7 ms·

The idea in this article is sometimes true, but it completely fails to take into account the relentless march of technology. Some items, such as cell-phones or

by beloch 14y ago

The idea in this article is sometimes true, but it completely fails to take into account the relentless march of technology. Some items, such as cell-phones or laptops, will be totally obsolete within 10 years no matter how finely made they are. Other items, such as guitars, will not be obsolete since the technology isn't changing quickly, if at all. There will be new digital guitars with funky synth modes every year, but a gibson dobro will still sound like a gibson dobro in twenty years. Some things fall somewhere in between. Your grandfather's watch is a marvel of mechanical engineering that will keep time adequately for centuries if taken to a watch-shop for maintenance every few years. That maintenance will cost more than buying a new timex would, and the timex will keep far more accurate time. Timex's are disposable. When the timex's battery dies it will probably cheaper to replace it than to replace the battery. However, their function is superior for all practical purposes. Many people currently enjoy the aesthetics of mechanical watches. They're currently enjoying a major surge of collectibility, but that wasn't the case twenty years ago and it may well not be the case twenty years from now. The real trick is to figure out what can last and what should be treated as disposable. e.g. Say you're building a home theater. Amps have changed very little over the last 20 years. Preamps and receivers go obsolete every few years. If you spend $5000 on a Bryston amp it will easily last 20 years (that's how long it'll be under warranty!), but a Bryston preamp will be hopelessly unusable long before that 20 year warranty runs out. There are also big variations in short-term durability too that aren't necessarily correlated with price. e.g. Macbook air's and the new retina pro's are gorgeous pieces of engineering, but they're made to be disposable. If you spill coffee on them they're basically done. You can't remove the battery and take them apart to clean them (proprietary screws) like you can with a much cheaper laptop and Apple won't lift a finger to help you. This is a case where our perceptions of what is durable and high-quality can actually lead us to buy something that won't last as long!

megablast 14y ago
Paying too much for something works if you have no idea how to actually judge the quality of the item. I know computers and bikes, and will not pay too much for those thing, because I know the quality and I know the cost. I have no idea about cars, or houses, or shoes, so I have not way of judging the quality of these items.
- ImprovedSilence 14y ago
  Learn. Just because you don't know now, doesn't excuse you from not knowing when you go to make a purchase. There are a number of ways to acquire knowledge out there. Go get it.
  - gmac 14y ago
    To a point. But there aren't enough hours in the day to become an expert in buying everything one has to buy, and in many cases predicting the durability of something is really difficult. I guess this is in large part why brands are so valuable, as they give consumers a seemingly easy quality heuristic.
    - jamesrcole 14y ago
      I agree. Time is our most valuable resource and it's a cost/benefit matter as to whether it's worth your while looking in-depth at purchasing options for a particular type of product.
    - ryanklee 14y ago
      > enough hours in the day to become an expert in buying everything one has to buy Provided that it's usually the case that people buy far more than they strictly need to, might not some level of requisite knowledge about a product help determine whether one allows or disallows oneself from a purchasing it? I know, in my own case, that I've become increasingly wary of purchases (given a price point, say, above $50) if I haven't had enough time to understand just what the hell it is I'm buying. This runs from things like bed comforters to headphones to deck chairs to pants to video games. Generally speaking, my level of regret over a purchase is inversely proportional to the level of knowledge I had of that product and its ecosystem at the time.
    - genwin 14y ago
      You can rely on the opinions of experts for many large purchases, like cars. For smaller items it's usually good enough to look for hallmarks of quality; e.g. whether the wood in the furniture is solid.
freehunter 14y ago
As an anecdote to add to your great analysis, I know a lot of my engineering coworkers (including me) who refuse to buy new cars. I drive a 15 year old truck not because it's fuel-efficient, not because it's beautiful, not because it has all the features, and certainly not because it needs no maintenance. It's because when it does need maintenance, I can do it and it's relatively cheap and easy. It's the Timex vs pocket watch thing, except in this case the Timex is much more expensive. Repair-ability is decreasing the more computers there are installed in a car. The one new car I owned quickly became dated, even though I bought it with the latest technology (it even had a Windows Mobile USB port!). My truck doesn't have any technology to become outdated. It's the RHEL of the car world compared to the Ubuntu. Not flashy or cutting edge, but bullet-proof and easy to dig into the internals. I'd rather have something I can put 400k miles on than something with an iPod port or built-in GPS that will be worthless when it hits 150k.
- genwin 14y ago
  Good advice I got: "A high-tech car means high-tech repair bills". I drive a minivan from the utilitarian days when they still had a spare tire. A cassette deck device that plugs into a modern music player works fine. My external GPS will always be current too.
- roc 14y ago
  Cars are a good example of why "built to last" doesn't make universal sense. We don't make trucks like we did 15 years ago, because we know what happens to the human body inside a rigid metal shell during a collision. We know that we can design engines and transmissions that will keep you on the road better, keep you out of more accidents and at least halve your fuel bill. And these gains will trivially outweigh the higher costs for maintenance, repair costs and increased frequency of replacement. Similarly with major appliances like refrigerators, furnaces and hot water heaters. It's not at all uncommon to see people with older versions of those appliances that are 30+ years old, still tickin and trivial to repair and maintain. But they're so horribly inefficient that even if you replace that classic with a modern model that will fall apart the day after its warranty expires, you can save so much more money in the interim that you'll still be ahead after you replace it. Now, I'm not arguing that you should go out and buy the latest. Or that aiming for longevity and repairability is never right. I'm just saying that there are trade-offs when something is "designed to last" and "easy to repair". And, particularly when moving parts and electronics are involved, those trade-offs can cost more in the long run.
dllthomas 14y ago
> However, their function is superior for all practical purposes. These days, when everyone has a pocket-watch in their pocket, "jewelry" is more of the function of a wristwatch than perhaps ever before. A $10 timex is inferior for this practical purpose, however much better it is at actual timekeeping.
pbreit 14y ago
You're probably both right but the OP is more interesting because people generally subscribe to your point of view. Which is the whole reason the OP's post needed to be written.
antonioevans 14y ago
Why do people say Apple Computers aren't able to be modified? Go on Amazon/Ebay. Find the screwdrivers. It's a computer not Fort Knox.
- shiftpgdn 14y ago
  This was true for everything up until the latest batch of MacBook Pros. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228070/Retina_MacBook_Pro_least_repairable_notebook_ever_says_iFixit http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228070/Retina_MacBoo... I'll continue to use my five year old BlackBook. I just wish it could take more than 4GB of ram.
tripzilch 14y ago
> You can't remove the battery and take them apart to clean them (proprietary screws) Huh. I've never really looked at a MacBook Air that closely, but why does it need proprietary screws?

by beloch 14y ago

megablast 14y ago

Paying too much for something works if you have no idea how to actually judge the quality of the item. I know computers and bikes, and will not pay too much for those thing, because I know the quality and I know the cost. I have no idea about cars, or houses, or shoes, so I have not way of judging the quality of these items.

ImprovedSilence 14y ago
Learn. Just because you don't know now, doesn't excuse you from not knowing when you go to make a purchase. There are a number of ways to acquire knowledge out there. Go get it.
- gmac 14y ago
  To a point. But there aren't enough hours in the day to become an expert in buying everything one has to buy, and in many cases predicting the durability of something is really difficult. I guess this is in large part why brands are so valuable, as they give consumers a seemingly easy quality heuristic.
  - jamesrcole 14y ago
    I agree. Time is our most valuable resource and it's a cost/benefit matter as to whether it's worth your while looking in-depth at purchasing options for a particular type of product.
  - ryanklee 14y ago
    > enough hours in the day to become an expert in buying everything one has to buy Provided that it's usually the case that people buy far more than they strictly need to, might not some level of requisite knowledge about a product help determine whether one allows or disallows oneself from a purchasing it? I know, in my own case, that I've become increasingly wary of purchases (given a price point, say, above $50) if I haven't had enough time to understand just what the hell it is I'm buying. This runs from things like bed comforters to headphones to deck chairs to pants to video games. Generally speaking, my level of regret over a purchase is inversely proportional to the level of knowledge I had of that product and its ecosystem at the time.
  - genwin 14y ago
    You can rely on the opinions of experts for many large purchases, like cars. For smaller items it's usually good enough to look for hallmarks of quality; e.g. whether the wood in the furniture is solid.

freehunter 14y ago

As an anecdote to add to your great analysis, I know a lot of my engineering coworkers (including me) who refuse to buy new cars. I drive a 15 year old truck not because it's fuel-efficient, not because it's beautiful, not because it has all the features, and certainly not because it needs no maintenance. It's because when it does need maintenance, I can do it and it's relatively cheap and easy. It's the Timex vs pocket watch thing, except in this case the Timex is much more expensive. Repair-ability is decreasing the more computers there are installed in a car. The one new car I owned quickly became dated, even though I bought it with the latest technology (it even had a Windows Mobile USB port!). My truck doesn't have any technology to become outdated. It's the RHEL of the car world compared to the Ubuntu. Not flashy or cutting edge, but bullet-proof and easy to dig into the internals. I'd rather have something I can put 400k miles on than something with an iPod port or built-in GPS that will be worthless when it hits 150k.

genwin 14y ago
Good advice I got: "A high-tech car means high-tech repair bills". I drive a minivan from the utilitarian days when they still had a spare tire. A cassette deck device that plugs into a modern music player works fine. My external GPS will always be current too.
roc 14y ago
Cars are a good example of why "built to last" doesn't make universal sense. We don't make trucks like we did 15 years ago, because we know what happens to the human body inside a rigid metal shell during a collision. We know that we can design engines and transmissions that will keep you on the road better, keep you out of more accidents and at least halve your fuel bill. And these gains will trivially outweigh the higher costs for maintenance, repair costs and increased frequency of replacement. Similarly with major appliances like refrigerators, furnaces and hot water heaters. It's not at all uncommon to see people with older versions of those appliances that are 30+ years old, still tickin and trivial to repair and maintain. But they're so horribly inefficient that even if you replace that classic with a modern model that will fall apart the day after its warranty expires, you can save so much more money in the interim that you'll still be ahead after you replace it. Now, I'm not arguing that you should go out and buy the latest. Or that aiming for longevity and repairability is never right. I'm just saying that there are trade-offs when something is "designed to last" and "easy to repair". And, particularly when moving parts and electronics are involved, those trade-offs can cost more in the long run.

dllthomas 14y ago

> However, their function is superior for all practical purposes. These days, when everyone has a pocket-watch in their pocket, "jewelry" is more of the function of a wristwatch than perhaps ever before. A $10 timex is inferior for this practical purpose, however much better it is at actual timekeeping.

pbreit 14y ago

You're probably both right but the OP is more interesting because people generally subscribe to your point of view. Which is the whole reason the OP's post needed to be written.

antonioevans 14y ago

Why do people say Apple Computers aren't able to be modified? Go on Amazon/Ebay. Find the screwdrivers. It's a computer not Fort Knox.

shiftpgdn 14y ago
This was true for everything up until the latest batch of MacBook Pros. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228070/Retina_MacBook_Pro_least_repairable_notebook_ever_says_iFixit http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228070/Retina_MacBoo... I'll continue to use my five year old BlackBook. I just wish it could take more than 4GB of ram.

tripzilch 14y ago

> You can't remove the battery and take them apart to clean them (proprietary screws) Huh. I've never really looked at a MacBook Air that closely, but why does it need proprietary screws?