Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech 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 a love of all things tech and I recently
Speaker 1: did a series of episodes about General Motors, and one
Speaker 1: of the many things I talked about in those episodes
Speaker 1: was how Alfred Sloan, who was an absolutely critical leader
Speaker 1: of GM early on, established a practice of planned obsolescence.
Speaker 1: That is part of Sloan's market strategy was creating a
Speaker 1: company that every year would release cars that had updated
Speaker 1: styling and features in order to entice not just first
Speaker 1: time car buyers, but people who had already, you know,
Speaker 1: purchased a car in the past. And that got me
Speaker 1: to thinking that I should really talk about planned obsolescence
Speaker 1: in general and examine the facts and consider the myths,
Speaker 1: and also chat a bit about the right to repair
Speaker 1: movement and recycling, because all of this is kind of
Speaker 1: connected together. We're talking about casual consumption of electronic goods,
Speaker 1: almost a disposable approach to them, and electronic goods are
Speaker 1: not necessarily the best thing in the world to treat
Speaker 1: as disposable, so let's just start off by defining what
Speaker 1: planned obsolescence is really all about. Now. Generally, people talk
Speaker 1: about planned obsolescence as a strategy in which the maker
Speaker 1: of a thing, whether it's a physical good or an
Speaker 1: app or whatever, builds into that thing a predetermined end
Speaker 1: of life. In other words, you've already determined how long
Speaker 1: this thing is supposed to last. And the purpose of
Speaker 1: planned obsolescence is to not just sell one thing to
Speaker 1: each cut stomer one time, but to sell many of
Speaker 1: that same thing to every customer over time. It's the
Speaker 1: same reason why a lot of software companies will migrate
Speaker 1: toward a subscription based revenue model, because it's more profitable
Speaker 1: to get customers to regularly give you money than to
Speaker 1: bank on selling them a lot of the same thing
Speaker 1: to a huge customer base. Like if I'm selling a
Speaker 1: software package for two hundred dollars, I'm going to get
Speaker 1: you know, X number of customers, and chances are they're
Speaker 1: not going to buy another product for me for a while.
Speaker 1: If I offer a subscription fee for a much lower
Speaker 1: monthly plan, I might get people locked into that system
Speaker 1: for years and thus make way more money off of
Speaker 1: them in the long run than I would if I
Speaker 1: had gone with the big ticket item up front. This
Speaker 1: 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 convince the customer to
Speaker 1: bring the car back to the dealership's service center for
Speaker 1: regular maintenance or repair work. But not all technology has
Speaker 1: the value you 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 challenging 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 up 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. M 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 time, because well,
Speaker 1: entropy is something we just can't avoid. It's it's a
Speaker 1: fundamental law of the universe, particularly when it comes to
Speaker 1: cheap technology. This sort of disposable approach has a lot
Speaker 1: of negative drawbacks, including what to do with old tech
Speaker 1: that no longer works. I mean, a lot of technology
Speaker 1: contains stuff that's pretty toxic, so throwing it out in
Speaker 1: the garbage could lead to it ending up in a
Speaker 1: landfill somewhere, and then harmful stuff like lead or mercury
Speaker 1: could leach into the environment. Because of that, that's not great.
Speaker 1: So we'll touch a tiny bit on electronics recycling in
Speaker 1: this episode two. But I have done full episodes about
Speaker 1: e waste recycling, so I'm not going to spend too
Speaker 1: much time on it. And there are often ways to
Speaker 1: make older tech obsolete that are not necessarily obvious on
Speaker 1: the face of it. So let's talk about smartphones, for example.
Speaker 1: That's an easy one. One of the big trends we
Speaker 1: see in technology is that as devices or components within
Speaker 1: devices get more powerful, the software developers end up making
Speaker 1: software that eats up that extra power. Nicholas Worth wrote
Speaker 1: about this pro problem back in the ninety nineties. He
Speaker 1: wrote a paper titled a Plea for Lean Software, and
Speaker 1: his point has essentially boiled down into what we now
Speaker 1: call Worth's law, which is that software is getting slower,
Speaker 1: that is, it's getting more resource hungry at a rate
Speaker 1: that's faster than hardware is getting faster. So while subsequent
Speaker 1: generations of hardware are getting more powerful, the requirements of
Speaker 1: software are outpacing that progress, and the end result is
Speaker 1: that we often feel our shiny new devices just aren't
Speaker 1: keeping up as much as we expected them. To. We're
Speaker 1: basing our perception on what the new device should be
Speaker 1: able to do based on what we have right now,
Speaker 1: and that's just not how stuff works. Unfortunately, gamers who
Speaker 1: want to be on the bleeding edge of computing capability
Speaker 1: experience this a lot. A top gaming rig would cost
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars. It requires a powerful central processor or CPU,
Speaker 1: and quite likely multiple powerful graphics processing units or GPUs. Plus,
Speaker 1: you need a power supply that's capable of providing the
Speaker 1: juice that these components need, and you need a killer
Speaker 1: cooling system to make sure the whole thing doesn't overheat.
Speaker 1: And just as you get all of this stuff set
Speaker 1: up and running, the latest games, developers start making games
Speaker 1: that are so resource hungry that even with your killer rig,
Speaker 1: you might have to knock a few of the game's
Speaker 1: settings down a couple of notches just to make it
Speaker 1: run smoothly. Meanwhile, you're already anticipating the next big development
Speaker 1: in hardware that will let you move all those sliders
Speaker 1: all the way to the top. That's going to set
Speaker 1: you back a few more thousand dollars, which is brew
Speaker 1: roll with smartphones. We see this happen a lot as
Speaker 1: newer models use better processors, and typically new processors are
Speaker 1: usually more powerful and hopefully more efficient, So in other words,
Speaker 1: you're not seeing battery life just plummet from one generation
Speaker 1: to the next, or phones get way bigger because you
Speaker 1: need a bigger battery in order to make them last
Speaker 1: long enough. Processor technologies follow pretty close to Moore's law,
Speaker 1: and we typically interpret that as meaning that a processor's
Speaker 1: capabilities effectively double every two years or so. Not the
Speaker 1: same processor, but rather new processors on the market end
Speaker 1: up being twice as powerful as the processors that came
Speaker 1: out two years earlier. That's generally what we mean. More's
Speaker 1: laws more subtle than that, but we won't go into it.
Speaker 1: Battery life does not follow this same trajectory. It's again
Speaker 1: a law of physics. We're talking about electro chemical reactions,
Speaker 1: and so there's not a magic way to make batteries
Speaker 1: just last longer. It requires more incremental improvement. So if
Speaker 1: we only concentrated on making processors more powerful, they would
Speaker 1: just pull more juice per hour than older processors, and
Speaker 1: soon we would have smartphones. They would only have a
Speaker 1: couple of hours of useful battery life. So there is
Speaker 1: a balance to be made here. Meanwhile, smartphone apps still
Speaker 1: follow Worth's law. The apps drawn more processor power or
Speaker 1: the interact with more components, and smartphones like GPS receivers
Speaker 1: or accelerometers or the camera or microphone or some combination
Speaker 1: of all of these and more, and the smartphone operating
Speaker 1: systems themselves evolved to support these apps and provide more functionality. Well,
Speaker 1: older smartphones just can't keep up with this all the time,
Speaker 1: and so you will often see companies make a cutoff
Speaker 1: for operating system updates. Older phones might stall out at
Speaker 1: a certain OS version and be unable to install more
Speaker 1: recent update of the operating system. So you could have
Speaker 1: an Android smartphone that's maybe a few years old, and
Speaker 1: it's running a version of Android that's several generations old
Speaker 1: at this point because Google has determined that the hardware
Speaker 1: you're using simply cannot meet the needs of later operating systems. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the app developers are focusing on what they can do
Speaker 1: with the most recent OS version, which means you might
Speaker 1: not be able to run a new app with all
Speaker 1: of its features, or you might not even be able
Speaker 1: to run the app at all if you're using an
Speaker 1: older phone. And since apps are what makes smartphones smart.
Speaker 1: That ends up being a big problem, and so now
Speaker 1: the incentive is there for you to upgrade your phone
Speaker 1: even if your old phone still works, so that you can,
Speaker 1: you know, just use your smartphone the way you want
Speaker 1: to and you're not stuck on older versions of apps.
Speaker 1: And that's particularly important because sometimes these older versions of
Speaker 1: apps end up being tied to servers that could go offline,
Speaker 1: or they might swap over to a new process, and
Speaker 1: then you have an outdated smartphone that has a bunch
Speaker 1: of inactive apps stored on it and it becomes practically useless.
Speaker 1: On 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: their devices were slowing down due to age. That's what
Speaker 1: they assumed. It's just, oh, this is older, that's why
Speaker 1: it's getting slower. And in a way that was kind
Speaker 1: of true, but not in the same way that these
Speaker 1: 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: really can't replace a battery in your iPhone, at least
Speaker 1: not without violating your warranty. But under certain circumstances, like
Speaker 1: if you enroll in Apple Care Plus, then Apple actually
Speaker 1: will replace an iPhone battery free of charge. I say
Speaker 1: free of charge, really, I should say that price is
Speaker 1: included in your enrollment into Apple Care Plus. So for
Speaker 1: those users, the people who had enrolled an app Care Plus,
Speaker 1: they could have chosen to have a new battery put
Speaker 1: into their older iPhone and it would have extended the
Speaker 1: life of that device, but they weren't told about what
Speaker 1: was going on, so instead they opted to buy a
Speaker 1: brand new phone, which was way more expensive. In Apple
Speaker 1: reached a settlement agreement, actually to settlement agreements for two
Speaker 1: different class action lawsuits brought against the company about this
Speaker 1: very issue. The first settlement was for five hundred million dollars,
Speaker 1: a princely some and the second was for another one
Speaker 1: d thirteen million dollars. In both cases, prosecution argued that
Speaker 1: Apple was deliberately hiding the fact that it was throttling
Speaker 1: processing output and that the battery was degrading over time,
Speaker 1: and they knew that most users would opt to upgrade
Speaker 1: to a newer iPhone as long as they didn't realize
Speaker 1: that there was an alternative path they could have taken. Now,
Speaker 1: that pretty much hits the planned obsolescence definition right on
Speaker 1: the nose. So it turns out there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different approaches to planned obsolescence. While the phrase might
Speaker 1: make you think that the company is purposefully making stuff
Speaker 1: that just won't stand the test of time, as in
Speaker 1: the company is choosing to create substandard products, knowing that
Speaker 1: these products will break down and the customer is likely
Speaker 1: to come back and buy another one. Really, that's just
Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg, and it's usually not even
Speaker 1: the case. If a company's reputation gets tied to the
Speaker 1: idea that the stuff they make breaks easily, that's not
Speaker 1: good for business. And the rest of this episode, we're
Speaker 1: going to take a closer look at some historical examples
Speaker 1: of planned obsolescence and what was going on from different perspectives,
Speaker 1: and we'll also get into the right to Repair movement
Speaker 1: and what it might mean to the tech industry moving forward,
Speaker 1: assuming the movement actually achieves its goals. But first let's
Speaker 1: take 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: core innate how light bulbs should work, as in how
Speaker 1: bright they should be and how long they should last,
Speaker 1: as well as which company would be allowed to sell
Speaker 1: its products in certain specific regions. It was collusion of
Speaker 1: the highest order, and it violated pretty much every antitrust
Speaker 1: law you can think of. And it became known as
Speaker 1: the Phoebus Cartel. Cute huh, because Phoebus is another name
Speaker 1: for Apollo, the god of the sun. Before the cartel,
Speaker 1: manufacturers were making light bulbs that could last between fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred and two thousand hours of operation. But the cartel
Speaker 1: collectively decided that their light bulbs should have a life
Speaker 1: expectancy of one thousand hours of use. A ha. These
Speaker 1: companies were producing a technology that already had a limited
Speaker 1: lifespan just because of how it works. You know, the
Speaker 1: filaments and light bulbs, the part that actually gives off light.
Speaker 1: They eventually burned through and break, and that's what makes
Speaker 1: incandescent lightbulbs die. Clearly, this group of people were all
Speaker 1: agreeing to a worldwide limit on the useful number of
Speaker 1: hours a light bulb would operate in in order to
Speaker 1: sell more light bulbs. Right, they were making a predetermined
Speaker 1: end of life cycle for light bulbs, and by making
Speaker 1: everyone agree to this limitation, no manufacturer would be able
Speaker 1: to defy the others and start selling bulbs that had
Speaker 1: longer lifespans, which would ruin it for everybody else. Now
Speaker 1: you can see the appeal of that narrative, right, rich
Speaker 1: fat cats are cynically limiting a technology just to sell
Speaker 1: more light bulbs, while simultaneously creating pressure to prevent any
Speaker 1: other company from offering up a superior product. You could
Speaker 1: just hear the thumbs twiddling, you know, the mustaches waxing,
Speaker 1: and the chorals chortling. Heck, the cartel would even test
Speaker 1: lightbulbs from each manufacturer, and if any of those lightbulbs
Speaker 1: proved to have a lifespan that as well beyond those
Speaker 1: one thousand hours of operation, the cartel would find the
Speaker 1: responsible manufacturer keep those light bulbs lives shorter or else.
Speaker 1: But if we want to be a little more fair,
Speaker 1: we should take into consideration another factor. As light bulbs age,
Speaker 1: they would give off less light. Incandescent bulbs, they are
Speaker 1: less luminously efficient in other words, And so the counter
Speaker 1: argument was made that by limiting the lifespan to one
Speaker 1: thousand hours, it was more about maximizing luminous efficiency. It
Speaker 1: was to make certain that the light bulbs were providing
Speaker 1: enough light throughout their lifespans and not just turning into
Speaker 1: increasingly dim light sources. So there was an argument being
Speaker 1: made that the restriction of the lifespan was more about
Speaker 1: improving the quality of the performance of light bulbs rather
Speaker 1: than speeding up the need to replace those light bulbs.
Speaker 1: It was a compelling enough argument to lead the u
Speaker 1: K's Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission to give the companies
Speaker 1: some slack with that regard, though there were many other
Speaker 1: things the Phoebus Cartel did that did not get a
Speaker 1: free pass, but those are more market focused than tech focused,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to go into them. The cartel itself,
Speaker 1: by the way, dissolved in the late nineteen thirties, not
Speaker 1: because of government pressure, or at least not the kind
Speaker 1: of regulation pressure, but because of a little thing called
Speaker 1: World War two. Now, I suspect that the decision to
Speaker 1: arrive at one thousand hours of useful life was guided
Speaker 1: both by practical considerations and good old fashioned greed. So
Speaker 1: I suspect there is some truth to both of the
Speaker 1: scenarios 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 n 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: That's how he made so many early sales. Now there
Speaker 1: was a big emphasis on uniformity and consistency, in other words,
Speaker 1: because those are things that make it easier to mass
Speaker 1: produce something. And Alfred Sloan saw an opportunity to appeal
Speaker 1: to people on a different level over at General Motors.
Speaker 1: He thought it would be a good idea to change
Speaker 1: up the style of a model of car on a
Speaker 1: regular basis. At a glance, you would be able to
Speaker 1: give a ballpark estimate of the year when a certain
Speaker 1: model came out due to distinguishing features that were on
Speaker 1: that car. You know, maybe the headlights are in a
Speaker 1: slightly different spot, or maybe the car has a different
Speaker 1: kind of grill on the front of it, or maybe
Speaker 1: you put a pair of big old tail fins on
Speaker 1: the back of the thing. That's the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that Sloan was thinking about. Harley Earl, a man whom
Speaker 1: many historians credit as the first professional designer to work
Speaker 1: in the automotive industry, worked was Sloan to make this
Speaker 1: vision a reality, and Earl would sculpt models out of
Speaker 1: clay and then mold them in different ways to create
Speaker 1: new features, and as tastes changed, he could reflect that
Speaker 1: in different car body designs, and now cars could appeal
Speaker 1: to people by embodying certain design trends. This approach meant
Speaker 1: that cars now had a sort of planned obsolescence. As
Speaker 1: time passes, fashions change and older cars will pass out
Speaker 1: of fashion. Out of style, they'll become unfashionable, and that
Speaker 1: creates a psychological lever that GM could lean on to
Speaker 1: convince people to come in trade in their older cars
Speaker 1: and buy newer ones. The older cars might still work
Speaker 1: perfectly well from an operational point of view, but they
Speaker 1: could be seen as being old fashioned, and that was
Speaker 1: enough to push some people to upgrade to a new vehicle.
Speaker 1: It was still important for GM to make cars that
Speaker 1: were perceived to be reliable and powerful. If the cars
Speaker 1: were known to break down quickly, that kind of reputation
Speaker 1: would hurt sales. So while you could keep driving the
Speaker 1: same car for many years, assuming you took good care
Speaker 1: of the car, Sloan's goal was to make you feel
Speaker 1: like a kind of a social pariah if you did
Speaker 1: that for a really long time, Like, Oh, that poor
Speaker 1: so and so they can't afford a new car. Look
Speaker 1: at them driving that old, you know, Chevy or whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. Sloan's approach accelerated car pun the role
Speaker 1: of a car as a stat 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 of hundred by signing onto a two year agreement
Speaker 1: with the carrier. Typically, those agreements would limit your options
Speaker 1: when it came to upgrades. Normally you would have to
Speaker 1: wait out the two years to get to the point
Speaker 1: where you would renew your agreement or sign whatever newer
Speaker 1: version of the agreement the carrier was offering, and then
Speaker 1: you 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: help 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 read to implement a brand new feature,
Speaker 1: at least from a technological level. However, the hold 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, a new technology, or even just
Speaker 1: a new model of an existing technology, might not be
Speaker 1: the best option right out of the gate. We might
Speaker 1: need to use some self control before we buy the
Speaker 1: next 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 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 updates to technology
Speaker 1: that flesh out what it can do, at least in
Speaker 1: the ways that consumers desire, then we can't really put
Speaker 1: all the blame on manufacturers for planned obsolescence. We are
Speaker 1: somewhat responsible for it too. It's good to keep in mind,
Speaker 1: and if we recognize that part of us, we can
Speaker 1: try to make a better balance of when we actually
Speaker 1: need something new and when we just want something new.
Speaker 1: I struggle with this all the time, whether it's a
Speaker 1: new flagship phone. I mean, when Android comes up with
Speaker 1: a brand new flagship phone, I feel the temptation to
Speaker 1: jump on it. Not literally jump on it, but you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. However, in most cases, the phone
Speaker 1: I have at the time tends to be perfectly fine
Speaker 1: for my needs. The last time I did upgrade a phone,
Speaker 1: it was because the microphone on my phone had broken.
Speaker 1: I could use Bluetooth devices and talk on the phone,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't use my phone as a phone just
Speaker 1: on its own, so I did have to upgrade then.
Speaker 1: But I tend to stick to getting a new phone
Speaker 1: just every few years as the older one starts to
Speaker 1: lag behind, especially when it comes to what apps you
Speaker 1: can run. And the same is true for game systems.
Speaker 1: I've gotten a lot better about that too. It used
Speaker 1: to be that as soon as a game system came out,
Speaker 1: I felt the urge to rush out and buy it.
Speaker 1: I usually didn't because I usually didn't have the money,
Speaker 1: but I always wanted to. However, now I actually prefer
Speaker 1: to hang back, both so that any bugs in those
Speaker 1: early versions can be worked out. I mean, I do
Speaker 1: not want another Red Ring of Death situation ever again,
Speaker 1: and also so that game developers can release more titles
Speaker 1: for the system. It's not much fun pouring a bunch
Speaker 1: of money into a technology and then having to wait
Speaker 1: around for it to become useful. But now we also
Speaker 1: have to talk about the issue of right to repair.
Speaker 1: So earlier I talked about the ways companies make it
Speaker 1: challenging or impossible for the average person to repair stuff,
Speaker 1: and initially my reaction to that kind of thing is
Speaker 1: this is how they get you. They want you to
Speaker 1: get back to them and bring all the stuff to
Speaker 1: get it fixed by them the cells. But there can
Speaker 1: be other reasons for this that, while you may or
Speaker 1: may not agree with them, can be a little more subtle. So,
Speaker 1: for example, let's take Apple again. For most of the
Speaker 1: company's history, Apple products have been largely inaccessible to those
Speaker 1: who wish to do their own repairs, at least to
Speaker 1: do so without violating a warranty. But one of the
Speaker 1: big reasons for that is that Apple has a specific
Speaker 1: vision as to how consumers are supposed to experience Apple products.
Speaker 1: This was a philosophy that Steve Jobs had pushed pretty hard.
Speaker 1: The goal was to create a controlled experience from beginning
Speaker 1: to end. The company would have an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: authority in deciding this, from hardware configurations to the kinds
Speaker 1: of software that would be allowed to run on the device.
Speaker 1: We see this reflected in the iPhone app store, where
Speaker 1: developers have to get approval from Apple before their apps
Speaker 1: will actually appear on the market. This level of control
Speaker 1: helps a company deliver con extant quality to users. The
Speaker 1: challenge is then selling users on the idea that the
Speaker 1: company's approach is what the customer actually wants. Jobs was
Speaker 1: amazing at this. He could bring a device to a
Speaker 1: crowd and by the end of a presentation have that
Speaker 1: crowd convinced that Apple's product is exactly what the crowd
Speaker 1: wanted and needed. But Apple relinquishing control in any way
Speaker 1: wouldn't make that more difficult to do, because a third
Speaker 1: party might not perform up to Apple's standards and it
Speaker 1: would reflect poorly on Apple. But that also meant that
Speaker 1: Apple products were difficult to modify. Early consumer computers came
Speaker 1: out as kits, and the people who bought those kits
Speaker 1: would typically put them together themselves. You could also pay
Speaker 1: to have some of those kits come fully assembled. You
Speaker 1: would have to pay extra for that, but a lot
Speaker 1: of early computer owners actually enjoyed the experience of building
Speaker 1: the computers from the kits, and this meant that really
Speaker 1: enterprising hobbyists could even make little tweaks to the design
Speaker 1: to change the performance of the end machine a little bit.
Speaker 1: This was the early era of the hacker, as people
Speaker 1: figured out how these systems worked, and then they modified
Speaker 1: those systems in different ways. And it was pretty common
Speaker 1: practice along many different computer manufacturers to have components that
Speaker 1: you could swap out, like RAM chips. So if you
Speaker 1: wanted your computer to have more memory, you could open
Speaker 1: up your computer case and install more RAM, assuming your
Speaker 1: computer's motherboard and processor could support the additional RAM, but
Speaker 1: Apple typically made this really hard to do. If you
Speaker 1: wanted an Apple computer with more RAM, you were going
Speaker 1: to have to pay extra to buy a computer model
Speaker 1: that was a step up from whichever one you were
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: ideas are the underlying principles of the right to Repair movement.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of organizations that advocate for the
Speaker 1: right to repair, and they work to lobby governments to
Speaker 1: ask legislation that would mandate it. Primarily we see the
Speaker 1: movement in the United States and even more prominently in
Speaker 1: the European Union. This is also tied to the problem
Speaker 1: of electronic waste. As I mentioned earlier. According to the
Speaker 1: Public Internet Research Group, which I should add is not
Speaker 1: an unbiased source of information, but according to them, Americans
Speaker 1: throughout four hundred sixteen thousand cell phones a day. I
Speaker 1: find that number a little hard to believe. Maybe it's true.
Speaker 1: I didn't find, you know, other sources that back this up,
Speaker 1: but I did find other sources that had similar eye
Speaker 1: popping statistics. Only a fraction of the electronic devices we
Speaker 1: throw away, ever, end up in recycling centers. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's mostly on us. If we just toss it in
Speaker 1: the garbage, then that's where it's gonna go. It takes
Speaker 1: effort to find good recycling centers. Not all of them
Speaker 1: are ethical, by the way. It takes some research. So
Speaker 1: considering all the stuff that's in electronics and valuable metals.
Speaker 1: I mean there's like gold and copper in this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a real shame to just throw them out. And
Speaker 1: then you consider the environmental impact and it gets worse.
Speaker 1: Right to Repair groups want to see companies include access
Speaker 1: to stuff like repair guides, so make it possible to
Speaker 1: understand how these things work and how to fix them.
Speaker 1: Make it repair tools accessible if any proprietary tools are needed,
Speaker 1: and also make us accessible parts needed for repairs. Sell
Speaker 1: the parts individually as well, so none of this would
Speaker 1: be free. You know, the companies could still make money.
Speaker 1: They could actually offer repair kits that you could purchase.
Speaker 1: But imagine that instead of having to bring back your
Speaker 1: smartphone to some store or send it off to a
Speaker 1: manufacturer through the mail, you instead could order a repair kit,
Speaker 1: and if you have steady hands, maybe you replace that
Speaker 1: crack screen or that dead battery by yourself. That's the
Speaker 1: appeal of the right to repair movement. But as electronics
Speaker 1: get more complicated, it's more challenging to meet that kind
Speaker 1: of standard. Some devices are complex enough that it requires
Speaker 1: a person with specialized knowledge and skill in order to
Speaker 1: tackle the problem, and a lot of us, myself included,
Speaker 1: would probably find ourselves popping into an independent repair shop
Speaker 1: to have our stuff fixed rather than take it on
Speaker 1: ourselves and risk breaking it more. Look, all I'm saying
Speaker 1: is I know what my track record is for taking
Speaker 1: stuff apart versus putting it together again, and that ratio
Speaker 1: is way out of balance. We're seeing this movement embrace
Speaker 1: not just consumer goods like smartphones, but really big stuff
Speaker 1: like farming equipment and tractors. Farmers have criticized manufacturer John
Speaker 1: Deer for including essentially the equivalent of a digital lock
Speaker 1: and those limit who can actually make repairs to a machine.
Speaker 1: For farmers who depend upon these big vehicles for their livelihood,
Speaker 1: that represents a lack of freedom and lack of options,
Speaker 1: and it really does feel anti competitive. It's saying you
Speaker 1: have to go to people of our choosing if you
Speaker 1: want to have the thing you bought repaired. And this
Speaker 1: also gets into that weird area we find ourselves in
Speaker 1: in the digital age. In the old days, you would
Speaker 1: buy 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 number seventy three spanner up to iconological
Speaker 1: wrench or something in order to work on it. The
Speaker 1: EU has yet to pass regulations that would cover stuff
Speaker 1: like cell phones, computers, and tablets, though, and that is
Speaker 1: a big problem because these are some of the most
Speaker 1: common and harmful forms of consumer waste. People go through
Speaker 1: these types of devices on a pretty regular basis, and
Speaker 1: some of the member nations of the EU have gone
Speaker 1: on to move ahead and pass their own regulations since
Speaker 1: the EU as a whole has been a little slow
Speaker 1: on this. So, for example, in France, a new piece
Speaker 1: of information will be included with consumer electronics. It's essentially
Speaker 1: a repair index, is a score that ranges between one
Speaker 1: and ten. The index gives consumers the idea of how
Speaker 1: easy or difficult it is to disassemble a device, whether
Speaker 1: or not you can find information on how to repair
Speaker 1: the device, you know, if it's readily available or not,
Speaker 1: whether or not you can find spare parts for 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
Speaker 1: to plus how they intend to enforce legislation. Companies have
Speaker 1: very little incentive to offer up, you know, repair options
Speaker 1: to the end user because those can end up hitting
Speaker 1: revenue down the line. Now, personally, I would love to
Speaker 1: see a lot more options for repair. I'd like to
Speaker 1: see an approach similar to what it was like to
Speaker 1: buy a car twenty years ago, because yeah, you could
Speaker 1: bring your car back to the dealership for maintenance, but
Speaker 1: chances are you might find a great mechanic who is
Speaker 1: more convenient to where you live, or maybe they have
Speaker 1: more competitive rates and that might end up being your
Speaker 1: first choice instead of bringing it back to the dealership,
Speaker 1: or maybe you invest the time and energy to learn
Speaker 1: how to do the repairs yourself. I think the options
Speaker 1: should all be there, and I definitely think that's an
Speaker 1: improvement over the status quote we have. Now. Well, that
Speaker 1: wraps up this episode. I hope you enjoyed learning about
Speaker 1: planned obsolescence and the right to repair. If you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should tackle in future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, let me know. The best way to reach
Speaker 1: out is over on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff
Speaker 1: h S. W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.