(Note: The Damn You ___! series will likely start running weekly on Wednesdays. I just got a little itchy and posted this one early.)
Planned obsolescence isn’t a good thing. I think we, as consumers can all agree on
that. Most of us can name off at least one
time when we’ve been the victim of greed that has forced us to either upgrade
something that we didn’t want to and there was no need to or has forced us to
go without a feature that should have been included from the get go. Several examples of this are very obvious
from Apple in both their iPhone and Macbook Pro line ups, as well as from
Google. First, let’s address the issue
with Apple.
Apple hasn’t ever been a company to take great care of its
legacy hardware users. They have shown
often that they have no problem with leaving older (read: more than one
generation past the present hardware) computers and whatnots out to
pasture. The rationale has been that
this allows Apple to “innovate” and not be bogged down making sure their newest
idea works on all hardware, just the ‘stuff that can handle the new innovation.’ I call bullshit on this. I own a Macbook Pro. It has worked fine since I bought it three
years ago. The battery still works fine
(better than my Dell laptop’s after just one year) and I have relatively no
complaints about the rest of the laptop itself.
I do have complaints about the operating systems changes, though. I understand that it is my choice to not
upgrade to the latest OS, which I won’t because I would lose functionality and
gain little if nothing in return for my work needs, but I hate that many of the
nifty bells and whistles aren’t on my OS for no other reason than ‘we don’t
feel like supporting it.’
On the laptop, I’m mostly ok with this as it is easier to
circumvent or have other work-arounds for the various issues. On a phone, however, it is not nearly as
easy. With the newest release of the iOS
system to 6.0, lots of great new functionality will be introduced to some of
the iPhones on the market. Conveniently,
most of the newest, coolest stuff won’t be available on phones that are two
years old or more. If I honestly
believed that the newest iPhone was going to have hardware so much more
advanced from the iPhone 4, I could see why some features wouldn’t work. But I don’t.
I don’t believe for one minute that the iPhone 4 is so old and decrepit
so as to not work. Why? Because the iPhone 4S isn’t THAT advanced
compared to the original iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S will be getting most if not
all of these new cool features. Apple is
artificially keeping older hardware from working so you will buy a new
phone. I get that Apple makes the
majority of its money on hardware sales, but it is just wrong to withhold features
simply because they can. But you know
what, I bet this is the bestselling iPhone yet because people won’t care that
their old hardware still works. They
just want something new. American
consumerism at its best.
Google also has a problem with this planned obsolescence,
but they aren’t the ones causing it.
Rather, it is the cellphone carriers and the handset makers causing the
problem. Google puts out their operating
system Android for free to anyone that wants it, much cheaper than Microsoft
does for its Windows Phone 7 OS. The
problem with the Google stuff and Android phones in general is that Google is
constantly updating the OS. There may be
two or more major updates to Android in any given year. Great, right?
It is if the cellphone carrier and the handset maker actually push the
new update to your phone. Also great if
you have a phone that is actually powerful enough and has enough hardware to
handle the new software. Here, Google is
like the mad scientist in the back room making new discoveries and the middle
man peddling the wares is purposefully holding back goods so he can sell his
existing inventory full well knowing the scientist has just made something
vastly superior. I’d like to blame just
the phone companies and handset makers, but Google really should shoulder some
of the blame. If they had a yearly
iteration cycle for the new OS that everyone could count on, handset makers
would have more impetus to make better, longer lived devices from the get
go. The way it is now, you walk into a
Verizon, buy the newest phone with all the features and before you walk out the
door it is obsolete. Again, I call
bullshit on this system.
I don’t think that capitalism is the root of the issue here,
but rather greed. It is still possible
to desire making a good profit for shareholders while providing an excellent
product and then standing behind that product.
The idea that drawing a line in the sand arbitrarily between the haves
and have-nots when realistically there is barely and difference is greedy at
best and deplorable at worst. Oh
well. Both companies will continue down
this path with likely little pushback from the public at large and I don’t see
anything changing any time soon.
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