Forced obsolescence is a net negative

We all have one or two devices that you probably can’t use anymore, like an older flip phone or an ancient e-reader. Well, why can’t we use them? They still worked when you bought them. Well, that’s because of forced obsolescence, usually. I’m going to assume you know what that is, and if you don’t, just do a quick search.

Thanks, capitalism

The primary reason for forced obsolescence is capitalism. Even if a truly great product is made, once everyone gets one, you can’t make a profit anymore. So instead, the company starts a subscription service for it (I mean look around in the modern world, how often do you see subscription services) or releases a second rendition with more features. Everyone goes and buys that one, and the company stays afloat. But what happens to the older version?

Well, it gets left in the dust. The general public moves on from it, forgets it. The company may release an update for it, they may not. Tools developed for it drop support, services get shut down. Replacements or replacement parts become more difficult to find, and the company that originally made it turns a blind eye.

Ruh roh spaghettioh

This is where forced obsolescence becomes something problematic and not just something capitalistic and greedy. The device may still work completely fine, mint condition. The battery holds a charge, it doesn’t bootloop, screen still lights up. But because the manufacturer moved on from it, the developers did too, and because those two moved on, the users do, too. A device that functions perfectly meets the weak link in its chain, which wasn’t even its own link.

The biggest problem here is cost. You could be spending thousands upgrading your device, all because big brother decided that you couldn’t use it anymore. People that would normally only get a new device after many years are forced into buying the next one immediately, which puts some obvious wear and tear on the wallets of the consumers, while pouring cash into the wallets of the company, which only promotes this type of behavior.

Can’t forget that this puts pressure on the environment. Relentless purchasing like this is bound to make a hell of a lot of e-waste, which often ends up in landfills or scattered randomly, which poses actual threats to the environment and people. If a single spicy pillow battery gets accidentally popped in a landfill, and it goes up in flames, the rest of the landfill might too. Now, imagine those disgusting fumes that are sinking their way deep into the environment, meanwhile the manufacturer only makes more devices that never needed to be made, accelerating this problem in the first place. Yuck.

Distinction

The issue here isn’t that new devices exist, the issue is how the majority of the modern tech industry treats old devices. Rather than keeping up support while the product naturally wears out, which may cost a small portion of their multi-billion dollar profits, they just choose to discontinue the product, service, tool, whatever it is.

Not every discontinuation is a bad one, let alone forced obsolescence, though. There are genuine reasons why a product may have to lose support or be pulled from the shelves, such as recalls. I’m sure at some point, we all heard of Samsung’s Galaxy Note7 disaster, where they would literally explode, which could be extremely hazardous in environments like an airplane, crowded subway, or flammable place. For that reason, Samsung deployed a software update to the phones that essentially soft bricked it, and then removed them from physical and online storefronts. Another example is the Tesla Cybertruck, which due to shitty engineering (it failed a lot of safety tests), would get the gas pedal jammed under the foot mat, rapidly accelerating the truck and endangering practically everyone inside. Due to this, Tesla fixed this issue somewhat, and slipstreamed the newer version of the Cybertruck into manufacturing.

Fear not, for Homebrew is here

Well, it’s not always called Homebrew, since that’s just a term generally used for consoles. A better umbrella term would be community-maintained software.

When a company abandons its product, the majority of people follow. But not all people. Often, you’ll see other phones, computers, and niche tools still have quite the community, mostly comprised of hobbyists, software developers, and other sorts of enthusiasts. Through them, new life gets shoved into a twitching, dead body, murdered by greed. This often comes in the form of custom ROMs, software revivals, and replacements.

A great example is F-Droid. Rather than dropping support for Android 4.x and prior like Google did in 2023-ish, it kept support, as did the developers on that platform. If you install F-Droid, say, v0.45, on your Android 4 phone, you are bound to still see tons of software for it. To this day, you can still use F-Droid without any restrictions.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this post. For more wacky programming practices and information on raising old tech from the dead, don’t forget to tune in to the CheeseBlog for another post. Cya!