Comment by e2le
4 years ago
> but under what premise is it desirable that the government should mandate how companies design and sell products?
The Government already does this and with great success, the ban on lead additives in paint would be one example. By that point, it's harmful effects were already known as early as 1786 (efforts to ban lead paint began around 1921) before it's ban in 1976 (US).
Perhaps the free market just needed more time?
Without government intervention, somehow I suspect we would still see lead paint continue to be bought and sold. I cannot imagine the unthinkable number of individuals that were fucked over through no fault of their own (learning disabilities, poor health, shortened lifespan) because we chose to continue to allow lead paint to be sold on the market.
> I don’t see a coherent reason for the government to say “no, you can’t sell that”.
What about the environment? By artificially reducing the lifespan of these devices, you're sending them to an early grave only to be unnecessarily replaced by a new device because the corporate overlords demand it.
It's unnecessary churn and I'm not sure that we should demand that future generations carry the burden of our poor choices simply because we would prefer to wait until the free market fixes this mess (which may never happen). How long will that take? 10 years? More?
OS updates extend the lifetime of a device, not reduce it.
Another great example is fuel economy standards - the government says "no you cannot sell a car that has fewer than X mpg after the year Y" and it has done wonders for our energy policy despite the government doing what they can to keep gas prices down.
> OS updates extend the lifetime of a device, not reduce it.
They can extend the lifetime. They can also reduce it either by slowing things down to the point of becoming unusable or by preventing certain use cases - for example have you heard that the Nintendo Switch updates prevent subsequent downgrades in order to prevent users from making full use of the hardware by running custom/modded games?
How is provividing updates reducing the lifespan ofa device? Usually not having long term support of a device including security patches is seen as reducing the lifespan.
> How is provividing updates reducing the lifespan ofa device?
Nobody claims it does.
If a manufacturer goes out of business ot decides to stop providing updates, you can be stuck with a piece of junk if you don't control your device. If a device is designed to only allow automatic updates direct from the manufacturer and you have no control over the version of software your device runs, your perfectly functional hardware can become a useless piece of junk. Since updates often further lock devices down to make it harder run your own software, being unable to revert older versions of the software on your device can directly prevent you from being able to modify your device to make it functional.
This is all not just idle speculation, it happens all the time.
They’re referring to
> By artificially reducing the lifespan of these devices,
An iPhone 6S will run iOS 15, and if you throw a new battery in it it’ll run like new for almost all tasks, with the only caveat possibly being reduced NAND capacity/slower FS performance.
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Sorry, that's what I meant to say.
Lead paint has externalities that affect people other than the purchaser. What externalities does a Nintendo Switch not allowing firmware downgrades have?