Planned Obsolescence: A Pain in the Ass

Ok, I had an open-ended discussion on the issue with a friend and fellow designer of mine. The issue of planned obsolescence was at the center of our heat. In plain English, Planned Obsolescence is when capital-hungry companies develop several generations of a product, and introduce the later/ more advanced version of their product at a later (and apparently ‘more advanced’) time. A good analogy is a Doctor giving medicine or vaccinating someone. It would be like having a dosed cure, and only injecting you with nominal increments of that particular ‘cure’.

This is obviously a much deeper/ multi-layered issue than I make it out to be. There are pros and cons for this but I must take issue with one particular product on the market: The Apple iPod.

Apple marketing, if by any chance you’re reading this, PAY CLOSE ATTENTION. You are on the verge of screwing up BIG TIME. For the sake of world peace, I will leave the ‘designer’ argument out of this rant. I am speaking as a consumer. I feel insulted by those people, used and you know, kind of bitter.

I 'obtained' (ok, I didn't buy it, I won it ...but I worked hard to win it) my iPod in September of 2004. I think it might have been the ‘thing’ to have way back then, the 15 GB iPod. (Retail value was about $300.00+) In the 6 months that have passed since, Apple has managed to ‘unveil’ about 6 newer generations of the iPod. Each of those 6 is an improved version of the previous one (the mini iPods, the normal ones with more memory, the ‘dock’, the shuffle feature, the one with the pictures) etc. etc. 6 Months guys? Are you kidding me? To add insult to injury, they are playing this sick and twisted price game, where each ‘new’ product is priced the same as the ‘old’ crappy one, and the ‘old’ crappy one, goes down a substantial percentage in price.

Apple is fortunate and can get away with this because their particular product in question is truly a winner. I complain and I write this, but I am still very happy with my iPod (and I hear it’s a ‘classic’ that you can’t find anywhere else now…haha, that’s right). I do however think they pushed it too far, and to those of us who get green with envy at the slightest thing; too far, might be too much.

Apple may have won this battle, the iPod is a HOT product, and they can probably keep doing this for a while but in the long run (Apple Marketing, You still there?) they will end up losing what little brand loyalists they had. To a consumer, it’s a fundamental question: Why would I go spend a boat load of money on a company’s trendy/ technologically ‘hip’ product, when I’ve had first hand experience that I’m putting all this money on a soon-to-be Has-Been?

I do commend them for not changing the name or adding Version 1.0, 2.0 or anything of the sort … or.... making any drastic design changes … all iPods kinda sorta look alike (Smart move … ) so ... it’s cool, I can walk down the street and still pretend that I’m rockin’ a 60GB.

More on the topic, at a later date.

Side Note/ Tip: Hey, Do you think you’ll ever make some sort of IR communication system on the iPods, where I can ‘beam’ a song over to a fellow iPod user and vice versa? That would be hot man.