61–63 of 63 posts
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And cars. Let's not forget about fault finding a car requires a considerable investment in diagnostics gear.
Motorcycles still win in that department, even if modern sportbikes are getting more and more electronic helpers.
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In Shanghai there's a brand of milk, Ubest, that comes in 500 mL, 950 mL, and 1350 mL containers. The best price per mL is always the 950 mL size. This always bugs me -- what's the point of buying larger sizes if it's not cheaper?
People may have become accustomed to assume that the larger product is a better deal, so perhaps this is a way to achieve the higher profit margin of the two options through understanding consumer behavior. Note that this most likely not Ubest's pricing decision, but the convenience store or grocer retailer that sells the product to the end consumer.
I disagree with the common belief of planned obsolescence. In the industry the cheapest thing to make is plastic injection molding. By far. Like 50 to 100 times cheaper than the alternatives at scale. Melting plastic at 200 Celsius is so much easier than melting metal at over 700 Celsius(over 1000 for steels) with all the contractions and problems this creates. Any manufacturer could use metal in their products or cr…
If it's something that just mostly sits around unused, it's more resource efficient (economical, ecological) to minimize the manufacturing cost and not care about much else.
If it's a professional tool that is used hours every day, the manufacturing cost can almost be ignored - maximizing usability and minimizing downtime is where it's at.
So we still have professional vacuum cleaners that last maybe five years in professional use, ten hours six days a week, but would last for centuries in home usage, one hour every week.
Decades ago the products were not so differentiated, so also consumers bought long lasting vacuum cleaners. http://images.manufactum.de/manufactum/grossbild/21524_1.jpg
At some point it crosses over to intangible qualities like in design furniture. It's cool if it's not just a throwaway thing, but something well designed and maintainable. It also looks timeless.
