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Planned obsolescence [1] in the problem. Apple could certainly create modular devices designed to be used and piecemeal modified/updated indefinitely. But it's

Planned obsolescence [1] in the problem. Apple could certainly create modular devices designed to be used and piecemeal modified/updated indefinitely. But it's way more profitable to sell you a brand new phone every couple of years than it is to sell you a modular device that you could update as desired, especially if the parts/connections are standardized meaning you could foster a [normalized] third party market for batteries, screens, etc. Devices would last way longer, prices would be much lower, and it'd be unimaginably better for the environment. But Apple wouldn't make as much money, and the government's GDP growth figures wouldn't be as high. So clearly it's a terrible idea. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

vlovich123 3y ago
Modular devices aren't free in terms of engineering tradeoffs. Those interconnects to support modularity add their own unreliability (connectors that can fail more easily), weight (connectors) & increased size. Additionally, the connectors themselves have obsolescence anyway & at some point really expensive components start to be bottlenecks (e.g. upgrading the display uses a new connector or requires processing power/bandwidth that the CPU/RAM/GPU don't have etc). You see this in desktops where modularity is still fairly limited in terms of extending the lifespan of your machine - most people will buy a new computer anyway after 5 years vs trying to upgrade some components piecemeal because the new computer is cheaper / unit of performance than doing piecemeal upgrades. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_smartphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_smartphone, the modularity of the FairPhone helps it live 5-7 years. Notably that's not different from the 6-8 years that an iPhone is supported for. It's easy to blame it as planned obsolescence on the part of a single party instead of viewing it as a consequence of natural marketplace dynamics. You may of course adjust those dynamics by having the government impose a different set of constraints to have a different outcome. Politically that can be difficult though, especially in America, & it's not primarily because of the GDP but because people here generally distrust the government.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Right to Repair is a reasonable proxy for this entire topic, and it's overwhelmingly supported - 74.5% of people being in favor, 1.9% opposing. [1] The reason the government is distrusted is specifically because of issues like this. It's good for society, good for the environment, extremely widely supported, but companies like Apple lobby actively and aggressively against such progress. And they generally win. There's been some glacially slow progress at the state level, but Federal support is unsurprisingly nowhere to be seen. And you're dramatically understating the benefits of modularity. PCs are indeed the perfect example, and no - people are not replacing them every 5 years. You can see a Steam hardware survey here [2]. And that's for gamers, who are going to iterate their hardware faster than average! Even for video cards, one of the most likely to fail and most likely to be upgraded parts, the GTX 1060 (released in 2016) is the 6th most popular card, making up about 4% of all players (contrasted against 7% for the #1 card)! Without planned obsolescence, most things can last for extremely long periods of time. And those that do have, more or less, inescapably high failure rates (like old hard disk drives) can and should be standardized and able to be replaced/upgraded. [1] - https://www.waveform.com/pages/right-to-repair-april-2020-report https://www.waveform.com/pages/right-to-repair-april-2020-re... [2] - https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    I agree, repairability is more interesting requirement than modularity. You can get the former without requiring the latter & you can get the latter without achieving the former (e.g. proprietary connectors for modularity that don't have any broader adoption). As for luck of trust of government, that's an overbroad generalization as to the root of it. That's one class of reasons for a specific population group. There are others that don't share those reasons (e.g. the Bundy/BLM standoff had nothing to do with the government not implementing common sense ideas & the people involved share ideological 0 in common with those that are skeptical of the government for the reasons you mentioned).
    - somenameforme 3y ago

vlovich123 3y ago

Modular devices aren't free in terms of engineering tradeoffs. Those interconnects to support modularity add their own unreliability (connectors that can fail more easily), weight (connectors) & increased size. Additionally, the connectors themselves have obsolescence anyway & at some point really expensive components start to be bottlenecks (e.g. upgrading the display uses a new connector or requires processing power/bandwidth that the CPU/RAM/GPU don't have etc). You see this in desktops where modularity is still fairly limited in terms of extending the lifespan of your machine - most people will buy a new computer anyway after 5 years vs trying to upgrade some components piecemeal because the new computer is cheaper / unit of performance than doing piecemeal upgrades. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_smartphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_smartphone, the modularity of the FairPhone helps it live 5-7 years. Notably that's not different from the 6-8 years that an iPhone is supported for. It's easy to blame it as planned obsolescence on the part of a single party instead of viewing it as a consequence of natural marketplace dynamics. You may of course adjust those dynamics by having the government impose a different set of constraints to have a different outcome. Politically that can be difficult though, especially in America, & it's not primarily because of the GDP but because people here generally distrust the government.

somenameforme 3y ago
Right to Repair is a reasonable proxy for this entire topic, and it's overwhelmingly supported - 74.5% of people being in favor, 1.9% opposing. [1] The reason the government is distrusted is specifically because of issues like this. It's good for society, good for the environment, extremely widely supported, but companies like Apple lobby actively and aggressively against such progress. And they generally win. There's been some glacially slow progress at the state level, but Federal support is unsurprisingly nowhere to be seen. And you're dramatically understating the benefits of modularity. PCs are indeed the perfect example, and no - people are not replacing them every 5 years. You can see a Steam hardware survey here [2]. And that's for gamers, who are going to iterate their hardware faster than average! Even for video cards, one of the most likely to fail and most likely to be upgraded parts, the GTX 1060 (released in 2016) is the 6th most popular card, making up about 4% of all players (contrasted against 7% for the #1 card)! Without planned obsolescence, most things can last for extremely long periods of time. And those that do have, more or less, inescapably high failure rates (like old hard disk drives) can and should be standardized and able to be replaced/upgraded. [1] - https://www.waveform.com/pages/right-to-repair-april-2020-report https://www.waveform.com/pages/right-to-repair-april-2020-re... [2] - https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
- vlovich123 3y ago
  I agree, repairability is more interesting requirement than modularity. You can get the former without requiring the latter & you can get the latter without achieving the former (e.g. proprietary connectors for modularity that don't have any broader adoption). As for luck of trust of government, that's an overbroad generalization as to the root of it. That's one class of reasons for a specific population group. There are others that don't share those reasons (e.g. the Bundy/BLM standoff had nothing to do with the government not implementing common sense ideas & the people involved share ideological 0 in common with those that are skeptical of the government for the reasons you mentioned).
  - somenameforme 3y ago