By Rysha Sultania
“Skyler, don’t you understand? I’m not in danger, I AM….”
BEEP BEEP! UPDATE 8.9453842040 OUT!!!! BEEP BEEP!
I roll my eyes, click ‘remind me later’ for the 1000 th time that week and resume my Netflix
surfing. If you are one of those people who clicks ‘Update Now’ the minute you get the pop-up
screen, I suggest you go register yourself in the same club as those who put pineapple on pizza.
However the inherent laziness we have to update our systems may actually not be as
unfounded as we presume.
Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design and economics is a policy of
planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life, so it will become obsolete
(that is, unfashionable or no longer functional) after a certain period of time. The rationale
behind the strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat
purchases (referred to as "shortening the replacement cycle"). Producers that pursue this
strategy believe that the additional sales revenue it creates more than offsets the additional
costs of research and development and opportunity costs of existing product line
cannibalization. In a competitive industry, this is a risky strategy because when consumers catch
on to this, they may decide to buy from competitors instead. Planned obsolescence tends to
work best when a producer has at least an oligopoly similar to what is observed in the tech
domain.
(https://www.jstor.org/topic/plannedobsolescence/?refreqid=excelsior%3A82104b9ff4d48101
ed8c2a3488b81b97)
To put things in layman terms, anyone who has had to update several versions of an Operating
System or erratic iTunes may attest to the fleeting thought that software companies may be
deliberately planting errors or sabotaging their software so that the user is compelled to install
their new products. This phenomenon is exactly what is referred to as ‘perpetual product
obsolescence’ in the technical world. It is no secret that iTunes and MS Office applications can
be highly eccentric all of a sudden, causing users to be left confused and exasperated to say the
least. It has been widely speculated that iPhone IOS is often made to work slower and
erratically when a new phone is being released so that users feel that in order to have a
satisfying product experience they must purchase the newer model as theirs is outdated. Often
certain programs only work if you have downloaded a series of other affiliated software
rendering their prime purpose completely useless. In such situations, it is common for the user
to not only feel cheated but also helpless and as if backed in a corner, with no alternate options
to choose from.
Of course as stated above, a consumer could resort to using alternate competitors however this
becomes increasingly challenging in the OS and other application sector since several
companies are subsidiary to 2 or 3 main brands which exercise complete control over the
market.
Luckily, today with growing awareness and need for transparency, it is a lot more tricky for
these horrendous strategies to stay out of public eye for too long. So the next time you click
‘remind me later’, tell yourself you aren’t lazy, you’re just careful!
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