planned obsolescence

Louis Rossmann argues that Apple designs and supports its products in ways that force planned obsolescence and obstruct independent repair. He draws on his experience repairing MacBooks and campaigns for right to repair.

Veritasium explores planned obsolescence, from the Phoebus lightbulb cartel to printers and phones. It explains how companies deliberately shortened product lifetimes and why products aren't better.

Technology Connections examines why light bulbs have the lifespans they do, including the real history of the Phoebus cartel. He shows that bulb life trades off against brightness and efficiency rather than being simple planned obsolescence.

A short parody ad about iOS 4.0 running slowly on the 3G iPhone, made by a disappointed Apple customer.

A long Machine Learning Street Talk interview with Kenneth Stanley, creator of NEAT and novelty search, about his book on why greatness cannot be planned. They discuss open-endedness, the tyranny of objectives, serendipity and the evolution of ideas.

The 1966 film Walt Disney recorded weeks before his death, laying out his plans for the Florida Project and especially EPCOT, a planned city of the future. It uses models, concept art and animation to describe the circular city, monorails and people movers.

Guardian News coverage of Mark Zuckerberg's 2021 reveal of Facebook's metaverse plans alongside the rename to Meta. It shows a glimpse of the VR and AR vision.

AvE tears down the Juicero cold-press juicer, examining its heavily machined parts, electronics and the pricey juice packs. He pokes fun at the product and venture-funded culture along the way.

Johnny Harris investigates why McDonald's ice cream machines are so often broken, covering the Taylor machines, the repair restrictions on franchisees and the Kytch workaround device.

Adam Savage and engineer Zach Radding examine Lumafield CT scans of Apple's $130 Thunderbolt 4 cable alongside cheaper USB-C cables. They explain the internal components that distinguish Thunderbolt from ordinary USB-C.

AvE tears down a roughly $500 Dyson hair dryer, examining how its motor, airflow and electronics fit into a small body. He runs tests along the way and ultimately decides whether the engineering justifies the price.

Big Clive tears down the Dubai lamp, a Philips LED bulb developed with Dubai's ruler for maximum efficiency and long life. He examines its construction and circuitry, including underrun LEDs and many filament strips.

An Autoline After Hours episode where Sandy Munro discusses his complete teardown of the BMW i3, along with automotive journalists. It covers the car's carbon fiber construction and manufacturing technology.

An Autoline After Hours episode with teardown expert Sandy Munro and a panel of auto journalists. It covers his Tesla Model 3 teardown, including the battery, drive modules, build quality and manufacturing automation.

Louis Rossmann gives a basic, non-technical introduction to right to repair legislation for people new to the issue.

Louis Rossmann argues that Apple's Independent Repair Program is a PR stunt that misleads the public and burdens independent repair shops. He discusses parts access restrictions and program limits.

Dave Jones of EEVblog shows hand soldering of surface-mount parts, including drag soldering and tack-and-reflow of 0.5mm fine-pitch ICs, with solder paste and hot air.

Scotty Allen of Strange Parts travels through Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei markets and learns to upgrade an iPhone 6s from 16GB to 128GB by swapping its flash chip. It is part 3 of his custom iPhone series and shows the difficulty of the hands-on repair work.

Electronics hobbyist bigclivedotcom tears down a cheap USB power supply with a manufacturing fault that carries full mains voltage to the USB ports, showing the risk of electric shock.

Shahriar of The Signal Path tears down and experiments with Keysight's UXR real-time oscilloscope, which offers 110GHz bandwidth and 256GS/s sampling, and compares architectures from Keysight, LeCroy and Tektronix.

Louis Rossmann, an independent Apple repair shop owner, explains why he does not use Apple products, drawing on his experience of repairing devices he considers designed to fail and hard to fix.

AvE tears down a high-end KitchenAid stand mixer, looking at its castings, large DC motor and gear train. He also picks apart some design trade-offs.

Louis Rossmann argues that reballing flip-chip GPUs is not a real fix for dead laptop GPUs. He explains why such repairs and oven reflow tricks fail and what is actually happening with failing hardware.

Louis Rossmann discusses failing keyboards on newer MacBooks, comparing a Dell keyboard repair with an Apple keyboard repair and explaining why Apple's design is costly and hard to fix.

A three-minute demonstration of professional hand-soldering techniques for multi-lead surface mount parts, to IPC class 3 criteria.

Louis Rossmann, a Macbook repair shop owner, goes through a long list of Apple hardware engineering failures, from GPU defects to keyboards and repair practices.

A Motherboard documentary episode from Nebraska about farmers and mechanics fighting manufacturers like John Deere over access to the diagnostic software needed to repair modern tractors. It shows how software locks have taken away farmers' traditional self-reliance.

An update from the Strange Parts YouTuber on his recovery from a brain injury caused by a metal pipe while filming, and his plans for the channel.

Ben Krasnow of Applied Science demonstrates an X-ray fluorescence gun that measures chemical composition, tears it down, analyzes its failure, and discusses a new XRF technology appearing on eBay.

CuriousMarc inspects a newly arrived Teletype Model 19, an early military unit built around a Model 15 keyboard and printer, after an initial rough cleaning. It is the first part of a restoration series and touches on 5-bit Baudot code.

Linus Tech Tips opens up an M1 MacBook Air to test whether better thermal pads could improve performance in the fanless design. It looks at what Apple left on the table.

Dave Jones of EEVblog tears down a Kollsman MD-1 Automatic Astro Compass, a mechanical analog computer from a B-52 bomber. It is part of a star-tracker inertial navigation system that computes altitude and azimuth.

Strange Parts builds a working refurbished iPhone 6S entirely from components bought in the Huaqiangbei phone parts markets in Shenzhen. The video explains how the markets work and what the parts cost.

CuriousMarc and colleagues at the Computer History Museum try to compile and run a FORTRAN II program on a 1959 IBM 1401. The machine has only 16k of memory and a CPU not meant for scientific work, so success is far from guaranteed.

Big Clive does a complete teardown of a lithium phone battery, taking apart the protection circuit, case and the cell itself. He notes it was risky because the cell was not discharged first.

Big Clive takes apart an IKEA Koppla USB power supply to assess its safety, looking at isolation and transformer construction.

Linus Tech Tips reviews the first Framework Laptop, a fully repairable and upgradeable machine. The reviewer expected a flimsy chunky device and was happily surprised.

Dave Jones of EEVblog tears down an Esinomed Infoview medical tablet computer built around an 800MHz AMD Geode board, exposing extremely shoddy construction and design.

Valve opens up a Steam Deck to show its internal components and explain which are replaceable or upgradable. It advises against self-repair but shares the details openly.

BigClive tears down and tests a germicidal UVC lamp from eBay that floods a room with narrow-band ultraviolet and ozone. He warns of the eye and skin hazards.