4 ms·

I think that, for reasons that are various but ultimately just different flavors of the same reason, this seems to be the case for high end anything. My 14 yea

I think that, for reasons that are various but ultimately just different flavors of the same reason, this seems to be the case for high end anything. My 14 year old Kia Soul isn't in the shop nearly as often as any of the much younger midrange and high-end cars my friends typically drive. My $75 bottom-of-the-line Seiko 5 wristwatch doesn't need nearly as much maintenance as my old boss's Rolex or my dad's Breitling. (And a $5 quartz watch would require still less maintenance and keep better time too.) Our fancy Breville toaster oven seems to be reflowing the solder in its own circuit boards, and my parents' fancy Bosch laundry machines need to be replaced every 5 years, while our cheapo unit works fine and is older than some of my colleagues at work. I'm guessing it's just that trying to pack more fancy features into a product means there's more to break. Or, e.g., if you've got a higher-end laptop then it might have higher-performance parts that generate more heat and degrade the plastic more quickly. Or they might have tried to distinguish themselves by using materials that aren't typically used for a reason. Stainless steel cars, anyone?

tombert 2y ago
I agree with everything, but I would like to introduce another variable: economies of scale. There are more-or-less objectively correct ways to do a lot of things reliably, to a point where they’re kind of boring. Since they are somewhat objective, most companies use them as the default and the prices can get lower and lower because they’re making more and more. When a company purposefully tries the differentiate themselves, that inherently means that they cannot benefit from the same economies of scale, which in turn means higher prices have to be baked in. Sometimes that’s fine, I think Apple generally makes solid products for example, but a lot of the time this differentiation is just “different for the sake of being different”.
dehrmann 2y ago
> midrange and high-end cars my friends typically drive I take it they don't drive Lexuses.

tombert 2y ago

I agree with everything, but I would like to introduce another variable: economies of scale. There are more-or-less objectively correct ways to do a lot of things reliably, to a point where they’re kind of boring. Since they are somewhat objective, most companies use them as the default and the prices can get lower and lower because they’re making more and more. When a company purposefully tries the differentiate themselves, that inherently means that they cannot benefit from the same economies of scale, which in turn means higher prices have to be baked in. Sometimes that’s fine, I think Apple generally makes solid products for example, but a lot of the time this differentiation is just “different for the sake of being different”.

dehrmann 2y ago

> midrange and high-end cars my friends typically drive I take it they don't drive Lexuses.