Stay Free! Daily offers this amazing interview about obsolescence, design, and our relationship to our stuff.
STAY FREE!: Business people in the 1920s and up through the 1950s talked openly about planned obsolescence in trade publications. Are they less likely to talk about it now?
GILES SLADE: They call it different things now: "death dating" or "product lifespan." It's an established strategy. When a junior industrial designer is assigned to a work site and tasked with designing a product, one of the first questions is: How long is this thing going to last? How long does the competition last? How long is the warranty? This kind of planning is common knowledge among design teams.
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He talks specifically about the battery life issue, the vulnerability to scratches, the statements from Apple about the expected life span of the product, and the problems with the screens.
and what, precisely, is that supposed to mean?