Is Apple guilty of built-in obsolescence?
There has been much discussion in the wake of the accusations late last year that Apple was deliberately slowing down its phones in a bid to boost its sales. The French fraud watchdog has even launched an investigation on the Cupertino company.
All brands want people to keep buying their latest products, and in the case of Apple, its policy has always been to keep costs down by having as small an inventory of replacement parts as possible, dubbing devices more than five years old as vintage. In the case of its iPhones, batteries naturally deteriorate, and when they are unable to supply certain levels of power this can sometimes prompt an involuntary restart. Having one’s phone suddenly reboot is no laughing matter, so to avoid this problem, which is far from unique to Apple, once batteries fall below a certain capacity, the performance of phones is reduced.
From a technical perspective, this is a good solution: some phone is better than no phone. From a PR perspective, it’s proved a disaster, because Apple never told anybody about this problem and this solution. And if this issue emerges in the run-up to the launch of a new model, little wonder that the conspiracy theorists have been hard at work. Instead, Apple might have thought of providing a battery meter and a cheaper way to replace batteries, thus prolonging the use of the phone. But it has to be said that taking its customers consideration into account has never really been part of Apple’s culture (“It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want,” said Steve Jobs famously).
Should there be laws against built-in-obsolescence? In some rapidly evolving technological environments, customers probably already know that what they are buying will soon be obsolete. Philip Kotler even argues that “much so-called planned obsolescence is the working of the competitive and technological forces in a free society — forces that lead to ever-improving goods and services”. If Tesla wants to preserve its capacity for innovation, not retrofitting previous models may be unpopular, but makes sense, as long as buyers know what they’re getting into. Does it make sense that a vehicle just a few months old is unable to incorporate a new feature or newly developed accessory? It does if the brand wants to focus its resources on moving forward, even if this is frustrating for the user. Would it make sense to force Tesla by law to do things that are against its strategic interests? Probably not.
In fact there are already laws to protect consumers from unscrupulous manufacturers who make things that fall apart or do not work properly. Is this the case with Apple? The company is now facing no less than fifteen class action suits and will have to demonstrate to a judge that it was in fact acting in its customers’ interests. New laws trying to typify something with as many possible nuances as built-in obsolescence would probably create more problems than they solve.
Instead, monitoring companies guilty of built-in obsolescence makes sense. In the wake of the Apple case, if you have a terminal that works you can trade it in to buy the latest model, or you can accept reduced performance to avoid inconvenient reboots, or simply replace the battery. Either way, the demands of new operating systems, applications and wear and tear mean that phones have a limited lifespan, and punishing companies for coming up with new models is clearly absurd. As ever, the best approach is full transparency.
(En español, aquí)
