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

The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

downtowndougbrown.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 269 posts

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#241

Post by Dylan16807 »

kube-system wrote: post #236
Dylan16807 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> A more durable product exists, and yet, even you don't want to pay more for it.

This is disingenuous as hell.

I want to buy a version that cost 15% more to make. I don't want to buy a version that cost 3x as much to make (or is priced as if it does).

When I can't find the former, that is part of problem. When I don't buy the latter, that is not part of the problem.

> They're making these options intentionally because a bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush to them.

The best way to have the most birds in hands on an ongoing basis is to optimize for both price and lifetime per dollar, not just price.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#242

Post by kube-system »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #240
kube-system wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

> it's not worth it because it's such a gamble.

That's also true. At the individual unit level, small differences in MTTF/MTBF are negligible because product failures are naturally distributed anyway. The mean time is just a mean, and nobody gives a shit about a good mean product failure rate when theirs happened to fail below the mean. That's true no matter how much you spent.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#243

Post by Dylan16807 »

kube-system wrote: post #237
Dylan16807 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

> If you think people want 30 year old washing machines, you're kidding yourself.

You say this in the same breath you talk about people being desperate for any cheapest appliance instead of having nothing?

> And literally zero people are buying a house based on the bearings in the washing machine.

Well that's them being dumb.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#244

Post by xp84 »

belval wrote: post #135
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…

To be fair this is hardly limited to EE and is the issue with the race to the bottom in all product categories. Make long-lasting high-quality 100$ pants? People prefer spending 10$ on Shein. Additionally, the issue is that as a consumer, it's not easy to differentiate between quality markup and greedy markup. I don't see the cap manufacturer on the box so the 25$ light bulb might last 10 years or it might last 6 mon…

> as a consumer, it's not easy to differentiate between quality markup and greedy markup

This is so true and insightful. Even plenty of so-called “luxury goods” are trash. And outside of luxury, it seems like most markets are dominated by roughly 90-99.9% products that are all identically garbage, just ranging from 1%, 2% up to 800% profit margins. So the person buying the high-end brand and the one buying from Aliexpress both have the same quality components (trash tier) and sometimes the same PCBs and designs. If you want a good quality refrigerator, you can buy a Viking or something for $9,000, or spend any amount of your choice from $800-5000 for something that will die in 2 years and be outside of warranty. It makes my blood boil, especially in areas like appliances, where the amount of waste, by tonnage, is super offensive.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#245

Post by xp84 »

graemep wrote: post #226
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…

The problem is that consumers cannot tell whether the more more expensive one is high quality or whether it is just the same as the cheap one, just priced higher. There have been plenty of discussions on HN about brands that used to produce durable products no longer doing so. I mostly buy cheap stuff because I assume that everything will be built as cheaply as possible, so I will get something that will not last any…

Yes, so tragic really. The few people out there not just churning out disposable crap, are not even getting the business of people like you and me, because we know so few can be trusted that we just buy the cheapest thing.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#246

Post by alias_neo »

shiroiushi wrote: post #180
alias_neo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an LG OLED from 2017. It started getting really bad screen burn/pixel degredation just after the 6 year mark (6 year warranty), I did a quick search on Youtube, and lo-and-behold, a whole bunch of other people, with the same model, started having the same screen burn-in issues at the same age! It covers the middle third of the screen, top to bottom, and the entire bottom 1/4 of the screen with some odd spots a…

OLED screens are known for having burn-in problems like this. LCDs don't, though they probably have issues with backlights becoming dim with age.

Yeah, it's quite disappointing when you buy a mid-high end OLED, despite keeping the brightness down and being careful with it, it just suddenly developed huge patches of worn out pixels one day.

I'll probably still stick to OLED though unless there's a new technology that can give me the same blacks and brights; can't keep up with all of the new marketing terms these days so not sure if there is something that can compete but last longer.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#247

Post by kalleboo »

kube-system wrote: post #154
magic_smoke_ee wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a pretty awkward value judgement about what a "good" engineer is, but you're describing an unethical one with a bizword like "value engineering". I realize ethics are no longer understood by much of Western society because the culture teaches transactionality, worships trickle-down economics and greed, and hyperindividualism. > It isn't that. It's pressure at the shelf that does it. Consumers behavior s…

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 you really care, you can still get an excellently-engineered $300 toaster today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxAbz9mfaj0

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#248

Post by rasz »

lproven wrote: post #233
extraduder_ire wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Didnt at least some engineers transfer after acquisition?

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#249

Post by pxx »

xp84 wrote: post #244
belval wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair this is hardly limited to EE and is the issue with the race to the bottom in all product categories. Make long-lasting high-quality 100$ pants? People prefer spending 10$ on Shein. Additionally, the issue is that as a consumer, it's not easy to differentiate between quality markup and greedy markup. I don't see the cap manufacturer on the box so the 25$ light bulb might last 10 years or it might last 6 mon…

> as a consumer, it's not easy to differentiate between quality markup and greedy markup This is so true and insightful. Even plenty of so-called “luxury goods” are trash. And outside of luxury, it seems like most markets are dominated by roughly 90-99.9% products that are all identically garbage, just ranging from 1%, 2% up to 800% profit margins. So the person buying the high-end brand and the one buying from Aliex…

it's also not like the Viking refrigerator will last appreciably longer than a cheaper make... their warranties can be noticeably shorter than their competitors even though they somehow charge 2x-10x the price.

Re: The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory

#250

Post by rasz »

weinzierl wrote: post #210

"The capacitor might not have been doing its job properly if it was installed backwards, but it didn’t seem to really be hurting anything." This is the buried lede! I am of the opinion that half of the capacitors in any modern circuit are useless; the trouble is we don't know which half.

This guy knew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_Muntz

> He often carried a pair of wire clippers, and when he thought that one of his employees was "overengineering" a circuit, he would begin snipping components out until the picture or sound stopped working. At that point, he would tell the engineer "Well, I guess you have to put that last part back in" and walk away.[14]

Techmoan recently did a video "The story of the 4-Track Cart" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqoglkbe9sc covering most of Muntz life.

On a serious note this is a terrible practice and nowadays wont pass any EMC certification.

Post reply on HN