Well, kinda. In my experience, Shimano first discontinues XTR, then XT and then SLX. I couldn’t find reasonably priced XTR 1x11 chainrings for my XTR M9000 cranks in the tooth count I wanted and had to go third-party. After about 10 years, you’ll struggle to find XT stuff and have to make do with lower-end components. That’s not an issue with cassettes (they just weigh more), but it is an issue with chainrings as Shimano made them mutually incompatible (i. e. you can’t put XT chainrings on XTR cranks).
My next cranks will be Rotor cranks. I have had very good experience with their chainrings and their aluminium cranks are top notch.
I’m just going through this now with some old cyclocross frames - they use post mount (instead of flat mount) so putting together a modern groupset is getting harder and harder - it’s still possible right now but it involves matching third party calipers to regular road levers - the obsolescence factor right now isn’t that it’s impossible to get things working, but it’s just such a pain in the arse to get everything organised - third party calipers require new hoses, new hoses require new barbs, caliper wasn’t instock except with lever pair, so now have MTB levers on ebay, etc etc.
Funnily enough, when I built the frames (Titanium) I insisted on BSA bottom brackets, at the time when PF was all the rage, and in that regard my frame has actually caught back up with the times again as frames have gone backwards to BSA
At least where I live, the answer is yes. Last month, I had to replace my chainrings. The prices on Amazon were crazy (nothing on bike24.de) and they only had them in sizes I wasn’t interested in. Two years ago in Japan, I paid about $100 for one if memory serves. When I checked, the cheapest offer was about 200 € in the wrong size. And there were plenty of offers that might be fakes.
I had similar experience when buying a cassette for my wife’s bike (3x9 Shimano SLX with Alivio triggers ), all I could find were HG400 (?) cassettes. Maybe I could have ordered things through my LBS, but it took them 5 months to get a replacement for my first-gen Force eTap AXS shifter.
Not necessarily how long something should last, but just my take on new products and “upgrading”.
Depending on the situation, it may be cheaper to be on an “upgrade cycle”.
For example:
My iPhone 12 was perfectly fine. Recently, the warranty replaced it. Paid for. Not costing me anything to have. The new 16 came out. AT&T offered me a deal to trade it in for a 16 for free. Basically, $1000. Yes, I get locked into AT&T for another 3 years, but I’ve been with them for 20 years and don’t care. If I had waited any longer and kept using the old 12 for a few months, I would never be able to sell or get credit for $1000. Had I waited till it killed one broke, it would be worthless, and I would pay full price for a new phone.
My Garmin Fenix 6 was fine. When the 8 came out, I sold my 6 and bought the 7 Pro for $ 100 more than I got for selling the 6. Again. If I waited more time, the 6 wouldn’t be worth much, or if it broke, it would be worthless.
At one point, I would do this with my vehicles. New vehicle every 3 years. Now the market is a little too crazy. But this was very dependent on the location and the types of vehicles.
My point is that you have to be smart. Sometimes holding onto something because it works and the newest “thing” isn’t much better can end up costing you more in the long run.
And there is the heart of the matter. But it is not without cost. The old phones end up in landfills, there is manufacturing costs, shipping costs, cost to make the parts and packaging, etc. What “saves” the consumer money actually costs quite a bit. And that is one individual… multiply that by millions and billions. It is crazy that it is “cheaper” to get something new than to hold on to what you already have and works just fine.
Yup, you might be able to make an argument about selling your used thing and buying a new one since maybe that person who bought your used thing would have just bought a new one instead. So it comes out the same. But most trade-in incentives like phones is simply just to get you on the newest devices and to then make you even more likely to upgrade the next time to stay on the ‘newest’. Now this person might not fall into that cycle but if you’re someone who ‘always as the newest iphone’ then you might find a deal and not pay too much money for the new one. But the societal, labor, and environmental costs to make that phone are the same.
Oh man. This is such a can of worms. Just because they offer it, doesn’t mean it’s actually worth doing.
Long watch but absolutely worth every minute. Apple is just about the poster child for bogus “Right to Repair” practices. Here’s a thread I saw earlier today.
On a side note, I haven’t researched printers for years, but going back about 20 years I think, it somehow cost more to replace an ink cartridge than it cost to replace the whole printer, & we ended up with all these perfectly working, non-obsolete printers going into landfills. Madness!
Planned Obsolescence is a misleading term. (disclaimer: this is obviously my opinion)
There’s nothing planned about anything in the modern days. No engineers design products in a way that some product, especially tangible, is planned to fail in X number of days or months or years. The key takeaway of the documentary and the whole controvercy is that companies arent designing to fix things. They prefer replacement over repairment.
Engineers will design things as best as they can with given restrictions, mostly the cost. One example given in the documentary is the use of glue over screws or connectors. Glue is far cheaper to apply and far space conscious way to assemble things.
So the point is that it’s a lot more complex than “they are trying to f us!”
Given the complexity, I try to get thing that are repairable. I don’t cheap out on things. I don’t complain about weights. I give the benefit of the doubt that companies are doing their best to make best things with given priorities. I know what could jeopardize longevity of a given product, so I don’t buy things that focus on qualities that may jeopardize the longevity.
The price is not a deciding factor. It doesn’t say anything about longevity of a product.
I encourage everybody to do the math on ATT/Verizon versus their prepaid plans versus a NVMO that resells the exact same network.
Here’s a quick look at AT&T, AT&T Prepaid, and USMobile (on the AT&T network).
ATT Unlimited Starter SL $66/mo. x 36 months = $2376
ATT Prepaid Unlimited Basic $45/mo x 36 months = $1620
US Mobile Unlimited Starter $25/mo x 36 months = $900
US Mobile Unlimited Starter $270yearly x 3 = $810
US Mobile also has a $210/year plan if you don’t need unlimited data $630
I’ve been on ATT prepaid for years now saving a bundle. We just buy our phones outright and I feel we’ve been well ahead financially. I’m about to switch us to the $210/year USMobile plan.
Yah. For sure makes sense for some people.
I have a business plan with 6 lines. I think it works out to 40 a line unlimited data. Plus I get a discount on my internet and free Max to watch racing.
My suggestion is to do the math. One may have special needs. $40/month though sounds like a lot to get free Max when you can easily get $25/month. One line at $25 pays for Max.
Well they operate on a “white goods” model, not unique to them. That model is changing ough as Europe introduces laws on repair ability and interoperability.
In an still get new components for all of my bikes except one. On that bike I can’t get a proprietary shock, but it is an Online and I have zero concerns about getting service.
My 10b year old Super six is “obsolete”, but I can still service it. Same for my 1985 Bridgestone.
