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Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

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Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#221

Post by john61 »

prepend wrote: post #84
beloch wrote: post #12

You know what helps products last longer and reduces waste at the same time? Repairability . The repairability of apple products is so poor that even Apple can't fix most of their own products without replacing surprisingly large portions of any given Apple device. End user repairability has been utterly neglected. Disassembly is frequently impossible without causing damage, and components such as batteries are frequ…

Repairabiliy is important. But I think durability is more important as it requires no action by the user. iPhones are pretty solid as far as lasting a long time. I’m using a 5S that is 3 years old and it’s my daily driver. I passed on my old 4 that is still being used as a Netflix/ web browser. This is contrary to competitor phones that have hardware issues as well as ability to keep getting software updates. Nexus 5…

My Nokia N900 is 9 years in daily use now and still going strong.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#222

Post by jjoonathan »

ceejayoz wrote: post #135
jjoonathan wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have gaskets really been forgotten for technical reasons or were they quietly smothered when the planned obsolescence benefits of potting entered the industry's consciousness?

When my kids' lunch container gaskets leak, I have to throw the lunchbox in the wash. When my iPhone's leak, I'm out potentially $1500.

There are a dozen gaskets along your car's power train that will set you back multiple times that amount if they fail, yet they don't and you trust them not to.

Of course, if you let your kid reassemble either your power train or your $1500 iPhone without supervision, the results will be exactly as you describe, but also entirely your own damn fault.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#223

Post by jpttsn »

usrusr wrote: post #168
jpttsn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone lifetime is bottle necked by performance moving on, not by wear and tear. Even so holes in the wall fix the common hardware issues for like $100.

> Phone lifetime is bottle necked by performance moving on, not by wear and tear. We used to think the same about PCs, but now I haven't found an excuse to upgrade in seven years (this is equivalent to the time between the 3dfx Voodoo 1 and the Gforce FX 5x000 series!). I see absolutely no reason why the same isn't happening with phones, it just isn't that visible because of wear and tear replacement (and the various…

For me that’s a supply constraint, not demand. If MBPs got better as fast as iPhones I’d upgrade.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#224

Post by jstarfish »

saagarjha wrote: post #201
copperx wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though I hate things made out of plastic, plastic IS the right material for building a phone. Plastic is hard to scratch, has grip, is lightweight, and is hard to break.

Remember iPhone 5c? People absolutely hated it because it was plastic (well, that, and some other reasons–but mainly because it seemed "cheap").

I'm not a materials scientist, but something has happened to consumer plastics in the last 40-60 years-- it's changed for the worse (I'm assuming in an effort to be "green", which happily coincides with undermining durability).

We used to be able to buy Fisher-Price toys that were tough enough to bear the weight of a car, or withstand multiple generations of abuse by children. I've got plastic toolboxes inherited from my grandfather that still hold up.

Take a look at the ratings and user photos for plastic vehicle ramps on Amazon and consider whether you think you could even get the jack stands in before the ramps collapse. Kids' toys are flimsier than ever, yet despite the "cheaper" construction they're also more expensive than ever. I bought my kids the Barbie Dreamhouse (a $100+ marvel of plastic and cardboard) that collapsed under its own weight. The original Nintendo equipment was light-years more rugged than the endless RMA experience that is the Switch.

We have the technology to make plastics that don't feel "cheap" and the products reusable, but for whatever reasons we've clearly steered away from these goals.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#225

Post by ceejayoz »

jjoonathan wrote: post #222
ceejayoz wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my kids' lunch container gaskets leak, I have to throw the lunchbox in the wash. When my iPhone's leak, I'm out potentially $1500.

There are a dozen gaskets along your car's power train that will set you back multiple times that amount if they fail, yet they don't and you trust them not to. Of course, if you let your kid reassemble either your power train or your $1500 iPhone without supervision, the results will be exactly as you describe, but also entirely your own damn fault.

> There are a dozen gaskets along your car's power train that will set you back multiple times that amount if they fail, yet they don't and you trust them not to.

For that reason, I maintain precisely zero of them myself.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#226

Post by zrobotics »

jstarfish wrote: post #224
saagarjha wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember iPhone 5c? People absolutely hated it because it was plastic (well, that, and some other reasons–but mainly because it seemed "cheap").

I'm not a materials scientist, but something has happened to consumer plastics in the last 40-60 years-- it's changed for the worse (I'm assuming in an effort to be "green", which happily coincides with undermining durability). We used to be able to buy Fisher-Price toys that were tough enough to bear the weight of a car, or withstand multiple generations of abuse by children. I've got plastic toolboxes inherited fro…

Plastics have actually gotten better in the intervening years, but the advances in machining have allowed far more complicated molds than was once economical. This allows designers to use less plastic, and make it "strong enough". I was recently shopping for a gift for my nephew, and was horrendously disappointed in the Fischer price products- for the money, they didn't seem anywhere near the quality I remembered. However, one only needs to examine something like cordless tools or Lego to realize quality products can be made using plastic.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#227

Post by EpicBlackCrayon »

IBM wrote: post #158
post_break wrote: post #144

To me it sounds like Apple wants to be "seen" as building products that last as long as possible to justify the cost of the product. They want you to justify the buy it for life cost, because they want you to believe the marketing that it will last longer than competitors, even while laptop keyboards fail early, the repair process costs over $800, the screens on laptops look like someone sprayed brake cleaner all ove…

You don't have to believe Apple. All you need to do is look at the secondary market and see how prices for used devices hold up and see that it's true.

But is that because people immediately take a $1000 device and wrap it in a protective case, or by virtue of the device being durable, etc.?

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#228

Post by closetohome »

rauhl wrote: post #184
the_solenoid wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you try to extrapolate your or my willingness to repair something to the overall market for the iphone, it would be an error. What are the tradeoffs for a user replaceable battery? (really, this is something we should all know if we are arguing FOR replaceable batteries - maybe it's not the best idea? I would wager 99%+ of sales go to people who never want to touch the innards of a phone. And anecdotally,…

You raise a good point about tradeoffs: it probably is true that most people really neither want nor need a replaceable battery. But here’s another tradeoff: if one is producing phones for the great portion of the market which needs or wants disposable devices, then one doesn’t get to claim that one is designing durable devices.

Durable and disposable are not mutually exclusive attributes.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#229

Post by swerner »

scarface74 wrote: post #80
swerner wrote: post #6

If longevity is what they want, they should release private keys and hardware specs for hardware that they drop from their own OS updates. That way, we could continue using old iPads and iPhones, albeit with custom Android builds.

You can still use a first generation iPad today and do all of the stuff you did with it in 2010. Yes you can also redownload older apps from the store.

No, I can't unfortunately. Too many apps rely on web backends that have been upgraded and are incompatible with the versions that run on iPad 1. For example, the built-in YouTube application on iPad 1 is completely non-functional. Also, the newer iCloud features require you to "update" your iCloud to a version incompatible with the old iPad.

Many older apps have now also been pulled from the store. My iPhone 1 can only reinstall Skype from an old iTunes backup, but not from the store.

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