That’s not how planned obsolescence actually functions, nor is planned obsolescence as awful a practice as it sounds like it is. It’s just a way to lower costs by producing things that don’t need to last, meaning you don’t need to over-design them or put things in place that would unnecessarily spike prices.
Nor is it just a free market thing. Tanks (yeah the big military machines) are planned to render themselves obsolete, as are most policies, designs and theories. Things that are expected to break or be outdated are almost always designed to fit to a specific limit at which point they don’t really need to run anymore. It’s why things like the T34 weren’t designed to run for fifteen years and it’s why phones have a short lifespan. It’s why people who make policy pretty much never make policy that extends beyond their own terms, hence why the only consistent states are un-democratic ones.
So if we’re looking at something like an iPhone, you’re spending the extra money for the apps and the design. If you wanted a phone, you’d buy a practical phone. But the inbuilt technology on your iPhone isn’t going to be good enough for the apps that will come out in 3-5 years, meaning that making it last more than five years is a huge waste of money since the extras you bought it for aren’t going to work a the end of its lifespan anyway. You’re going to have to update it. If that doesn’t interest you, buy something that isn’t designed to be a cutting edge piece of tech and is instead designed to last.
(My first reply crashed my phone lol topical)
The difference between tanks being obsolete and consumer products should be obvious and honestly I don’t even know what lead you to make this comparison.
Consumers buy something because they think it’s high quality and built to last. It is in a consumer’s interest for something to be built well, not die from being dropped once when it doesn’t have to.
Planned obsolescence in the electronics industry is entirely unecessary and it’s crazy people haven’t made it more of an issue, considering it’s not in anyone’s interest but the company. This is not done to “keep costs down”, but go ahead and try to tell me Apple products are cheap. It’s done to bring in as much profit as possible at the expense of innovation. Apple has actually admitted to this funnily enough, but people like yourself who somehow feel the need to defend multinationals don’t care.
It is also bad for the environment: Consumers aren’t the only losers here, the environment is too. “Due to a lack of clear economic incentives and methods, globally only 12% of smartphone upgrades involve older devices being sold or traded for the new one. This means ecologically damaging devices end up languishing in drawers and eventually landfills.”
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