> I'm not being difficult. When I read "engineered to fail" that's not the impression I get from the statement. I agree with you. I think people mean something

> I'm not being difficult. When I read "engineered to fail" that's not the impression I get from the statement. I agree with you. I think people mean something else entirely, colloquially. Which is why I distinguished for clarity. I think the people who came up with the concept of "planned obsolescence" meant something entirely different to the zeitgeist meaning. That is, building something cheap with the intention of consistent replacements versus building something expensive with support/operational costs ongoing. One guarantees you return to them, the other you're just as likely to seek services elsewhere. The zeitgeist took that and morphed it into "they actively engineer/design parts that will fail after two years".