The Insanity of Forced Obsolescence

I’ve been ruminating on this post by Don Marti for a while now, it strikes a nerve with me:

I miss it, but it’s right here. I just picked it up. If I turned it on, I would be able to visit a web site, or take a picture, or whatever. All the hardware is in perfect working order. But I can’t take the risk of actually using it for all the stuff that people expect me to use a phone for, because it’s no longer getting software updates. And of course we all agree that it’s important to keep your devices updated. The updates stopped, so I switched phones. (Yes, I had to abandon my plan for an all USB-C device collection and buy some Lightning cables.) I had a useful thing that I had to turn off for the last time.

I still have my old phone, but I don’t have it in a way that matters, in a way that I could really use it. It’s satisfying to keep a useful thing working, and the opposite of satisfying to put something in the e-waste box, or worse, the maybe for projects later stack. I know that Google has no legal obligation to me, there’s NO WARRANTY, that’s life in the big city. I shouldn’t care, right? It’s just a phone. Somebody at Google nailed one of their OKRs by letting my old phone go out of support. They won. I lost.

This is, to put it bluntly, nuts. We have devices that can keep running for years, sometimes decades, and yet manufacturers are fixated on getting us to cast those working devices aside and purchase new shinies.

But the worst part is that many of us have accepted this. The bugs in hardware and software have been turned into features in the form of ‘security updates’, which conveniently (for manufacturers and developers, at least) stop coming when it is deemed no longer worthwhile.

Yes, for those large organisations with lots of legacy systems — and deep enough pockets — support can sometimes continue, but for everyone else that’s it. If you continue using that device or app, woe betide you!

There’s nothing stopping you from doing that safely, by turning off features or adding protections. But that requires knowledge, and that may not always be forthcoming from manufacturers or developers. Support websites can be excised of old information. Worse, the services that devices to connect to for their functions can be shut off, again because they’re no longer ‘worthwhile’.

It’s high time that technical support, bug-fixing and security lined up with the lifespans of the devices and apps we use every day. Unfortunately, that will require legislation and regulation, and those invested in the upgrade treadmill will fight those all the way.