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>>expensive products with the property that they usually work well, but sometimes become flaky. Think a washing machine. that is a different problem, consumeri

>>expensive products with the property that they usually work well, but sometimes become flaky. Think a washing machine. that is a different problem, consumerism killed that. There used to be several media companies that focused on long term durability of "durable goods" like washing machines and such But today most people buy new appliances not when they fail but when they need to upgrade to the latest technology, or because new government regulations makes them unfeasible to use / service, or because the Calendar function on their smart fridge does not work with google cloud anymore (true story), etc...

gorbachev 3y ago
That may be true for a lot of folks, but that's not the only issue. From my experience, the biggest issue is that a lot of the appliances and other gadgets we have these days are very complex. You have to be an electrical engineers, software engineer and a mechanical engineer, or a big service company that employs all three, to be able to fix anything. Additionally it's sometimes really difficult to find service manuals for a lot of these things. If your doodat is flashing error code E-71-X1-C and the user manual you have just says "call for service", what are you going to do about it? You typically need pretty serious google-fu magic to find enough information to start figuring out what's wrong. When my dryer broke several years ago I think I found the proper service manual for it on a site that looked exactly like a SEO spam site and seriously sketchy. Downloading the PDF I was praying my anti-virus application was up-to-date.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > If your doodat is flashing error code E-71-X1-C and the user manual you have just says "call for service", what are you going to do about it? Call for service.