I recently watched the documentary, “Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy” on Netflix. While some of the editing (and piecing together their main point with a AI voice over) was a miss in my opinion, the premise of planned obsolescence was interesting. While iPhones and the like are the obvious target here, the bike industry is really no different.
So my question… how long should things to last? How long do you expect them to?
For example… flight attendant. How long before it becomes obsolete?
How long do you expect $1000 crank & power meter to last?
What about “consumables” like a cassette, chain, chainring, grips, etc. ?
How do you use, how do you store, how do you entertain
Take per instance bibs. If you wash them on high temperature high spin cycle and throw them in the drier…will not last long even if premium brand…but if you put them in a washing wag spin low and dry flat…even if cheap they’ll last longer.
Same for cassettes and chains…the more expensive the more care it needs. A red cassette needs more care than a heavy rival. If you let it covered in crud dont clean and lube your chain. I do not expect a long lifespan even if it costs $450.
As the Apple products were mentioned: Apple provides service and parts for their devices for five to seven years, in some cases even ten years. I wonder how many phone, etc. companies can match that?
It seems to be more changing “standards” that they use to get people to upgrade.
I had an SRM that had over 20k miles on it when I sold it simply because I was tired of soldering in new batteries when needed. I had a reed switch go bad and they replaced the part rather than having to toss the whole spider, I don’t think any other power meter companies can do that.
Frames will easily last 50k miles without issue, cassettes, chainrings can easily go 20k miles with hot waxing.
Apart from on my gravel bike I’m still on rim brakes on my road bikes and I had thought my titanium road bike will last indefinitely with new wheels/ brake pads every so often but I do worry they will become obsolete/ un sourceable as more and more disc brake bikes appear.
Products last as long as a persons attention span these days. Very short.
I have a click wheel IPod and 2 mini hard drives for it, as replacements just in case. It goes perfectly with my bondi blue iMac.
Things do wear out and need to be replaced, but manufacturers and brands keep updating stuff in order to have shiny new things to sell. You don’t have to buy it. I tend to buy higher end stuff then use it for a long time. My road bike is 14 years old. It replaced one that was 10 years old. I just got a new mtb after retiring my 9 year old mtb, which replaced one that was 12 years old. My direct drive smart trainer is 8 years old. Along the way there’s been the regular replacement of worn parts and some upgrades.
Yeah, people still rocking an iPhone 6! Apple stuff usually lasts incredibly longer than ‘normal’ PC’s. I’ve got a first gen Mac Pro that STILL works fine. I use it for crunching videos and as a file server. It’s from 2006!! I had an HP notebook that I had to replace just to do Windows 11!! It would still work, but I needed 11, and had to stick it on a shelf likely never to be touched again. I’ve got an old MacBook Pro, 13" that I use from time to time, and a 3rd gen iPad Mini.
Apple, aside from the inability to add memory or drive space, last quite a bit. Although they have swapped processors twice, effectively marooning all their users who had the deprecated processor.
Mine was 5gb model. Guy at work got it for his kid. Kid dropped it. Spinning disc’s to not like that. Found a 10gb replacement. The guy didn’t want to pay for a new drive so I kept it. Still spinning to this day. No Bluetooth but that’s ok.
My bikes tend to last about 10 years. I sold my old one for next to nothing simply because “everything” was wir. Out (the RD was worn, the right trigger shifter no longer worked flawlessly, fork and damper needed a service, I needed new rotors and the wheels were no longer true).
I plan to keep my road bike for at least 10 years and the frame of my new-to-me hardtail is from 2014. The other components are from 2018 or 2022, so they should last a while.
I keep my phones until they almost break. I only replaced my iPhone 7 with a used iPhone 12 mini (when it was about 2 years old), because the charging port gave up the ghost.
Worked for 12 years now in different roles in product development. Mostly consumer/sports goods and automotive. While for sure there are borderline conspiratorial planned obsolescence cases, most of the cases consumers face on a daily basis are a bit more nuanced.
To paint it in extremely broad strokes, generally the consumers pressure the products to be increasingly complex, at the same time that the expectation is for prices to stay the same or go down (always adjust to inflation to compare apples to apples). An easy way out for manufacturers is to cheap out on components and hope that consumer expectations for durability go down with time. People like to talk about how durable and reliable old fridges were, but they would never accept the prices of that appliance with the modern functions and efficiency but built to the old durability standards.
