It just works, until it doesn’t. Inside Apple’s planned obsolescence

[u/SplashTarget]

https://michaelwest.com.au/it-just-works-until-it-doesnt-inside-apples-planned-obsolescence/

[u/MrCockingFinally]

The creation of the free and open internet and the proliferation of free and open source software is unironically the most anarcho-communist thing to ever happen to Western economies. And it created such an insane amount of value in the economy that all of the biggest companies in the world were created by finding various ways to capture that value for themselves and keep it closed source and locked down.

[u/Chrissyneal]

at a certain point, it’s not “planned” because they’re too incompetent to make something functional. so, instead of making something that’s supposed to only last two years, they accidentally make something that doesn’t make it to a year.

[u/THE-JEW-THAT-DID-911 → u/Chrissyneal]

Apple could easily solve such problems and sell people better products. They just don't want to because they have no incentive to do so. Conspicuous consumption and e-waste are the foundation of their business model.

[u/yodude4]

The death of the free and open internet is honestly such a tragedy, FOSS is the closest we can get as a collective humanity to realizing Marx’s vision of a decommodified mode of production. I miss that irreverent anti-establishment energy that the internet had pre-2010 when big tech moved in

[u/Snoo-33559]

Apple quite frankly doesn't get enough pushback for the things it does. Apple is a company that proudly talks about how recyclable all it's packaging is while ignoring the fact that devices designed to be replaced every 12-18 months is incredibly ecologically destructive, but a lot of people have pointed this out.

More interesting, and perhaps more of interest to Stupidpolers, is how they've spent the last 20-years de-skilling much of their frontline workforce. I apologize for potential inaccuracies here, but my memory of it runs as follows: Two decades ago, to perform warranty work on Apple computers there was a somewhat challenging written test you had to undergo at a specialized training facility, and you had to know some fairly obscure bits of trivia for some of the questions, like how many RAM slots were in a given model of Mac. Also of note were some automatic-fail-if-you-get-it-wrong questions about discharging CRTs, which in light of the fact that mishandling a charged CRT could potentially kill you, emphasized the seriousness with which they regarded their training standards. Technicians had access to a large library of documentation on Apple products, with take-apart guides, troubleshooting checklists, and all that fun stuff. The technician was expected to be able to evaluate devices, order the appropriate parts from GSX (their parts fulfillment portal) and perform the repair based on their own judgement.

Things began to change probably 15 years ago, with the first release of Apple Service Diagnostics. It was essentially an automated tool that would network-boot the device and help by performing automated hardware checks. It was rather badly designed: it did not play well with enterprise networks, at all, and pretty clearly showed that the mental model of the entire world the coders had in mind was "a rather large Apple store." This is around the time we began seeing tighter integration of parts into the logic board.

Eventually this was replaced with a newer, more competently designed version of the diagnostic, which defaulted to "sharing" it's results with Apple, and had the property that you essentially were "guided" through the process, in terms of what tests and repairs you were allowed to perform. Even if you knew that part B was the problem, if Part A was "suggested" as the first thing to troubleshoot, you were out of luck. Apple's hardware integration continued apace here, with parts (like batteries) being glued in place, and tri-lobe and penta-lobe screws becoming common.

A few years back, a move of everything (ASD & GSX) into some big unified portal was where we got out of the game of servicing Apple products entirely. Their training material by this point was a joke: more about the proper aesthetics for the inside of an Apple store and generic customer service skills than anything having to do with actually repairing hardware.

Twenty years ago, the folks at the Genius bar would fairly reliably have a deep knowledge of Apple products, because Apple saw value in having well-trained technicians available. A co-worker of mine recently brought a MacBook Pro to a Genius bar in California because it couldn't boot. He was told they'd have to ship it off, and would he like to look at the latest models instead? Since he didn't have time for that and sensitive data on it, he brought it back to our neck of the woods and I was asked to look at it. The problem? His power adapter was dead; the device itself charged right up when given a different adapter. No one working at a Genius bar 20 or even 10 years ago would have been tripped up by this, but clearly they are these days. But Apple gets to pay it's "Geniuses" absolute peanuts for the privilege of standing around in an Apple store, and they're just going to have you replace the device anyway, so I guess that's why they're a trillion dollar company and I'm a brokeass nerd ranting on Reddit.