Partly, they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. Partly, they know damn well that they're screwing people over. True believers that actually buy the Brooklyn bridge are rare birds.
"Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.
As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.
Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective."
I'm claiming that replaceability, durability, composability, these things no longer made the cut in the design.
- they came up with 3 different chargers so far, and may come with more types opposite to industry standard.
- phones goes from 16gb to 64gb, no 32gb
- Their mac charger top pin gets broke in year, and it cost $80+. And they have different chargers for macs in last 3 years (Air and pro). It would be fine in PC world to get away with this kind of things as there are different manufacturers. Here apple is the only one who designs and creates it.
At the moment I don't know what to do. I can't buy a new MacBook Pro because they are all broken in my mind, so am looking to see what Lenovo do with their 'retro' ThinkPad.
I find such things exploitive and the product's success giving a green light for other manufacturers to re-engineer their products based on less honorable principles.
For instance, on flip phones, batteries would eject if you dropped it in order to absorb impact. They were designed to fly out to minimize the damage to the device and screen. Very clever - solid engineering. However, what if if you want to sell a phone when the battery dies or make a fall break the phone so you can ... sell more phones! And now the industry no longer follows what was a very smart durability focused engineering practice.
Like the laptop in the OPs article. They could have decided to adhere it in a more clever way to make it removable instead of fusing it with glue. Screws, latches ... lots of technology was readily available.
I'm not interested in "debating" whether this is "true", clearly I'm the only one at this time, on this thread, that thinks this. I'm curious as to whether I'm just some minority of one here.