I frequently rant about the declining quality of hardware and software. Here’s an article blaming manufacturers:
“Now computers are fast enough, mobile phones are small enough and digital music players have enough memory. Manufacturers now have a problem. How will they sell new products to consumers who are perfectly satisfied with their current electronics? My IBM XT, 20 years old, proves that we were capable of manufacturing durable technology decades ago — now that the performance problem is also taken care of, presumably the majority of us (certainly the shops and offices of the world) can stop buying new computers?
“The electronics industry has clearly spotted this problem, and has worked out a simple way to make you upgrade even if you’re not a slave to fashion: your gadgets will simply break within the year. The evolution of the microchip to a point where the average consumer cannot tax it technically has ushered in The Age of the Flimsy
— delicate, beautiful supermodels that can’t go the distance.”
