Comment by bane

I've noticed that people seem to also have two working definitions of "reliability".

1. "This works as expected to without error or repair for longer than expected"

2. "This is easy and straightforward to repair, so when it breaks the halt in operations is only temporary"

I don't know why people seem to use #2 when it is obviously not the meaning of reliability, but some version of it almost inevitably brought up when discussing an unreliable technology that somebody still prefers to use over the reliable one.

This thinking infests everything from computing to cars.

"Sure my PC crashes all the time, but its a simple reboot and some configuration tweaks to get it back online, takes like 30 seconds"

"I love my car, the service from the repair shop is white glove whenever I bring it in. I'm usually in and out in the same day"

"My stand mixer is amazing, I only have to 3d print a replacement for the central gear every 10 or 11 loaves of bread and it's a 30 second swap out to get it working again"

"I love my new clothes dryer, the maintenance contract gets somebody in within 24 hours to get it back online"

To the point of the post, very few organizations track long-term reliability and repairs for products, even major expensive ones like cars and appliances. The segment of consumer who really cares about this stuff just isn't large enough to make it really viable to do so, and the segment of consumers who follow definition #2 undercut them anyways.