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Built-in software ‘death dates’ are sending thousands of schools’ Chromebooks to the recycling bin (www.mercurynews.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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There are few things quite as emblematic of late stage capitalism than the concept of "planned obsolescence".

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

but to actually provide a compromise leading to an overall better product.

Could you elaborate a bit more on that?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

For incandescent lightbulbs, his point was that bulbs can burn fast and bright or low and slow, and standardizing on a lifespan of 1000 hours was a sweet spot between performance and longevity. For example, it makes 60W bulbs from different manufacturers more interchangeable and less prone to tricky marketing gimmicks like a "long life" 60W bulb that's dimmer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Thank you for explaining this concept. I still don't see how it can be considered planned obsolescence, though. It looks more like a matter of optimizing the output and doing a tradeoff for more performance.

I see planned obsolescence as artificially limiting the longevity or repairability of a product, without any benefit at all, but with the intention of making it less durable. A good example could be locked smartphones without updates.

But perhaps, the definition of planned obsolescence is broader than i think.