An in-depth look at the global efforts to push back against planned obsolescence in tech products, a scandalous practice, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic
John Harris / The Guardian : Tweets: @dingos1946 , @jonathanwatts , and @rachelcoldicutt Tweets: @dingos1946 : “feature of modern manufacturing known as planned obsolescence. This is the idea that some of the world's biggest companies have been selling us products either knowing full well that they will only last a couple of years, or having deliberately built ...” https://www.theguardian.com/ ... @jonathanwatts : Planned obsolescence vs repair cafes. Great piece by @johnharris1969 on Amazon, Apple and the outrage of our electronic waste mountain https://www.theguardian.com/ ... Rachel Coldicutt / @rachelcoldicutt : Great to see this issue - which feels very under-reported in the UK - get some mainstream non-techy press. Also, oof, *this*: “the average lifetime of desktop printers is a mere five hours and four minutes of actual printing time.” https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
John Harris's long read lands in a coverage arc that has been building for years: the Basel Action Network's tracker investigations into where discarded devices actually end up exposed how badly the recycling layer performs, while a 2017 report documented how Apple, HP and other manufacturers lean on the Green Electronics Council to weaken reusability and repair standards. Against that backdrop, Harris frames planned obsolescence at Amazon and Apple as the upstream cause of the e-waste mountain those trackers keep finding downstream.
The timing matters: with COVID-19 straining supply chains and household budgets, the piece argues consumers are being forced to keep devices longer than their designed lifespans assume — a tension also visible in the related warning that [[a:950028|consumer IoT is already in trouble because owners can't manage a house full of products facing looming obsolescence]].
First-order effects
- Apple and Amazon face renewed reputational scrutiny as the named villains of short product lifespans, with Harris's printer statistic — five hours and four minutes of actual printing time on average — giving critics a concrete emblem of the practice.
Second-order effects
- Recyclers and certification bodies sit between the critics and the manufacturers: tracker-based exposés like the Basel Action Network's put recycling intermediaries on notice, while the documented manufacturer influence over green electronics standards makes the Green Electronics Council's credibility a live battleground.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, pressure converges on business models rather than individual products — consistent with the related analysis that Apple's pledge to stop mining the earth is unachievable without overhauling how it sells hardware — pushing repairability from activist demand toward a structural design requirement.
The trend: Consumer electronics is moving toward a reckoning over product lifespan, where repair rights, recycling integrity, and manufacturers' linear sell-more-replace-sooner models are increasingly contested together.