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I used to cynically think that things breaking down over time was mostly a choice for built-in obsolescence. After doing some real physical product design thoug

• Aurornis 2y ago
  Spending time in a company that designs and manufactures real products will cure anyone of this conspiracy theory. There’s probably an exception for companies that don’t have any warranty and don’t have to suffer returns (e.g. the stuff you buy from Temu). Any company that has to build a reputation and suffer the economic consequences of warranty claims will not be doing anything to intentionally make their products break down over time. Once you’re close to the engineering side of physical products you also realize how hard it would be to make products that break down precisely after the warranty period is up. Most failure modes get spread out over a very long time (years/decades). Attempts at intentional obsolescence would start cutting into your warranty period very easily.
  • NullPrefix 2y ago
    Do you think the fact that new cars have engines that are not rebuildable but only replaceable is just a coincidence? With every year car manufacturers get more insight in how and when things break, thus allowing the use of more plastic parts in the engine bay
    • SR2Z 2y ago
      It's not a coincidence - new cars have turbochargers and electronic engine control that provide huge performance/efficiency gains and necessarily are harder to repair. Your average shitty 4-banger from the 80s or 90s is not remotely comparable to a new engine - in almost every respect (including reliability!) the new one is better.
      • NullPrefix 2y ago
        New engines also have thin blocks, which cannot be honed
        • Peanuts99 2y ago
          New engines don't ever need to be honed. You can change the performance parameters in software easily enough.
          • NullPrefix 2y ago
            honing is part of rebuild
            • SR2Z 2y ago
              Yes, and who exactly is going to rebuild a $2000 engine instead of buying a new one? The labor costs ALONE make that a horrible idea for anyone who isn't a mechanic already - and if an engine lasts ten years the depreciation on the car is intense enough that it doesn't matter.
              • NullPrefix 2y ago
                I doubt you could buy a new engine for $2k. And this whole thing that you are arguing for, it's called throwaway products
      • marcus0x62 2y ago
        Turbochargers date back to the 1920s, and I'd rather troubleshoot a modern EFI/GDI system than a carburetor any day of the week.
        • SR2Z 2y ago
          Sure they're old, but my understanding is that outside of diesels and aircraft they were too fiddly and unreliable to put in common use.
    • Spooky23 2y ago
      Almost any car can go 200,000 miles these days and exceptions (Hyundai/Kia engines, Nissan transmissions) are well known and excoriated. Pre OBD2 cars just didn’t do that. 100k was a significant milestone for the life of the car. Today, it’s a preventative maintenance milestone. Shitty plastic parts aren’t a feature of modern cars, just lousy companies. I had a 1991 Dodge Spirit in college and high school that had a little plastic part in the distributor that broke when it got hot. When it did, the car would just stop if you hit a puddle or turned right quickly. It did so enough that I kept two spares in the trunk. One time the car died on the ramp from the GW Bridge to the West Side Drive. I just stopped on the ramp and fixed it, pissing off hundreds of people in the process.
      • NullPrefix 2y ago
        >Almost any car can go 200,000 miles these days and exceptions Doubt that >Pre OBD2 cars just didn’t do that In Eastern Europe, if the car has 200k-300k km on the odomoter, it only means one thing - the odometer is turned back. Pre OBD2 doing 500k and up is pretty normal here. >little plastic part in the distributor Distributor was always plastic, afaik. I'm talking about plastic water pumps on the new BMWs
        • WrongAssumption 2y ago
          "How Many Miles Does a Car Last? The Bureau of Transportation indicates that the average age across the board for vehicles still on the road is just over 11 years according to Autotrader, and the average may be approaching 12 years. Standard cars in this day and age are expected to keep running up to 200,000 miles, while cars with electric engines are expected to last for up to 300,000 miles." https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a32758625/how-many-miles-does-a-car-last/# https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a32758625/how-many-mil...
        • kube-system 2y ago
          Old BMWs have plastic water pumps. That’s hardly something new.
      • shermantanktop 2y ago
  • hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago
    The cost of improved quality still need only offset the cost of returns within the warranty period and opinion on reasonable product lifetime though. At some point the cost of better quality will be greater than the profit margin a company is willing to accept and a consumer is willing to pay, but it’s in the companies best interest to get that as close to a number that passes the pub test (e.g., an ‘untentional’ bug bricking the firmware the day after warrantee expires) I’m not convinced some of my very expensive smart products aren’t intentionally degrading over time, given fw is introducing more functional bugs.
  • eviks 2y ago
    > Any company that has to build a reputation and suffer the economic consequences of warranty claims What are the economic consequences of warranty claims if you products are cheapened to fail after the warranty expires? Have you not heard of enough of penny-pinching electronics fails (a device worth hundreds $ failing due to low quality part worth cents)?
    • shermantanktop 2y ago
      I think the point is that Hanlon’s Razor applies here. Though there are definitely cases like this, I’m not sure how one could prove that the penny-pincher was intentionally oblivious to the damage from failure.
    • margalabargala 2y ago
      The argument is, cheapening your products to break after the warranty expired is sufficiently hard that it would result in plenty of products breaking before the warranty expires.
      • eviks 2y ago
        It's not rocket science First, you're not blind - you can test your product to see what the "plenty" is. Second, many components have rated use, so it's easy to estimate mean time to fail and pick the one beyond the warranty period with whatever buffer you like. It's not like you need seconds level of precision here!
        • stouset 2y ago
          Might I suggest reading about the normal distribution? Or, I don’t know, perhaps giving slightly greater consideration to the people in this thread who’ve actually worked on physical device engineering?
          • eviks 2y ago
            The level of consideration matches the level of argumentation, e.g., it's obvious you failed in your interpretative nitpicking on the word "mean" and think "reading about the normal distribution" means anything in this context.
  • Marsymars 2y ago
    I agree with your overall sentiment, but I can't help but feel that when companies offer single-year warranties it's because they haven't put in the engineering to keep the failure rate down over what's actually a reasonable-for-the-consumer lifespan for the product.
    • jwagenet 2y ago
      Or perhaps a manufacturer has determined the customer isn’t willing to pay a premium for the engineering or material costs required to increase lifespan.
  • Salgat 2y ago
    When peoplespeak of planned obsolescence, they're discussing how companies pay the bare minimum to make a part that functions within the warranty period. They aren't doing it to fail the part prematurely, they'd doing it to pinch pennies in the manufacturing costs.
• NullPrefix 2y ago
  >it's really difficult to build things to last A lot of depends on where your price point is. Do you compete with Temu or do you sell expensive things. People rarely expect cheap things to last, but if you don't compete on being the cheapest, than the product is expected to be made to last
  • klysm 2y ago
    I'm saying even when cost isn't the motivating factor, it's _still_ difficult to build things to really last, especially when there are moving parts.
• desdenova 2y ago
  Obsolescence doesn't exist because a comically evil mastermind designs things to break. It exists because capitalism favors profits over anything else. A lower quality component is cheaper than a higher quality one that would last longer, so that's what ends up being mass produced, and that's what you, as a product designer with no power over the entirety of the production pipeline, has to work with.
  • guhidalg 2y ago
    You are assuming that a product designer needs the product to last as long as possible given our current knowledge of physics, chemistry, engineering, and manufacturing at the moment. Most of the time, that's just not necessary. Things break, and if you can make some money off of them before they break then we can keep the cycle going. Customers would happily spend the same amount of money again after some time if they expect an improved product (for proof, see every subscription service).
  • tbrownaw 2y ago
    Well, also it turns out that most people won't pay that much extra for something to last longer.
    • entropi 2y ago
      Also paying extra does not in any way mean you will get any better quality these days. It is indeed a market for lemons.
    • AngryData 2y ago
      It might if there was an actual reliable correlation between the price of a product and its longevity. But many times the shittiest products will slap on some marketing materials about it being extra heavy duty or something, or design it to appear like a more reliable competing product, but charge more for it. I buy the cheapest parts not because I want the cheapest parts, but because spending an extra 20% on the price often results in the exact same part with zero extra value.
    • Salgat 2y ago
• ThatMedicIsASpy 2y ago
  There is a choice to pay 4 cents or 6 cents for a capacitor in your electronic devices.
  • waste_monk 2y ago
    "There is no choice" - clueless MBA
  • Scoundreller 2y ago
    There was a Leviton (well known brand) timer power switch that would prematurely fail. They spec’d out too low temperature rating of a capacitor that was right next to a heat source and cook itself to death: https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=315&v=BQM4ERy-wpY https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=315&v=BQM4ERy-wpY https://electronupdate.blogspot.com/2017/12/leviton-ltb30-buzzing-timer-failure.html?m=1 https://electronupdate.blogspot.com/2017/12/leviton-ltb30-bu... So yeah, tried too hard to save 2 cents
    • klysm 2y ago
      That's not a 'saving 2 cents problem', that's a failure to recognize the thermal environment and requirements for a component, which is kind of my entire point: engineering isn't easy.
      • Dylan16807 2y ago
        The 6 cent capacitor is more durable and can absorb an error like that without the product failing. Like they say that anyone can overbuild a bridge but only an engineer can make it barely stand up. A lot of that cost cutting is useful but it tends to go too far.
        • ReptileMan 2y ago
          >Like they say that anyone can overbuild a bridge but only an engineer can make it barely stand up The majority of biggest suspension bridges if I remember correctly are barely standing up. They use above 80% of the cables carrying capacity for themselves.
• kajecounterhack 2y ago
  > it's really difficult to build things to last. Having a non-user replaceable battery is a really easy way to ensure a product stops working after 3-4 years though. And the criticism is typically directed at companies like Apple, who does make things that last physically, but then force you to upgrade by way of battery.
  • pinkmuffinere 2y ago
    Both can be true: planned obsolescence is real, but building things to last is difficult too. IMO the durability problems in early generations of products tend to be "real", because there are still real engineering problems that aren't understood, and there isn't (generally) a super limited market. Once the engineering problems are solved and the market is fully saturated, there is suddenly an incentive to add planned obsolescence. I don't have any data to back up this claim though.
    • jordanb 2y ago
      A more accurate term is "value engineering." If you have a product that's been in the market for a while and it looks like it's meeting service life expectations you start looking at it trying to find ways to save money by substituting cheaper parts. You swap out metal gears for plastic gears, for instance. If these parts have a shorter service life, but the service life is still longer than the warranty, then maybe that's a win in two ways for the manufacturer.
      • pinkmuffinere 2y ago
        Wow that's super interesting! I've never heard of this, but the appeal is immediately obvious. Thanks for commenting, gonna have to do a Wikipedia binge.
      • folsom 2y ago
        I think of it as a continuous feedback loop between engineering, finance, and QA that ultimately ends in a product being manufactured as inexpensively as possible without dying in the warranty period.
• anjel 2y ago
  I'd be fine with planned obsolescence if the mfr had a duty to disclose the means of obsolescence and the Product lifespan.
  • aitchnyu 2y ago
    While we are at it, I want companies to disclose that a brand is made with cheaper ingredients or meets a lower quality expectation. Can think of some loopholes myself though.
• bsimpson 2y ago
  I was in film school in the mid 00s, when RED was just starting to sell digital cameras to Hollywood studios. I remember a lot of my professors being concerned that we'd lose the archival properties of cinema - you can play back a 100 year old movie with a bright light and a ratchet - the same stuff you need to play back a movie from the 90s. They were concerned there'd be too much churn in digital formats. Just this weekend, I saw a headline that the Looney Tunes box set I bought then probably doesn't work anymore, because Warner Bros used crappy materials to mint the DVDs and people have had them degrade beyond playability.
  • xandrius 2y ago
    So kind of correct but not quite related? The old film stuff which survives is mainly due to material quality, storage and luck, in that sequence. Those DVD started already losing the battle.
  • Reason077 2y ago
    Film wasn't always perfect either. A lot of early, pre-1950s cinema has been lost because the old nitrate film stock degrades over time. And can catch fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose#Nitrate_film_fires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose#Nitrate_film_fi...
    • mikepurvis 2y ago
      Even modern film is often not great, particularly theatre prints that aren't explicitly made for archival purposes. There was a fascinating YouTube video recently where the author pushes back on the purported superiority of fan-scanned 4Ks now competing with official, studio-supervised restorations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQwQRFLFDd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQwQRFLFDd8 Obviously DNR and bad HDR jobs are kind of their own issue, but he focuses specifically on coloring and the notion that theatre prints are themselves often wildly inconsistent and change over time, so it can be extremely difficult to even establish a baseline for what a film was meant to look like or even what it actually looked like upon release. As a modest 4K collector myself, it frustrates me when certain films seem to sit in indefinite limbo, but Amadeus (released this week) looks fabulous and was absolutely worth the wait, so I have hopes that the people taking their time to do right by films like Ben Hur and The Sound of Music are doing so for the right reasons.
• K0balt 2y ago
  It’s also really hard to make things that last at least X long but hardly event more than Y. I know an engineer who spent two years of his life making sure the new water pump designs would fail at warranty + 50 percent, but only in an annoying, non catastrophic way. Also, plastics that last very specific amounts of time are common in specific pieces of assemblies in mechanical timers for refrigerator defrosters and the little crossbars that tie the vanes in air vent directors together. Replacement timers use all nylon gears and last “forever”. The one I personally uncovered is a Honeywell thermostat. It is a direct replacement for a mechanical thermostat that would frequently fail about 10-15 years out due to corroded/pitted contacts. The all electronic replacement does not have this problem, but they still failed around 10 years out, but with remarkable predictability in my friends apartment complex. I reverse engineered one. It is powered by the 16-24v signal line. It uses a simple potentiometer to set the temperature, no clock, memory or other features. It has a battery soldered on the circuit board. The battery slowly discharges while the unit is on. In about 10 years of operation, the battery voltage drops below 1v or so. The battery powers nothing, but the microcontroller senses it’s voltage and when it is too low, it changes the behaviour of the thermostat to randomise the temperature cut in/out points by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit , making the thermostat annoyingly unpredictable in a way that is very similar to the typical failure mode of the old thermostat it replaced. One notable difference is that the electronic one will never fail (unless it is in the off position) to come on at 45F or lower, preventing the programmed random behaviour from provoking a freeze-up and damage to structures, so I guess that’s nice?
  • salviati 2y ago
    This is an incredibly useful investigation! Did you publish it somewhere?
    • h0l0cube 2y ago
      +1 on this. I don't think I've read a story about how planned obsolescence is achieved in such a novel and non-plausibly deniable way. By that, I mean they haven't just cheaped out on materials, they've spent extra to make it fail predictably.
• matthewfcarlson 2y ago
  Agreed. A great example would be the testing of old tvs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxQS58t39_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxQS58t39_U They were often tested to ridiculously high standards with huge voltages applied across strenuous tests. And they cost accordingly. It’s amazing how cheap things are these days. I think what frustrates people more is that the more expensive options don’t usually last long. Finding the more reliable option is fiendishly difficult and it may not exist.
  • foobarian 2y ago
    > I think what frustrates people more is that the more expensive options don’t usually last long Yeah, well put. Just had to replace a dishwasher, and among the models of one brand it seems the more expensive models just add more moving parts and complexity that, ironically, may lead to more issues. Don't get me started about clothes. The quality and weight of the fabric is almost completely disconnected from the price.
• SecretDreams 2y ago
  In my years in PD, I never saw intentional product obsolescence. Instead, I saw a lot of targets based on use metrics, i.e. design for this many years, exposure, etc. The problem is testing - you can't actually test for time in real time. Instead, we try to develop elaborate accelerated testing schemes that try to closely capture consumer intent. The problems with accelerated testing schemes are four fold: 1) They're a relative benchmark. They don't represent how the product will perform in absolute terms, only how it will do in this standardized bench test against other products. 2) They might miss some things that are coupled together that don't fully get felt out until you're over longer periods of time. 3) They're imperfect if the use cases for a consumer product will be complex. An easy example is a car. Auto OEMs will try their best with their standardized accelerated testing scheduled for durability, corrosion, etc -> but the consumer will always end up doing shit that is totally reasonable but not in the accelerated testing scheme )or under provisioned). 4) For complex products, a lot of accelerated testing might happen on only a subsystem level and may not fully map to the final product. Although these downsides are real, accelerated testing is still great and, with good planning and experience, can catch a lot of problems.. but it tends to always miss something and the above 4 points can synergistically work together to make a "design big" more obvious when in the field/hands of the customers!