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Advancement in tech are nowadays driven only by profit, which in turn is driven by sales, which prioritise what people are likely to pay for. People expect tech
by n0on3 6y ago
Advancement in tech are nowadays driven only by profit, which in turn is driven by sales, which prioritise what people are likely to pay for. People expect technology to be affordable and they really don't care what the effect of this is. Put competition in the mix and you get a lot of stuff that sucks because the field of battle is not the quality, is pricing and marketing.
And then stuff dies after a short time. And/or is just left forgotten because it's more broken/an annoyance than it is useful. Or, and this is key, you are stuck with it because for a mix of reasons there is no viable alternative.
One would expect that on the long run the ultimate victims of this (the users of technology) would realise that rather then the ten thousand loads of tech crap they buy they would be much better off with a bunch of stuff that actually works without annoyances for a better quality of life but people just don't. Because again, pricing and marketing.
It used to be _create value and make a profit from it_, now it's the other way around: _aim for profit and consider creating value as a cost of doing so_ (and therefore should be minimised, who gives a frack if the user is annoyed or the thing is broken as long as there is profit).
People has been even trained for decades by major products in the industry to accept that tech doesn't work/is broken/sucks. The good stuff we have exist because at some point for some small time quality became competitive advantage, then on top of that other cycles of craploads piled on.
We did this.
- LeifCarrotson 6y agoExpecting that billions of people will simultaneously act against their incentives is madness. You can't assign collective fault to "we" who did this by making bad choices individually. It's a system that has optimized itself to this end goal. I feel pretty good about my choices in comparison. I use an older, sock Android device, with simple wired headphones, so that particular issue with AirPods has never occurred to me. My laptop is a bulletproof old Thinkpad running Ubuntu LTS, which is likewise pretty reliable. Software that I have to use for work but that I expect to be crappy goes in a VM. I use this crappy software to the best of my ability to create other software and hardware that I expect to work reliably, and to do so for decades. But none of those signals and "good choices" ever feed back into better choices by the titans of our industry. When an iPhone or AirPods device uses up all the recharges available in it's battery, that shows up as profit in the numbers Apple uses to make decisions. Don't blame the victims for the situation they're prey to.
- n0on3 6y agoI don't see your point, it's obvious that among billions _some_ made better choices, but collectively it's still our choices that led to this. And I think it's pointless to blame "titans of the industry" while almost literally everyone else too buy into the same pattern, or you mean to tell that there is a _signigicant_ sum of companies in the tech industry that ships with a "quality first" mindset? I do not mean to be sarcastic, if that's your point please make a list, I would really appreciate that. And yes, I blame the victims for their/our short-sightedness, it's not like anyone forced people to buy and re-buy broken products for decades.
- pdimitar 6y ago> When an iPhone or AirPods device uses up all the recharges available in it's battery, that shows up as profit in the numbers Apple uses to make decisions. You make it sound like only the batteries in Apple devices have finite charging cycles, which is obviously not true.
- city41 6y agoAlthough I agree quite wholeheartedly with your comment and the article, I still feel it's possible to find good or at least better software out there. I recently switched to Android because it is far less buggy than iOS. I honestly think iOS is the buggiest software I've ever used. I also similarly switched from Spotify to Amazon Music Unlimited for the same reasons. I have yet to find even a single bug in AMU. It's honestly quite impressive in today's software world. I really hope more companies start to see quality and reliability as a competitive advantage. I know I'm an outlier, but I gladly pay more or switch when I find a product that is more reliable.