586
You know what scares us about big tech? Planned obsolescence.
(www.fairphone.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
586 points (96.4% liked)
Technology
60112 readers
4020 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Not really. TVs, phones, laptops, appliances, etc are all really competitive markets, and all of them have issues with planned obsolescence. The reason for this has nothing to do with patents at all, but the manufacturer cutting corners to keep costs down, or in the case of phones and some laptops, blocking their manufacturers from selling parts.
That's what the right to repair movement is all about, and it has nothing to do with patents but schematics and contracts. They're intentionally making things harder to repair. They would rather their customers come to them for repairs (where they can upcharge), buy their protection plan (recurring revenue), or replace the device (chance at an additional sale) instead of repairing it themselves. None of that is related patents whatsoever.
Then we need rules on how long they can take to bring it to market. Hence 5 years, with an optional renewal if they need more time. One renewal, that's it, so a maximum time of 10 years if they use full 5 years to bring it to market.
No they are not. It's a few large producers of components, mostly, with litigious interfaces, like USB, mostly, with Intel, AMD and some ARM CPUs, mostly, with drivers for Windows first, mostly.
This means there's demand for things easier to repair, but nobody's making them. That's because of barriers in the form of patents and licenses. You are not going to dissuade me, LOL.
Agreed.
Sure, CPUs and GPUs are pretty homogeneous, but that's also changing with Intel launching GPUs, Qualcomm entering laptop CPUs, Apple making their own silicon, and Nvidia potentially entering consumer CPUs (they're entering servers).
Making a new CPU, GPU, or storage device has a pretty high barrier to entry due to engineering costs (and yes, patents), but prices are pretty reasonable and planned obsolescence isn't really a thing.
I have never thrown out a CPU, GPU, or storage device because it broke too soon or got too slow, I threw it out because I wanted an upgrade. I have thrown out laptops because they became unusable due to terrible design (e.g. hinge got messed up on one, power connector broke on another, etc). So the ones with the most patents seem to be the ones that are the most reliable, whereas the combined product (laptop, appliance, etc) is the one that dies because they cheaped out on components. For example:
If you go back 50 years, appliances lasted 20+ years, whereas now you're lucky to get 10. That has nothing to do with patents, it's just classic cheaping out on components.
The things that I have with tons of patents tend to last forever, it's everything around them that seem to fail and be incredibly hard to repair.
Not necessarily. The Fairphone exists and is pretty easy to repair, yet it's niche. Likewise with the Framework laptop. For washing machines (I just had to replace mine), durable options like Speed Queen exist, yet most seem to go for the cheaper, disposable option.
It has nothing to do with patents, people just prefer the cheaper or higher end option, and they're apparently not willing to pay a premium for repairability.
The right to repair movement is trying to expand repairability to all devices, not just those that cater to the repairability niche.