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The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

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Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#131

Post by bo1024 »

drdec wrote: post #98

Most of the people on this board are upper middle to lower upper class (thinking American, apologies to my non US friends). Such people can afford products outside the grasp of most Americans. What naturally happens to such products is that the manufacturers find a way to broaden their customer base. They find ways to bring the price point down so they can sell more. For most people this is a boon. They can afford a…

Your parents, lower middle class in the 80s, could afford a washing machine that lasts 40 years.

You, lower middle class in the 2020s, can afford with the same resources a washing machine that lasts 5 years and is no more effective than your parents' (but has an app).

In the sense of the parent comment, you are fortunate that the magic of capitalism currently produces such cheap washing machines that even people as poor as you can afford them. But from another angle, the purchasing power of the lower middle class has sunk over time, and quality has degraded to match because durable products have now become "outside the grasp of most Americans".

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#132

Post by dijit »

kovac wrote: post #123
forgotusername6 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I owned a Nokia in 2003. The battery lasted a week and they were virtually indestructible. The phone never crashed or reset, the keys were so reliable and well placed that I could text without looking at the screen. The phone did not get slower with age. None of these things can be said about my current smart phone. Granted it does a lot more, but the quality of the things it does do is much worse.

I bought my dad a Nokia phone in 2008. A dumb phone, with just texting and calling features. It continues to work to this day, so, 17 years (the markings on the buttons are fully erased now, other than that it works). It outlived him. I don't know how they managed to build stuff like that. I would expect some electronic part to fail sometime along the way.

Well, I can tell you how: rigorous testing.

I worked for Nokia (briefly, just before Eloppification) and I remember being told that when the iPhone launched everyone laughed because there was no way that the battery could last more than a day, there was no app store back then, no flash, no high-speed data (2G) and it failed every single one of the internal tests that Nokia had.

Yet, people didn’t care, obviously - and the iPhone is the model for nearly all phones today.

I get bent out of shape about this, the same way I get bent out of shape about the death of small phones and modular laptops; but people vote with their wallets and if the market was large enough for both to exist then there would be better options; yet it seems like there’s not.

People seem to care much more about capacitive touch screens, large displays, hungry CPUs, incredible post-processing of cameras (and great camera sensors) than they do about being drop proof, having stable software or battery life.

Features > Stability ; to most people. (and, how do you put stability on a spec sheet for tech youtubers to care about or savvy consumers trying to buy the best “value” they can; build quality doesn’t fit onto a spec sheet).

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#133

Post by [deleted] »

blueflow wrote: post #63
AndyMcConachie wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This author doesn't really understand quality and starts out by defining it purelt in subjective terms. Then makes the mistake in the rest of the article by following this subjective reasoning by talking about perceptions of quality as a stand in for actual quality. Go read Zen anf the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for a decent, if not weird, introduction to thinking about quality. Quality is both subjective and obje…

I'm surprised. What is the objective aspect of quality? Can you have quality without a human-intended purpose?

[deleted]

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#134

Post by ReptileMan »

raspasov wrote: post #43

"Following his reasoning, it cannot be stated in absolute terms that an iPhone 15 is of “better quality” than a 2003 Nokia." This statement suffers from either viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses or from total cultural relativism in the most pejorative sense. I'm not sure about 2003, but around 2009, I owned a Nokia N900, which was arguably the flagship Nokia phone at the time. I can confidently state that c…

When we talk nokia we mean 3310 ... and that bastard was indestructible, the battery lasted forever and you had snake and a phone book.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#135

Post by thatjoeoverthr »

I’ve noticed a significant drop even recently, having recently bought the single worst pair of shoes at a brand name store. They basically dissolved like tissue paper within a week. I’ve never seen anything like it.

My working assumption right now is this two phenomena together.

One, a sneakier kind of “shrinkflation”. You can make a can of coke smaller but you can’t do this with shoes. But you can swap out materials or hire more careless manufacturers.

Two, the breakdown of communication caused by AI, earlier fake reviewers and the death of the media at the hands of the web. Taken together, you can get away with a lot more without liquidating your brand simply because word won’t spread.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#136

Post by myaccountonhn »

panick21_ wrote: post #87
djfivyvusn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced the widening access to American consumerism is a moral win. The amount of fossil fuels we're dependent on as a species is obscene. I worry for our children. There is no offramp, only growth.

This is one of these philosophies that I hate more then almost any other. The idea that is bad that poor Indian and Chinese people now have access to anything from clean water to planes is absurd. You can sit there in your luxury house and cry about consumer culture but for millions of people its basic stuff that they have access to for the first time. And in Europe, despite increasing quality of live, both total ene…

The reason it's seen as bad is because there are not enough natural resources to sustain such a consumption, and many of these countries (esp India) will practically become unhabitable if global warming continues like it does. There are very few signs that technology will be able to fix this.

No one is against clean access to water...

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#137

Post by blub »

jabjq wrote: post #106
raspasov wrote: post #43

"Following his reasoning, it cannot be stated in absolute terms that an iPhone 15 is of “better quality” than a 2003 Nokia." This statement suffers from either viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses or from total cultural relativism in the most pejorative sense. I'm not sure about 2003, but around 2009, I owned a Nokia N900, which was arguably the flagship Nokia phone at the time. I can confidently state that c…

I googled the author's name and from a cursory look at his linkedin he was a toddler in 2003. It’s therefore reasonable to conclude that he has no idea how a phone from 2003 worked. I mean, he could’ve used one for a bit, but definitely not as a daily driver.

As late as 2011 Nokias like the N8 or N9 were competitive with the iPhones of that time i.e. the iPhone 4. That iPhone is the famous “holding it wrong” phone.

Then Nokia admitted defeat and switched to Windows which failed badly. Symbian was too hard and expensive to maintain and their Linux OS strategy was to redo the OS three times instead of incrementally developing it.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#138

Post by pas »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #108
raspasov wrote: post #43

"Following his reasoning, it cannot be stated in absolute terms that an iPhone 15 is of “better quality” than a 2003 Nokia." This statement suffers from either viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses or from total cultural relativism in the most pejorative sense. I'm not sure about 2003, but around 2009, I owned a Nokia N900, which was arguably the flagship Nokia phone at the time. I can confidently state that c…

I owned a Nokia in 2003. The battery lasted a week and they were virtually indestructible. The phone never crashed or reset, the keys were so reliable and well placed that I could text without looking at the screen. The phone did not get slower with age. None of these things can be said about my current smart phone. Granted it does a lot more, but the quality of the things it does do is much worse.

my nothing phone (1) full of very ugly scratches (and one especially ugly testament on a corner to me dropping it one too many time) was stolen a few months ago while I was in a house of worship (I was introducing my favorite girlfriend to the forbidden pleasure of dipping fries into mcfreeze ice cream with caramel - and while in this trance state...)

anyway, the new Nothing phone (3a) is amazing batterywise!

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#139

Post by danaris »

Xmd5a wrote: post #103
RangerScience wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth noting that the author of Zen and the Art literally went crazy in pursuit of this. I don’t mean this to say “you have asked a bad question”, but rather to say, “you have asked so large a question that a man once went insane in trying to answer it.”

>Pirsig had a mental breakdown and spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals between 1961 and 1963. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and treated with electroconvulsive therapy on numerous occasions >Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values is a book by Robert M. Pirsig first published in 1974. I'm afraid you're romanticizing the relationship between Pirsig's books and his life. That s…

While it may be true that Pirsig's mental breakdown had nothing to do with what went into the book, the facts you have presented here do not particularly support that conclusion.

If his mental breakdowns had been, say, in 1976 and 1978, that would have supported it much better. But someone working on the philosophical underpinnings of a book for over a decade before the book is published is not at all unreasonable.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#140

Post by throwaway_fjmr »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #108
raspasov wrote: post #43

"Following his reasoning, it cannot be stated in absolute terms that an iPhone 15 is of “better quality” than a 2003 Nokia." This statement suffers from either viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses or from total cultural relativism in the most pejorative sense. I'm not sure about 2003, but around 2009, I owned a Nokia N900, which was arguably the flagship Nokia phone at the time. I can confidently state that c…

I owned a Nokia in 2003. The battery lasted a week and they were virtually indestructible. The phone never crashed or reset, the keys were so reliable and well placed that I could text without looking at the screen. The phone did not get slower with age. None of these things can be said about my current smart phone. Granted it does a lot more, but the quality of the things it does do is much worse.

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