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Indeed. I have a backpack made by Tumi, it was my brother's bag from around 2001 or so. When he passed away in 2005 I inherited it, and a few years ago I finall

Indeed. I have a backpack made by Tumi, it was my brother's bag from around 2001 or so. When he passed away in 2005 I inherited it, and a few years ago I finally noticed it had a little RFID tag and barcoded serial number embedded in it. I went on their website and looked it up, he had never registered it. So I registered it and found that it has a lifetime warranty, even though they stopped making that model years ago, and if it ever has a defect they will fix it or replace it with an equivalent bag. That's some damn fine customer service right there, and it's a shame Google's support is falling on its face when compared to furniture and backpack companies. This article is one more piece of news that makes me glad I excised Google from my life almost completely (I haven't found an alternative to my Nvidia Shield TV yet, but I'm looking).

Hydraulix989 10y ago
Well, with furniture and backpack companies, the tolerance (or "forgiveness") for user error is a lot higher. If you accidentally drop your backpack, it doesn't have a screen or anything that shatters and requires a $150 part replacement. You can't even drop furniture in day-to-day use, really. Moreover, your backpack doesn't have a battery or anything that slowly but surely degrades over time anyways with a meager five-year lifespan. I can't imagine too many ways that a backpack or piece of furniture can become accidentally damaged by "user error." Remember, so many people try to misrepresent their own mistakes (perhaps because they didn't understand what happened or they didn't realize it was their own fault) as product defects that the phone manufacturers all had to add things like internal liquid sensors to their devices. On another note, many of my non-technical friends conflate Android OS software problems with device defects (e.g. "my phone died" actually meant that they had 300 running processes because they never learned how to close running apps on Android -- which to be fair is a PRETTY buried feature that doesn't lend itself well to user discovery; the number of people I see that don't realize they have to manually close apps on their Android phone is shocking). It's probably the reason there are so many ways to buy "refurbished" devices. Needless to say, if Apple or Google started honoring a lifetime warranty, they'd lose a lot of money pretty quickly.
- morganvachon 10y ago
  > "my phone died" actually meant that they had 300 running processes because they never learned how to close running apps on Android -- which to be fair is a PRETTY buried feature that doesn't lend itself well to user discovery; the number of people I see that don't realize they have to manually close apps on their Android phone is shocking Maybe on a 2011 device with 256MB of memory and Gingerbread this was true, but memory management hasn't been a problem on Android phones for a few years now. The memory management has improved in parallel with the amount of available memory, to the point where the device can actually perform worse if the user goes mucking about and closing apps manually. With Marshmallow and Nougat it has become even more efficient.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Eh, not really. On my Moto G 2014 you can consistently crash the system UI if you have more than 2 or 3 apps open, and any further app you open also just dies. The OS already uses 950M of its 1GB of RAM.
    - morganvachon 10y ago
      Interesting, I had a 2nd generation Moto G that would only bog down if I had a misbehaving/badly coded app running (Pandora, and basically any app or game that contained ads). It was a surprisingly peppy device for $100.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        Sure that was a Moto G? The 2nd Gen Moto G was sold even at the end of its lifetime for 200$.
        morganvachon 10y ago
        Yep, I got it from Consumer Cellular back when I used their service, their regular price was $150 but I got it on a promo for $100. That's without a contract, in fact I called and had them carrier-unlock it for me a few weeks after I bought it.

Hydraulix989 10y ago

Well, with furniture and backpack companies, the tolerance (or "forgiveness") for user error is a lot higher. If you accidentally drop your backpack, it doesn't have a screen or anything that shatters and requires a $150 part replacement. You can't even drop furniture in day-to-day use, really. Moreover, your backpack doesn't have a battery or anything that slowly but surely degrades over time anyways with a meager five-year lifespan. I can't imagine too many ways that a backpack or piece of furniture can become accidentally damaged by "user error." Remember, so many people try to misrepresent their own mistakes (perhaps because they didn't understand what happened or they didn't realize it was their own fault) as product defects that the phone manufacturers all had to add things like internal liquid sensors to their devices. On another note, many of my non-technical friends conflate Android OS software problems with device defects (e.g. "my phone died" actually meant that they had 300 running processes because they never learned how to close running apps on Android -- which to be fair is a PRETTY buried feature that doesn't lend itself well to user discovery; the number of people I see that don't realize they have to manually close apps on their Android phone is shocking). It's probably the reason there are so many ways to buy "refurbished" devices. Needless to say, if Apple or Google started honoring a lifetime warranty, they'd lose a lot of money pretty quickly.

morganvachon 10y ago
> "my phone died" actually meant that they had 300 running processes because they never learned how to close running apps on Android -- which to be fair is a PRETTY buried feature that doesn't lend itself well to user discovery; the number of people I see that don't realize they have to manually close apps on their Android phone is shocking Maybe on a 2011 device with 256MB of memory and Gingerbread this was true, but memory management hasn't been a problem on Android phones for a few years now. The memory management has improved in parallel with the amount of available memory, to the point where the device can actually perform worse if the user goes mucking about and closing apps manually. With Marshmallow and Nougat it has become even more efficient.
- kuschku 10y ago
  Eh, not really. On my Moto G 2014 you can consistently crash the system UI if you have more than 2 or 3 apps open, and any further app you open also just dies. The OS already uses 950M of its 1GB of RAM.
  - morganvachon 10y ago
    Interesting, I had a 2nd generation Moto G that would only bog down if I had a misbehaving/badly coded app running (Pandora, and basically any app or game that contained ads). It was a surprisingly peppy device for $100.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Sure that was a Moto G? The 2nd Gen Moto G was sold even at the end of its lifetime for 200$.
      - morganvachon 10y ago
        Yep, I got it from Consumer Cellular back when I used their service, their regular price was $150 but I got it on a promo for $100. That's without a contract, in fact I called and had them carrier-unlock it for me a few weeks after I bought it.