Poll: So I found out something interesting about Apple today, along with other companies of course..

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Giftfromme

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Nov 3, 2011
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I like how the word "need" is thrown about when talking about products. Before the iPad came out, I really really needed such a product. I was dying for it. Luckily the iPad came out and fulfilled my needs. It was quite fortuitous as I was going to die the week after it came out! Thank God for Apple.

Oh yes the future products I need:
A phone or a relay of a few phones that can double up as projectors and speakers, so that anywhere I or my friends are, if there is a flat surface, we can sit down and watch a move on it. The other phones will double as the 5.1/7.1 sound.

A telescope for my phone. Seriously who doesn't need one of these?

A device that collects my darts for me, so I don't have to pick them up. I also need a device to picks up tennis balls too.

I need a device that can display holographics like Star Wars.
 

Olas

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Dec 24, 2011
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Why do poll results always give me the finger? Sigh.

It was discovered in the mid 30s that exposure to asbestos could lead to many lung diseases such as mesothelioma and lung cancer. The U.S. government and the enormous asbestos industry decided that this discovery wasn't something that the public needed to know about. They actively suppressed knowledge of these diseases, opposed further cancer research, and then continued to use the stuff in everything from homes to war submarines until the late 70s, when the knowledge of the substance's lethality began to surface. Of course by then the damage was already done.
I guess the point I'm making here is that capitalism can be a real dick sometimes.

Sure someone might discover a cure for cancer, perhaps someone already has, either way we'll probably never hear about it. Such a discovery would be terrible business for drug manufacturers.
 

evilneko

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Jun 16, 2011
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I'm skeptical. There's no need to deliberately cut features, to deliberately downgrade hardware. The march of technology will naturally make their gadget obsolete within a couple years even if they didn't do that.

Then again, kind of explains why the iphone took what, three generations before getting copy and paste functionality? :p Still waiting on the keyboard, too.
 

Aprilgold

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Apr 1, 2011
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Aris Khandr said:
Saladfork said:
Next time you see someone with a macbook in a cafe or something, congratulate them for breaking the market system.
Or, crazy thought, the Apple product just worked better for their needs. I have an iPad. I'm not ashamed of it, and I didn't "break the market system". I looked at what I wanted out of a tablet, and found the Apple offering to be more reasonable.
Well get ready to buy the second, third or fourth addition coming since that one right there is incomplete, apparently.

While a Macbook allows you to get a bunch of media editing programs, a Ipad doesn't have a lot that is unique to it that a competitor can't out fox. Honestly, you might as well wait until they have the best version out there, since it will cost less then buying every one coming after the first.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not surprising, its a great buisness choice. Make your products come fast and slightly incomplete to make the best bang for your bck.
 

Zack Alklazaris

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Oct 6, 2011
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Business is business, but yet when it comes to computers like the iPads it pisses me off. If they are going to make an outdated product on purpose it should come with an outdated price.

I thought this topic was going to be more of things that have a shelf life. Like lets you make a razor that never dulls. You can use that same razor for the rest of your life as long as it doesn't break. The company would go bankrupt because no one is buying their product. They already have it. That is something I approve, you can't ask a company to drive themselves knowingly into bankruptcy any more than to ask someone to kill themselves.

Apple on the other hand could of started with the iPad 3 and still would of made a damn good profit. Then they could of put people on researching better App organization, better accessories, instead of being able to just drift down the "lazy river" for 3 years.
 

FamoFunk

Dad, I'm in space.
Mar 10, 2010
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Although I may be owning things from other evil companies who do this...
I genuinely live a happy life knowing that I never have and never will own an Apple product, so much better, cheaper stuff suits my needs.
 

Daverson

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Nov 17, 2009
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Of course it's not ethical to create machines designed to die after a certain time - this'll escalate, haven't you seen blade runner?
 

Tanner The Monotone

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Aug 25, 2010
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Matthew94 said:
This is pretty old.

With the iPad 1 they saw a space for a camera that never appeared. iPad 2 rolls around and bam, there is a camera in the exact same place.
You think that they would try to hide that better.....
 

Zantos

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Jan 5, 2011
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Matthew94 said:
Evil Smurf said:
afroebob said:
Their are a lot of factors so I would say it depends. If they do it Apple style so that they can make more money off the poor oblivious souls who are stupid enough to buy their products than no. But if its to make it so that the product can have a better price to be available to everyone than I can accept it. We could have the new Xbox have an 8 core processor, 32 gigs of RAM, 5 gigs of graphics memory and a robotic blowjob machine but it would cost a LOT of money and people wouldn't be able to afford it.
It would be the best console though, an argument against the gaming pc even
Every spec he said there was nonsense.

5 gigs of VRAM won't do shit unless you are running at realy high resolutions and 32 gigs of ram is beyond excessive as even demanding PC games don't come near using the PC standard of 4-8GB at the moment.

8 cores... why not? At least AMD would be happy
Remember when if you had 32MB of RAM, you'd never have to upgrade your computer again? I'm going to make a leaping assumption that 94 corresponds to your DoB. Oh god, is this what it feels like to be old???

OT: It's not really unethical. If people want to keep buying the new gizmos then let them. I'm more a work it til it breaks kind of guy. I have plenty of new stuff, but not before making do with older things until it reaches its final hour. I still have my 20GB Creative Zen brick, works like a charm.
 

Tayh

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Apr 6, 2009
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Wait... People are surprised that apple puts sub-optimal hardware/technology in their products? I thought it had been a "public secret" for over a decade.
 

Slayer_2

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Jul 28, 2008
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Zen Toombs said:
Slayer_2 said:
It's Apple... They're so evil they make Microsoft look like Jesus Christ. I'd rather perform an amputation on myself rather than use an Apple product.
...interesting theory. Care to explain?
Sure. They make overpriced, crappy products and use aggressive marketing aimed at pretentious, computer illiterate people to put a strangehold on the market. My only consolation is that Android devices have finally come along, and in a beautiful move, wiped out a huge percentage of Apple's stake on the smartphone market (which is their biggest money maker, by far). About time we got some quality competitors to put Apple in their place. Although, I doubt they're too phased yet, since they likely have more money than all of the USA.
 

Qitz

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Mar 6, 2011
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OlasDAlmighty said:
Why do poll results always give me the finger? Sigh.
HAHA! I didn't even see that till you mentioned it.

For a company? Yeah, it is ethical. They're not working on the same form of ethics as you or me, whats ethical to them is making a profit for their shareholders and making something with limited technology while saving the "big guns" for the next release is perfect for them.

There are some companies out there who work off making the best things they can but that's a lot more of a risk than just the "Well leave that out till the next version" practice. Some companies don't really have an excuse anymore since they've gotten into multiple areas for profit now though.
 

Britisheagle

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May 21, 2009
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Wushu Panda said:
Britisheagle said:
So I study business studies at university, specialising in marketing and operations, but enough of the boring stuff.

Today I was speaking to a guy who worked for Apple who was teaching us about planned obselesence, the planning of making a product obsolete. So how does it work, you ask? Well basically...

At the development stage of production, using the iPad for example, the company identifies what their products are capable of. They then, deliberately, downgrade or leave items out with the iPad 2 immediately going into production to make the original out of fashion within a couple of years time. They then release the new product, with all the "improved" features and upon doing this the iPad 3 AND 4 go into the early stages of production, with the actual top of the line components.

I was shocked by this and must admit I found it very unethical. So did the guy in the seminar, saying he was shocked when he found out but still finds himself buying the latest gadgets, despite hardly any noticable changes as he is a sucker for it all. He likes having what the new thing is.

Other compaines do it too, for example Indesit deliberately design their products to only last the average time of a warranty so they don't have to pay out for new machines whilst ensuring that their customers buy a new machine when it does break after the warranty has expired.

So what do you think?
do you live under a rock? how is this shocking? companies have been doing this for a while now, hence why people say "they dont make them like they used too". Apple is the worst, but it isnt anything new. I figured out they were doing this shortly after the third iPod came out and people were raving how they could trade in their old one for a new. its why i hate Apple and dont get suckered into buying the latest crap.
No, I live in a house.

And I work in business, albeit the retail industry and as such I haven't seen this aspect of manufacturing. So of course I found it shocking, I didn't think a company could deliberately outdate their own products every year and still manage to trade without someone taking a step back from buying their "new" product and thinking, "hang on a second, is this wrong for a company to extort me by deliberately making my current bit of tech unfashionable and outdated just so they can make more money?"

I mean people rant about games being released yearly with little to no real additions and that costs, what, £40? I'm talking about tech that costs literally 10 times that, why does nobody care?
 

spartan231490

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Jan 14, 2010
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Of course it's not ethical, you are exploiting people for money. That said, it's not that bad, particularly not in the way you described since buyers are made aware of the specs of the machine and know what they are paying for. However, many people(myself included) believe that many things are designed to break after a certain amount of use, and that is much worse because the consumer can't know that his X is designed to intentionally break at some point. With computers, at least you know that those parts will soon be obsolete beforehand.
 

Smiley Face

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Jan 17, 2012
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It does make sense from an ethical standpoint in a situation where including all of the features would make the product too expensive, so they hold them out until the product is established - minimizes risk for them, maximizes folks who buy the product.

This is why I don't buy tech until it's been established for a few years.