Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 353 posts

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#221

Post by vladvasiliu »

scarface74 wrote: post #103
andrekandre wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've made AirPods last longer than any other pair of earbuds I've ever had. same... now if only i could easily replace the batteries, it would be almost perfect (they just die on me mid-call sometimes)

And how much larger would they be?

That's an interesting question, and I'd like an honest answer to that.

We've heard the same argument about phones, and my old Galaxy S5 with a user-replaceable battery was a whopping 0.5 mm thicker than an iPhone 13 mini. That's the width of a mechanical pencil lead. They're both water-resistant, too.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#222

Post by intothemild »

causality0 wrote: post #177
guerby wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same experience here. That's why my current laptop is a https://frame.work - USB-C to USB-C adapters means that the part that will fail is changeable - All four USB-C are able to charge the laptop. And the power brick also has detachable USB-C AND power cord cable. (And just for fun I ordered an upgrade to the motherboard, will use the old motherboard as always on PC in my home)

Personally I hate the trend of only charging over type-c. It's an order of magnitude less robust and far more prone to falling out than, say, a ThinkPad connector. Having the option is nice but I despise having to babysit my $100 Asus charger lest I stomp it flat by accident.

I really don't get this.

USB-C can on do the following on the same cable at the same time

1. Charge 2. Data 3. Video

Your power cable can

1. Charge

How is that "orders of magnitude" worse?

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#223

Post by vladvasiliu »

strogonoff wrote: post #176
samatman wrote: post #9

I've made AirPods last longer than any other pair of earbuds I've ever had. It's the cord. For me, a max of six months of fiddling with the damn thing and it breaks. I've had real headphones last quite a bit longer— but I buy the ones with replaceable cords. The pair I still have is on its fourth cord and second pair of muffs. I don't view it as any sort of economic, human, or environmental catastrophe, that they sto…

Cable replaceability is why I love IEMs like Shure SE215. Earbuds hardly break, but the cable breaks eventually. Less waste, plus the ability to choose a different cable.

> plus the ability to choose a different cable

Yup. I have a pair of Shure earbuds bought in 2011. When the cable started acting out, I replaced it with a lightning cable, since I had just got an iPhone. When that one started acting out, I replaced it with a Shure BT cable. Now I get great sound from my crappy work laptop.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#224

Post by ornornor »

scarface74 wrote: post #111
pca006132 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think quite a lot of Windows laptop works fine with Linux nowadays? Perhaps not out-of-the-box, but they works fine after installing the OS manually (which doesn't really take much time TBH). I'm not sure what software you need for work, but if they are open source they are usually fine with Linux (iirc Mac exclusive projects usually have alternatives) . For cloud stuff, I don't know what you are using so can't rea…

As long as you don’t care about things like battery life, heat, or your laptop sounding like a 747 under load.

Not true at all. It does require a bit more semi manual tweaking but you’re being overly dramatic.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#225

Post by ornornor »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #43
psi75 wrote: post #12

At this point, I only buy Apple products because of inertia. Give me an out-of-the-box Linux laptop that's as easy to use and that supports the software I need for my work, and give me a way to port over all of my cloud stuff, and I'm done with Apple forever. They're trading on the reputation they earned decades ago. This said, the problem isn't limited to one company. It's how capitalism works. In order to succeed,…

I’d really like to switch from Windows to Linux, but the software situation seems like a real problem. According to ProtonDB, a third of the top 1000 games have issues on Linux, and popular creative software (Affinity, Ableton) is right out.

I use Linux 95% of the time. When a game doesn’t work in Linux, I simply reboot into windows. Same with my CAD package that will never run in Linux (or a VM for that matter).

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#226

Post by ornornor »

what-imright wrote: post #101

Stop trying to make hardware last forever. Who here would like to use hardware from 2017? iPhone x anyone? The lifetime of these devices is defined by the reasonable update schedule of the consumer, which is based on moores law. 5 years is a reasonable update schedule. Then put one in a museum and live in the now. You get this much time forget the nostalgia https://www.bryanbraun.com/your-life/months.html

My 2015 iPhone works just fine for me, thank you very much. It’s on its third battery (despite apples best effort at preventing me from replacing it).

I wouldn’t need to update if Apple let me put iOS 16 on it or at least committed to shipping security updates to iOS 15 beyond Sept. 2022.

We don’t all need this years 1000$ (!!!!!!) phone, some of us are very content buying a few years old used phone for 200$.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#227

Post by amelius »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #146
jewel wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using this magnetic USB-C adapter on my laptop to reduce the wear and tear on the port: https://a.co/d/4JCadfi . I've been using it since March with no complaints. It'd be great if manufacturers could standardize on something like this so that the port could be flush.

They can't; Apple has a patent on Magsafe.

MagSafe is derived from a magnetic power connection that deep fat fryers used to keep dangerous accidents from happening in the kitchen

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#228

Post by ornornor »

deltasevennine wrote: post #116

This is called planned obsolescence, and it's not just electronics. Practically every product nowadays are designed with a death date to perpetuate a repeating buying cycle from consumers. It's very real. To learn more here's an interesting short video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE

I enjoyed the video, thanks

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#229

Post by ornornor »

throwaway98797 wrote: post #98
lamontcg wrote: post #97

How about we mandate user replaceable batteries (with some kind of wording to make it easy enough for normal humans with no glue and connectors that don't snap easily). Once upon a time I had an HTC Evo 4G that I could do this with. Mandating that they admit the death date seems to be baking in some level of stockholm syndrome.

id prefer they didn’t for now society has voted with their dollars to support my preferences

Why would you prefer they didn’t?

How is producing tons and tons of e waste each year and having you spend an extra few hundreds every single year unnecessarily is something you’d prefer to keep on doing?

And it’s not like the alternative would prevent you from doing it. You could still throw your phone away every couple of year and buy the new incarnation of you really wanted to still set your money on fire. It would take nothing away from you but make everyone else’s life a little better. I don’t get it.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#230

Post by vladvasiliu »

scarface74 wrote: post #102
lamontcg wrote: post #97

How about we mandate user replaceable batteries (with some kind of wording to make it easy enough for normal humans with no glue and connectors that don't snap easily). Once upon a time I had an HTC Evo 4G that I could do this with. Mandating that they admit the death date seems to be baking in some level of stockholm syndrome.

Could you drop your HTC Evo 4G in water and it still work?

I could drop my Galaxy S5 in water, and it would still work.

I actually rode around for several hours in the pouring rain with it attached to my motorbike handlebars, and it still worked.

Post reply on HN