What's the biggest case of planned obsolescence you've dealt with?

I work in an operating room, and have been around long enough to see multiple pieces of perfectly good equipment get replaced just because it hit the manufacturer's end-of-life date.

I'm talking things like a several-hundred-thousand dollar microscope for microsurgery.

Basically that date means if the microscope fucks up somehow, the vendor takes zero liability, and any legal expenses fall onto the hospital... so we trash it and buy another one. Rinse and repeat after another few years.

That end-of-life date is always crazy early, and is like that 100% because the manufacturer knows hospitals would rather just treat a quarter million dollar microscope as disposable than accept liability for an equipment fault.

The waste is unreal.

Got to be Apple slowing down older iPhones to mask battery degradation, and hoping no one would notice.

Sealed in batteries on smartphones and Surface tablets.

The device will eventually reach a point where it won't even boot (or shuts down randomly) when plugged in because the charger connection isn't actually wired to power the main board without going through the battery first (most smartphones) or the device consumes more power than the port is designed to deliver (Surface).

Windows 11 refusing to install on hardware it can absolutely run on.

IP rating on smartphones so there's seals and glue everywhere and opening them up is a fucking nightmare.

Clothing!

Lots of clothes only last a couple of years then they break apart, holes appears, etc...

We have a local collective that fixes clothes and its helped keep them alive for 10+ years now. But jeens, shirts, ect that are newer seem to be worse somehow. They don't last nearly as long.

Washing machines. In the stores, you see a shiny stainless steel drum, but holding up the drum is a raw aluminum spindle. Those spindles corrode with typically caustic laundry detergents to last about 6 years. Replacement was possible, with a day of work. Now, manufacturers seal the drum unit with welded plastic so replacement is impossible.

The entire smartphone industry.

I use five year old smartphone (Pixel 4a). I can afford a new one, but I don't need a new one, and it would be worse in ways I care about (bigger, probably without a headphone jack), without being better in any way that really matters to me, so I don't want a new one.

Official software updates ended a couple years ago, but I'm running LineageOS and I got an update this week. Google has intentionally made it hard for most people to use LineageOS or any other Android distribution not blessed by Google as their primary phone by allowing app developers to check whether it's Google-approved. For now, I can usually work around that, but it would be too big a hurdle for most people.

The kernel is getting pretty old though; it's 4.14 when I'm up to 6.17 on my laptop. This is because SOC vendors don't release open source drivers, nor maintain the proprietary ones for very long.

Finally, there's the battery. Mine is in great shape because I use AccA to limit charge to 60% most of the time, but charging to 100% as most people do would have greatly reduced its capacity by this point. Replacing it requires melting glue and some risk of damage. Most phones are like that now (though that's changing due to EU regulation).

Windows 11's TPM requirements.

I recently built a brand new computer for my uncle. He was running a 3rd gen Core i7 machine running Windows 7. I get a call that it won't boot. I do manage to get it booted, the SMART data shows the hard drive is on its last eyebrows, and anyway he's running an OS that's three generations out of date.

I'm a big Linux user, I've got my aunt running Linux Mint. My uncle is such a dunce at computers I don't think I can do that, because he lacks the vocabulary to tell me what he wants his computer to do. "I might use it for business." In his line of work that could mean anything from going to quickbooks.com to needing some piece of Windows-only shitware. So "Get a .exe from somewhere" had to remain intact.

For everything he actually does with that computer, that old 3rd gen i7 was fine. Replace the hard disk with a SATA SSD, maybe replace the weird 2-4-2-4 some but not all of it is dual channel 12GB of RAM with two 8 GB sticks of DDR3 and let it roll...except no currently supported version of WIndows runs on this computer.

For a large number of people, computers became objectively fast enough in 2015. That's about when SSDs became standard equipment, fixing any hardware reason for "damn this thing is slow" even out of midrange consumer hardware. Gamers, home labbers and AI startups need more power, the rest of the world doesn't. And that was a problem for Microsoft.

Laboratory instruments controlled by shitty software that's somehow tied to a particular version of Windows, and won't work with 11. And, of course, the manufacturer won't update it, because they'd much rather you drop a quarter million on the new model.

CPAP, comes with a cell chip in it to relay data for the Dr to monitor/access. Cell chip stops working after 5 years.

Edit: Realized this could use more clarity. The cell plan for the chip expires after 5 years and cannot be renewed, meaning the entirely functional machine needs to be replaced or the Dr can't properly monitor necessary vitals.

Win11... The amount of perfectly good hardware that became ewaste in October is insane to me

65" Hisense TV. Bought it new and 1.5 years later the motherboard died. Scoured the Internet for the part and it turned out Hisense didn't even sell it, you had to buy secondhand used boards.

But it must have been a common problem b/c over ~6 months even the resellers were permanently sold out. Recycled it in the original packaging.

IMO companies like that should be forced to recycle every scrap of their e-waste themselves.

Probably doesn't count as I didn't buy it, so I'm technically not dealing with it. But let's talk about electric riding lawnmowers. Last year I was looking to replace my 20+ year old riding lawnmower with an electric one. Could not find a single manufacturer who would also provide the parts lists. Digging deeper, seems like they simply do not sell parts, like at all. The mowers just aren't repairable - straight up, if it breaks, buy a new one. That's irresponsible when talking about an electric drill, but a full riding mower? WTF?

To be fair, this might be a chicken & egg problem. Low adoption rates means there's a very small market for parts, so there's no aftermarket support. And that aftermarket is where I get parts for my current mower. So maybe it's not fair to blame the manufacturer? But I think that's a stretch. From where I'm standing, it sure looks like intentional planned obsolescence.

Had a chrome book that worked just fine but unbeknownst to me had an expiration date that started counting down at its date of manufacture, not the date of purchase.

The thing worked great, but no more security updates after 3 years.

My body. Shits getting worse by the day.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Pro. It's one of these curved phones with glass on the back.

The front glass is hardened Gorilla Glass. The back glass breaks when you're looking at it wrong. Because of the curved soapbar style, the phone easily slips out of your hand, shattering the back glass.

I am very delicate with my phones and never broke one in all of my life. The S8 was the final boss for me, though. I had to have the back glass repaired two times, one time it just fell off of my bed which is only 15cm above the floor. Fuck you, Samsung.

Something I’ve personally noticed as someone who will perform a light disassemble before tossing an “broken” item.

The plug in oil heaters that look like radiators. Efficient, low cost. 3 now, total. The knob spins and I can no longer turn it on. Unplug. Unscrew. And a broken Dshaft knob falls out. They don’t make it obvious and easy to get to these knobs, you have to remove the large side panel without bothering the wires to get to a small panel to unscrew to get to the knobs. Then you have to find or make a Dshaft knob to fit, which isn’t easy.

Dishwashers, the 3 most recent dishwashers that I have had experience using across 3 very different households and use levels, from 3 different manufacturers, have all had minor to major faults in the 4-5 years since installation, just after the warranty period ended.

Mostly drawer and roller related, but also a pump failure.

Smartwatches. Seriously, they are all working perfect one day, and next day they die. Wanna change the battery? Good luck keeping them out of the water, if you happen to find and replace the battery at all, which isn't cheap anyway.

Don't know if it's planned obsolescence or just laziness but all of my Nintendo Switches have at least a little drift and I've bought at least two replacement sets of joy-cons AND replaced just the joystick on one unit (PITA and replacements didn't work 100% so I stopped repairing).

Not sure if this qualifies as planned obsolescence but Acer stopped supporting a tablet I bought in less than two years. I have been avoiding Acer products ever since.

My Chevy Volt 2013, which still runs great, no longer has OnStar because they never planned for a way to upgrade the connectivity when 3G networks were retired. So I am concretely less safe when driving and lose other useful features like remote start, milage tracking, etc.

Having to replace perfectly functional Pixel phones because GOS stopped making updates for them. I don't blame GOS as they're a FOSS project and their end of support coincides with Google's end of support, but it still feels bad replacing perfectly functional hardware. Wish release cycles were much slower so support for existing devices could be focused on, instead of having to spend time porting to every new phone dropped like every year or whatever.

New appliances. A matter of time until the fridge chokes itself since the coils are covered in dust and impossible to reach without tipping the whole fridge over. Also sorely regret replacing the old electromechanical washer instead of repairing it. New one fills with too little water at random and apparently it's a controller board issue with no easy fix in sight.

Also Apple mobile devices, I understand they can't keep supporting them forever, but the bootloader's locked so I can't even put something less demanding on it.

Phones. Windows.

The first Unifi Video NVR. It was a device with an Atom D525, running Debian 6, when Debian 6 was about to EOL. It went on the market for 6 months and then was pulled.

I've never personally dealt with them and don't ever intend to get a Switch 2 so I probably won't deal with them, although I can imagine them being catastrophic when Nintendo eventually sunsets the console in question, but Switch 2 Game-Key Cards.

Windows and ios

School just got 30 new laptops because of the tpm requirement on windows 11 just like Microsoft planned.

I would not mind helping them with Linux of any distro even after Im done learning there because it’s so much better

Sonos

Microsoft Windows10

Viagra

Dacor Stove

In 2006 my wife and I moved into a new house and bought a Dacor RSD30S stove.

Dacor made parts for the thing for TWO YEARS and that's it. I owned it for 12 years and it went through three igniters and the door handle broke. The first igniter broke within 18 months and I was able to replace it with a new one. The second one went out at around 5 years and the part was already discontinued. Fortunately, the parts guy I was ordering from was very familiar with Dacor and said that the igniter from the new model would work, the bracket would just need to be drilled to mount it. It took me all of 5 minutes. The third one went out and I was screwed. So I spent about 2 years manually igniting my "modern" duel fuel range. Even when it did work, Dacor used one igniter coil for all four igniters. If they were not all perfectly clean the current would only go to one with the least impedance and the rest wouldn't work.

I was never able to fix the broken handle.

Dacor... Never again.

Contrast that with the stove I replaced the Dacor with, a Wolf DF304. Granted, we're talking about a very high end range vs a middle of the road POS. However, Wolf has not changed the design of the DF304 in 25 years. I actually bought my Wolf 2nd hand, hence why I could afford it. It was 8 years old when I bought it. Wolf not only still has all the parts for it in stock, the stove is still in production. It currently is 14 years old and works like new, compared to the Dacor being 12 years old and completely clapped out. Also Wolf uses independent coils for each igniter, so the current doesn't flow to the igniter with the least impedance like the Dacor.

I know this sounds like a case of "you get what you paid for", but that Dacor new was $2500, so not exactly cheap.

And don't even get me started on General Electric appliances...

Apple, are we on CPU architecture 3 now ?