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> There's an ebb and flow to these things. If new technology is making my headset obsolete every year, designing a 10-year headset makes no sense. Once headset
by tablespoon 6y ago
> There's an ebb and flow to these things. If new technology is making my headset obsolete every year, designing a 10-year headset makes no sense. Once headset technology settles down and people realize they keep buying the same thing over and over, then the customer starts to value reliability more. Unfortunately customer behavior updating to the reality that underlying technology of a product has stopped evolving lags by a few years, but it happens.
However, business really like the income that comes from regular tech refreshes. Once technology stops making their products obsolete after N years, they'll often start designing them to reduce reliability (e.g. going for cheap parts that will fail faster) or incorporating planned obsolescence features.
IIRC, this is what's happened to consumer printers and many types of home appliances.