Planned Obsolescence (ft. Louis Rossmann)

this video was brought to you by brilliant hi welcome to another episode of Cold Fusion look at the phone or the laptop that you're watching this video on you think you own it right well you kind of don't over the years you and I have slowly lost control and ownership of the products we buy maybe you've noticed it maybe not or maybe it just hasn't bothered you yet but the fact of the matter is that we're being punished for wanting to make decisions about how we maintain repair use and operate our devices and software from

Cars to TVs laptops and phones fixing things has become a nightmare companies are actively blocking our right to repair the products that we own I'm looking at you apple and more anti-reaction think in putting together this episode a secondary topic presented itself the fact that we're slowly losing control of everything that we own hostile software is transferring the power from us the consumer to the tech Giants we'll explore that too and one final piece of housekeeping I sat down with right to repair Advocate LS Rossman to get his thoughts on the subject I'll be using

bits of the interview throughout this episode you are watching C Fusion TV it's not a new phenomenon that manufacturers want to control their products even after they've been sold to you back in 1985 Nintendo introduced the checking integrated circuit or cic it was a chip for the NES console that stopped unauthorized Game cartridges from being inserted and played developers like Atari games were then sued for releasing games without Nintendo's approval this is innocuous by today's standards but it was a sign of things to come since then our games have ringly become online arcade mode is

the only part of GT Sport that works offline you can't do driving tests buy cars take photos or even save progress unless should connect it to the PSN so if a game maker decides to shut down a server a few years after you bought it you're stuffed that game you paid for it's now unplayable but it goes beyond games entire Hardware devices can become paperweight when a company decides to stop supporting it spotify's Hardware car audio player didn't sell well so they're abandoning it leaving all of those who bought it stranded with an expensive paper

weight these things are all terrible enough but the most egregious transgression of all is the inability to fix our own devices manufacturers will tell us that as technology improves components naturally get tougher to fix sure there is some truth to that but the real kicker here is that they're not just making Hardware repairs more difficult they're also designing software that practically puts our devices on lockdown this has sparked a movement of consumers Advocates experts and politicians alike who say enough easy enough enter the right to repair movement the right to repair movement is essentially demanding

a return to the old school ways of Technology development you know when products were built to last but if something did break you could just grab a manual some spare parts and get it back up and running so right to repair is you should have the ability to repair your own product and the manufacturer should end be putting intentional roadblocks in your way of doing so and there's this misconception that right to repair means that I want to have a a cell phone that's the side of of what you know Gordon gecko was using in

the movie Wall Street and that's not really what it's about rights to repair is about manufacturers not putting intentional barriers between you and your ability to do your job the sad truth is gradually over the years and decades Corners have been increasingly cut and Now Products just don't last as long as they used to and consumers as a whole just got used to throwing things away in a 2024 survey nearly 50% of people said that they replace products and not repair them that's almost 50% of broken products ending up in the trash instead of being

repaired now let's see how manufacturers lock us out from repairing things ourselves there's a thing called Parts pairing a decade ago if a phone component broke you could just go to any electronic store and get it replaced with a compatible part try that now with an iPhone and good luck it's not going to work anymore because of Parts pairing Parts pairing is a manufacturing Choice Apple leads the pack here rigging its system with software barriers so you're forced to use only its parts tools and services so the first is Parts pairing where a part will

have a serial number and the the device will check the serial number of that part and if it has changed it'll say even if that is a perfectly compatible part even if you have taken that part out of another device that you just purchased new for $2000 something about that won't work properly and that that's something that's obviously bad for many people this makes sure that they only work with the specific device they came with in September 2023 Apple up the ante and launched its most software locked phone yet the iPhone 15 with this model

you can't even swap out Parts between iPhones of the same model if you need to swap your iPhone 15 Pro Max camera or screen with a phone of exactly the same model features will be disabled or the part just wouldn't work we have the red motherboard with the blue phone internals and we have the blue motherboard with the red phone internals we'll boot both of these phones on face Bas ID issue detected we have the important battery message important display message through tone is still disabled auto brightness also doesn't work and the same goes for

some MacBooks while apple is the most restrictive the trend has spread HP tried to discourage non-hp printer ink with fake error messages GE Fridge owners had to find hacks to use offbrand water filters even kig blocked third party K Cups a move that was roasted by coffee lovers Parts pairing is enough to get under anyone's skin but that's just one piece of the puzzle there are plenty of other tactics some are pretty nefarious that manifacturers use and keep getting away with until now 2009 marked the beginning of Apple's anti-republican it only got worse from 2016

Apple would solder their solid state drives to the MacBook logic ports making Replacements and data recovery nearly impossible many other manufacturers would pull all sorts of tricks to scare off wouldbe DIY repairers in a 2022 repairability report card Samsung and Google phones flunked while Lenovo Microsoft and HP laptops barely passed so a part of the motivations for the right to repair movement is to counter the war on Independent repair take Apple for example as you can tell already they've earned a bad reputation but not without reason until recently Apple only allowed repairs at The Genius

bar or authorized third party repair shops to give you an idea of just how far they went these shops are geotagged and repair parts are tracked by IP addresses and this is so repairs can only happen within an approved Zone when I'm at the other shop I can do them that's the shop that's off do so we have to do them from that Geo as such oh I see so Apple actually like tells you where that repair can happen as well yeah everything's coded when we order the part they come direct to that store and

we can only use them within that store because obviously Apple would know by the IP what address where you doing it wow there's a lot into it they're very clever Apple even sued a small business owner in Norway for using refurbished iPhone screens that were never advertised as genuine parts and that's the next phase of the issue manufacturers actually blocking your ability to repair your own stuff take John Deere for instance until 2023 they outfitted all their tractors with software that only company authorized representatives could access to repair John Deere then set the price of

repair to around $170 per hour and then made the farmers cover the representatives travel expenses for Farmers living in remote areas which is common this was a huge pain especially since tractor downtime means lost crops and income to get around this and this is hilarious some Farmers resorted to to searching the dark web for John Deere software from Ukrainian hackers in the words of one such hacker quote we want Farmers to be able to repair their stuff for when things go wrong and now that means being able to repair or make decisions about the software

and their tractors okay so back to Apple in 2019 CEO Tim Cook partly blamed cheaper batteries for bad iPhone sales he put it to investors when people can repair their own devices they don't buy new ones of course it's a smart economic strategy and it's paid off about 2/3 of Apple's Revenue comes from new iPhone sales we see this everywhere like dishwashers you can buy a new one for around $200 but if something breaks the replacement parts cost almost exactly the same as a brand new dishwasher it's the nature of the Beast consumers Chase Bargains

and corporations Chase profits and next we have hostile software nothing in big Tech's easy to use anymore I'm sorry you Got You Don't Own anything they make changes that you have no control over every upgrade seems like a downgrade um this is true of all the companies and we were making things that were intuitive where the human would do something that seemed to make sense and it would work and now you have to search for it sometimes where did they move it to Everything Changes you have to subscribe you don't own you don't own products

anymore uh it's just they'll make a change the next month on you and you have to subscribe pay money and set up names companies just love updating our software and it's really for benefit software updates are becoming hostile removing and breaking features at will and there's nothing you can do about it and the market Trend goes beyond Electronics we're losing control of everything we buy remember when BMW was trying to charge buyers of their cars a subscription fee for heated seats well thankfully they backed away from that but it goes to show you the thinking

of these companies they want to make a buck wherever they can and then we have Adobe who's recently come under Fire and is being sued by the US justice department and FTC for hidden cancellation fees and also making it unnecessarily difficult to cancel subscriptions let's get into why Adobe is being jointly sued by the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission alleging that the company imposed a hidden early termination fee and complex and challenging cancellation process upon subscribers violating the restore online Shoppers confidence act wow what a catchy name which has been around

since 2010 this isn't to mention the recent controversy around their terms of service critics claim that they can access user files to train their AI essentially you pay while they siphon your hard work straight from your computer case of adobe they outwardly state that if you've uploaded something to their database they use it to train generative AI it's not even debatable if they're doing this it's literally written in their terms of service couple weeks ago I was looking for stock photos and I ended up on Adobe stock where I noticed something strange kept scrolling and

found more again words spelled wrong if they were even words at all in this one the tape just kind of disappears into the headlight of the car if I did want to license any of these photos it would cost me $80 $80 and that's just the tip of the iceberg we all know about Windows forcefully updating and reactivating settings that you turned off and then there's Facebook shoving AI into search features no one asks for looking at the broad picture consumer riots are taking a beating all right so this all sounds pretty bad right how

did we get here how did we get to a point like this how did manufacturers get away with such anti-consumer behavior for so long well let's put it into perspective these massive companies lobbing against right to repair are collectively worth about1 trillion this is a David versus Goliath battle if I've ever seen one in 2019 Microsoft even offered to pay more taxes to fund stem education in Washington if right to repair never went to a floor vote manufacturers love to parade their list of excuses against right to repair they argue that it threatens their intellectual

property puts consumers at risk of injury and leads to botch parts and repairs that damaged their reputation back in 2017 an apple lobbyist warned a Nebraska Senator that passing right to repair laws would turn the state into a mecca for cyber criminals now imagine if a car manufacturer said that you couldn't replace your brakes alternator or radiator anywhere but in their own dealership to air quote discouraged theft and if you dare to try that would make your entire car unusable what do you think do you think these arguments passed the sniff test for [Music] you

okay so there's got to be some positives here fortunately there is things are starting to turn around and that's thanks to some recent legislative victories in October of 2023 three California passed the right to repair act and this requires manufacturers to provide the tools to fix electronic devices over a dozen other states in the US are toying with similar bills across the pond the European Union has been pushing forward legislation for the benefit of end users remember when Apple was forced to switch out their charging port the lightning cable for USBC that was thanks to

the EU mandating that all handheld devices must use USBC charging ports by 2024 Apple has been a reluctant participant in all of this but they've shown that they can play nice in 2022 they rolled out a self-repair program however Apple self-repair setup requires a $1,210 credit card hold 75 lb of gear and when he tried it the iPhone screen shattered immediately it seems like this is lip service from Apple only fast forward to April of 2024 an Apple has made a surprising about face now some of us can fix our devices with secondhand genuine parts

and most importantly their devices will work as usual but Louis Rossman says that these policy changes still aren't a legitimate solution for easy repair which is why it's also frustrating to see all these press releases this 24 page thing from Apple where it talks about how we're making repair available to all like that's a core value it's like no it's not suck like it's no no get theu out of here it's it's not it's demonstrably not I it's not a logistical thing where they're doing the right thing but there's one little hang up in this

particular area the supply chain but in their program I have to collect all this information on you that you I don't have to collect if you're just my normal customer feel free to be Anonymous you I have to collect all this info on you collect information on your device and then I have to order the part now I have to buy a part and wait a week or 2 to 4 days for it to show up who's going to wait a few days for a battery on a smartphone that's insane I would imagine that this

is just something that was made up by a group of people that wanted to be able to show legislators they're trying to make us look stupid they're trying to make us look Petty in my opinion so in conclusion right to repair is important it benefits us as consumers and taking into account E-Waste it's better for the environment and even our own health manufacturers have proven that they can design products that are easier to fix it's time that more of us demanded it these companies saying that modern products can't be repaired easily because they'll be too

bulky or lose water resistance is false the LG G5 phone did this all the way back in 2016 and furthermore Dell's XPS comes with an easily swappable battery and SSD and Microsoft tweaked its surface 3 laptops to make repairs less of a headache and then there's the extremes such as the framework laptop where every part is replaceable with a single screwdriver to some degree this should be the way forward this is the framework laptop 16 this is a DIY laptop this is so anti-apple in like the best way possible the screws are labeled that's right

the instructions for disassembling this laptop are literally printed on it three screws boom battery out and now to get the main board out we just have this connection here for the the fingerprint sensor a pull tab for the speaker two pull tabs for the display assembly and our two antennas for the wireless card and finally if we have right to repair people like Kenny wouldn't have to wait 63 days for an authorized technician to change his wheelchair battery quote no one should ever have to fear death or fear for their family because a company decides

a medical equipment customer does not have the right to replace his own batteries and that just about sums it up we all need a right to repair TR try to spread the word right to repair by Saving somebody money or by getting them to be excited even if they just do something like make their thermostat work again like there's going to be a kick of dopamine when you solve a problem that you didn't know how to solve and you solve the puzzle and it actually works there's always that little gu and if you get people

to experience that then you've got people on your side for Life try to spread the word that way don't tell people you're bad you bought this product you're bad you didn't fix this thing and or you're bad because you don't care about repair you should care about this here's why you should like try to not lecture people on it get the share on your joy if you want to see the full interview with Lou Rossman I'll leave a link in the description below not being able to repair our own devices is frustrating but have you

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catch you again soon for the next episode cheers guys have a good [Music] one and you don't t no Coke all right I'm going to on my all right all right [Music]