4 ms·

The examples could have been better. 486dx/sx anyone? Here the maths coprocessor was not wired up in the budget version. Yield had as much to do this as market

The examples could have been better. 486dx/sx anyone? Here the maths coprocessor was not wired up in the budget version. Yield had as much to do this as marketing. Lame Teslas. If you want auto drive and to use all those battery cells then pay extra. The mass production can be extra efficient plus upsells are possible as the customer can pay for the upgrade later. 1000 hour light bulb. The cartel of lightbulbs required bulbs to last a lot less. Worse product, more repeat sales, rigged market. The smaller chocolate bar. To hit a price point, e.g. a dollar/pound/euro the product can be made worse or smaller. The cheap board game. Times have changed, people play a board game once and it goes in the bin. Before TV the product would have been played year round and passed on to the next generation. There is no need to build a product to that standard any more. Patents expire too, this means products get worse. Changing laws. Imagine that you can no longer use bright food colours, the product gets worse. This article didn't address anything I didn't know of and made no mention of what is obvious.

walshemj 10y ago
boardgames are not getting cheaper in my experience
spqr0a1 10y ago
Light bulbs aren't such a clear example. Incandescent filaments are much more efficient at higher temperature but burn out quicker. In the general case, savings from reduced electricity cost more than offset the increased replacemet rate for bulbs in accessible fixtures.
- ohnoyoudinnt 10y ago
  > Light bulbs aren't such a clear example. Incandescent filaments are much more efficient at higher temperature but burn out quicker That's a common misperception. Early filaments could last for decades. It took a lot of work to design a filament that burned out after a certain amount of time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel "The cartel was a convenient way to lower costs and worked to standardise the life expectancy of light bulbs at 1000 hours, while at the same time raising prices without fear of competition. Members' bulbs were regularly tested and fines were levied for bulbs that lasted more than 1000 hours."
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    What about after 1939?
extrapickles 10y ago
You can get rough service lamps that last 10,000hrs but they are slightly more than 10x the price due to better construction of other non-filament parts (thicker glass, better filament support, etc). I suspect its more of a tragedy of the commons type thing with pricing. Some people when buying products always go with the cheapest initial purchase price regardless of how good of an idea it is. In other cases features beyond the industry norm can actively harm reviews of the product as too many people will misunderstand the feature. A game recently[0] let people set the max draw distance much higher than comparable games. It was blasted in reviews for being "poorly optimized". When the developers reduced the max draw distance by ~50% people started praising them for doing a good job optimizing for that patch when they actually crippled a feature. [0]: Dying Light part of http://www.pcgamer.com/what-optimization-really-means-in-games/3/ http://www.pcgamer.com/what-optimization-really-means-in-gam...

walshemj 10y ago

boardgames are not getting cheaper in my experience

spqr0a1 10y ago

Light bulbs aren't such a clear example. Incandescent filaments are much more efficient at higher temperature but burn out quicker. In the general case, savings from reduced electricity cost more than offset the increased replacemet rate for bulbs in accessible fixtures.

ohnoyoudinnt 10y ago
> Light bulbs aren't such a clear example. Incandescent filaments are much more efficient at higher temperature but burn out quicker That's a common misperception. Early filaments could last for decades. It took a lot of work to design a filament that burned out after a certain amount of time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel "The cartel was a convenient way to lower costs and worked to standardise the life expectancy of light bulbs at 1000 hours, while at the same time raising prices without fear of competition. Members' bulbs were regularly tested and fines were levied for bulbs that lasted more than 1000 hours."
- tedunangst 10y ago
  What about after 1939?

extrapickles 10y ago

You can get rough service lamps that last 10,000hrs but they are slightly more than 10x the price due to better construction of other non-filament parts (thicker glass, better filament support, etc). I suspect its more of a tragedy of the commons type thing with pricing. Some people when buying products always go with the cheapest initial purchase price regardless of how good of an idea it is. In other cases features beyond the industry norm can actively harm reviews of the product as too many people will misunderstand the feature. A game recently[0] let people set the max draw distance much higher than comparable games. It was blasted in reviews for being "poorly optimized". When the developers reduced the max draw distance by ~50% people started praising them for doing a good job optimizing for that patch when they actually crippled a feature. [0]: Dying Light part of http://www.pcgamer.com/what-optimization-really-means-in-games/3/ http://www.pcgamer.com/what-optimization-really-means-in-gam...