Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you. Well, it's Thanksgiving here
Speaker 1: in the United States, which means we are actually off
Speaker 1: work today, but we thought we'd bring you a rerun episode.
Speaker 1: This episode published last year March nine, two thousand twenty one,
Speaker 1: with the title Planned Obsolescence and the Right to Repair.
Speaker 1: I thought this would be an appropriate topic to bring
Speaker 1: back up because we are in the heart of holiday
Speaker 1: gift buying season. You know, tomorrow is Black Friday, which
Speaker 1: is traditionally a big shopping day, but we all know
Speaker 1: that those shopping days have been expanded both before and
Speaker 1: after Black Friday. But one of the big things people
Speaker 1: like to get our tech gifts for their loved ones.
Speaker 1: And one of the downsides to tech is that it
Speaker 1: can go obsolete pretty quickly, and sometimes when stuff goes wrong,
Speaker 1: there's not necessarily an easy way to fix it, and
Speaker 1: that brings us to the right to Repair movement. So
Speaker 1: sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode from last year,
Speaker 1: Planned Obsolescence and the Right to Repair. I recently did
Speaker 1: a series of episodes about General Motors, and one of
Speaker 1: the many things I talked about in those episodes was
Speaker 1: how Alfred Sloan, who was an absolutely critical leader of
Speaker 1: GM early on, established a practice of planned obsolescence. That
Speaker 1: is part of Sloan's market strategy was creating a company
Speaker 1: that every year would release cars that had updated styling
Speaker 1: and features in order to entire not just first time
Speaker 1: car buyers, but people who had already, you know, purchased
Speaker 1: a car in the past. And that got me to
Speaker 1: thinking that I should really talk about planned obsolescence in
Speaker 1: general and examine the facts and consider the myths, and
Speaker 1: also chat a bit about the right to repair movement
Speaker 1: and recycling, because all of this is kind of connected together.
Speaker 1: We're talking about casual consumption of electronic goods, almost a
Speaker 1: disposable approach to them, and electronic goods are not necessarily
Speaker 1: the best thing in the world to treat as disposable.
Speaker 1: So let's just start off by defining what planned obsolescence
Speaker 1: is really all about. Now. Generally, people talk about planned
Speaker 1: obsolescence as a strategy in which the maker of a thing,
Speaker 1: whether it's a physical good or an app or whatever,
Speaker 1: builds into that thing a predetermined end of life. Other words,
Speaker 1: you've already determined how long this thing is supposed to last.
Speaker 1: And the purpose of planned obsolescens is to not just
Speaker 1: sell one thing to each customer one time, but to
Speaker 1: sell many of that same thing to every customer over time.
Speaker 1: It's the same reason why a lot of software companies
Speaker 1: will migrate toward a subscription based revenue model, because it's
Speaker 1: more profitable to get customers to regularly give you money
Speaker 1: than to bank on selling them a lot of the
Speaker 1: same thing to a huge customer base. Like if I'm
Speaker 1: selling a software package for two hundred dollars, I'm going
Speaker 1: to get you know, X number of customers, and chances
Speaker 1: are they're not going to buy another product for me
Speaker 1: for a while. If I offer a subscription fee for
Speaker 1: a much lower monthly plan, I might get people locked
Speaker 1: into that system for years and thus make way more
Speaker 1: money off of them in the long run than I
Speaker 1: would if I had gone with the big ticket i'd
Speaker 1: up front. This can actually manifest in lots of different ways. Now, typically,
Speaker 1: I get the sense that the popular perception of you know,
Speaker 1: planned ups lessons is that companies make stuff that's just
Speaker 1: designed to stop working after a certain number of hours
Speaker 1: of operation. So, in other words, the manufacturer isn't making
Speaker 1: products that are meant to stand the test of time. Rather,
Speaker 1: these are products that will at some point break down
Speaker 1: and either require repairs or a replacement. Now, repairs were
Speaker 1: great if you happen to be the not only the
Speaker 1: company that's selling the thing, but you're also the company
Speaker 1: that provides maintenance and repair services. Car dealerships often fall
Speaker 1: into this category. You can purchase a car at a dealership,
Speaker 1: and then most dealerships have service centers as well, or
Speaker 1: they have, you know, an agreement with a service center,
Speaker 1: so the dealership can continue to make money off of
Speaker 1: a sale if the salesperson can and convince the customer
Speaker 1: to bring the car back to the dealership's service center
Speaker 1: for regular maintenance or repair work. But not all technology
Speaker 1: has the value of a car. Obviously, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of tech out there that's fairly inexpensive to make, and
Speaker 1: companies might price that technology it's such a relatively low
Speaker 1: cost that a repair might set you back the same
Speaker 1: amount or more than buying just a new version of
Speaker 1: whatever that tech is. For a lot of us, I
Speaker 1: figure the reaction to that as well, I might as
Speaker 1: well buy a new one if I'm going to be
Speaker 1: spending that kind of money. Heck, the new thing of
Speaker 1: a jig might have more features than the old one,
Speaker 1: or it might look a little different, you know, more stylish,
Speaker 1: and so we toss aside whatever old thing of a
Speaker 1: jig we have and then we go out and buy
Speaker 1: a new one. Or maybe you would actually like to
Speaker 1: do repairs yourself. That's something we're going to chat about
Speaker 1: more towards the end of this episode. But some companies
Speaker 1: have been known to make it challenge or maybe even impossible,
Speaker 1: for the end customer to really repair the technology they purchase,
Speaker 1: whether it's through using proprietary screws that need a specific
Speaker 1: tool to remove them, or actually sealing components into compartments
Speaker 1: with glue and rivets and solder or other fasteners, making
Speaker 1: it impossible to open without risk of causing further damage.
Speaker 1: Companies have used a few different ways to obscure or
Speaker 1: impede repairs mm apple. Or you could also get to
Speaker 1: a point with stuff like cars where it just becomes
Speaker 1: harder to make repairs because it's hard to even determine
Speaker 1: what is wrong with the thing without a special diagnostic
Speaker 1: device like a computer. This is the case with a
Speaker 1: lot of modern cars. You might be able to lift
Speaker 1: the hood and look around a little bit, but some
Speaker 1: vehicles have various covers or engine configurations that make it
Speaker 1: really challenging for the average person to access specific parts
Speaker 1: of the motor, let alone do any work on it. Again,
Speaker 1: this limits what you can do with tech once it
Speaker 1: starts to fail, and all tech does fail over time,
Speaker 1: because well, entropy is something we just can't avoid. It's
Speaker 1: it's a fundamental law of the universe, particularly when it
Speaker 1: comes to cheap technology. The sort of disposable approach has
Speaker 1: a lot of negative drawbacks, including what to do with
Speaker 1: old tech that no longer works. I mean, a lot
Speaker 1: of technology contains stuff that's pretty toxic, so throwing it
Speaker 1: out in the garbage could lead to it ending up
Speaker 1: in a landfill somewhere, and then harmful stuff like lead
Speaker 1: or mercury could leach into the environment. Because of that,
Speaker 1: that's not great. So we'll touch a tiny bit on
Speaker 1: electronics recycling in this episode two, but I have done
Speaker 1: full episodes about e waste recycling, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to spend too much time on it, and there are
Speaker 1: often ways to make older tech obsle elite that are
Speaker 1: not necessarily obvious on the face of it. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about smartphones, for example. That's an easy one. One
Speaker 1: of the big trends we see in technology is that
Speaker 1: as devices or components within devices get more powerful, the
Speaker 1: software developers end up making software that eats up that
Speaker 1: extra power. Nicholas Worth wrote about this pro problem back
Speaker 1: in the ninety nineties. He wrote a paper titled a
Speaker 1: Plea for Lean Software, and his point has essentially boiled
Speaker 1: down into what we now call Worth's law, which is
Speaker 1: that software is getting slower. That is, it's getting more
Speaker 1: resource hungry at a rate that's faster than hardware is
Speaker 1: getting faster. So while subsequent generations of hardware are getting
Speaker 1: more powerful, the requirements of software are outpacing that progress,
Speaker 1: and the end result is that we often feel our
Speaker 1: shiny new devices just aren't keeping up as much as
Speaker 1: we expected them to. We're basing our perception on what
Speaker 1: the new device should be able to do based on
Speaker 1: what we have right now, and that's just not how
Speaker 1: stuff works. Unfortunately, gamers who want to be on the
Speaker 1: bleeding edge of computing capability experience this a lot. A
Speaker 1: top gaming rig would cost thousands of dollars. It requires
Speaker 1: a powerful central processor or CPU, and quite likely multiple
Speaker 1: powerful graphics processing units or GPUs. Plus you need a
Speaker 1: power supply that's capable of providing the juice that these
Speaker 1: components need, and you need a killer cooling system to
Speaker 1: make sure the whole thing doesn't overheat. And just as
Speaker 1: you get all of this stuff set up and running
Speaker 1: the latest games, developers start making games that are so
Speaker 1: resource hungry that even with your killer rig you might
Speaker 1: have to knock a few of the game's settings down
Speaker 1: a couple of notches just to make it run smoothly. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you're already anticipating the next big development and hardware that
Speaker 1: will let you move all those sliders all the way
Speaker 1: to the top. That's going to set you back a
Speaker 1: few more thousand dollars, which is brutal. With smartphones, we
Speaker 1: see this happen a lot as newer models use better processors,
Speaker 1: and typically new processors are usually more powerful and hopefully
Speaker 1: more efficient, so in other words, you're not seeing battery
Speaker 1: life just plummet from one generation to the next, or
Speaker 1: phones get way bigger because you need a bigger battery
Speaker 1: in order to make them last long enough. Processor technologies
Speaker 1: follow pretty close to Moore's law, and we typically interpret
Speaker 1: that as meaning that a processor's capabilities effectively double every
Speaker 1: two years or so. Not the same processor, but rather
Speaker 1: new processors on the market end up being twice as
Speaker 1: powerful as the processors that came out two years earlier.
Speaker 1: That's generally what we mean. More's laws more subtle than that,
Speaker 1: but we won't go into it. Battery life does not
Speaker 1: follow this same trajectory. It's again a law of physics.
Speaker 1: We're talking about electrochemical reactions, and so there's not a
Speaker 1: magic way to make batteries just last longer. It requires
Speaker 1: more incremental improvement. So if we only concentrated on making
Speaker 1: processors more powerful, they would just pull more juice per
Speaker 1: hour than older processors, and soon we would have smartphones.
Speaker 1: They would only have a couple of hours of useful
Speaker 1: battery life. So there is a balance to be made here. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: smartphone apps still follow Worth's law. The apps drawn more
Speaker 1: processor power, or they interact with more components, and smartphones
Speaker 1: like GPS receivers or accelerometers or the camera or microphone,
Speaker 1: or some combination of all of these and more, and
Speaker 1: the smartphone operating systems themselves evolved to support these apps
Speaker 1: and provide more functionality. Well, older smartphones just can't keep
Speaker 1: up with this all the time, and so you will
Speaker 1: often see companies make a cut off for operating system updates.
Speaker 1: Older phones might stall out at a certain OS version
Speaker 1: and be unable to install more recent updates of the
Speaker 1: operating system. So you could have an Android smartphone that's
Speaker 1: maybe a few years old, and it's running a version
Speaker 1: of Android that's several generations old at this point because
Speaker 1: Google has determined that the hardware you're using simply cannot
Speaker 1: meet the needs of later operating systems. Meanwhile, the app
Speaker 1: developers are focusing on what they can do with the
Speaker 1: most recent OS version, which means you might not be
Speaker 1: able to run a new app with all of its features,
Speaker 1: or you might not even be able to run the
Speaker 1: app at all if you're using an older phone. And
Speaker 1: since apps are what makes smartphones smart, that ends up
Speaker 1: being a big problem. And so now the incentive is
Speaker 1: there for you to upgrade your phone, even if your
Speaker 1: old phone still works, so that you can, you know,
Speaker 1: just use your smartphone the way you want to. And
Speaker 1: you're not stuck older versions of apps. And that's particularly
Speaker 1: important because sometimes these older versions of apps end up
Speaker 1: being tied to servers that could go offline, or they
Speaker 1: might swap over to a new process, and then you
Speaker 1: have an outdated smartphone that has a bunch of inactive
Speaker 1: apps stored on it and it becomes practically useless. On
Speaker 1: a related note, battery life decreases over time and use,
Speaker 1: so older batteries just don't hold as much of a
Speaker 1: charge as newer batteries, and they drain faster, which means
Speaker 1: that your older battery operated devices will need recharging more frequently.
Speaker 1: Apple famously tried to address this problem by purposefully throttling
Speaker 1: the processing speed of older iPhones. The processors would work
Speaker 1: more slowly so that they would consume less battery power,
Speaker 1: thus extending the usefulness of a battery at the cost
Speaker 1: of smartphone performance. But Apple didn't, you know, tell anyone
Speaker 1: about it, and a lot of users figured out that
Speaker 1: there too, vices were slowing down due to age. That's
Speaker 1: what they assumed. It's just, oh, this is older, that's
Speaker 1: why it's getting slower. And in a way that was
Speaker 1: kind of true, but not in the same way that
Speaker 1: these users thought. They just thought, this thing is getting old,
Speaker 1: I need a new one, so they opted to buy
Speaker 1: a new, later generation iPhone. But in iPhone, users figured
Speaker 1: out that their phones were being throttled and they had
Speaker 1: no choice in the matter, and that led to a
Speaker 1: big class action lawsuit. As users said, had they known
Speaker 1: what was going on, they would have opted to replace
Speaker 1: the battery in their old iPhone rather than buy a
Speaker 1: brand new iPhone. And I should add that Apple does
Speaker 1: not make it easy for you to do this. You
Speaker 1: you really can't replace a battery in your iPhone, at
Speaker 1: least not without violating your warranty. But under certain circumstances,
Speaker 1: like if you enroll in Apple Care Plus, then Apple
Speaker 1: actually will replace an iPhone battery free of charge. I say,
Speaker 1: for your charge. Really, I should say that prices included
Speaker 1: in your enrollment into Apple Care Plus. So for those users,
Speaker 1: the people who had enrolled in Apple Care Plus, they
Speaker 1: could have chosen to have a new battery put into
Speaker 1: their older iPhone and it would have extended the life
Speaker 1: of that device, but they weren't told about what was
Speaker 1: going on, so instead they opted to buy a brand
Speaker 1: new phone, which was way more expensive. In Apple reached
Speaker 1: a settlement agreement, actually to settlement agreements for two different
Speaker 1: class action lawsuits brought against the company about this very issue.
Speaker 1: The first settlement was for five hundred million dollars a
Speaker 1: princely some, and the second was for another one thirteen
Speaker 1: million dollars. In both cases, prosecution argued that Apple was
Speaker 1: deliberately hiding the fact that it was throttling processing output
Speaker 1: and that the battery was degrading over time, and they
Speaker 1: knew that most users would opt to upgrade to a
Speaker 1: newer iPhone as long as they didn't realize that there
Speaker 1: was an alternative path they could have taken. Now, that
Speaker 1: pretty much hits the planned obsolescence definition right on the nose.
Speaker 1: So it turns out there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: approaches to planned obsolescence. While the phrase might make you
Speaker 1: think that the company is purposefully making stuff that just
Speaker 1: won't stand the test of time, as in the company
Speaker 1: is choosing to create substandard products knowing that these products
Speaker 1: will break down and the customer is likely to come
Speaker 1: back and buy another one. Really, that's just the tip
Speaker 1: of the iceberg, and it's usually not even the case.
Speaker 1: If a company's reputation gets tied to the idea that
Speaker 1: the stuff they make breaks easily. That's not good for business.
Speaker 1: And the rest of this episode, we're going to take
Speaker 1: a closer look at some historical examples of planned obsolescence
Speaker 1: and what was going on from different perspectives, and we'll
Speaker 1: also get into the right to Repair movement and what
Speaker 1: it might mean to the tech industry moving forward, assuming
Speaker 1: the movement actually achieves its goal. But first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. We're back and on December twenty three,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty four, a group of elite entrepreneurs met to
Speaker 1: establish some shady guidelines, which was pretty ironic because they
Speaker 1: were all in the lightbulb business. That's sort of a
Speaker 1: pun I guess anyway. The leaders represented some of the
Speaker 1: largest light bulb manufacturers in the world. There was General Electric,
Speaker 1: the grand daddy of big tech companies in the United States.
Speaker 1: There was the company Phillips from the Netherlands, as Rum,
Speaker 1: a company from Germany had a representative present, and the
Speaker 1: French had their place too, with executives from the company
Speaker 1: De Lump And together they created a powerful idea, which
Speaker 1: we can represent as a very large lightbulb turning on
Speaker 1: behind their heads or at least we could if this
Speaker 1: were a video and not an audio podcast. Their idea
Speaker 1: was to form a new company, an organization that would
Speaker 1: coordinate how lightbulbs should work, as in how bright they
Speaker 1: should be and how long they should last, as well
Speaker 1: as which company would be allowed to sell its products
Speaker 1: in certain specific regions. It was collusion of the highest order,
Speaker 1: and it violated pretty much every antitrust law you can
Speaker 1: think of. And it became known as the Phoebus Cartel.
Speaker 1: Cute huh, because Phoebus is another name for Apollo, the
Speaker 1: god of the sun. Before the cartel, manufacturers were making
Speaker 1: lightbulbs that could last between fifteen hundred and two thousand
Speaker 1: hours of operation. But the cartel collectively decided that their
Speaker 1: light bulbs should have a life expectancy of one thousand
Speaker 1: hours of use. A ha. These companies were producing a
Speaker 1: technology that already had a limited lifespan just because of
Speaker 1: how it works. You know, the filaments and light bulbs,
Speaker 1: the part that actually gives off light, they eventually burned
Speaker 1: through and break, and that's what makes incandescent lightbulbs die. Clearly,
Speaker 1: this group of people were all agreeing to a worldwide
Speaker 1: limit on the useful number of hours a light bulb
Speaker 1: would operate in in order to sell more light bulbs. Right,
Speaker 1: they were making a predetermined end of life cycle for
Speaker 1: light bulbs, and by making everyone agree to this limitation,
Speaker 1: no manufacturer would be able to defy the others and
Speaker 1: start selling bulbs that had longer lifespans, which would ruin
Speaker 1: it for everybody else. Now you can see the appeal
Speaker 1: of that narrative, right, rich fat cats are cynically limiting
Speaker 1: a technology just to sell more light bulbs, while simultaneously
Speaker 1: creating pressure to prevent any other company from offering up
Speaker 1: a superior product. You could just hear the thumbs twiddling,
Speaker 1: you know, the mustaches waxing, and the chore as shortling. Heck,
Speaker 1: the cartel would even test light bulbs from each manufacturer,
Speaker 1: and if any of those light bulbs proved to have
Speaker 1: a lifespan that was well beyond those one thousand hours
Speaker 1: of operation, the cartel would find the responsible manufacturer keep
Speaker 1: those light bulbs lives shorter or else. But if we
Speaker 1: want to be a little more fair, we should take
Speaker 1: into consideration another factor. As light bulbs age, they would
Speaker 1: give off less light. Incandescent bulbs they are less luminously efficient,
Speaker 1: in other words, and so the counter argument was made
Speaker 1: that by limiting the lifespan to one thousand hours, it
Speaker 1: was more about maximizing luminous efficiency. It was to make
Speaker 1: certain that the light bulbs were providing enough light throughout
Speaker 1: their lifespans and not just turning into increasingly dim light sources.
Speaker 1: So there was an argument being made that the restriction
Speaker 1: of the life span was more about improving the quality
Speaker 1: of the performance of light bulbs rather than speeding up
Speaker 1: the need to replace those light bulbs. It was a
Speaker 1: compelling enough argument to lead the u K's Monopolies and
Speaker 1: Restrictive Practices Commission to give the companies some slack with
Speaker 1: that regard. Though there were many other things the Phoebus
Speaker 1: Cartel did that did not get a free pass, but
Speaker 1: those are more market focused than tech focused, so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into them. The cartel itself, by
Speaker 1: the way, dissolved in the late nineteen thirties, not because
Speaker 1: of government pressure, or at least not the kind of
Speaker 1: regulation pressure, but because of a little thing called World
Speaker 1: War Two. Now, I suspect that the decision to arrive
Speaker 1: at one thousand hours of useful life was guided both
Speaker 1: by practical considerations and good old fashioned greed. So I
Speaker 1: suspect there is some truth to both of the scenarios
Speaker 1: I mentioned, or if you listen to ridiculous history scenarios
Speaker 1: and considering that some of the other moves that the
Speaker 1: cartel made, like namely price fixing, you definitely cannot count
Speaker 1: greed out because that was the primary motivator for those decisions.
Speaker 1: But there are at least some people who are a
Speaker 1: little more charitable toward the idea of limiting bulb lifespan
Speaker 1: in an effort to favor better luminous efficiency. So we'll
Speaker 1: move on. The next big example is the one that
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier and talked about a little bit in
Speaker 1: my episodes about General Motors. This was the GM under
Speaker 1: Alfred B. Sloan, the man who took a big mess
Speaker 1: of companies that were acquired by GM founder William C. Durant,
Speaker 1: and then he organized all of this mishmash into individual
Speaker 1: business units looking over specific makes of car, and each
Speaker 1: of those units had a great deal of autonomy between them.
Speaker 1: He was also a consummate capitalist, and I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that in a flattering way. He had a habit
Speaker 1: of focusing on profits and ignoring people. But you can
Speaker 1: learn more about that in the GM episodes. One of
Speaker 1: Sloan's many contributions to the automotive industry was the introduction
Speaker 1: of stylistic changes to various car models year over year.
Speaker 1: In the early days of automobiles, the dominating manufacturer was
Speaker 1: the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford's company produced the famous
Speaker 1: Model T. Ford and first introduced that Model T in
Speaker 1: nineteen o eight, and it remained in production until nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven. By nine, this was a mass produced cars,
Speaker 1: so on a huge scale, Ford dominated car sales in
Speaker 1: the United States for like decades now. Allegedly, Ford himself
Speaker 1: once said that there was no use in overtaking and
Speaker 1: passing a Model T on the road because you would
Speaker 1: just find yourself behind a different Model T. That's how
Speaker 1: commonplace they were. He also reportedly said that a customer
Speaker 1: could get a Model T and whatever color they wanted
Speaker 1: as long as it was black. While the company would
Speaker 1: offer Model T s and other colors up to nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: between nineteen fourteen and nineteen Ford only churned out black
Speaker 1: Model T cars. This meant that Ford's factories could build
Speaker 1: nearly identical cars, one right after the other, using mass
Speaker 1: production techniques, thus increasing efficiency and keeping costs down. And
Speaker 1: it also meant that Ford could sell these cars at
Speaker 1: affordable prices. They were meant to be practical, durable, and reliable,
Speaker 1: and that's how he made so many early sales. Now
Speaker 1: there was a big emphasis on uniformity and consistency, in
Speaker 1: other words, because those are things that make it easier
Speaker 1: to mass produce something. And Alfred Sloan saw an opportunity
Speaker 1: to appeal to people on a different level over at
Speaker 1: General Motors. He thought it would be a good idea
Speaker 1: to change up the style of a model of car
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. At a glance, you would be
Speaker 1: able to give a ballpark estimate of the year when
Speaker 1: a certain model came out due to distinguishing features that
Speaker 1: were on that car. You know, maybe the headlights are
Speaker 1: in a slightly different spot, or maybe the car has
Speaker 1: a different kind of grill on the front of it,
Speaker 1: or maybe you put a pair of big old tail
Speaker 1: fins on the back of the thing. That's the sort
Speaker 1: of thing that Sloan was thinking about. Harley Earl, a
Speaker 1: man whom many historians credit as the first professional designer
Speaker 1: to work in the automotive industry. Worked was Sloan to
Speaker 1: make this vision a reality, and Earl would sculpt models
Speaker 1: out of clay and then mold them in different ways
Speaker 1: to create new features, and as tastes changed, he could
Speaker 1: reflect that in different car body designs, and now cars
Speaker 1: could appeal to people by embodying certain design trends. This
Speaker 1: approach meant that car has now had a sort of
Speaker 1: planned obsolescence. As time passes, fashions change and older cars
Speaker 1: will pass out of fashion. Out of style, they'll become unfashionable,
Speaker 1: and that creates a psychological lever that GM could lean
Speaker 1: on to convince people to come in trade in their
Speaker 1: older cars and buy newer ones. The older cars might
Speaker 1: still work perfectly well from an operational point of view,
Speaker 1: but they could be seen as being old fashioned, and
Speaker 1: that was enough to push some people to upgrade to
Speaker 1: a new vehicle. It was still important for GM to
Speaker 1: make cars that were perceived to be reliable and powerful.
Speaker 1: If the cars were known to break down quickly, that
Speaker 1: kind of reputation would hurt sales. So while you could
Speaker 1: keep driving the same car for many years, assuming you
Speaker 1: took good care of the car, Sloan's goal was to
Speaker 1: make you feel like a like kind of a social
Speaker 1: pariah if you did that for a really long time, Like, Oh,
Speaker 1: that poor so and so they can't afford a new car.
Speaker 1: Look them driving that old, you know, Chevy or whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. Sloan's approach accelerated car pon the role
Speaker 1: of a car as a status symbol. GM offered several
Speaker 1: different makes of cars, and each make targeted a different
Speaker 1: economic demographic. So on the cheaper end was the Chevrolet
Speaker 1: line and on the opposite side of the spectrum was
Speaker 1: the Cadillac. But no matter which make of car you
Speaker 1: talked about, that strategy of planned obsolescence was at play.
Speaker 1: You can see Sloan's impact in consumer products across the board,
Speaker 1: and not just in tech, though it tends to be
Speaker 1: particularly evident in the tech world. It's why Apple releases
Speaker 1: a new iPhone every year, or more to the point,
Speaker 1: it's why companies like Apple hold really big exclusive press
Speaker 1: events to hype the release of a new model of
Speaker 1: iPhone every year. And to be clear, Apple does this
Speaker 1: with lots of its products, not just the iPhone. It's
Speaker 1: just the iPhone event tends to get the most attention.
Speaker 1: So let's think about that yearly schedule for a moment,
Speaker 1: and also think back to how phones were marketed in
Speaker 1: the US when the iPhone first launched in two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: So at that time, Apple had signed an exclusive agreement
Speaker 1: with the carrier A T and T here in the
Speaker 1: United States. Now, the reasons behind that agreement are fascinating,
Speaker 1: but they also go beyond what I'm going to talk about,
Speaker 1: so I'll save that for some future episode. You're welcome.
Speaker 1: But back in those days, it was pretty common practice
Speaker 1: in the United States for carriers like A T and
Speaker 1: T to offer subsidized phones in return for signing two
Speaker 1: year contracts where you agreed that this was your carrier
Speaker 1: for two years. You were locked into a carrier. That
Speaker 1: made the initial purchase price of phones a little bit
Speaker 1: more affordable, at least initially, so rather than shelling out
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars for a phone, you might spend a
Speaker 1: couple hundred by signing onto a two year agreement with
Speaker 1: the carrier. Typically, those agreements would limit your options when
Speaker 1: it came to upgrades. Normally you would have to wait
Speaker 1: out the two years to get to the point where
Speaker 1: you would renew your agreement or sign whatever newer version
Speaker 1: of the agreement the carrier was offering, and then you
Speaker 1: could upgrade to a new phone at a reduced cost,
Speaker 1: or sometimes the phone would be included as part of
Speaker 1: the agreement. But Apple was releasing a brand new iPhone
Speaker 1: every year, and each new iPhone would have new features
Speaker 1: and new styling, so the phones were following Sloan's approach
Speaker 1: to product design. A new iPhone wasn't just flashy technology.
Speaker 1: It was also a status symbol, and a lot of
Speaker 1: folks would choose to upgrade to the new version, even
Speaker 1: if it meant they had to pay more to do
Speaker 1: it because they were only a year into a service
Speaker 1: agreement with their carrier and they could not yet qualify
Speaker 1: for a subsidized phone. Now. This happened for a few years,
Speaker 1: but gradually US carriers kind of phased out those two
Speaker 1: year contract plans, which also meant that the subsidized phone
Speaker 1: model began to disappear. Customers had more freedom to choose
Speaker 1: whichever carrier they wanted to without getting locked into things,
Speaker 1: but it also meant that they often had to pay
Speaker 1: full price for phones. For those who had been upgrading
Speaker 1: to a new iPhone every year, despite the limitations of
Speaker 1: two year contracts. This was actually probably a welcome change
Speaker 1: to the rest of us. It was a bit of
Speaker 1: an adjustment, not a bad thing, but it did take
Speaker 1: some time to adjust to it. The brilliant thing about
Speaker 1: Sloan's approach, the thing that Apple often relies upon, is
Speaker 1: that you're encouraging customers to crave the new There's this
Speaker 1: built in desire in the market to get the coolest
Speaker 1: new toy with the latest features and the latest options.
Speaker 1: Companies don't have to trash the older technology. They just
Speaker 1: helped the new things that the latest version can do.
Speaker 1: And it might mean that companies take steps to roll
Speaker 1: out new features very carefully. So in some cases a
Speaker 1: company might be ready to implement a brand new feature,
Speaker 1: at least from a technological level. However, the whole back,
Speaker 1: they'll make a market based decision to wait and sit
Speaker 1: on that technology for a little bit in order to
Speaker 1: maximize sales. You might say, well, we could install these
Speaker 1: three new features in our next phone, but if we
Speaker 1: only install one of them, and then the phone after
Speaker 1: that we add a second one, and the phone after
Speaker 1: that we add the third one, we are able to
Speaker 1: keep boosting sales year over year. If we do all
Speaker 1: three right now, we might not have enough of an
Speaker 1: improvement to get that same boost next year. So it
Speaker 1: becomes this kind of game of chess. So why would
Speaker 1: you put in all the bells and whistles if you
Speaker 1: can hold back a few of them and then make
Speaker 1: many more sales in the next update. Now, is this insidious?
Speaker 1: I don't really think so. I mean, from a business perspective,
Speaker 1: it does make a lot of sense. From a consumer perspective,
Speaker 1: I say, what this should do is teach us that
Speaker 1: jumping on a brand new technology, or even just a
Speaker 1: new model of an existing technology, might not be the
Speaker 1: best option right out of the gate. We might need
Speaker 1: to use some self control before we buy the next
Speaker 1: shiny thing. Of course, this approach requires moderation as well,
Speaker 1: or else you would never buy anything at all. If
Speaker 1: I need a new phone and I know that I'm
Speaker 1: three months out from the release of something that I
Speaker 1: think is really worthwhile, then I can wait that out.
Speaker 1: But if I'm perpetually waiting for a phone that blows
Speaker 1: me away with all the features, I'll probably be worried
Speaker 1: that I'm going to experience buyer's remorse. If I jump
Speaker 1: in right. So in other words, if I buy something
Speaker 1: and I don't feel like it's really what I was
Speaker 1: waiting for, then maybe the next thing that comes out
Speaker 1: the next month makes me feel badly about it, and
Speaker 1: so that can actually become um a bit of a crisis.
Speaker 1: It can. It can prevent you from taking action because
Speaker 1: you're always worried that once you take action, you're committed,
Speaker 1: and then the next day you find out there was
Speaker 1: a better option. But yeah, that desire for the new
Speaker 1: is something that's really ingrained in the tech world. Companies
Speaker 1: don't have to make products that will break after a
Speaker 1: certain amount of time. They don't have to have that
Speaker 1: kind of planned obsolescence because with lots of tech, just
Speaker 1: the desire to have the latest thing is enough all
Speaker 1: on its own. That means the companies just have to
Speaker 1: focus on offering up products that are different enough from
Speaker 1: the previous generation to spark our desire. When we come back,
Speaker 1: i'll talk a little bit more about this, and then
Speaker 1: we'll learn about the right to repair. But first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. So, if manufacturers are actually giving
Speaker 1: the people what they want, that is update, it's to
Speaker 1: technology that flesh out what it can do at least
Speaker 1: in the ways that consumers desire. Then we can't really
Speaker 1: put all the blame on manufacturers for planned obsolescence. We
Speaker 1: are somewhat responsible for it too. It's good to keep
Speaker 1: in mind, and if we recognize that part of us,
Speaker 1: we can try to make a better balance of when
Speaker 1: we actually need something new and when we just want
Speaker 1: something new. I struggle with this all the time, whether
Speaker 1: it's a new flagship phone. I mean, when Android comes
Speaker 1: up with a brand new flagship phone, I feel the
Speaker 1: temptation to jump on it. Not literally jump on it,
Speaker 1: but you know what I mean. However, in most cases,
Speaker 1: the phone I have at the time tends to be
Speaker 1: perfectly fine for my needs. The last time I did
Speaker 1: upgrade a phone, it was because the microphone on my
Speaker 1: phone had broken. I could use Bluetooth devices and talk
Speaker 1: on the phone, but I couldn't use my phone as
Speaker 1: a phone just on its own, so I did have
Speaker 1: to upgrade then. But I tend to stick to getting
Speaker 1: a new phone just every few years as the older
Speaker 1: one starts to lag behind, especially when it comes to
Speaker 1: what apps it can run. And the same is true
Speaker 1: for game systems. I've gotten a lot better about that too.
Speaker 1: It used to be that as soon as a game
Speaker 1: system came out, I felt the urge to rush out
Speaker 1: and buy it. I usually didn't because I usually didn't
Speaker 1: have the money, but I always wanted to. However, now
Speaker 1: I actually prefer to hang back, both so that any
Speaker 1: bugs in those early versions can be worked out. I mean,
Speaker 1: I do not want another red Ring of Death situation
Speaker 1: ever again, and also so that game developers can release
Speaker 1: more titles for the system. It's not much fun pouring
Speaker 1: a bunch of money into a technology and then having
Speaker 1: to wait around for it to become useful. But now
Speaker 1: we also have to talk about the issue of right
Speaker 1: to repair. So earlier I talked about the ways companies
Speaker 1: make it challenging or impossible for the average person and
Speaker 1: to repair stuff. And initially my reaction to that kind
Speaker 1: of thing is this is how they get you. They
Speaker 1: want you to get back to them and bring all
Speaker 1: the stuff to get it fixed by them themselves. But
Speaker 1: there can be other reasons for this that, while you
Speaker 1: may or may not agree with them, can be a
Speaker 1: little more subtle. So, for example, let's take Apple again.
Speaker 1: For most of the company's history, Apple products have been
Speaker 1: largely inaccessible to those who wish to do their own repairs,
Speaker 1: at least to do so without violating a warranty. But
Speaker 1: one of the big reasons for that is that Apple
Speaker 1: has a specific vision as to how consumers are supposed
Speaker 1: to experience Apple products. This was a philosophy that Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs had pushed pretty hard. The goal was to create
Speaker 1: a controlled experience from beginning to end. The company would
Speaker 1: have an enormous amount of authority in deciding this, from
Speaker 1: hardware configurations to the kinds of software that would be
Speaker 1: allowed to run on the device. We see this reflected
Speaker 1: in the iPhone app store, where developers have to get
Speaker 1: approval from Apple before their apps will actually appear on
Speaker 1: the market. This level of control helps a company deliver
Speaker 1: consistent quality to users. The challenge is then selling users
Speaker 1: on the idea that the company's approach is what the
Speaker 1: customer actually wants. Jobs was amazing at this. He could
Speaker 1: bring a device to a crowd and by the end
Speaker 1: of a presentation have that crowd convinced that Apple's product
Speaker 1: is exactly what the crowd wanted and needed. But Apple
Speaker 1: relinquishing control in any way wouldn't make that more difficult
Speaker 1: to do. Because a third party might not perform up
Speaker 1: to Apple's standards and it would reflect poorly on Apple.
Speaker 1: But that also meant that Apple products were difficult to modify.
Speaker 1: Early consumer computers came out as kits, and the people
Speaker 1: who bought those kits would typically put them together themselves.
Speaker 1: You could also pay to have some of those kits
Speaker 1: fully assembled. You would have to pay extra for that,
Speaker 1: but a lot of early computer owners actually enjoyed the
Speaker 1: experience of building the computers from the kits, and this
Speaker 1: meant that really enterprising hobbyists could even make little tweaks
Speaker 1: to the design to change the performance of the end
Speaker 1: machine a little bit. This was the early era of
Speaker 1: the hacker, as people figured out how these systems worked,
Speaker 1: and then they modified those systems in different ways. And
Speaker 1: it was pretty common practice along many different computer manufacturers
Speaker 1: to have components that you could swap out, like RAM chips.
Speaker 1: So if you wanted your computer to have more memory,
Speaker 1: you could open up your computer case and install more RAM,
Speaker 1: assuming your computer's motherboard and processor could support the additional RAM.
Speaker 1: But Apple typically made this really hard to do. If
Speaker 1: you wanted an Apple computer with more RAM, you were
Speaker 1: going to have to pay extra to buy a computer
Speaker 1: model that was a step up from whichever one we're
Speaker 1: looking at. And that also extends to making it really
Speaker 1: hard to repair Apple computers if something were to go wrong,
Speaker 1: and thus we get to the birth of the genius bar.
Speaker 1: So we get companies creating complicated electronic devices, many of
Speaker 1: which have proprietary fasteners and such holding them together, and
Speaker 1: the message that the customer is to bring any of
Speaker 1: those devices that aren't working, you know, they might need
Speaker 1: some repair. You're supposed to bring those back to the
Speaker 1: company or maybe an authorized service vendor. Critics of this
Speaker 1: approach say it's anti competitive and it hurts the consumer. Ideally,
Speaker 1: the consumer would have an open choice as to whom
Speaker 1: they could bring a broken device for a repair. So
Speaker 1: if I were particularly talented at repairs, I would be
Speaker 1: able to open up a shop and work on all
Speaker 1: sorts of devices. I might offer more competitive rates than
Speaker 1: what people might find going through the original manufacturer or
Speaker 1: enrolling in an extended care or warranty program. And these
Speaker 1: are ideas are the underlying principles of the right to
Speaker 1: repair movement. There are a lot of organizations that advocate
Speaker 1: for the right to repair, and they weren't to lobby
Speaker 1: governments to pass legislation that would mandate it. Primarily we
Speaker 1: see the movement in the United States and even more
Speaker 1: prominently in the European Union. This is also tied to
Speaker 1: the problem of electronic waste. As I mentioned earlier. According
Speaker 1: to the Public Internet Research Group, which I should add
Speaker 1: is not an unbiased source of information, but according to them,
Speaker 1: Americans throughout four hundred sixteen thousand cell phones a day.
Speaker 1: I find that number a little hard to believe. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's true. I didn't find, you know, other sources that
Speaker 1: backed this up, but I did find other sources that
Speaker 1: had similar eye popping statistics. Only a fraction of the
Speaker 1: electronic devices we throw away, ever, end up in recycling centers.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's mostly on us. If we just toss
Speaker 1: it in the garbage, then that's where it's gonna go.
Speaker 1: Take effort to find good recycling centers. Not all of
Speaker 1: them are ethical, by the way. It takes some research.
Speaker 1: So considering all the stuff that's in electronics, including valuable metals.
Speaker 1: There's like gold and copper in this stuff, it's a
Speaker 1: real shame to just throw them out. And then you
Speaker 1: consider the environmental impact and it gets worse. Right to
Speaker 1: repair groups want to see companies include access to stuff
Speaker 1: like repair guides, so make it possible to understand how
Speaker 1: these things work and how to fix them. Make it
Speaker 1: repair tools accessible if any proprietary tools are needed, and
Speaker 1: also make us accessible parts needed for repairs. Sell the
Speaker 1: parts individually as well, so none of this would be free.
Speaker 1: You know, the companies could still make money. They could
Speaker 1: actually offer repair kits that you can purchase. But imagine
Speaker 1: that instead of having to bring back your smartphone to
Speaker 1: some store or send it off to a manufacturer through
Speaker 1: the mail, you instead could order a repair kit, and
Speaker 1: if you have steady hands, maybe you replace that cracked
Speaker 1: screen or that dead battery by yourself. That's the appeal
Speaker 1: of the right to repair movement. But as electronics get
Speaker 1: more complicated, it's more challenging to meet that kind of standard.
Speaker 1: Some devices are complex enough that it requires a person
Speaker 1: with specialized knowledge and skill in order to tackle the problem,
Speaker 1: and a lot of us, myself included, would probably find
Speaker 1: ourselves popping into an independent repair shop to have our
Speaker 1: stuff fixed rather than take it on ourselves and risk
Speaker 1: breaking it more. Look, all I'm saying is I know
Speaker 1: what my track record is for taking stuff apart versus
Speaker 1: putting it together again, and that ratio is way out
Speaker 1: of balance. We're seeing this movement embrace not just consumer
Speaker 1: goods like smartphones, but really big stuff like farming equipment
Speaker 1: and tractors. Farmers have criticized manufacturer John Dear for including
Speaker 1: essentially the equivalent of a digital lock and those limits
Speaker 1: who can actually make repairs to a machine. For farmers
Speaker 1: who depend upon these big vehicles for their livelihood, that
Speaker 1: represents a lack of freedom and lack of options, and
Speaker 1: it really does feel anti competitive. It's saying you have
Speaker 1: to go to people of our choosing if you want
Speaker 1: to have the thing you bought repaired. And this also
Speaker 1: gets into that weird area we find ourselves in in
Speaker 1: the digital age. In the old days, you would buy
Speaker 1: something and you would just think this is mine, right,
Speaker 1: Like you bought a watch, that's your watch. You could
Speaker 1: repair that watch however you liked. But these days things
Speaker 1: are being sold not just as a product but as
Speaker 1: an ongoing service. And it's not so much that you
Speaker 1: own the thing, it's that you own access to that thing,
Speaker 1: and some ownership is retained by the original manufacturer. This
Speaker 1: is an idea that I'm not super keen on because
Speaker 1: it does put a lot more power back in the
Speaker 1: hands of the manufacturers and and takes a lot of
Speaker 1: power away from consumers. Well, in the United States, twenty
Speaker 1: states have filed legislation in an effort to address these
Speaker 1: kinds of issues, and in the EU some progress on
Speaker 1: this front has already been made. This month a series
Speaker 1: of regulations that apply to manufacturers that make appliances like
Speaker 1: washing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers, I think computer monitors too. It
Speaker 1: goes into effect and those regulations state that companies need
Speaker 1: to offer products that have replaceable components, and moreover, that
Speaker 1: anyone would be able to make these replacements using common tools.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't need anything special in order to do this
Speaker 1: repair work. So, in other words, companies are not supposed
Speaker 1: to solder stuff together or otherwise make it impossible or
Speaker 1: difficult to access components without causing further damage. And you
Speaker 1: shouldn't need a you know, number seventy three spanner up
Speaker 1: to iconological wrench or something in order to work on it.
Speaker 1: The EU has yet to pass regulations that would cover
Speaker 1: stuff like cell phones, computers, and tablets, though and that
Speaker 1: is a big problem because these are some of the
Speaker 1: most common and harmful forms of consumer waste. People go
Speaker 1: through these types of devices on a pretty regular basis,
Speaker 1: and some of the member nations of the EU have
Speaker 1: gone on to move ahead and pass their own regulations
Speaker 1: since the EU as a whole has been a little
Speaker 1: slow on this. So, for example, in France, a new
Speaker 1: piece of information will be included with consumer electronics. It's
Speaker 1: essentially a repair index, is a score that ranges between
Speaker 1: one and ten. The index gives consumers the idea of
Speaker 1: how easy or difficult it is to disassemble a device,
Speaker 1: whether or not you can find information on how to
Speaker 1: repair the device, you know, if it's readily available or not,
Speaker 1: whether or not you can find spare parts of that
Speaker 1: kind of device, how expensive those spare parts are, So
Speaker 1: you know, the the more difficult it is to repair something,
Speaker 1: the lower that score is going to be for that
Speaker 1: particular item. Now, where we go from here will depend
Speaker 1: upon how governments either past legislation or they opt not to,
Speaker 1: plus how they intend to enforce legislation. Companies have very
Speaker 1: little incentive to offer up, you know, repair options to
Speaker 1: the end user because those can end up hitting revenue
Speaker 1: down the line. Now, personally, I would love to see
Speaker 1: a lot more options for repair. I'd like to see
Speaker 1: an approach similar to what it was like to buy
Speaker 1: a car twenty years ago, because yeah, you could bring
Speaker 1: your car back to the dealership for maintenance, but chances
Speaker 1: are you might find a great mechanic who is more
Speaker 1: convenient to where you live, or maybe they have more
Speaker 1: competitive rates and that might end up being your first
Speaker 1: choice instead of bringing it back to the dealership, or
Speaker 1: maybe you invest the time and energy to learn how
Speaker 1: to do the repairs yourself. I think the options should
Speaker 1: all be there, and I definitely think that's an improvement
Speaker 1: over the status quo we have now. Well, that wraps
Speaker 1: up this episode. I hope you enjoyed learning about planned
Speaker 1: obsolescence and the right to repair. If you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics I should tackle in future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: let me know. The best way to reach out is
Speaker 1: over on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff h s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Ye.
Speaker 1: Tex Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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