I remember when I was in uni, living on-campus in a student dorm. Living conditions were not great, the rooms were small and they stuffed 3 or 4 guys in each room. We each had a bed, a chair, a tiny wardrobe, a shelf and half a desk. No fridge. Each fall, when we got back to school, there was an effervescent market for old used refrigerators. Everybody was buying and selling fridges for the first 1 or 2 weeks. One year we bought a 50 year old Zil fridge made in the USSR in the 60’s. We paid like €10 for it. It was heavy as hell and we had to carry it up the stairs to the 4th floor. The thing made a loud, continuous buzzing which helped drown out one of our colleague’s thunderous snoring. We loved it. I don’t remember what happened to it or who got to keep it after we disbanded, but I’m sure it still works.
Sadly the old disc world Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness boot theory applies.
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.”
Built to outlast the owner.
When my parents were kids, their home-ec class consisted of repeatedly hammering into their heads to cook meat at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or else they’d get sick because the refrigeration was so unreliable
That’s why my grandmother made such overdone roasts. I just thought I didn’t like roast beef much until I tried it medium rare instead of charred to a grey cube of leather.
Same, I used to wonder why the looney tunes characters always treated steak as this big delicious thing when my experience with it was disgusting dried shoe leather that required 3 cans of coke to get down.
Where do you live that your parents are old enough to have unreliable ice boxes, but modern enough that both the man and women took home-ec?
Canada
Golden age revisionism is a comforting illusion that edits out the past’s flaws and distorts reality; it becomes dangerous when it shapes decisions based on nostalgia instead of truth.
Those 1980s fridges for ex lacked ice makers and water filtration, used far more energy due to inefficient design, struggled with consistent temperatures that spoiled food faster, often required manual defrosting, and had poor seals that let cold air escape and raised costs.
Golden age revisionism is the chief tactic of blow hard Republicans. Ever hear, make America great…again?
I’ve never used a fridge that has an ice maker or water filtration. They are still premium options, or some people just don’t have any use for the features.
Yeah, these must be American things. Never encountered them in Europe in a non-professional setting.
My wife just got a ~20k hospital bill but hey at least our fridge filters the drinking water automatically
deleted by creator
I hypothesize that youve been out of the consumer fridge market for at least 10 years. Water filter and ice maker ia the basic bitch options these days.
Premiums option today are things like climate zones, adjustable shelving, ai, inventory tracking and digital screen/computer that you can write notes on or ask ur fridge what meals you can make from the fridge contents.
But don’t take my word for it, google it yo.
Except in this case its true. They have over stuffed modern appliances with useless features that shorten the life of the appliance. As to how they didn’t comes with ice makers. Of course they did. Most had a place where it could be added if you didn’t buy one with that feature. Water filtration wasn’t there true enough but no one thought of that then. Only older early 70’s fridges came without defrosting. As to the poor seals you get that from damage which applies to modern fridges as well. The fridge I have is from the early 90’s and it rocks. No problems with ice buildup No leaks and a consistent temperature. I dread having to buy some modern POS built to fail so you can get sold another one.
Not everything is a republican plot to get you to purchase a forty year appliance.
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” — Henri Bergson
misquoting someone doesn’t work with me. I mean I see just fine. I see that people are buying applliances and they last just past the warrenty. I don’t care if they are super effiecnet. You lose that money saved when you have to keep buying another one.
I have a mini fridge purchased new early 00s that I recently left unplugged for a day or so to melt the ice buildup on the freezer.
Not that I’m happy with the overall state of appliances these days, but the reality is that technology is still improving, but some of those “improvements” aren’t for the buyer’s benefit (while others are). And there’s plenty of plain old cheap shit in a nice brushed stainless steel package to make it look high end.
Like induction stoves and convection ovens weren’t really a thing in the 80s but imo are way better than what came before. But, despite being a convection oven, the cheap one the developers picked for my place is the worst oven I’ve ever used. And I’m hesitant to “upgrade” because, despite knowing they can be better, there’s a good chance whatever I end up getting won’t, or make will be at first but will start degrading rapidly from day 1 such that it’s shitty by the time the warranty runs out.
That is the big difference between modern and older appliances. The older ones were made in good faith, the newer ones are a gamble because we have an economic system based on greed and it has progressed a lot since the 50s.
You forgot about the locking doors so children had to be taught not to play inside of them if you saw one outside because you would suffocate and die.
I remember watching an episode of Punky Brewster on TV about that.
Now that is a name I haven’t hear in a long time…pb.
I mean you ain’t wrong or nothing, but I’m pretty sure they’re mostly focusing on enshitification.
I’m 40 and the only memory I have of an old appliance that stands out was the time I took soaked clothes and put them in the dryer and ran it. I broke that sum-bitch gud
I will share your pain bro, give it here.
My modern fridge automatically defrost itself and has an incredibly silent compressor. More than once I forgot to close the freezer door correctly and still it’s not covered in ice on the inside. It uses so little energy into its day to day operation.
My modern drier has a heat pump built in to effeciently heat the air. It also detects how long it needs to run to get my clothes to the perfect dryness.
My modern dishwasher has a heat exchanger system to retain the heat from the dirty water to warm the fresh water. This saves energy.
Modern devices maybe have their problems. Sometimes with cheaper components or worse repairability. But don’t pretend like the only innovation we had over the years was to add wifi to your appliances.
The refrigerator in the photo is auto defrosting, I’m almost certain.
Also, there’s a drive for some markets towards French door fridges and those leak a tremendous amount of energy.
The energy saving parts also come with cost cutting, which is how I interpret the post. My 2001 era dishwasher was recently replaced with a 2024 model (in 2025) and the old one weighs nearly twice as much. They’re comparable in the product line of their time from the same manufacturer; the new one cost more. But it’s not just mass. It’s insulation, it’s metal parts replaced with plastic, nylon-glass fibre parts replaced with ABS and it’s thinning down components to last just until the warranty expires.
It doesn’t have a heat exchanger though. What kind of dishwasher?
I bought a french door fridge specifically because the design makes it so that my dog can’t get the door open. I figure the energy leaking from the door design is far less than the energy and food loss of the door being left open all day while I’m at work because my adorable idiot wanted a snack.
My new from store 2 year old fridge had to be replaced recently. Repair estimate was $1k which is more than the cost of the entire fridge itself
That sucks but how does that relate to my comment?
More features, more that can go wrong. More tech, more that can fail or work improperly. Usually these are more expensive repairs, too, if they even can be replaced without replacing the whole unit.
Modern appliances have a lot more features, and usually have some very nice improvements! However, they have a reputation for being unreliable and failing early.
The overall sentiment of the thread is how appliance don’t last as long as they used to, before they added all the “smart” features. That the durability is the measure of “goodness”, not the number of features. You brought up a bunch of great features, someone replied to you that their new appliances didn’t last longer than two years before being replaced.
That is how it relates to your comment, as a counterpoint.
I acknowledged problems with reliability and repairability in my own post.
Factoring in the lifespan of an appliance is definitely a good idea, but it’s also true that old appliances are often incredibly inefficient compared to their counterparts. As always you have to be a savvy shopper to find out what is good and what is bad. I’d never get myself a smart fridge but a modern one has features I wouldn’t want to miss.
There’s also survivorship bias. Garbage appliances were made in the old days too.
Survivorship bias. All the ones that broke aren’t around anymore.
Another issue is we’ve been trained to treat major appliances as disposable. Back in the day you called a repairman.
For example, my mom’s washer stopped doing the spin cycle. She immediately hopped on Consumer Reports to shop for a new one.
I hopped on an appliance parts website and ordered her a new lid switch for $15. One YouTube video later and her washer worked like new.
You were lucky it wasn’t the $250 circuit board that failed, which charged $50 for shipping.
Still cheaper than a new washer.
My fridge stopped working correctly, only the freezer part would actually cool. I called the local service company. Tech came when I wasn’t home, told my partner “compressor’s broken, though shit” , took 60€ and left.
My combination washer dryer has stopped drying. From what I gather it seems like a compressor gas leak, guess what? Too expensive to fix, so I would have to throw away several tens of kilos of machine just because of a fart’s worth of gas.
I have a Neato robot vacuum which I’ve kept clean and repaired for years, only for fucking Vorwerk, may they go bankrupt tomorrow, to shut down its servers, so now it’s dumb as a rock and next to useless.
It’s not your mother’s fault for assuming a malfunctioning appliance must be replaced.
to shut down its servers, so now it’s dumb as a rock and next to useless.
I hate this so much. There’s no reason a robot vacuum should require internet access to function. Companies only do it for tighter control of their products, to track your usage, to have the ability to paywall features, and to have the ability to disable it so you have to buy a new one.
It’s doubly fucked in that I have a smart home where everything is controlled locally without the cloud, and this vacuum was the only thing that wasn’t.
Maybe someone’s developed an open-source firmware solution that you can port to it for self-hosting?
Maybe try giving it to AI to make a self-hosted server?
If nothing else, that can be a redeeming quality of that heap of bullshit, if it can manage it.
What?
If the vacuum needs a cloud connection to run, maybe AI could try to create a self-hosted replacement.
I doubt they do much security, so perhaps the vacuum doesn’t validate certificates or keys.
The enshittification of everything will eventually lead to some small companies making good quality long lasting appliances I hope, they will make a good name for themselves and have easily repairable parts, but since we live in the real world whirlpool or GE will buy them keep the branding and make it more “intelligent” and easily breakable by adding computer parts that aren’t needed and plastic parts that will fail and not be able to be repaired or replaced.
Some companies already started to make repairable products (eg: fairphone and framework) the problem is that they either cost a lot or have less quality than other products because they are new company with limited marketshare and that don’t make money by making you buy something every 2 years
I am aware of both companies and am a customer because i want to encourage repairability however i also know that once the market is saturated with long term easy to fix products that the manufacturer will then not be able to sell new stock for a while, and Framework and Fairphone both have a solution to that by selling individual components for replacement or upgrade, but how much would a dishwasher or washing machine manufacturer be able to make off of O rings, or timing belts or something else cheap and easy to make, when amazon will sell lower quality ones at 1/2 the price that will work temporarily for either the repairman or cheap customer to fix their own machine. The incentive structure sucks for anything but enshitification at the moment.
I agree with you
Don’t count on it. Instant Pot managed to sell so many units they’re in what seems like almost every kitchen. And then that was that, because everyone already had one, so their sales volume plummeted and they went bankrupt. I still use mine all the time, but the original company went away.
That’s fine, companies shouldn’t be forever
That’s very much the plot to Cory Doctorow’s short story Unauthorized Bread. The toaster company turned off the servers and some people got real tech savvy real quick.
Back in the day you called a repairman.
That guy’s time is worth probably $30/hour, so if you want to use up his 8 hour day you’d better be willing to pay $240, plus parts, plus the gas money of driving his truck to your home, plus the cost of keeping those parts on hand and the truck available.
Or if it’s something he knows is only a half day job, then he can book something else so that he only really needs to charge you $120.
Now that a lot of these appliances are like $500, it’s pretty hard to justify the cost of professional repair.
50 years ago, when the price of an appliance was something like 50 hours of a repairman’s hourly wage, it made a lot of sense for most issues to be fixed by a professional. Now that these appliances are worth like 15-20 worker hours, it’s much harder to justify.
They only cost 15-20h of work because they’re built like a pile of leafs in the wind. Look at it wrong and it’ll break.
I hopped on an appliance parts website and ordered her a new lid switch for $15. One YouTube video later and her washer worked like new.
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many youtube videos are scams/clickbait though and/or present un-true or outdated information
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even if i have the spare part and the replacement part (i probably ordered the wrong one, how the heck am i supposed to know whether Knita CX-2035 is compatible with my Radover DishWasher i13s, the manual says i need Knita CX-2034 but they don’t produce them anymore, but the Knita website says that CX-2035 is the “successor part”), i assume i either lack a screwdriver or a voltage meter or a fucking welding machine to weld the oven open and shut again. And if i manage to weld it shut correctly, i will forever live in anxiety about accidentally having used toxic chemicals inside the oven which now continue to evaporate each time that i heat it up, slowly poisoning my food and me which will only become clear decades later when i start developing mysterious diseases which might have their origin in me using aluminum wires when i should have used stainless chromated copper wires.
Dude, you can find replacement videos for pretty much any part in any appliance that are just some dude walking you through it because they just did it. I’m not sure where you’re seeing scam appliance repair guide videos.
The way you buy parts is you go to a part seller webpage where you enter the model number they’ll have a parts diagram and you select the part you need.
There’s pretty much zero chance that welding would be required to change a part.
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The problem is that they’re not designed to be repairable
Also, appliances were way more expensive – both to purchase and (thanks to wasteful energy etc. usage) to operate. Bens Appliances and Junk has a good video on this that I imagine a lot of people are drawing on in this thread.
The ‘modern’ stuff breaks down faster due to 1) the fact that engineering has improved so much that obfuscation can be planned without compromising functionality. 2) ‘Modern’ stuff tries to cram in multiple features which are not necessary for its basic function. For this I blame the lack of diligence from buyers. The increased complexity means more parts that can fail. I bring up the example of SystemD (no offense to anyone, user’s choice).
Not necessarily. Less parts, less complex mechanisms = lower probability of something breaking down.
Also there was a time where companies actually cared. They would send the engineers for the next model out with service techs servicing current models to help them find the common failure points and help make things more servicable.
Also there was a time where companies actually cared.
:-/
Planned Obselence was pioneered nearly a century ago. You might have individual service reps or salesman with a soul. But no company has ever carried about more than profits.
Longevity was supposedly a goal for manufacturers in the GDR.
in the GDR
Yes, but that’s Evil Communism. Didn’t you see the movie “The Dryers of Others”?
They were way more repairable though. We had a gas dryer that lasted 40 years and was only replaced because we moved somewhere without gas.
It was basically a big egg timer with an electric motor and a gas burner. You could fix anything on it with a crescent wrench, screwdriver, and off-the-shelf components from the hardware store for about 9 bucks.
The replacement dryer has had to have $1000+ circuit boards replaced more than once.
The WTF here is not necessarily that some component on the circuit board failed, but that the manufacturer charges $400-$1000 for it with a straight face and gets away with it when they undoubtedly have that board made in China for about $4 per unit.
The big thing you and a lot of posters are missing is what happens when those parts aren’t made anymore. With a standard motor that uses a start capacitor, you can get that cap or motor as a generic part or from another manufacturer, if your modern appliance eats its vfd board now, you can replace it for $$$. If it dies in 8 years, its probably already been discontinued and you are sol even if you wanted to pay for it.
Also imprecise engineering tended to overbuild things.
Thanks to better manufacturing techniques, engineering analysis, and the fine humans in management, we have gotten really good at barely building a machine that lasts just long enough to be out of warranty.
Increase in precision (materially and economically) then leads to rebound effects; higher precision should lead to lower material flows, but the opposite happens because the technological progress broadens the market when possible
But there’s WAY more surviving devices from 1960 in 2020 than there will be from 2020 in 2080.
Yeah also forever means from when you were 8 until you moved out, only 12 years… Appliances can still do that today.
Look at Mr Moneybags over here, with enough money to move out
Samsung has left the chat…
Which is fine. You’d think they’d just refine those further. Today we’d have ultra efficient tanks that take little water, little energy, and never break.
Everything breaks eventually. Entropy always increases.
Right but none of the ones made these days last. Some > none.
I’m assuming CFC might have been a better coolant, that’s why those old fridges are so good
You mean those things that are 10x less efficient?
I too can build a wooden box that will last you multiple lifetimes. But it won’t keep your food cold.
It’s not because of efficiency that things last less time now.
Crucial parts that used to be made of metal are now plastic to save money, etc.
There is also a survivorship bias at play here. Old appliances that are still in use are exactly the appliances where all the constituent parts were top quality, that have had the right maintenance, that have, against all odds, survived. Plenty of those old appliances didn’t survive.
Yes capitalism has done what it does to increase profitability and desirability, but there are still got quality appliances that last. They just usually don’t have the most features, or a luxury look. When I got a new fridge-freezer last year, the guy who installed it told me that he rarely saw that model returned or repaired, and when it was repaired, it was pretty cheap. He also said he’d never buy a smart fridge, so I felt vindicated in buying the simplest device on the market.
It’s not because of efficiency that things last less time now.
well, yeah, a lot of over-engineering makes things fickle and it increases the number of potential failure points. simpler technology is simply more durable. My grandma has equipment they used for farming when she was a kid (that was 70 years ago). Stuff like buckets, pushcarts, manual hoes (those you use for farming, think minecraft hoes). They still work flawlessly.
Also there’s literally a proverb that says: “You don’t need an engineer to build a bridge that stands. You need an engineer to build a bridge that just barely stands.”
In other words, modern mathematics has taught people how to build houses that are just stable enough that they will last for a lifetime, then they collapse. Meanwhile the house that my uncle lives in was built around 500 years ago and still stands. It’s one of these old houses with extra thick walls (think 1m thick cutstone walls), it has a cellar and multiple stories. People back then did not cheap out on construction materials. Also the egyptian pyramids still stand because they are in no sense of the word “efficient”.
Eh. It made more sense hundreds of years ago for people to build houses that lasted for centuries. That kind of construction makes sense in periods of slow technological and social change.
But think of how differently people live now vs just a hundred years ago. Imagine buying a house without running water, electric wiring, or insulation. Sure, old homes can be renovated to have these. But that requires tearing the thing down to the bare stone or wood walls and starting from scratch. You have to gut the entire building. The only thing that remains is the shell, a shell which represents only 20% of the cost of the building, if that. Most of the cost of a building is not in the structure itself, yet that’s the only part that gets saved in a complete gutting and renovation.
If you build a house today that lasts centuries, the only way that house will still be occupied 300 years from now is if it’s been gutted down to the studs multiple times over the generations. And at that point, why build an ultra-durable house in the first place? Why not build something lighter that requires fewer resources up front, and can simply be torn down and recycled once it’s become obsolete?
If you think the concept of saving money on shoddy parts was invented this decade you just never paid attention. “Metal” isn’t some kind of magic substance that just works forever, cheap cast bullshit iron can shatter quicker than you can say “structural integrity”.
The reason everyone is glazing up this old appliances is because of survivorship bias, everyone sees one on the million devices and doesn’t see millions of old bullshits that disintegrated into nothingness over years.There literally are cases of switching from steel moving parts to plastic in appliances. Plus many manufacturers no longer sell spare parts past past maybe a year or two.
Appliances used to cost actual money so they had to be reliable and more importantly, repairable. Good luck finding spare parts for most washing machines or TVs nowadays. They’re designed to be thrown away because otherwise you no longer have any reason to upgrade. At least 50 years ago, technology changed fast enough that you’d have incentive to upgrade for efficiency, features, etc.
TV is quite unique because they’re cheap so you watch ads and they watch you and sell your data. You don’t repair them not because you can’t but because it’s cheaper to buy a new one because with TV you are the product.
With all the rest you absolutely can repair it, it’s just way harder because the technology is more complicated, smaller, integrated better. I repaired my washing machine myself 5 years ago with no prior knowledge buying a spare part on aliexpress, and it was Samsung, notorious for subpar repairability. On the other hand, I failed to repair my smartwatch even though I had spare parts, again was incredibly easy to find, but it’s was so complicated and small so without expensive equipment I couldn’t do it, but that’s absolutely not their fault.
Meanwhile, 50 or so years old TV my dad refused to throw out for nostalgic reasons had to be repaired every year like clockwork, it took him a full day, and by the end of it’s life spare vacuum tubes were more expensive than a new tv.
Anyway, planned obsolescence was always a thing, the legends are saying the first commercial lightbulb was sold with this concept in mind. But it’s not as ubiquitous as we fear it isYou can still buy those expensive appliances. The brands exist. Just be prepared to pay the prices your grandparents paid.
Some of the brands have turned to shit tho.
Samsung used to make reliable washers about two decades ago. Bosch appliances used to have a better reputation. Etc.
Miele is the only one still making supposedly reliable stuff but I read they’re relaxing their once great parts availability policy. No they’re not getting cheaper, just enshittifying.
Generally, the more efficient the system, the more fragile it is. I’m not a materials engineer, but metal isn’t always the best material for the job.
Plus, you can still get built to last appliances if you’re willing to shell out as much money as they did in the past. Large appliances used to be major purchases that you had to budget and save up for months to get, but these days you can hop down to the big box store and get a relatively cheap hunk of junk.
Plastic is never a great material for parts whose primary purpose is transmission of power, especially via friction (so gears and such). It’s great for parts that don’t have to withstand any force, but unfortunately it increasingly gets used for parts that do.
When you make the motor, including the shaft itself, out of metal, saving 2 grams by making a cog out of the cheapest
chocolateplastic available isn’t saving much weight or money. It does however guarantee the device will fail earlier.You can also have a more efficient system without sacrificing durability. Take a look at the Bosch CP3 high pressure fuel pump. Stout metal piston. Million kilometers is not unheard of. Meanwhile, Continental/Siemens made a hpfp that used super thin membranes to pump fuel. Those usually die in less than 100k km. Both available at the same time and both serve the goal of enabling using direct injection to improve fuel efficiency and emissions. But the joke here is that the Bosch one runs at much higher pressures (it’s for diesels) and is STILL cheaper to buy new. So people with engines that use the Siemens one would just scrap the car if it goes and they can’t get a specific used piston pump to replace it with (also a Bosch one, but I forgot the name). This is in the GM 2.2 Direct engine in Vauxhalls and Opels. Those cars have disposable fueling systems (and engines in fact since you can melt a piston once that membrane pump fails).
^as said by somebody who never had to replace the motor on their washer, or the burned on their range, or the belt on their dryer, or the elements in the water heater…
The reason they always worked forever was because your dad bought replacement parts from the appliance repair store and didn’t complain to you about it.
This is literally one of the top 3 good things about YouTube
have repaired my oven twice (15 years) and dryer three times (16 years). it’s amazing how many appliances can be repaired if people just take the time to dig into it.
unless it has a screen. fuck everything about that shit.
We tried to repair our washing machine but the fuckers designed it in such a way that the drum and bearing or something of the sort are inseparabale and thus you cannot just replace rhe bearing which was fucked in ours but you have to get the whole assembly. So instead of a probably 50-100€ worth of parts the repair would be in the 200-300€ range and at that point it made no sense spending that much money on a 6 year old machine.
ooof
Yep. Have four of those type. Occasionally, once a decade or so, I have to maintain em. But otherwise I milk em. Like cows.
If you are thinking of how you milk a washing machine, Imma ask if you been thinkin hard enough
Admittedly, the timer of my old microwave isn’t reliable anymore, since it’s spring got weak. But it would be easy to fix, if i get to it sometime. Staring at a screen has higher priority.
Edit: typo
They weren’t smart enough to maximize shareholder value :P
Ah, the good old days when your “dumb” refrigerator would kill children playing hide and seek because the latch wouldn’t open from the inside. When it was lined with asbestos because that’s literally the best insulation that exists excepting aerogel. When the mercury thermostat would fail—leaking mercury on to your food (and aerosolizing some which would be breathed in as soon as you opened it)—and it would freeze everything inside, complete with an interior wall of snow that could take days to defrost. It used old school freon, destroying the ozone layer. Or before then, fun highly toxic gasses like methyl chloride!
Those were the days! When a breeze through the house on a day with wonderful weather could blow out the pilot light in your oven, slowly leaking gas into your house, exploding and destroying the entire home late at night while everyone is asleep.
Then the wonders of electricity came along to produce ovens that were hooked up to 220V lines without a grounding wire, and wiring that would slowly fail over time, eventually making contact with the metal frame, electrocuting anyone who touched the device—or anyone that touched the person touching it.
Ovens were built different “back in the day”! They didn’t have anti-tip brackets, resulting in loads of children sitting on the oven door, spilling boiling liquids down upon them.
The best were those old washing machines, though! You could lift up the lid and look inside to see your laundry spinning at high speeds! Just don’t reach your hand in, or you could find out what the term “degloving” means.
Ah yes, the good old days of appliances.
Well, you obviously speak for the USA. And despite things like thermal cutoffs or automatic shutoffs, things were pretty safe here (Germany) in the 60-90s.
Also, there is a difference between general advancements in safety regulations and putting tons of unnecessary features in a device that will break soon. No Tesla of today will probably still be going in 50yrs or after 500.000km.
The higher the complexity, the higher the chance of failure.
And on top of it, there was no “planned obsolescence” or even suicides switches built in. Bad for capitalism, good for people.
But they had more fun colours for appliances
if you design an appliance that kills someone you should be sentenced to death by the same appliance
- Hammurabi
MAGA!
/s
Well, they worked forever because you could get them fixed. They will break down but you could repair them yourself or get it repaired. Unsure about whitegoods, but small appliances these days are expected to end up in landfill; no exposed screws and everything is glued in.
no exposed screws and everything is glued in.
Ironically, everything being glued in is also the reason why they last much longer before you have to repair them for the first time. Screws are potential failure points where stuff can get loose. When stuff is glued together with modern glues, it’s basically shut like welded. It doesn’t get loose and lasts much longer.
Especially for stuff like smartphones that’s relevant. When stuff is screwed together, it’s typically not air-tight, and water can get in and ruin stuff. Glued together, it’s watertight basically completely.
You’ve clearly never tried to fix anything at least within the last decade.
When things are glued and there are no exposed screws, this means that you can’t replace parts and it means that in order to get inside to see what broke, you need to break it open very carefully. This means that in most cases, they break beyond repair and force you to buy a new one.
If you can break it open carefully, because everything is glued in (or in some cases just punched in during manufacture), you can’t replace anything because there’s nothing you can mount the new part to.
Phones are not appliances; they’re electronic devices and are much more complicated BUT should be repairable, as they used to be back in the 90s.
And have you seen the inside of a device that’s glued in? It is definitely NOT water tight. The glue is hard and cracks, and the purpose of the glue is not for IP, but to just keep the part in place and save 2c on each screw.
But I digress… Check out IFixit. Hopefully after going through some points on what the benefits are for right to repair, you’ll change your stance on this.
You can buy appliances without smart features still?
Best Buy has dozens, if not hundreds, of fridges without smart features. I can buy a 18cu top freezer fridge for $450 right now.
That same type of fridge back in the 1970s cost $300-$400. Adjusted for inflation that’s $2,000
So I don’t get this post. You can buy cheap fridges still and it’ll probably last a long time if you take care of it. Read repair reports or Google random problems for a fridge you’re looking to buy to see the most common failure points and see what the repair cost would be to factor in future costs.
Stupid post.
