Ethics means the control of behavior with what is good and bad based on moral duty and obligation. Can a product be ethically wrong? The answer always depends on the designer and his approach. Nowadays, it has become more important than ever for designers to take responsibility for how their designs affect the customer and own up to it by making a difference.
Not long ago, the goal in designing a product was to make it last as long as possible, while now this is no longer the case. In the last few years, an uncommon and immoral marketing tactic has grown considerably in popularity; planned obsolescence.
“Planned obsolescence is the production of goods with uneconomically short useful lives so that customers will have to make repeat purchases.” (Bulow, J. 1986)
According to what was stated above, planned obsolescence is when a designer makes the product’s end of life short by choice, making it useful for a limited amount of time.
An equally significant aspect of planned obsolescence is perceived obsolescence.
Figure 1, Overconsumption by Christopher Dombres (2012)
Perceived obsolescence:
“Perceived Obsolescence is when a customer is convinced, that he/she needs an updated product, even though his/her existing product is working well”. (Ryan, V. 2019)
Provided that, the companies consciously deactivate or slow down the product remotely. Similarly, companies discontinue old models when introducing new aesthetics, avoiding the need of lowering the price of the older items. The reason for that is to indirectly force the consumer to buy a new item and replace the old one, leaving them to earn more money.
“Apple introduced a change to limit performance when battery condition decreases past a certain point. - This fix will also cause users to think, my phone is slow so I should replace it” (Poole, J. 2017)
Having said that, even though apple was discontinuing their old models people were still selling them online as second hand phones. Apple, by faulting their program the consumer hesitated to buy them even second hand at an extremely low price, since they knew it was going to be deactivated soon or slowed down making it worthless. Therefore, they were leaning towards the newer phones that were on the market.
Figure 2, Peak average graphs that show a unimodal and multimodal effect.
Israel was the first country to investigate Apple, considering the fact that maybe they use planned obsolescence as their way of marketing. After that US did some more investigations, as well as France. France is the only country that alleged offence as a crime, stating that “penalties could include up to 5% of annual turnover or even a jail term”. (BBC, 2018)
Apple admitted that they were slowing down some “iPhone models through a software update and timed the update to coincide with the release of the newer model, the iPhone 8”. (BBC, 2018)
"The slowing down of older devices seems to have the deliberate aim of pushing Apple customers towards purchasing the new model," the group said.
All things considered, Apple voiced the truth and stated that this will not happen in the future models. The most compelling argument is how much of an effort to reduce perceived obsolescence are they willing to make?
Nevertheless, if you are a smart consumer and buy products carefully, the negatives can be balanced by the positives.
Figure 3, Older devices are assigned to drive sales of newer devices
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/15343/production/_99515868_gettyimages-869823962.jpg
Bibliography:
Bulow, J. (1986). Article Navigation An Economic Theory of Planned Obsolescence. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 101(4), pp.729-749.
Ryan V. (2013-2019). What is perceived obsolescence? [online]
Poole, J. (2017). iPhone Performance and Battery Age - Geekbench. [online] Geekbench.com
Fitzpatrick, K. (1967) Planned Obsolescence: publishing, technology, and the future of the academy. New York University Press
Author not available, (2018). Apple investigated by France for 'planned obsolescence. BBC News.
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