Comment by enraged_camel
15 days ago
>> Appliances like Microwaves, etc were revolutionary for its time. Only problem: they lasted forever (>20 years). No 1 needed to buy it again = no business. It was deliberately not made to last as long and possibly not exactly cheaper both in cost and retail price.
This is a common myth that was debunked a while back. Essentially people get fooled by survivorship bias: they only see the few old appliances that somehow survived, and that leads them to conclude that things were higher quality back in the day.
> Essentially people get fooled by survivorship bias
It's still a thing today though? It's not survivorship bias. Take the Microwave example. In a lot of countries it is very hard to buy just a traditional (convection) Microwave now. They force these 4-in-1 or an inverter Microwave.
> leads them to conclude that things were higher quality back in the day
It says nothing about "quality". So continuing, yes the inverter Microwaves are "quality", offer more control and costs more but due to all the complexity dies way faster. A lot of them die in <3 years when the traditional 1s last way longer. Back in the day we only had convection Microwaves. The end.
> This is a common myth that was debunked a while back.
By who? By you? Another example - SSDs have been made to not last as long. We went from SLC -> MLC -> TLC -> QLC etc. The writes were reduced. Did the consumers want this? No. There just wasn't much "choice". Top of line Samsung consumer SSDs just changed. During COVID some vendors sneakily adjusted it too. So, yes quality went worse. Deliberately.