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The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

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Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#231

Post by djmips »

magic_smoke_ee wrote: post #142
Workaccount2 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am assuming you are an ee (like myself)...I have never designed a product with a built in expiration, nor have I ever seen any app notes or write ups on the engineering of it - something engineers love to do. What I have seen done is cheaping out on parts in order to get the price as low as possible, because customers shop primarily on price. Not to lash out, but it kind of hits a nerve for me, because people think…

I seriously doubt it's ever a deliberate conspiracy in engineering apart from shenanigans like what happened at VW, but it's net effect of product managers, accountants, and contract manufacturers who modify PCBs and BOMs after it's passed off to them to save money on retail products. And so it's likely unintentional with negligence, but it benefits the company. Except for some Samsung appliances made ~ 2010-2014 whi…

There was a documented conspiracy in the past to limit the life of incandescent bulbs. Humans haven't changed that much.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#232

Post by AnthonyMouse »

shiroiushi wrote: post #178
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Older computers usually guzzle power, especially if you look at the absolutely awful Pentium4 systems. Even many Pentium 4-based systems would idle around 30 watts and peak at a little over 100, which is on par with a lot of modern desktops, and there were lower and higher power systems both then and now. The top end Pentium 4 had a TDP of 115W vs. 170W for the current top end Ryzen 9000 and even worse for current…

>The top end Pentium 4 had a TDP of 115W vs. 170W for the current top end Ryzen 9000 and even worse for current Intel. You can't compare CPUs based on TDP; it's an almost entirely useless measurement. The only thing it's good for is making sure you have a sufficient heatsink and cooling system, because it tells you only the peak power consumption of the chip. No one runs their CPUs flat-out all the time unless it's s…

> What's important is idle CPU power consumption, and that's significantly better these days.

It isn't. You can find both ancient and modern PCs that idle anywhere in the range from 10 to 30 watts, and pathological cases for both where the idle is >100W. Some of the newer ones can even get pretty close to zero, but the difference between zero and 30 watts for something you're leaving on eight hours a day at $0.25/kWh is ~$22/year. Which is less than the interest you'd get from sticking the $600 cost of a new PC in a 5% CD.

And many of the new ones are still 30 watts or more at idle.

> That's an entirely different situation because of the closed and vendor-controlled nature of those systems.

It's a worse situation, but if the complaint is that they abandon their customers long before the customer wants to stop using the device, they certainly match the criteria.

> But if you can't tell the difference between 1080p and an NTSC TV, you're blind.

Being able to discern a difference and caring about it are two different things. If your use for a TV is to watch the news and play 90s video games then the resolution of the talking heads doesn't matter and the classic games aren't in 1080p anyway.

> The low-res stuff is relegated to very small budget models where it's really pointless to have such high resolution.

Which is the point. If you have an old 30" TV and no space for a 72" TV, you do not need a new 30" TV.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#233

Post by lproven »

extraduder_ire wrote: post #131
rwmj wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZX Spectrum +2 shipped with transistors backwards: https://www.bitwrangler.uk/2022/07/23/zx-spectrum-2-video-fi... This even caused visible artifacts on the display, which was apparently not enough for the problem to be noticed at the factory.

I think Clive Sinclair was notorious for wanting products to be brought to market quickly, with pretty aggressive feature sets. They very well may have noticed it at the factory, but didn't want to do a fix because it was technically functional.

The +2 was an Amstrad product, not designed or built by Sinclair, though.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#234

Post by rascul »

com2kid wrote: post #202
kube-system wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I would hope those bulbs were built pretty well, they were crazy expensive... expensive enough that they wouldn't be competitive in lifetime-per-dollar against today's crappiest bulbs even if they lasted a person's entire lifetime. > I don't think I've had any last more than 5 years. Do you shut them off every 3 hours? That's probably what the estimate on the box is based on. Run the same bulb half the day and y…

> I've seen them. And dissected my own. Still, at the price that modern LED bulbs are being made, I'm surprised they're built as well as they are. Brand name Sylvania bulbs are $0.79/ea in a bulk Amazon right now. LED bulbs aren't lasting any longer than incandescent bulbs used to. My house has 2 bathrooms, one had incandescent bulbs when I moved in and I didn't bother to replace them. Those incandescent bulbs have o…

> LED bulbs aren't lasting any longer than incandescent bulbs used to

They tend to last a lot longer for me.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#235

Post by klysm »

talideon wrote: post #221
klysm wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like one the least harmful mistakes you could make. Capacitors are sprinkled all over boards in excess’s because it’s probably better than not enough capacitance.

It would probably be an idea to point out here that those are decoupling capacitors used to reduce noise. Capacitance isn't the point with them, but that they pass AC while blocking DC. Not that the capacitance hurts, mind.

But that’s what a capacitor does? The point is to provide a low-inductance path, not really block DC

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#236

Post by kube-system »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #206
kube-system wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good engineer is one that has a job, doesn't put their employer out of business, and produces work that fulfills the requirements they're given. Many people think there's some unethical conspiracy going on, and consumers actually want a product that lasts a long time, but companies are refusing to give it to them. But this is projection of individual preferences on to the market as a whole. Consumers want cheap shi…

> If consumers really wanted to pay a premium for high duty-cycle equipment with premium lifespans, they can already do that by buying commercial grade equipment. But they don't. That costs a ton. I just want a better lifespan, I don't want to 20x the duty cycle and also pay B2B prices. It's too hard to figure out which consumer products have a better lifespan, so companies do a bad job of catering to that need. This…

> That costs a ton. I just want a better lifespan, I don't want to 20x the duty cycle and also pay B2B prices.

Therein lies the problem. A more durable product exists, and yet, even you don't want to pay more for it. And you are likely much more privileged than the rest of the world. What do you expect the rest of the world to be doing? Most of the world isn't picky about whether their hand mixer has plastic bushings or ball bearings. They're are choosing between any appliance at all and mixing their food with a spoon.

> It's too hard to figure out which consumer products have a better lifespan, so companies do a bad job of catering to that need.

There are many companies that try to break this barrier over and over, with tons of marketing material proclaiming their superiority. Why do they all fail? Because their hypothesis is wrong. The majority of the mass market doesn't want appliances that last for tens of thousands of hours. Most people use their appliances very lightly and for short periods of time before replacing them.

I think a lot of people on this forum have points of view tainted by privilege. Poor people aren't dumb, they know that they are buying cheap stuff that doesn't last as long as more premium options. They're making these options intentionally because a bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush to them.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#237

Post by kube-system »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #205
kube-system wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except for some Samsung appliances made ~ 2010-2014 which seemed to fail just after their warranties expired. And? That just sounds like they have good engineers. If you are designing a machine, you have an target lifetime. You'd obviously want the product to last through the warranty period, because warranty claims are a cost to the company. Every choice of a component affects lifetime. Designers of mass-market pr…

> And? That just sounds like they have good engineers. If you are designing a machine, you have an target lifetime. You'd obviously want the product to last through the warranty period, because warranty claims are a cost to the company. > Every choice of a component affects lifetime. Designers of mass-market products can't just use premium components everywhere -- the mass market will not pay steep premiums for other…

If you think people want 30 year old washing machines, you're kidding yourself. Do you remember what washing machines were like in the 1990s? They were noisy and tore up clothing. Not only would I not want to use one of these outdated machines, nor display it in my home, but I also wouldn't have wanted to move it to the dozen different addresses I have lived at since then.

At least in the US, people move frequently, and a washing machine that lasts for decades isn't even a benefit, because they'll likely have left it behind.

> The difference between a 5 year washing machine and a 30 year washing machine is not very big. Anyone pinching those specific pennies is doing a bad thing.

Absolutely right, it's only a matter of tens of dollars, probably. However, retail consumer appliances live and die at the margins. Nobody is opening up their washer to inspect the components to see if the $510 washer has better components than the $499 washer. All else equal, they're buying the $499 washer 90% of the time. Your fixed costs are going to eat you alive when spread across your fewer units, and retailers will stop carrying your product because it isn't moving.... All the while the $499 washer is going to be sitting in that home 5 years from now when the realtor puts a sign out front. And literally zero people are buying a house based on the bearings in the washing machine.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#238

Post by kube-system »

consp wrote: post #212
kube-system wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except for some Samsung appliances made ~ 2010-2014 which seemed to fail just after their warranties expired. And? That just sounds like they have good engineers. If you are designing a machine, you have an target lifetime. You'd obviously want the product to last through the warranty period, because warranty claims are a cost to the company. Every choice of a component affects lifetime. Designers of mass-market pr…

> And? That just sounds like they have good engineers. If you are designing a machine, you have an target lifetime. You'd obviously want the product to last through the warranty period, because warranty claims are a cost to the company. Product have an expected lifespan longer than the warranty period. This is malicious if given as a target. I'd like to see MTBF numbers on everything so people can lump together and s…

> Product have an expected lifespan longer than the warranty period. This is malicious if given as a target.

Also it is mathematically stupid, because products do not fail at consistent rates, nor are they used by customers are equal rates. If you want to minimize warranty costs, you do need to target some mean lifetime well beyond the warranty period.

MTBF (or MTTF) might be useful number if you buy 100 light bulbs, but is not really a useful number for you buying one appliance. Product failures don't follow a normal distribution. The stuff that ticks people off about shitty products is the infancy-failure part of the bathtub curve -- It's when you get 13 months out of a $200 blender that fails in infancy that you're pissed. Not when you get 24 months out of a $20 blender that fails from end-of-life.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#239

Post by kube-system »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #207
kube-system wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that poor people can now afford to own some household appliances isn't a huge value to society? It completely changed the way our societies operate. I think it is a good thing that people have the option to buy crappy washing machines, rather than being forced to use the washboard and bucket my grandmother used. Yeah, they sometimes do develop a bad belt, or the timer mechanism might fail. But it beats being…

> If anything, squeezing a few more pennies out of that BOM is going to lift some people at the fringes out of poverty. If it squeezes a small but solid chunk out of product lifetime too, then it's also likely to harm people on the fringes. If they can buy it with one less month of savings, but then it breaks a couple months earlier, they're probably worse off. (For actual pennies divide both of those numbers by some…

Yeah, walk up to someone in the hood and tell them that for 15% more they could have got [insert product] that last 2x as long. You're gonna get punched in the face, because they already know that. They're not dumb. What you're missing is the time-value of owning something now, which is greatly amplified when life is tough.

People don’t want to walk their clothes basket down to the laundromat for one more month while they save for the nicer washer that lasts a little bit longer. They want the cheap one now, because they just got off some shitty shift at work, and they’re sick and tired of lugging their laundry down the street. Having a quality washer [x] years from now is not a desired part of the equation. Immediacy is of higher value.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#240

Post by Dylan16807 »

kube-system wrote: post #239
Dylan16807 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anything, squeezing a few more pennies out of that BOM is going to lift some people at the fringes out of poverty. If it squeezes a small but solid chunk out of product lifetime too, then it's also likely to harm people on the fringes. If they can buy it with one less month of savings, but then it breaks a couple months earlier, they're probably worse off. (For actual pennies divide both of those numbers by some…

Yeah, walk up to someone in the hood and tell them that for 15% more they could have got [insert product] that last 2x as long. You're gonna get punched in the face, because they already know that . They're not dumb. What you're missing is the time-value of owning something now , which is greatly amplified when life is tough. People don’t want to walk their clothes basket down to the laundromat for one more month whi…

1. Immediacy doesn't help once it breaks and you can't buy a new one for years.

2. If everything lasts twice as long for 15% more, you can get a half-expired used one for even cheaper.

> they already know that. They're not dumb.

I think they're not dumb and they already know it's extremely difficult to figure out which brand fits that criteria, if any, so it's not worth it because it's such a gamble.

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