right to repair, planned obsolescence, declining quality

V

version

Well-known member
I've bought two new phones recently and both batteries were fucked out of the box. The latest one's supposed to have a 22-day life, it's a dumbphone with no wifi or anything like that, I haven't made a single call on it and it's lasted two days...
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
version said:
I've bought two new phones recently and both batteries were fucked out of the box. The latest one's supposed to have a 22-day battery life, it's a dumbphone with no wifi or anything like that, I haven't made a single call on it and it's lasted two days...
Click to expand...
What's the dumbphone? Sounds like the kind of thing I want
 
V

version

Well-known member
mixed_biscuits said:
What's the dumbphone? Sounds like the kind of thing I want
Click to expand...

It's another term for a feature phone, i.e. something like a Nokia with no wifi, camera, etc. This is the one I bought, and it would be great if the fucking battery worked as advertised.


"22 days of standby from a single charge," and I got two...

Apparently they're not actually "Nokia" anymore as some other company bought them out and kept the name. I'll have to try send it back and look for something else.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
version said:
It's another term for a feature phone, i.e. something like a Nokia with no wifi, camera, etc. This is the one I bought, and it would be great if the fucking battery worked as advertised.


"22 days of standby from a single charge," and I got two... Jokers.

Apparently they're not actually Nokia anymore and it's some other company who bought them out and still uses the name. I'll have to try send it back and keep looking for a new one.
Click to expand...
Wish it didn't have a screen
 
sufi

sufi

lala
sufi said:
just got a message from EE to let me know that they are ceasing 3g so my antediluvian handset will no longer connect to the internet 🤷‍♂️
Click to expand...
i mean i'm not sure if i give a shit since i got the handset specifically so i don't have the internets following me around in my backpocket 24/7 (& typing with yr thumbs wtf) occasionally i will conjure a "wifi hotspot" which can be handy i guess

But it is a shame that no more 3g means that loads of old hardware will no longer be useable
 
V

version

Well-known member
I've had to put my SIM in a knackered smartphone I got off my brother. I got a two-factor text and it's already asking me to rate their messenger app. The amount of shit on these phones is ridiculous.

Been trying to get a wifi card working for months to no avail too, so I currently have this stupid smartphone USB tethered to a desktop as well. A sorry state of affairs.
 
V

version

Well-known member
sufi said:
But it is a shame that no more 3g means that loads of old hardware will no longer be useable
Click to expand...

I wouldn't get so annoyed about this sort of thing if I felt we were getting genuine improvements, but so much of what comes down the pipeline seems to be a downgrade: it costs more, it's more intrusive, it's more of a pain to navigate and it doesn't last as long. I just want things which last, which work and which leave you alone, but apparently that's beyond our present capabilities.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
version said:
I wouldn't get so annoyed about this sort of thing if I felt we were getting genuine improvements, but so much of what comes down the pipeline seems to be a downgrade: it costs more, it's more intrusive, it's more of a pain to navigate and it doesn't last as long. I just want things which last, which work and which leave you alone, but apparently that's beyond our present capabilities.
Click to expand...
Douglas Adams was writing about appliances that had been endowed with enough intelligence to develop existential angst but were still shit at what they were supposed to do 45 years ago.
 
Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
version said:
I wouldn't get so annoyed about this sort of thing if I felt we were getting genuine improvements, but so much of what comes down the pipeline seems to be a downgrade: it costs more, it's more intrusive, it's more of a pain to navigate and it doesn't last as long. I just want things which last, which work and which leave you alone, but apparently that's beyond our present capabilities.
Click to expand...
There was some notorious example of a product that was designed so well (lasts long, consumer only needs one, high satisfaction, etc) that the company actually suffered because of it, long-term. It all seems, to me, to be a toxic byproduct of the laws and conventions around for-profit corps (perhaps especially publicly traded ones) where shareholder profit needs to be optimized, and where growth strategies are just perpetually open-ended (maybe with some examples of shareholder-approved sunsets).

Anyway, as a rule it often goes against present free market logic to design a product so well that the market's demand is definitively satisfied - from a growth perspective, its like you're truncating your market growth. Rather its more like getting your market hooked on an open-ended roadmap of product improvements.
 
V

version

Well-known member
Clinamenic said:
There was some notorious example of a product that was designed so well (lasts long, consumer only needs one, high satisfaction, etc) that the company actually suffered because of it, long-term. It all seems, to me, to be a toxic byproduct of the laws and conventions around for-profit corps (perhaps especially publicly traded ones) where shareholder profit needs to be optimized, and where growth strategies are just perpetually open-ended (maybe with some examples of shareholder-approved sunsets).

Anyway, as a rule it often goes against present free market logic to design a product so well that the market's demand is definitively satisfied - from a growth perspective, its like you're truncating your market growth. Rather its more like getting your market hooked on an open-ended roadmap of product improvements.
Click to expand...

There's a compromise where you don't completely shaft the customer though. The phone I was using up until buying the last two was great, lasted about four years and I didn't mind having to replace it at that point. The two I've bought since have arrived faulty, one of them direct from the manufacturer. All three were from the same company, so it seems there's been a dip in quality, unless I happen to have been incredibly unlucky and somehow ended up with two outliers or knockoffs.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Clinamenic said:
There was some notorious example of a product that was designed so well (lasts long, consumer only needs one, high satisfaction, etc) that the company actually suffered because of it, long-term. It all seems, to me, to be a toxic byproduct of the laws and conventions around for-profit corps (perhaps especially publicly traded ones) where shareholder profit needs to be optimized, and where growth strategies are just perpetually open-ended (maybe with some examples of shareholder-approved sunsets).

Anyway, as a rule it often goes against present free market logic to design a product so well that the market's demand is definitively satisfied - from a growth perspective, its like you're truncating your market growth. Rather its more like getting your market hooked on an open-ended roadmap of product improvements.
Click to expand...
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.[1] Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips,[2] incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva,[3] 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.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
mixed_biscuits said:
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.[1] Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips,[2] incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva,[3] 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.
Click to expand...
*Byronic disgust*
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
mixed_biscuits said:
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.[1] Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips,[2] incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva,[3] 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.
Click to expand...

W.S. Burroughs was HUGE on the lightbulb conspiracy

BIG TOPIC in "The Adding Machine", etc.,
 
V

version

Well-known member
william_kent said:
W.S. Burroughs was HUGE on the lightbulb conspiracy

BIG TOPIC in "The Adding Machine", etc.,
Click to expand...

Pynchon's where I first came across it. As Tea alluded to, there's a story in Gravity's Rainbow about an immortal light bulb called Byron who runs up against them and tries to unite all the bulbs on the grid.


So Byron dreams of his Guerrilla Strike Force, gonna get Herbert Hoover, Stanley Baldwin, all of them, right in the face with one coordinated blast. . . .

Is Byron in for a rude awakening! There is already an organization, a human one, known as "Phoebus," the international light-bulb cartel, headquartered in Switzerland. Run pretty much by International GE, Osram, and Associated Electrical Industries of Britain, which are in turn owned 100%, 29% and 46%, respectively, by the General Electric Company in America. Phoebus fixes the prices and determines the operational lives of all the bulbs in the world, from Brazil to Japan to Holland (although Philips in Holland is the mad dog of the cartel, apt at any time to cut loose and sow disaster throughout the great Combi-nation). Given this state of general repression, there seems noplace for a newborn Baby Bulb to start but at the bottom.

But Phoebus doesn't know yet that Byron is immortal.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top