations in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.
It feels so bad to watch the enthusiasm leave you, Louis. At the same time, I can't say I blame you. But this is important work you are doing. Don't let the bastards get you down! (Also I would add: I really DO believe the CEO's were smoking cigars and cackling like villains in back rooms. Their actions are clearly malice.)
I remember a wise teacher said something like, "any good engineer can make a product that will last forever, but the great engineer, the one that gets promoted, will make a product that lasts close enough for the warranty to expire and then needs replacing with a new 'improved' product. That's how fortunes are made."
Reminds me of a joke I heard a while back - "What's the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer? A bad lawyer will let a case drag on for years, a good lawyer will make it last even longer"
conspiracy is just when two or more people agree toguether to weponaze against a third person my favorite conspiracy theory is that hollywood forcefed people worldwide to believe conspiracies are crazy talk
The thing that always blows my mind with all of this corporate nonsense is regardless of what topic is being argued about (planned obscelesence, headphone jack removal, etc) is that there are so many people that will give their lives to defend their favorite companies and deflect all possible criticisms that come their way. This hurts every consumer on the market, including these "corporate defenders." Regardless if the criticisms are genuine or toxic, defending these companies gives them more power than the ludicrious amount of power they already have, to keep selling anti-consumer products. Supporting businesses that actively take choices away from consumers while you make fun of someone on the internet for still caring about a "feature of the past" only brings us closer to the distopia we're headed towards. While Manchild B and I argued about whether Apple's removal of the headphone jack was a good or bad thing, Apple went ahead and removed the fucking SIM tray. These corporate defenders are just free PR for them. I don't buy anything from Apple anymore, and I likely never will again. However, I will absolutely never religiously defend the companies I do purchase from. Business is not friendship, it's time we all remembered that. If a company that makes devices I usually like makes a horrible decision, I'm calling that shit out every time, and likely not buying from them for the forseeable future, assuming a better alternative exists. It is MY CHOICE to use wired headphones with my headphone jack on my smartphone instead of wireless earbuds that need to be replaced every 2-3 years. It is MY CHOICE to replace the battery in my phone instead of buying a whole new phone for way more money. It is MY CHOICE to use physical sim cards to easily swap from one phone to another. None of these choices hinder other people in any way, shape, or form. Don't point your weapons at me, point them at the companies taking these choices away. Don't criticize us for being salty or negative. Criticize the companies that took our choices away in the first place, causing us to be salty and negative. If you bought a cheese burger, and the burger didn't have any buns, would you continue buying from there and religiously defending the business from any criticism regarding such a horrible decision? If you bought a pizza, and there was no cheese, would you continue buying from there and religiously defending the business from any criticism regarding such a horrible decision? Most people would obviously say no, but their actions in the tech market suggest otherwise. Edit: It is MY CHOICE to pick between using the fingerprint scanner and face ID... There are likely other things I've forgotten, but this is one that just happened to come to mind.
No conspiracy they say. Planned obsolescence isn't real they say. Well history says a different story. If they did it once, corporations are gonna do it again. The *Phoebus cartel* was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took over market territories and *LOWERED THE USEFUL LIFE OF SUCH BULBS* . Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips, incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva, as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting"). Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955), it ceased operations in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.
“Planned obsolescence doesn’t exist! We just make sure you can’t repair anything and that new software won’t work properly on your device. That’s totally not a cover for the same thing!”
My favorite rationalization was: "designed to specification." All this is, is overleverged companies subsidizing their positions at the cost of the total health of the marketplace. Strange framing would be, how can we allow a company to succeed if it installed its good in every home that lasts for 40 years? This is the current trap we are all in.
My first experience on this topic was with a PlayStation 1, I was still in high school. My PlayStation fell off of my desk, a tooth broke on one sprocket. I went to the local video game guy and asks if he can get me a sprocket and he said no, these units are unrepairable. So I went to Salvation Army and found a cassette tape deck for only three bucks. Found a sprocket that worked.. just barely.
@@bryanshoemaker6120and yet...you yourself managed to replace it. It needed no tech guy... People are just fk blind to obvious things like that...just like you. I also had a PS, before PS One(the smaller one) appeared. It held on over decade, before I gave it away to a charity shop(but keept few games for use with emulator)...and it had experienced multiple drops from the chair to the floor.
"This video is going to be smaller than usual because I'm tired of talking about this" lol it's ok Louis, people have been watching these videos for as long as you have been making them. We still appreciate it, even if it's the same thing over and over again. Maybe that's weird but its true 🤷♂️
Louis, I loved your theatrical performance at 6:56 "...and do I think that was done out of some plan where people are smoking cigars in a back room and saying, "Those repair people will not be able to fix anything anymore - YES!!" (Evil Laughter) Thank You!!
I got a waffle iron from 1950-1970 made out of mostly metal with a 50cm long and 2cm thick cable. It still works. My friend meanwhile has this new fancy one with a display and a timer and it broke after 2 years. It's also made out of flimsy plastic for the most part. Quality sure went down a lot
exactly. Something made pre 1990s more often then not still works just fine. A version of that same thing made in the last 20-30 years tends to break within 3-5 years.
Plus, your friend probably paid more a well. To tackle that, manufacturers hit us with the 'Energy consuming' argument. If you do the math, a device that costs €50 more in purchase, and does not run constantly (like a fridge typically does), will take a LONG time to consume up to €50 worth of electricity, especially where I live, in Belgium, , where only max 30% of our bill is the actual use and the rest is extra costs and taxes for the other leeches wetting their beaks
Louis, you did a lot for us and the industry. Your outcome with the industry might not be clearly visible, but it truly is for us, and for me personally. Take a break. You deserve it, and you need it. Hope you'll get yourself together soon
Based on my experience going through engineering school, I think you are being disingenuous. Parts wearing out and bad things happening when parts wear out it a real thing. Talking about how long a part can last before it should be swapped out to prevent a catastrophic failure is necessary and does not constitute teaching planned obsolescence. The idea of planned obsolescence is to replace things more often than is necessary for the sake of making money. That's taught in business degrees, not engineering degrees. But I went to school for aerospace engineering. When a plane starts falling out of the sky, you've already screwed up bad. Maybe whatever you did was different. What kind of engineering was it?
@@Elrog3 I had started a general engineering degree at East Tennessee State University with the intent of going mechanical. Unfortunately between job, pregnant wife followed by new baby, running a side business, and getting covid - I chose the wrong semester to start and lost my financial aid. I plan to go back one day, probably at a different school. The planned obsolescence wasn't a defined part of the curriculum, but something one of the prof's did bring up and talk about as something that happened in the industry, and that you may be asked to "take into consideration" when working for some companies. I could certainly see why it wouldn't be desirable in the aerospace field.
No conspiracy they say. Planned obsolescence isn't real they say. Well history says a different story. If they did it once, corporations are gonna do it again. The *Phoebus cartel* was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took over market territories and *LOWERED THE USEFUL LIFE OF SUCH BULBS* . Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips, incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva, as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting"). Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955), it ceased operations in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.
@@Elrog3 You're using planes as an example when planes randomly nosedive due to shitty engineering that a manager decided to ignore and said "uhhh, just tell that programmer to override laws of physics or something". lmao
I just have to say, I’m not sure exactly how you’re measuring your effectiveness in moving the needle (though I have an idea), but for me personally (someone who stumbled onto your channel a few years ago because I was pissed off at Lenovo, and going down that rabbit hole somehow led me to an ancient video of yours, I liked what you were saying, subscribed on a whim and now watch your videos pretty consistently), I had never heard of right to repair, but solely because of you it is now a topic I feel incredibly strongly about. Now I can’t believe I’m being this optimistic because I also get discouraged by a lot of the same things you talk about in a lot of your videos, and obviously I’m just one person, and no I’m not personally doing anything for right to repair or other issues you address other than learning about them, talking to other people about them, and small things here and there. But logically, you have to just zoom out for a second. I bet there are thousands of other people just like me who would never even have heard the topic if it weren’t for you. And sure that’s not moving the needle in terms of legislative change or whatever, but you’re only one guy, and I think you should be proud that you are doing things within your means, really doing more than most people would, and your passion trickles down to people like me, and the friends people like me talk to about this stuff etc. Now I can see how from your side of things it can look discouraging, (and trust me I’m totally discouraged most of the time too) but just for a second extrapolate what I’m saying, sure you haven’t moved this unrealistic needle to your satisfaction, but the innumerable people influenced by your videos, who never even would have thought for a second about this stuff, that’s the only hope we have for change to ever happen, and that’s the needle you’ve moved.
Louis, if anything, if ANYTHING, you are making a lot of people think about this kinds of things, you are planting the seeds, they need to be cared for, and it will eventually bear fruit, maybe not now, maybe not in your lifetime, but you need to keep planting and taking care of those seeds.
"planned obsolescence isn't it real" that's pretty much the most idiotic thing I've ever heard someone say. I have an idea. Making batteries replaceable and security updates available for at least 10 years would go a long way to demonstrating that planned isn't real. The fact of the matter is it is real. 100% real.
No no no. you see. It's simple. it isn't Real. So then make it ILLEGAL, and if we ever Discover companies did this, we can SUE them for it. I mean, if it's not real, they have no excuse to NOT make it a law to protect consumers from it existing in the future, Right?
No conspiracy they say. Planned obsolescence isn't real they say. Well history says a different story. If they did it once, corporations are gonna do it again. The *Phoebus cartel* was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took over market territories and *LOWERED THE USEFUL LIFE OF SUCH BULBS* . Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips, incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva, as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting"). Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955), it ceased operations in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.
I say with 100% confidence there are absolutely executive meetings where they discuss the impact of independent repair people on their bottom line, and how to prevent that impact.
The great thing about old electronics vs today is that often times appliances would come with FULL ENGINEERING SCHEMATICS. I have a washing machine from not too long ago, it's only 15 years old, and it came with a whole ass blueprint of how the thing works, so if I was inclined to - I could reverse engineer and replace solder/add/replace parts on the boards in order to keep it working for another 15.
Alf Treager was a pioneering engineer who built radios which made things like the Royal Flying Doctors Service practicable. He had this annoying habit of experimenting with the radios when servicing them. Consequently the circuit diagrams supplied with the devices never matched the actual circuit inside the case...!
This was never about screwing anyone, although it absolutely feels like it. This was and is always about money, and how to keep it flowing in to these companies.
If a Company made 1 product that never broke and lasted forever. It would sell 1 copy to everyone, and then never make any money, cause everyone would already have one. That is WHY they design it to break, so you are FORCED to buy a new one. It's LITERALLY What Sony and other Companies do with their 'Official Repair Shops', where they lie to the Customers, telling them they need to throw away their perfectly good phone and buy the $1500 brand new phone instead to replace it, 1 year after buying the 'Old' phone, all because a part on it was DESIGNED to fail to get them to the Official Repair Shop, to be scammed. Yes, I said it to be SCAMMED. Because if the Product CAN be repaired, it should be REQUIRED for them to ACTUALLY Try and FIX IT first, and not be able to LIE or worse BREAK the product THEMSELVES in the back and then try and SCAM customers into buying a new one!
We could call it managed obsolescence. Maybe that sounds better to corpos lol. There's not much difference between conspiracy and management anyway. Both involve people talking, often (but not always) behind closed doors, assigning roles and tasks to achieve their plans, discussing possible issues and mitigations. The only difference is that conspiracy sounds more spooky because there's an implied victim.
Management is a conspiracy. Management has a victim, the victims of management are the workers who are being managed and the customers who are being serviced.
Planned obsolescence has been around at least as long as the 2500 hour incandescent bulb reduction to 1000 hours, by the Phoebus Cartel. (1925) It is a game of brinkmanship with as many reasons as there are dollars. While the primary motive is profit, every tool will be used to stifle competition. Modern companies aren't just competing with each other, but their own past products, for future sales; where sabotage can be a profitable inside job. This is especially true when businesses self-regulate the lifespan of hardware, accessibility of repair parts/tools, and software functionality duration.
@@Onihikage I'm not. We all have to play our part in calling out injustice and trying to make everything better for the people, Louis just excels at keeping people informed
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." is one of the most harmful rules ever created. It effectively means that any malice is acceptable as long as it can be masked as incompetence.
Planned obsolescence is also design variation running amok and creating obsolete peripherals. Think of the mountains of useless cellphone covers that can't be used on newer models because they slightly changed location of camera over each iteration, it's components like screens with different sizes that make sure that in the future your device cannot be repaired due to lack of replacement parts.
EU says the iPhone battery must be replaceable. I'd bet dollars to donuts that each iPhone will have a slightly different battery and that by the the the iPhone 18 comes out the replacement battery for the iPhone 16 will be unavailable.
You know what my favorite example of repairability is? Central vacuums. Back in the 70s when they gained popularity, they were built extremely reliably and they could be repaired super easily, and they all used the same standards. I can replace the motor in a 2004 Kenmore central vac brand new, from the original manufacturer of the motor. Then it'll last at least another 10 years. Shame that other products aren't like this
"Fuck what people say and screw their intentions. What are the outcomes, what are their actions? At the end of the day that's all that matters" You know... this makes me feel somewhat better. I always think about all of the bad stuff I think about people, hate, disgust, judgement and all... But it doesn't ever reach out to people, and my actions as a person are actually pretty respectful and decent. So perhaps none of that matters if I keep it to my thoughts only... I may even be considered a good person... solely through my actions...
My favorite are devices that are purposely designed to self destruct, found a few of these types of things while trying to fix things like appliances. For example I had a kettle that died a few years ago. I found a strange hose leading from the top of the kettle (very carefully concealed at the top) right to this copper plated disk in the switch mechanism. The hose was ducting steam from the kettle onto the disk (and electronics) and corroding it, ensuring it would die in a year to two. Bastards! Oh and for those curious, it was a chef's choice cordless kettle.
I am pretty sure that hose had some sort of a function, other than corrosion acceleration. Still a shit design, but I am almost certain it was there for some other reason.
That is a steam switch, much like that used in the big old Zip water heaters. When the water boils, the steam produce condenses onto and imparts heat the bimetallic dome switch to trip the power switch disconnect spring. There should be no electronics in a simple kettle. Most of the corrosion is in the harmless bluing of the live/phase side switch conductors. Thermal stresses is a more likely source of premature failure. (The kettles I buy tend to last ten to thirteen years and the failure is always in the heating element.)
Loved that I found your videos. Crazy how you went from just uploading random gripe videos to having 2 million subscribers. You're an interesting guy for sure.
I sure am Becky. I sure am. I've settled down here and consider this my long term home. I bought a great house in a great place with amazing neighbors Thank you so much for the kind welcome. I hope you enjoy it here too. :)
Not at all. Even if every component was made to last the longest time possible, there will still be a mean time before failure, which is what the warranty is based on. Nothing lasts forever. This isn't about a device breaking out of warranty, its about being able to actually repair it when it does. If it can't be repaired because the manufacturer put obstacles in the way to stop you, that's planned obsolescence.
No conspiracy they say. Planned obsolescence isn't real they say. Well history says a different story. If they did it once, corporations are gonna do it again. The *Phoebus cartel* was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took over market territories and *LOWERED THE USEFUL LIFE OF SUCH BULBS* . Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips, incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva, as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting"). Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955), it ceased operations in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.
I'm an electrical and product engineer, absolutely planned obsolescence is a thing, but it is the result of trying to make production as cheap as possible, not some kind of global conspiracy to make products last a shorter time for the sake of it. You can still avoid it by spending a bit more and buying good brands. Products for the government and military to use generally receive much higher quality electrical components than consumer products which are mostly designed to last 2 years, the general warranty period in many developed countries, while the aforementioned products for the military and government are designed to last over a decade and be much more durable.
I work in automotive and I listened to a podcast where they were talking about planned obsolescence and cited replacement car parts as an example. The tooling for each part in your car costs a minimum of $50k but easily way more. It also requires floor space in the factory. It's common for the next gen's car parts to require new tooling and a new line setup. Once there's a model year upgrade, the sales volume tanks and it stops being profitable to have that floor space just for that part. It saves the car makers tons of money to reuse parts on the next model so they do it whenever possible.
The fact that the iPhone 7 didn’t get iOS 16 and the iPhone 8 didn’t get iOS 17 when iPads with the same chipset got the update is proof of planned obsolescence. App iOS version requirements are getting higher and higher too. But that’s only apple..
One thing people need to recognise is that evil (wrong doing) doesn’t need to be intentional. Even if we grant manufacturers plausible deniability, what it doesn’t change is that the relationship we should want to have with manufacturers is one where they serve the consumer and are rewarded so. Not where they use little tricks, regardless of intentional or not to get more money out of you.
Tell that to Cannon printers. They DIE within months of their 2 year warranty and there's a reason a new printer with ink is cheaper than getting new ink carts
Usually it's because the new machine comes with starter cartridges which are not otherwise available and have sod-all ink inside. Why they bother is a mystery, because surely it must cost them almost as much to make a full cartridge?
@@dankrigby5621 At the scale these things are produced in it's never simple. Not when you have 3 cartridges in production which appear all the same, but actually need to be slightly different.
@@leftoverthoughts2275 if you only include less filling of ink in one cartridge, it's not hard to produce at all. Telling them apart also isn't hardy every part and product is serialized.
2:03 That doesn't sound ridiculous at all. Think about all the automotive recall scandals over the last 50 years. The executives literally sit around discussing how many people they can let die before it backfires and cuts into profits. Same shit with railway operators, airplane manufacturers, baby product companies, etc. Have you ever met someone with an MBA? I'm related to some of these people, I've worked for some of these people, and "cartoonishly villainous" is not an inaccurate descriptor. Maybe I just have some confirmation bias, but c-suite people are fuckin' degenerates driven by pure sociopathic greed.
Because the MBAs that do give a fuck about externalities aren't rich. Pollution and environmental destruction isn't a problem for your company until the poors are at your doorstep and the food you eat just killed your only beloved daughter
I will die on this hill that planned obsolescence is largely a good thing and saves consumers money from hopeless endeavors to fix old, out dated, and inferior products. As with everything, companies can go too far, but for consumable goods, obsolescence is a mostly a good thing.
i do think your are making a difference , keep it up please, also tiktok is no more invasive than other social networks the difference is just your country politics
You caught my attention because as a retired person my income is limited - I simply cannot run out and buy a new laptop. And what happened to "design for disassembly"? The whole point was ease of servicing for recycling AND for reuse. Does anyone even try to do that anymore? Thank you kindly for fighting the good fight...I believe eventually sanity will prevail, it will have to if we're to survive as a species.....cheers.
No thanks to the gaslighting. It doesn't take a genius to see that stuff that used to have batteries that I could just very easily swap out now has built in stuff that I can't even access without breaking the device. My previous beard trimmer is a decent example. That one I could open up and change the batteries. Unfortunately I dropped it and I could not for the life of me find one that still had replaceable batteries. Fast forward a few years, the batteries in my new one no longer charge properly and I'm sure they'd love me to go and buy another but I'll just use it via cable now. Failing that, I'm prepared to go scruffy.
Thank you for making your show. It just showed up on my feed and it's great. Thanks for your honest insight and knowledge that is lacking in the YT world. It is also an ethics show.
Electrician here if you buy a light fixture, make sure it has a light socket for a light bulb. Light fixtures with built in led will have to be thrown away after led dies.
No conspiracy they say. Planned obsolescence isn't real they say. Well history says a different story. If they did it once, corporations are gonna do it again. The *Phoebus cartel* was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took over market territories and *LOWERED THE USEFUL LIFE OF SUCH BULBS* . Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips, incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva, as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting"). Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955), it ceased operations in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.
Louis, the fact that repair has become more difficult over the last decade doesn’t mean your actions have been ineffective. It might seem that way to you at times, but your actions have contributed to the actions and thinking of many people, myself included. Thanks to your actions, I think even today the situation is slightly better than it would otherwise have been. I am most of the way through my EE+CS degree and I know many of my colleagues feel the same as me. Wherever my career takes me, I want to do my best to influence the industry away from this anti-consumer, unsustainable BS.
![Chino Pacas - Smith (ft. Junior H & Fuerza Regida) [Video Visualizador Oficial]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/BVK6k56X30Y/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm a product manager. "Product Lifecycle Management" is a skillset you put on your resume. It is literally the planning and strategy to necessary to continue existing in a world where each day your products get older, more customers find new problems in your existing products, and competitors are one day closer to having something new.
Saying "planned obsolescence does not exist" is literally saying that "product managers make no plan for what happens as our devices get older, they just make it all up on the fly and sometimes we decide to increment and release a new device and it just so happens to occur annually for devices that take 2 years to develop".
Or like fast food restaurants spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to find ways to "convince" more people to buy their product but then cite personal responsibility as a reason they aren't directly responsible for the poor health of their customers. I guess they just spent those millions on something that didn't exist.
@@Syncrotron9001 No, that's nothing alike. Ultimately it's your own choice to purchase the product no matter what (non-violent) methods of persuasion are used. Were you waiting to find a tangentially related place to make your post because you were just dying to say it? I mean, saying 100s of different ways throughout the years that companies do things to convince you to purchase their products isn't really very insightful nor is it really a point to condemn them on unless it involves deception that precludes properly informed consent.
@@Sonny_McMacsson Then the shareholders should sue the corporation for throwing that money away on something that the corporation claims doesnt do anything. You cant have it both ways.
Wasting money on purpose is illegal for a publicly traded company.
@@Syncrotron9001 Just because you claim something to the public to CYA doesn't mean you believe it. Like you said, they're beholden to the shareholders, not the public, beyond any regulatory concerns. Just think about how far Disney had to slide for that sort of thing to start happening.
@@Sonny_McMacsson So now said corporation is admitting to lying to the government which regulates it. You're trying really hard here.
"We called it a 'Conspiracy', therefore it would be cringe for any of you to actually believe it! Checkmate, losers!" -Corporations, apparently
Carlin says it well... "you don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge."
@@CD-vb9fithere is actually a conspiracy tho. research adullam films, read Behold a pale horse by bill cooper, the dulce book by branton, or Cosmic conspiracy by stan deyo. written in like the 70s. there nwver actually been a debate about whtether or not there is one just lack of brain for some
"You wouldn't want to be called a CONSPIRACY THEORIST, would you? You know who else is a conspiracy theorist? People with tin foil hats and flat earthers. ...oh god please tell me that shut him up..."
@@CD-vb9fi And even if you don't need it to explain what's going on sometimes you find evidence for a conspiracy anyways.
@@hungrymusicwolf Yes, that is why Carlin said it that way. There is no "formal" conspiracy meaning that the players involved have not sat down and negotiated one but the players are "consciously behaving" in a fashion as if one exists "hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge" which leads to exactly what you are saying. "Evidence for a conspiracy".
It still "IS" a conspiracy... just an informal one.
As George Carlin once put it:
"You don’t need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities and fraternities, they’re on the same boards of directors, they’re on the same country clubs, they have like-interests. They don’t need to call a meeting; they know what is good for THEM, and they are getting it. And there used to be seven oil companies. There are now three. It will soon be two. The things that matter in this country have been reduced in choice: there are two political parties, there are a handful of insurance companies, there are six or seven information centers. But if you want a bagel there are 23 flavors because you have the ILLUSION, you have the ILLUSION of choice. You don’t get the real important choices. No freedom of choice."
Couldn't have said it better bonbon. Pin of integrity and honor.
Carlin always knew what was really going on.
Carlin was part of them
Y'all should stop portraying this man as a maverick iconoclast
The world needs George Carlin back. Unfortunately, if it were possible to bring him back, I KNOW what he would say. He would take a look around, in about 30 seconds he would say "Put me back in the fucking ground, right fucking now!" George saw this stuff coming 30 years ago.
because he was one of them@@chrisl4999
As a computer tech who used to repair cathode ray tvs, computer components in the 80s and 90s i can absolutely tell you that we went from reuse/refurbish to planned obsolesence in the early 90s.
No we went from off the shelf to priority components and thus it only approved channels
You're crazy, planned obsolescence isn't a thing.
* smokes cigar with malicious intent. *
@@ReaIHuman prove that what they do has any evil intentions behind it and increasing profits is not evil onto itself so got give me more then just that
@qazhr you're ignorant of US manufacturing. In the 50's and 60's things were made to last. Unlike today, thing are engineered to fail. Hence the term: mean time between failures. Get a clue.
@@daddyattitude at the same time they were more expensive and less complex.
"Planned obsolescence ISN'T REAL"
Oh that's good. Then we can make it Illegal in Law with no issues, right? Since it doesn't exist. That way, if it ever DID exist, we could Sue the heck out of whatever company that did such a thing!
Yeah, if it’s not even real and doesn’t happen, surely we could just make it an offence punishable by disolving a company and ceasing the assets of everyone responsible, i mean, no one is gonna be hurt by that law then
Make it death penalty, I mean, nobody would die, right? [Laughs in MLM theory's language]
@@KozelPraiseGOELRO just don't use firing squads or the rifles will break (their cup holder electrical circuit exploded after 2 weeks and it made the whole thing unusable)
"Well it's not even real so making a law like that would just be a waste of time".
* lights cigar *
I don't know man, planned obsolescense isn't real in the conspiracy sense, what companies plan for is making something that a) lasts as long as their majority of customers expect it to and b) last as long as legislation or certificates dictate (if applicable) for as cheap as possible (in order to make the most amount of profit possible). So when planning for a X year lifecycle on a product, they aren't prioritizing on making sure it breaks after X years, they are prioritizing on making sure it doesn't break in X years with the lowest manufacturing cost possible. The intent isn't malicious, though you could argue that being profit driven is (I don't think so).
I think we, the customers shouldn't just shout "planned obsolescence" every time we see something like this but demand higher quality products and better support. As long as the majority of society doesn't care, there isn't really much to do about this, other than supporting manufacturers who do focus on better quality and reusability and not buying product from companies that don't care about it.
I personally just buy cheap things that I know I can fix myself if something breaks (for example cheap xiaomi phones, now I have a Poco F3 that I got for ~300 USD 2+ years ago. It's due for a battery replacement which I already ordered from aliexpress).
I know you're tired of talking about it Louis, especially when it just seems like no one cares and nothing changes, but I'm always appreciative of you fighting the fight. Like they say, "all it takes for evil to win is for good men to do nothing".
And you don't even have to be a good person to do the right thing, even if it's just occasionally!
also.... if you cannot reciprocate directly, pay the favour forward. One hand washes the other.
The more you read the lobbyists denying the existence of planned obsolescence the sicker you feel.
-sicker- *angrier* ftfy 👍
It does make me feel sick.
The capitalist system is broken.
It is like having a system where once in a while, you have to break all the window panes in your house and buy new window panes.
Then, they ask me to recycle the glass.
Why would I do that? To create jobs?
We would be wasting energy and wasting human time. Shorten the worker’s hours and increase their pay.
But wait a minute. Most of the work is done by robots anyway and as time goes by, more parts of industry are being taken over by robots.
If planned obsolescence weren’t real, why do they need to pay lobbyists to deny it?
No no. That's fine. The issue is that they are LYING to the group Representing the CITIZENS and making the LAWS, it should be HEAVILY ILLEGAL to LIE, TWIST THE TRUTH, or LEAVE OUT CONTEXT. The General Public should be able to SUE these Lying Lobbyist that are MANIPULATING those who are making the laws, and making them take actions that HARM the General Public and Citizens.
Legal bribery
"Safety" = Giving us direct control.
"Conspiracy" = You revealing that we're using the word 'safety' as an excuse to gain direct control.
And the usual BS "For the safety and security of the user". smh
Conspiracy: Two or more people acting on accord to commit a crime.
If conspiracies are not real. Then why do police departments have have departments for organized crime? After all if conspiracies do not exist. Then it would be a waste of resources to have one.
You just described 2020.
@@RicardoSantos-oz3uj The word 'conspiracy theory/theorist' was coined by the CIA in the aftermath of the JFK assassination. It was developed as a means of discrediting people without having to address their specific charges. Their psychological operations division (and, yes, this was/is a real thing) theorized that by lobbing together everything from the ludicrous (big foot, little green men from space, ghosts) to the plausible (Kennedy was whacked by the CIA), it would cause the general public to view anyone they charged with that term as a complete nutter. Well, it worked. And to this day ANYONE who so much as even hints that there's backroom dealings going on at high levels of governance is treated as being a half-step removed from someone who ought to be in an institution.
Safety is usually a way to get people to concede control
In (East) Germany, we went from refurbish/repair to planned obsolescence when the Berlin Wall fell. As long as resources were scarce and expensive, it was in everyone’s interest to build machines everybody could repair - if they ever broke in the first place. Most of the gadgets from that time still work due to their robustness and their repairability.
Same in Yugoslavia - Slovenia. It wasn't so much that the products were better made, they generally weren't, but they were made to be easily repairable, and replacement parts were available for decades.
Make repairs as hard as possible.
Had a dejuicer that broke ...was really loud.
Taking it apart...oh, special screwdriver required...rust drilled the heads out to have a look, inside normal screws, taking it apart with normal tools...what was the problem, a ball bearing went out, plastic transmission that was about to fall apart...why not brass? Replaced the ball bearing and of it would go.
It seems like lots of people have fallen in love with the Trabant.
I've heard Soviet airliners are uncompetitive for the similiar reasons. Airbus and Boeing work with much thinner safety margins, which leads to lower weight and consequently reduced fuel consumption. Soviet aircraft are built like tanks, but heavy on the juice.
@@justsomeguy5103 that is not true at all. SU planes have way higher crash rates than pretty much any other planes. Just look at all the pile of garbage that is tupolev planes and you''ll see how wrong are you.
Oh, Lou. They're not planning for them to become obsolete. They're FORCING them to become obsolete.
They are not what they really are forcing you to go thru them to repair. The things are repairable but they don’t want you to go thru third parties.
@@qazhr Which then incentives them to make sure they do break (just not so much you go to their competitor) so they make money off of you.
They're *also* forcing things to go obsolete. It's becoming more and more obvious with smartphones. A couple of system updates and suddenly it's running slower. They keep forcing a lot of unnecessary bloat and always on features people don't use to make them upgrade because the updated are not optional.
@@qazhr "Distinction without a difference."
@@joshuawillingham6363 right I dare to run windows 10 on computer from 2006 and see how that goes for ya
That article has the same energy as saying "gaslighting isn't real"
hahah
"gatekeep, girlboss, what's the third one?"
"There isn't a third one. Your crazy"
It's real, but people misuse the term all the damn time.
@@icipher6730the oc actually used it right
lol there's a quote that's like "gaslighting isn't real, you made it up because you're crazy"
Hewlett Packard literally released a printer with a page counter inside it that bricked the machine once they wanted you to buy a new one. European machines would be packed with a note to ignore all the "errors" that popped up that were fake ways to make you buy more ink than you used.
Every inkjet printer has a purge sponge and keeps an internal purge counter (ink must be purged every week or it dries and clogs). Once the printer thinks the sponge is "full", the printer is bricked. Every manufacturer does this. Some have been RE'd so you can get software to reset the counter if you replace the sponge, some you can't.
@@jessicav2031 Similar with a Dell printer.. it had a counter on the imaging drum. Once it reaches 50.000. stop, nada.. it will refuse to print with it and tell you to replace it. ya, ya, sure to "to ensure expected quality".. btw. this is not the part where the toner is in, on this machine it was separate. there was just no way to say, its fine. It will likely print another 10.000 just fine, Im totally okay with the current qualty. No. Somebody sold 3rd party replacement chips you could solder on instead, so it would think it was a new drum. Still the chip costed about 30$ and a soldering job.. its just crazy.
@@jessicav2031 installing a function like that without the ability to replace a fucking 1ct-waste-receptacle is simply an act of wilful damage.
I'm glad that I own an old HP Laserjet 2050DN that works absolutely fine with the generic Universal HP driver. Unfortunately, I also own the not so-enviable so-called Envy 4520 that uses the HP 🤮Smart driver that wants you to create an HP account to scan a page locally over WiFi. I'll just use a third party app to scan, thank you very much.
@@jessicav2031no
Louis, you may not have "moved the needle much" but you HAVE spread incredible awareness and helped many people become far more educated regarding what is happening out there and the consequences of losing out on ownership of our property.
I understand if you want to stop and cant blame you for it, but youre genuinely providing a very helpful service.
As the late great George Carlin said, "You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge." These people know what makes them money, and they know what doesn't. Sure, they didn't "plan" for things to become obsolete quicker, but they sure as heck noticed that by making these changes, and seeing their competitors make these changes, that things becoming obsolete quicker made them more money. If consumers can notice it, are we supposed to believe these manufacturers are completely stupid and haven't noticed it, and how much money it makes them? That they don't understand why consumers choose to throw them more money year after year? This is honestly frustrating beyond belief just how much smoke they're trying to blow up our collective asses.
Rossmann's Corrolary to Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced ignorance is indistinguishable from malice.
Grey's Law, "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"
Planned obsolescence is a real thing in my engineering school we had an entire class about it, we had a test about how we would plan for components to break after a specific amount of time
Un fuckin real. I've wondered if this was taught in such a manner. Wow.
One thing I have heard is that parts are often engineered with a very specific lifespan in mind. For example, a company like BMW tells it engineers: We consider the lifetime of our vehicles to be 50000 miles, please engineer X part so it's as cheap to produce as possible, while maintaining that minimum durability of 50000 miles. In that respect, with modern computer modelling and manufacturing capabilities, engineers can be incredibly precise with their designs.
@@bobi6191with computers just input a random time for it to break and when its compiled no one knows about it anyway
@@joshuagibson2520I mean, parts tell you what lifetimes and environments they're rated for, they have specific ICs rated for cars because they're required to not fail for like 20-30 years. On the flip side you get disposables like pregnancy test readers where it just has to read the line once. What's evil is engineers intentionally building devices that are *supposed* to last 10+ years and using cheap parts that are rated for 5 years (or otherwise shortening their lifespan).
Yeah, same for my classes in business school. There was an entire class on it as well.
"We have to slow down the phones to save older batteries!"
"Can't you just let people replace batteries?"
"Something about safety, yada yada"
Dont think for a minute that (Insert govt. alphabet agency, here FBI, CIA, NSA ETC.) can't or won't use your cell phone for surveillance, they can and do. If you can't take out the battery thatsa plus for them because if they turn somethung on covertly have cam or audio on secretly, and you can ull the plug on their oper.ation it's a bad thing if you can't pull tge battery they can use it as a full blown surveillence tool . So, it stands to reason these agencies were all for non removable batteries and possibly were behind it becoming a thing . If not actually involved in pushing phone mfg. towatd a glued in battery standard, I'm sure they liked seeing it happen, and would fight tooth and nail against any mfg reverting back to the easily removable variety.
I remember Apple doing this literally with iPads.. afaik remember at first they denied anything, later "admitted" it was to "save batteries".
Imo, there's nothing wrong with underclocking the system to reduce power consumption if the battery is old(5-8 years), not still new which they tend to do anyway
But honestly it's so funny that a fresh battery would just boost the system back to new
Seriously , F... companies that glue the "highly-flammable when punctured" batteries into the device. There's absolutely ZERO reason for it , yet almost everyone does it.
@@tydshiin5783 Imagine if they presented the facts and gave owners a choice?
-
"Your battery is getting old. If we slow down the machine, it will extend the life of that battery. Do you accept this slowdown? [Y/N]*
* This decision can be changed at will in the settings menu.
-
Wouldn't that be fantastic?
Their forced phone updates are repeatedly putting TikTok on my phone.
And somehow Facebook is a required app that I cannot uninstall.
Yeah, that’s probably because an independent repair person repaired your product and installed them… /s
@@Quik-wk5sh I sure hope that's sarcasm, cause I haven't had to have any repairs done to my phone.
tell them several times if you need that you dont accept that. I got a tick when i noticed that tiktok was installed on a new phone as well and im happy that my phone dont get tiktok (not old but old modell). The facebook issue is solved with adguard, i block both tiktok and facebook with it. No computer or phone in my network can reach those nasty places.
Android 😂😂😂
I have no Facebook app , yet *Meta App Installer* , *Meta App Manager* and *Meta Services* were all installed and enabled by default on my Samsung (I would be none the wiser , had I not accidentally stumbled upon "Running Services" option) - It's a problem across the board, it doesn't matter if you have an iPhone , Xiaomi or Samsung - Zuckerborg paid to have his crap pre-installed in most of devices on the market.
They don't want for your device to die ASAP. They want it dead after its warranty expires.
There's also the fact that 80% of failed devices that are still under warranty are replaced by the newer and shinier model without any warranty claim. At best.
Because if you make a warranty claim as painful as possible, virtually none will be returned. (e.g. Request RMA, Ship at own expense in original packaging, provide original receipt, wait for determination whether misuse caused the failure, then receive a beat up "refurbished" unit that has 90 day or less warranty).
My tv broke 3 hours before the warranty went out lol. Dead serious. I ordered a repair after I found out 50 minutes before the warranty was gone. It went through.
The sad thing is, this isn't just happening in the industry where Mr. Rossmann works in, it's happening also at a large scale in the auto industry as well
Power tools and saws have been saved from this fate due to the nature of competition right now. Those that have tried are quickly identified and replaced with cheaper better products. They’ll probably get their way eventually.
It’s happening across the board, in more ways then is comprehensible. It’s standardized.
Do you guys think manufacturers are using technology as an excuse to do it?
@@glenbenton4855 100%. And consumers have gotten so used to being uninformed that they will literally argue with you because they are fooled by useless flashy junk. Its sad.
@@moldyzucchinis3251I have been complaining about the right to repair/planned obsolescence/bullshit in cars since I noticed they started making the intake manifolds plastic in the early 00s.
It really is an across the board thing and to my eye, it really accelerated/got more brazen in the 21st century. Being able to get schematics and things pretty much stopped by 2010 ish.
My old man has power drills from his father from the mid 20th century.
My new craftsman drill didn't make it through the renovation of my second floor.
Yeah, it's across the board.
They have no incentive to make things that last. They only have an incentive to make you buy more.
And the shittiest part about all of this:
People would tell me I am paranoid, or that only geeks really care...it is so wildly frustrating.
I understand Louis. You may not have moved the needle at the federal level, but you've given some energy back to this old geek.
It's always about "safety"
Much like "gun control". It's never about safety. It's about controlling people.
Out of an abundance of caution
Don’t forget “The Children”.
The safety of the children!
And privacy
As an engineer I can tell you that the design process includes likely lifespan, the parts that are the most time limited should be made to be easily replaced. If they are not, or those parts are particularly expensive then that is planned obsolescence.
When the repair cost is more than the value of the item that is effectively end of life of that item.
One of the most heartbreaking truths I've had to come to grips with is that the truth will have to constantly fight against the lie that only needs to be spoken once. Thank you Louis for all the time and energy you've put into the cause over the years. It may not seem like it sometimes but you're absolutely making a difference in the world and we can see that even if other people don't, can't or won't!
Idk man, you got me fired up about the right to repair movement despite not being able to repair anything nor living in the U.S. I think making more and more people aware of this is exactly what they do not want, and it seems to be exactly what you're doing. You may feel like you're not moving the needle, but that's only cuz we're still on the stage of getting it unstuck. And you, sir, are the master at keeping it unstuck.
Knowing that frustration with your phone pc etc is real and how to direct it.
That's a good way of looking at things, I have always been wary of "spreading awareness" because it creates the illusion of progress but it never occurred to me in some cases it might be the other way around where there is an illusion of no progress as we first need to break through a buffer.
Just because you don't live in the US doesn't mean you can't repair stuff dude
@@Twist3rOfficalWhat I think he/she meant is the legal battle Louis has faced is in the US and he deals with American companies. By the way, I am in the same case, I don’t repair anything other than what’s easily done and sometimes not even that. But, at least for me, it makes a huge difference to be able to pay less for a repair than to replace something or pay overpriced repairs.
Its definitely getting more widely known. Even all the boomers in my family who barely know how to hook up an HDMI know about it@@GAHAHAHH
"This is probably gonna be a short video--" *creates video longer than the last five videos*
😂
Either planned obsolescence is the real deal, or most manufacturers have no quality control.
Why not both? Saves even more money
What they have is a special kind of engineering. They spend a lot of time testing their design to make sure that it lasts the warranty period + 1 y.
If the product lasts too long, then it becomes disastrous for their investors.
Also, all companies have to more or less do that so that they can reduce the cost of the product.
If the product will last too long, then it is a quality product and they have to increase the price of the product. The consumer tends to compare prices and chooses the cheaper product.
As a result, quality products disappear from the market. You get bad products, with short lives, that cost less.
Note: the above is my conspiracy theory.
Its been real for ages. The most obvious example I've seen was with lightbulbs. In east Germany they created lightbulbs that basically never burned out, but were shunned by the international light industry due to creating a product that would put them all out of work. Even outside of East Germany, there is a lightbulb in California that has been on since 1901. That tech was solved ages ago but still somehow i've replaced many lightbulbs in my life 💆🏿
Nah, QC is like fine for most parts, but QC cannot do anything if the product already comes out with issues but is considered fine by manufacturers
@@ImAlxxy @Yaivenov Technology Connections actually has an argument against the particular case of incandescent busb not being planned obsolescence if you want to believe it. You should watch that video. It boils down to a fundamental tradeoff between bulb hours and performance after the process was perfected. 1000 hours is right in the middle. Higher and you get dim bulbs and shorter you get short life. The 1901 Centennial bulb runs so dim you can't use its light.
The current Doctor Who series had an episode, in 2012, entitled "The Snowmen". After hearing and responding to questions, Clara Oswald is asked: "Do you understand what I am saying to you?". Clara answered: "Words". That sequence and that answer is the epitome of "Believe what you see, not what you hear." I learned a long time ago: Words are meaningless, actions are everything.
that catchphrase is insane and misleading
words have a very real
power and they alter actions all the time, and if actions inherently have meaning, thus words have too, at the very least indirectly
"words are meaningless" sounds deep but is actually just stupid
Words whisper, actions thunder.
@@rayaqinwords are near meaningless to some people.
At this point, we really need no conspiracy, it's just the endgame of our way of doing business.
It's just far more efficient and simple now to screw us out in the open instead of trying to hide it behind a conspiracy or the like.
I work for a fabricator. There's a lot of smoke, moisture, iron particles, high heat and low temps in the winter. We have a green (now completely coated i dust) GE fridge that's was my grandparent's in the 60s. Its been running without maintenance in the fab shop for over 2 decades now. That machine is a beast that cannot be killed. Well at least not by anyone except its creator.
To me one big example of planned obsolescence is when device manufacturers stop releasing software updates for a device even though there's not technical reason to do so. There are lots of Android phones that could be updated to multiple Android versions beyond what they ship with but the most you can expect is like two upgrades for the higher end devices and between 0 and 1 upgrades for lower end devices. The TPM requirement in Windows 11 is another example of this. This results in lots of perfectly usable devices being replaced simply to get more up to date software.
I think you went one step further than Louis is going. Releasing software updates actually costs money (developers and testing and whatnot). Locking the firmware so even hobbyists can't release the update is the anti-repair stance,
Same with TPM, you can't expect them to not increase security (which is a selling point for operating systems) just to keep supporting legacy hardware. If they took steps to lock bootloaders so you can't use linux, for example, that would be anti-repair.
@@eazegpi I can see that however as you alluded, not locking the firmware of smartphones and tablets and thus allowing users to install an OS of their choice (whether third party or simply a newer version of Android) wouldn't cost the device manufacturers anything.
As for the TPM the fact is that for most people not having a TPM made no difference and we know that Windows 11 can work without it because people have been installing it on "unsupported hardware" since the pre-release versions were made available. Also it's not like MS not requiring TPM would prevent the technology from becoming more widespread as both AMD and Intel had firmware based TPM solutions long before Windows 11 was even a thing meaning that each year there are more devices with TPM support than not.
Even ignoring the TPM, the CPU requirements being limited to 2nd AMD Ryzen or later and Intel 8th gen or later are a much better example of something that will cause people to replace perfectly usable devices even though it not doing this wouldn't cost MS anything. I fail to see how Ryzen 7 1800X doesn't meet the Windows 11 requirements while a Ryzen 3 2200G does (the same applies to i7-7700K and i3-8100 respectively).
Bloatware
Blame the component manufacturers like Qualcomm for the lack of drivers and firmware which then impacts the Android OEMs do make an effort. Also, Buy a cheap Chinese phone like Asus Zenfone then don't expect too long of a support on the software side. Heck, a lot of cheaper Android OEMs couldn't be arsed with releasing timely updates
The android ecosystem seems really stupid in of itself. Every single phone requiring device specific updates when windows/linux systems can all get standardized updates from one source is so unnecessary. It would be great if every phone was 'stock' android and every phone could update without any additional support required
RUclips needs to allow users to award more than one thumbs up to content this good
Why would any company want you to have their product forever, ofc they want you to buy it again
If making the phone out of titanium, a space age material and cheap ass glass on the same phone so it shatters the moment you press it isn't planned obsolescence, idk what is. 😂😂😂😂 .
Or
You can't account something as malice if it's already accounted for in stupidity 😅😅😅😅
If that’s space grade titanium, let’s hope they don’t make a spaceship…
It not planned obsolescence that just bad design
@@qazhrYeah that's what planned obsolescence is 🤦🏽
@@austinhernandez2716 not really seeing it as intentional bad design and alot of you seem to rush to malice when it more likely nobody thought someone would bend it like that
@@qazhr Their engineers aren't stupid, they know those are bad materials. "We'll just keep making flaws in all the ways that align with our interests and none in the other direction, but it's all a coincidence", sorry mate but that won't fly with any person still with their wits about them. Those flaws are intentional.
Louis: This video will be short because I'm not excited to talk about this any more.
Louis: People should be judged by their actions, not by their talk.
Video: Long.
People: Judge that Louis is actually still excited to talk about this topic.
Insane that someone in the industry is allowed to lie to consumers and the general public like this.
That is literally his job to serve the industry as a disinformation specialist. A pre-lawyer in the court of public opinion and accusation denier.
No conspiracy they say. Planned obsolescence isn't real they say. Well history says a different story. If they did it once, corporations are gonna do it again.
The *Phoebus cartel* was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took over market territories and *LOWERED THE USEFUL LIFE OF SUCH BULBS* . Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips, incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva, as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting"). Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955), it ceased operations in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.
It feels so bad to watch the enthusiasm leave you, Louis. At the same time, I can't say I blame you. But this is important work you are doing. Don't let the bastards get you down! (Also I would add: I really DO believe the CEO's were smoking cigars and cackling like villains in back rooms. Their actions are clearly malice.)
I remember a wise teacher said something like, "any good engineer can make a product that will last forever, but the great engineer, the one that gets promoted, will make a product that lasts close enough for the warranty to expire and then needs replacing with a new 'improved' product. That's how fortunes are made."
😂😂😂
Reminds me of a joke I heard a while back - "What's the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer? A bad lawyer will let a case drag on for years, a good lawyer will make it last even longer"
a prof at my university always said the same thing^^ I am also studying to become an engineer lol
In today’s age, what corporations and governments call a “conspiracy” is technically real.
Misinformation
The technical definition and legal one dies mean it is of something that is real or planned on.
conspiracy is just when two or more people agree toguether to weponaze against a third person
my favorite conspiracy theory is that hollywood forcefed people worldwide to believe conspiracies are crazy talk
Keep spreading knowledge brother. Gives me hope. Thank you🤩
Whenever a RUclipsr says a video is going to be short, it never goes as planned
The thing that always blows my mind with all of this corporate nonsense is regardless of what topic is being argued about (planned obscelesence, headphone jack removal, etc) is that there are so many people that will give their lives to defend their favorite companies and deflect all possible criticisms that come their way. This hurts every consumer on the market, including these "corporate defenders." Regardless if the criticisms are genuine or toxic, defending these companies gives them more power than the ludicrious amount of power they already have, to keep selling anti-consumer products. Supporting businesses that actively take choices away from consumers while you make fun of someone on the internet for still caring about a "feature of the past" only brings us closer to the distopia we're headed towards. While Manchild B and I argued about whether Apple's removal of the headphone jack was a good or bad thing, Apple went ahead and removed the fucking SIM tray. These corporate defenders are just free PR for them.
I don't buy anything from Apple anymore, and I likely never will again. However, I will absolutely never religiously defend the companies I do purchase from. Business is not friendship, it's time we all remembered that. If a company that makes devices I usually like makes a horrible decision, I'm calling that shit out every time, and likely not buying from them for the forseeable future, assuming a better alternative exists.
It is MY CHOICE to use wired headphones with my headphone jack on my smartphone instead of wireless earbuds that need to be replaced every 2-3 years. It is MY CHOICE to replace the battery in my phone instead of buying a whole new phone for way more money. It is MY CHOICE to use physical sim cards to easily swap from one phone to another. None of these choices hinder other people in any way, shape, or form. Don't point your weapons at me, point them at the companies taking these choices away. Don't criticize us for being salty or negative. Criticize the companies that took our choices away in the first place, causing us to be salty and negative.
If you bought a cheese burger, and the burger didn't have any buns, would you continue buying from there and religiously defending the business from any criticism regarding such a horrible decision? If you bought a pizza, and there was no cheese, would you continue buying from there and religiously defending the business from any criticism regarding such a horrible decision? Most people would obviously say no, but their actions in the tech market suggest otherwise.
Edit:
It is MY CHOICE to pick between using the fingerprint scanner and face ID...
There are likely other things I've forgotten, but this is one that just happened to come to mind.
Vegan pizzas are a thing.
@@andrewgrant6516 that's hilarious
definitely not what I was specifically referring to but that is wild
No conspiracy they say. Planned obsolescence isn't real they say. Well history says a different story. If they did it once, corporations are gonna do it again.
The *Phoebus cartel* was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took over market territories and *LOWERED THE USEFUL LIFE OF SUCH BULBS* . Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips, incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva, as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting"). Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955), it ceased operations in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.
“Planned obsolescence doesn’t exist!
We just make sure you can’t repair anything and that new software won’t work properly on your device.
That’s totally not a cover for the same thing!”
My favorite rationalization was: "designed to specification."
All this is, is overleverged companies subsidizing their positions at the cost of the total health of the marketplace. Strange framing would be, how can we allow a company to succeed if it installed its good in every home that lasts for 40 years? This is the current trap we are all in.
My first experience on this topic was with a PlayStation 1, I was still in high school. My PlayStation fell off of my desk, a tooth broke on one sprocket. I went to the local video game guy and asks if he can get me a sprocket and he said no, these units are unrepairable.
So I went to Salvation Army and found a cassette tape deck for only three bucks. Found a sprocket that worked.. just barely.
Sounds more like that guy just didn't want to do it 😄
@@KeyDx7 that particular part was definitely not meant to be repaired. It took some creativity to open it.
@@bryanshoemaker6120and yet...you yourself managed to replace it. It needed no tech guy...
People are just fk blind to obvious things like that...just like you.
I also had a PS, before PS One(the smaller one) appeared. It held on over decade, before I gave it away to a charity shop(but keept few games for use with emulator)...and it had experienced multiple drops from the chair to the floor.
@@AKUJIVALDO I literally had to melt it in half to get to the sprocket.
Why did you take a ps1 to school...
"This video is going to be smaller than usual because I'm tired of talking about this" lol
it's ok Louis, people have been watching these videos for as long as you have been making them. We still appreciate it, even if it's the same thing over and over again. Maybe that's weird but its true 🤷♂️
Louis, I loved your theatrical performance at 6:56 "...and do I think that was done out of some plan where people are smoking cigars in a back room and saying, "Those repair people will not be able to fix anything anymore - YES!!" (Evil Laughter) Thank You!!
I got a waffle iron from 1950-1970 made out of mostly metal with a 50cm long and 2cm thick cable. It still works.
My friend meanwhile has this new fancy one with a display and a timer and it broke after 2 years. It's also made out of flimsy plastic for the most part. Quality sure went down a lot
exactly. Something made pre 1990s more often then not still works just fine. A version of that same thing made in the last 20-30 years tends to break within 3-5 years.
Plus, your friend probably paid more a well.
To tackle that, manufacturers hit us with the 'Energy consuming' argument. If you do the math, a device that costs €50 more in purchase, and does not run constantly (like a fridge typically does), will take a LONG time to consume up to €50 worth of electricity, especially where I live, in Belgium, , where only max 30% of our bill is the actual use and the rest is extra costs and taxes for the other leeches wetting their beaks
Louis, you did a lot for us and the industry. Your outcome with the industry might not be clearly visible, but it truly is for us, and for me personally.
Take a break. You deserve it, and you need it.
Hope you'll get yourself together soon
You are literally taught about planned obsolescence in engineering school, or at least I was during my brief stint.
Based on my experience going through engineering school, I think you are being disingenuous. Parts wearing out and bad things happening when parts wear out it a real thing. Talking about how long a part can last before it should be swapped out to prevent a catastrophic failure is necessary and does not constitute teaching planned obsolescence. The idea of planned obsolescence is to replace things more often than is necessary for the sake of making money. That's taught in business degrees, not engineering degrees. But I went to school for aerospace engineering. When a plane starts falling out of the sky, you've already screwed up bad. Maybe whatever you did was different. What kind of engineering was it?
@@Elrog3 I had started a general engineering degree at East Tennessee State University with the intent of going mechanical. Unfortunately between job, pregnant wife followed by new baby, running a side business, and getting covid - I chose the wrong semester to start and lost my financial aid. I plan to go back one day, probably at a different school. The planned obsolescence wasn't a defined part of the curriculum, but something one of the prof's did bring up and talk about as something that happened in the industry, and that you may be asked to "take into consideration" when working for some companies. I could certainly see why it wouldn't be desirable in the aerospace field.
No conspiracy they say. Planned obsolescence isn't real they say. Well history says a different story. If they did it once, corporations are gonna do it again.
The *Phoebus cartel* was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took over market territories and *LOWERED THE USEFUL LIFE OF SUCH BULBS* . Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips, incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva, as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting"). Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955), it ceased operations in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.
@@Elrog3 You're using planes as an example when planes randomly nosedive due to shitty engineering that a manager decided to ignore and said "uhhh, just tell that programmer to override laws of physics or something".
lmao
@@shinobuoshino5066 Planes failing is very rare compared to other things we use failing. I don't know what you are smoking.
I just have to say, I’m not sure exactly how you’re measuring your effectiveness in moving the needle (though I have an idea), but for me personally (someone who stumbled onto your channel a few years ago because I was pissed off at Lenovo, and going down that rabbit hole somehow led me to an ancient video of yours, I liked what you were saying, subscribed on a whim and now watch your videos pretty consistently), I had never heard of right to repair, but solely because of you it is now a topic I feel incredibly strongly about. Now I can’t believe I’m being this optimistic because I also get discouraged by a lot of the same things you talk about in a lot of your videos, and obviously I’m just one person, and no I’m not personally doing anything for right to repair or other issues you address other than learning about them, talking to other people about them, and small things here and there. But logically, you have to just zoom out for a second. I bet there are thousands of other people just like me who would never even have heard the topic if it weren’t for you. And sure that’s not moving the needle in terms of legislative change or whatever, but you’re only one guy, and I think you should be proud that you are doing things within your means, really doing more than most people would, and your passion trickles down to people like me, and the friends people like me talk to about this stuff etc. Now I can see how from your side of things it can look discouraging, (and trust me I’m totally discouraged most of the time too) but just for a second extrapolate what I’m saying, sure you haven’t moved this unrealistic needle to your satisfaction, but the innumerable people influenced by your videos, who never even would have thought for a second about this stuff, that’s the only hope we have for change to ever happen, and that’s the needle you’ve moved.
Louis, if anything, if ANYTHING, you are making a lot of people think about this kinds of things, you are planting the seeds, they need to be cared for, and it will eventually bear fruit, maybe not now, maybe not in your lifetime, but you need to keep planting and taking care of those seeds.
Hit the nail on the head. Actions are louder than words.
The Slipknot/cutting yourself analogy really caught me off guard LMAO
We need accountability for corporations and politicians
"planned obsolescence isn't it real" that's pretty much the most idiotic thing I've ever heard someone say. I have an idea. Making batteries replaceable and security updates available for at least 10 years would go a long way to demonstrating that planned isn't real. The fact of the matter is it is real. 100% real.
No no no. you see. It's simple. it isn't Real. So then make it ILLEGAL, and if we ever Discover companies did this, we can SUE them for it. I mean, if it's not real, they have no excuse to NOT make it a law to protect consumers from it existing in the future, Right?
No conspiracy they say. Planned obsolescence isn't real they say. Well history says a different story. If they did it once, corporations are gonna do it again.
The *Phoebus cartel* was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took over market territories and *LOWERED THE USEFUL LIFE OF SUCH BULBS* . Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips, incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva, as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting"). Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955), it ceased operations in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.
I say with 100% confidence there are absolutely executive meetings where they discuss the impact of independent repair people on their bottom line, and how to prevent that impact.
The great thing about old electronics vs today is that often times appliances would come with FULL ENGINEERING SCHEMATICS. I have a washing machine from not too long ago, it's only 15 years old, and it came with a whole ass blueprint of how the thing works, so if I was inclined to - I could reverse engineer and replace solder/add/replace parts on the boards in order to keep it working for another 15.
Alf Treager was a pioneering engineer who built radios which made things like the Royal Flying Doctors Service practicable. He had this annoying habit of experimenting with the radios when servicing them. Consequently the circuit diagrams supplied with the devices never matched the actual circuit inside the case...!
13:33 "Cuts itself more often than kids in highschool that listen to Slipknot" ok that took me off guard
This was never about screwing anyone, although it absolutely feels like it. This was and is always about money, and how to keep it flowing in to these companies.
If a Company made 1 product that never broke and lasted forever. It would sell 1 copy to everyone, and then never make any money, cause everyone would already have one. That is WHY they design it to break, so you are FORCED to buy a new one.
It's LITERALLY What Sony and other Companies do with their 'Official Repair Shops', where they lie to the Customers, telling them they need to throw away their perfectly good phone and buy the $1500 brand new phone instead to replace it, 1 year after buying the 'Old' phone, all because a part on it was DESIGNED to fail to get them to the Official Repair Shop, to be scammed.
Yes, I said it to be SCAMMED. Because if the Product CAN be repaired, it should be REQUIRED for them to ACTUALLY Try and FIX IT first, and not be able to LIE or worse BREAK the product THEMSELVES in the back and then try and SCAM customers into buying a new one!
If it feels like it then it is.
“They” don’t want “us” being able to take down their back doors.
We could call it managed obsolescence. Maybe that sounds better to corpos lol.
There's not much difference between conspiracy and management anyway. Both involve people talking, often (but not always) behind closed doors, assigning roles and tasks to achieve their plans, discussing possible issues and mitigations. The only difference is that conspiracy sounds more spooky because there's an implied victim.
Management is a conspiracy. Management has a victim, the victims of management are the workers who are being managed and the customers who are being serviced.
Planned obsolescence is obvious to anyone that didn't want to upgrade from Windows 7.
Planned obsolescence has been around at least as long as the 2500 hour incandescent bulb reduction to 1000 hours, by the Phoebus Cartel. (1925)
It is a game of brinkmanship with as many reasons as there are dollars. While the primary motive is profit, every tool will be used to stifle competition.
Modern companies aren't just competing with each other, but their own past products, for future sales; where sabotage can be a profitable inside job.
This is especially true when businesses self-regulate the lifespan of hardware, accessibility of repair parts/tools, and software functionality duration.
Proud to live in a world with you, Louis!
Don't forget, if you give up they win and they can never be "allowed" to win Louis... No matter how hard it is to fight
They only win if we ALL give up. Don't put this all on Louis, he's just one guy.
@@Onihikage I'm not. We all have to play our part in calling out injustice and trying to make everything better for the people, Louis just excels at keeping people informed
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." is one of the most harmful rules ever created.
It effectively means that any malice is acceptable as long as it can be masked as incompetence.
ty for all your effort 🙏
Someone once said, "actions speak louder than words." This video is an echo of that sentiment
*Veritasium would like a word* 💡
Every product should be made as planned longevity.
Planned obsolescence is also design variation running amok and creating obsolete peripherals. Think of the mountains of useless cellphone covers that can't be used on newer models because they slightly changed location of camera over each iteration, it's components like screens with different sizes that make sure that in the future your device cannot be repaired due to lack of replacement parts.
EU says the iPhone battery must be replaceable. I'd bet dollars to donuts that each iPhone will have a slightly different battery and that by the the the iPhone 18 comes out the replacement battery for the iPhone 16 will be unavailable.
You know what my favorite example of repairability is? Central vacuums.
Back in the 70s when they gained popularity, they were built extremely reliably and they could be repaired super easily, and they all used the same standards.
I can replace the motor in a 2004 Kenmore central vac brand new, from the original manufacturer of the motor. Then it'll last at least another 10 years.
Shame that other products aren't like this
"If you're unsure about the motive, look at the outcome and infer the motive."
- J.Peterson on Deception
That guy literally said "Corporations trying to make as much money as possible? Never seen it."
My washer has a switch, belt and motor. The fancy ones look nice. I actually want one. But I can fix a belt, switch or motor.
"Fuck what people say and screw their intentions. What are the outcomes, what are their actions? At the end of the day that's all that matters"
You know... this makes me feel somewhat better.
I always think about all of the bad stuff I think about people, hate, disgust, judgement and all... But it doesn't ever reach out to people, and my actions as a person are actually pretty respectful and decent. So perhaps none of that matters if I keep it to my thoughts only... I may even be considered a good person... solely through my actions...
My favorite are devices that are purposely designed to self destruct, found a few of these types of things while trying to fix things like appliances. For example I had a kettle that died a few years ago. I found a strange hose leading from the top of the kettle (very carefully concealed at the top) right to this copper plated disk in the switch mechanism. The hose was ducting steam from the kettle onto the disk (and electronics) and corroding it, ensuring it would die in a year to two. Bastards! Oh and for those curious, it was a chef's choice cordless kettle.
I am pretty sure that hose had some sort of a function, other than corrosion acceleration. Still a shit design, but I am almost certain it was there for some other reason.
That is a steam switch, much like that used in the big old Zip water heaters. When the water boils, the steam produce condenses onto and imparts heat the bimetallic dome switch to trip the power switch disconnect spring. There should be no electronics in a simple kettle. Most of the corrosion is in the harmless bluing of the live/phase side switch conductors. Thermal stresses is a more likely source of premature failure. (The kettles I buy tend to last ten to thirteen years and the failure is always in the heating element.)
Loved that I found your videos. Crazy how you went from just uploading random gripe videos to having 2 million subscribers. You're an interesting guy for sure.
Off topic, but I hope you're enjoying the great state of Texas 😁
I sure am Becky. I sure am. I've settled down here and consider this my long term home. I bought a great house in a great place with amazing neighbors Thank you so much for the kind welcome. I hope you enjoy it here too. :)
@@rossmanngroup Come pick me up sometime I live in Joshua we can go to Dairy Queen.
They're projecting what they do, it's the major companies that ship their products out with TikTok installed.
If planned obsolescence wasn't real, all products will have a lifetime warranty.
Not at all. Even if every component was made to last the longest time possible, there will still be a mean time before failure, which is what the warranty is based on. Nothing lasts forever.
This isn't about a device breaking out of warranty, its about being able to actually repair it when it does. If it can't be repaired because the manufacturer put obstacles in the way to stop you, that's planned obsolescence.
Warranties are basically insurance. Most often they are just a scam. I'd like to see less of them, not more.
No conspiracy they say. Planned obsolescence isn't real they say. Well history says a different story. If they did it once, corporations are gonna do it again.
The *Phoebus cartel* was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took over market territories and *LOWERED THE USEFUL LIFE OF SUCH BULBS* . Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips, incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva, as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting"). Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955), it ceased operations in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.
My Wayback Machine says: Planned obsolescence was a topic in the 1960's and '70's. It was even discussed in MAD magazine back then.
Are we gonna see the wooden block move ever? Love the content keep it up
That's my axiom m3 speaker
I'm an electrical and product engineer, absolutely planned obsolescence is a thing, but it is the result of trying to make production as cheap as possible, not some kind of global conspiracy to make products last a shorter time for the sake of it. You can still avoid it by spending a bit more and buying good brands. Products for the government and military to use generally receive much higher quality electrical components than consumer products which are mostly designed to last 2 years, the general warranty period in many developed countries, while the aforementioned products for the military and government are designed to last over a decade and be much more durable.
How else are we going to keep
The line going up?!? 📈📈📈
I work in automotive and I listened to a podcast where they were talking about planned obsolescence and cited replacement car parts as an example. The tooling for each part in your car costs a minimum of $50k but easily way more. It also requires floor space in the factory. It's common for the next gen's car parts to require new tooling and a new line setup. Once there's a model year upgrade, the sales volume tanks and it stops being profitable to have that floor space just for that part. It saves the car makers tons of money to reuse parts on the next model so they do it whenever possible.
The fact that the iPhone 7 didn’t get iOS 16 and the iPhone 8 didn’t get iOS 17 when iPads with the same chipset got the update is proof of planned obsolescence. App iOS version requirements are getting higher and higher too. But that’s only apple..
iPads have larger batteries. Therefore can deliver more power and therefore the cpu can run faster to process the program.
Yeah I am shocked I am sitting here with my iPad 6th gen with iOS 17 on it
One thing people need to recognise is that evil (wrong doing) doesn’t need to be intentional.
Even if we grant manufacturers plausible deniability, what it doesn’t change is that the relationship we should want to have with manufacturers is one where they serve the consumer and are rewarded so.
Not where they use little tricks, regardless of intentional or not to get more money out of you.
Yes it does, any action you do is intentional.
Tell that to Cannon printers. They DIE within months of their 2 year warranty and there's a reason a new printer with ink is cheaper than getting new ink carts
Usually it's because the new machine comes with starter cartridges which are not otherwise available and have sod-all ink inside. Why they bother is a mystery, because surely it must cost them almost as much to make a full cartridge?
@@leftoverthoughts2275 well its quite simple. You having less ink means you have to buy more ink cartridges sooner.
@@dankrigby5621 At the scale these things are produced in it's never simple. Not when you have 3 cartridges in production which appear all the same, but actually need to be slightly different.
@@leftoverthoughts2275 if you only include less filling of ink in one cartridge, it's not hard to produce at all. Telling them apart also isn't hardy every part and product is serialized.
@@dankrigby5621 They may have control chips or coded structural parts, though.
Planned obsolescence has been the de facto standard since the invention of the light bulb
2:03 That doesn't sound ridiculous at all. Think about all the automotive recall scandals over the last 50 years. The executives literally sit around discussing how many people they can let die before it backfires and cuts into profits. Same shit with railway operators, airplane manufacturers, baby product companies, etc. Have you ever met someone with an MBA? I'm related to some of these people, I've worked for some of these people, and "cartoonishly villainous" is not an inaccurate descriptor. Maybe I just have some confirmation bias, but c-suite people are fuckin' degenerates driven by pure sociopathic greed.
Because the MBAs that do give a fuck about externalities aren't rich. Pollution and environmental destruction isn't a problem for your company until the poors are at your doorstep and the food you eat just killed your only beloved daughter
I will die on this hill that planned obsolescence is largely a good thing and saves consumers money from hopeless endeavors to fix old, out dated, and inferior products.
As with everything, companies can go too far, but for consumable goods, obsolescence is a mostly a good thing.
If it works and does the job, does it matter?
i do think your are making a difference , keep it up please, also tiktok is no more invasive than other social networks the difference is just your country politics
You caught my attention because as a retired person my income is limited - I simply cannot run out and buy a new laptop. And what happened to "design for disassembly"? The whole point was ease of servicing for recycling AND for reuse. Does anyone even try to do that anymore?
Thank you kindly for fighting the good fight...I believe eventually sanity will prevail, it will have to if we're to survive as a species.....cheers.
No thanks to the gaslighting. It doesn't take a genius to see that stuff that used to have batteries that I could just very easily swap out now has built in stuff that I can't even access without breaking the device. My previous beard trimmer is a decent example. That one I could open up and change the batteries. Unfortunately I dropped it and I could not for the life of me find one that still had replaceable batteries. Fast forward a few years, the batteries in my new one no longer charge properly and I'm sure they'd love me to go and buy another but I'll just use it via cable now. Failing that, I'm prepared to go scruffy.
Thank you for making your show. It just showed up on my feed and it's great. Thanks for your honest insight and knowledge that is lacking in the YT world. It is also an ethics show.
Repair shops don’t repair anymore. They just change parts.
Isn't that the same thing?
Electrician here if you buy a light fixture, make sure it has a light socket for a light bulb.
Light fixtures with built in led will have to be thrown away after led dies.
Anytime they call something a conspiracy theory you know it's real
Ah yes, the moon landing was indeed faked
No conspiracy they say. Planned obsolescence isn't real they say. Well history says a different story. If they did it once, corporations are gonna do it again.
The *Phoebus cartel* was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took over market territories and *LOWERED THE USEFUL LIFE OF SUCH BULBS* . Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips, incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva, as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting"). Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955), it ceased operations in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.
Louis, the fact that repair has become more difficult over the last decade doesn’t mean your actions have been ineffective.
It might seem that way to you at times, but your actions have contributed to the actions and thinking of many people, myself included.
Thanks to your actions, I think even today the situation is slightly better than it would otherwise have been.
I am most of the way through my EE+CS degree and I know many of my colleagues feel the same as me. Wherever my career takes me, I want to do my best to influence the industry away from this anti-consumer, unsustainable BS.