“The concept of ‘planned obsolescence’ is not a new one: Its coinage goes all the way back to 1932, when it was used to identify a simple scheme by which the government would impose a limited shelf life on products in an attempt to help the world emerge from the Great Depression,” Marco Tabini reports for Macworld.
“Over the years, however, planned obsolescence has taken on a more sinister meaning, often suggesting that products are purposefully planned to fail prematurely, or have been altered in such a way that they become unusable over time. This charge has been levied against the iPhone several times in the last couple years,” Tabini reports. “Ultimately [though] the planned obsolescence that pundits like to decry is nothing more than the natural evolution of a product line that is less than a decade old. Apple is no more guilty of creating and managing a product cycle than any other manufacturer, and is likely to continue doing so for some time—at least until the improvements between iterations start to plateau, as they have in the desktop market.”
Much more in the full article here.
