Whenever I buy a console I'm super aware I have maybe 5 years of using it before I'm forced to upgrade to the next console. It's even worse with phones. I wonder how many of these devices (or realistically, new features existing devices) are held back on purpose to justify a new phone every year.

What is the current rate of technological advancement if we discount capitalism creating a culture where businesses don't put out their best product always, and innovation is not innovation for the sake of itself, or to make people's lives easier, but a tool used to beat out the other guy and keep making money off of people every year?

  • neo [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    For your example of 'phones' as far as I can tell the standard to beat is still Apple and if I'm not mistaken they are supporting their phones for 5 years or a bit more, where if you consider how much faster these phones got since their introduction - that is actually really nice. Compare that to most Androids, which maybe get a couple of years of support. And forget most IoT devices which probably have no support.

    Related to that is how desktop/laptop CPUs have really stagnated, and only marginally improved for most of the 2010s. I think it's safe to say a lot of that was Intel dragging ass because they had a design they could refine and sell to absolutely squeeze profit out of. Since they sat mostly uncontested in the CPU space they refused to really push on the borders of their own microarchitecture. Well, fast forward to now and Apple's already cutting them out and integrating their own ARM chips (because they have invested untold sums of money in CPU design) into all their computers, and AMD had their own R&D breakthroughs to catch out Intel and delivered rather remarkable performance at much better value.

    So besides the shitty device makers and de-facto monopolies, in the computer space I don't think there really is too much planned obsolescence, at least in the terms you framed it. If it's 6 years since the last game console came out and they're already going to make another, a lot has changed over those years. Game consoles are an interesting example, even, because a lot of design goes into them to produce what is effectively these days an extremely well supported IoT device.