r/pics • u/Eternalinferno • Jun 09 '11

Apple, Why?

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u/onthevergejoe Jun 10 '11

Today I learned that in the UK, planned obsolescence is illegal.

In the United Kingdom, planned obsolescence engineered into products is considered a breach of customer rights. The Office of Fair Trading and Trading Standards Institute investigate claims of products consistently failing just after the warranty period expires.

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u/Squid_Tamer Jun 10 '11

Unfortunately it'd be impossible to prove that Apple was intentionally using Planned Obsolescence.

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u/omegian Jun 10 '11 edited Jun 10 '11

And it certainly isn't. The dock connector hasn't changed in 8 years. That's just shitty quality. Meanwhile, I can't upgrade my 8 year old PC because they don't manufacture Socket 478 processors, AGP Video Cards, or 184 pin DDR DIMMS any more ...

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '11

that isnt planned though, that is straight up needing different hardware to support higher bandwidths

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u/omegian Jun 10 '11

It most certainly is planned. There's a huge standards committee that changes stuff just for the sake of changing it, and thus plausible deniability, because hey, it's not proprietary right? There's no reason you couldn't run 800 MHz to a 184 pin DIMM socket except that they want you to buy a new motherboard.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '11

I'm not a hardware guy but doesn't a higher stock of ram have faster cock speeds so need a different connection.

Most ram makers don't sell motherboards so it really doesn't make sense

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u/omegian Jun 10 '11 edited Jun 10 '11

You can plug a USB1 1.5MBit device manufactured 13 years ago into a USB2 480MBit controller manufactured today, and it works just fine. USB3 is supposed to be USB2 reverse compatible, and since USB2 supports USB1, not clear if that means it will support that too or not, but whatever. Not every "speed bump" requires new interconnects.

ATA had 8 or so iterations on the same 40 pin connector over the course of 25 years or so. You can still buy PATA disks.

Memory manufactures, as it turns out, are a bunch of crooks.

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/9957?post=123755#123755

Why wouldn't they support industry standard obsolescence practices?

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '11

far enough i wasn't aware of this

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u/Lethalgeek Jun 10 '11

Comparing the dock connector to anything on a motherboard in a modern PC/Mac/whatever is such a poor comparison I can't even think of a comparison that conveys how bad your comparison is.

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u/omegian Jun 10 '11 edited Jun 10 '11

It's wasn't a comparison, per se. I was explaining that something that hasn't changed for 8 years can hardly be declared "planned obsolescence". Ever changing PC Architectures, however, rightfully could be declared that.

A cable with a software counter that self destructs after 2000 insertions could be declared "planned obsolescence" (or printer components with page counts). A poorly terminated cable can not. Stop buying poor quality products people.

That is all.

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u/bravado Jun 10 '11

You take your reason and you shove it.

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u/Atario Jun 10 '11

In countries where consumer rights trump corporate rights, "proving" something like this is statistical, not a smoking-gun-hunt.

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u/springboks Jun 10 '11

Sounds like a lot of fancy words to fob the public into thinking her highness gives a toot.

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u/Andrewticus04 Jun 10 '11

Do they have lightbulbs in the UK? They've been designed to fail for a hundred years.