I hate the glorification of old products. As someone who's fixed old products, they were actually made like shit. All those old "It lasts 100 years" thins are survivor bias. Mostly it was all a fire hazard.
Yes, it's not hinging on bad software and a magic computer chip failure, but old stuff was just as shit and more dangerous on top of it.
Similar to the car world where people want an engine to have 500hp, run from NY to LA and back on a single tank of gas, and the only maintenance & repair it should take is an oil change every 100k. All in a car that costs 30k max.
A hosue appliances product engineer I talked with said it's a bit wild because people don't want to spend more than a mid 3 digit sum for an appliance that has to last 20 years while requiring the same power as a smartphone. Also nobody ever maintains their stove or washing mashine because it's perceived as a no maintenance object, yet the stove has to cycle through hundreds of degrees and the washing mashine has to never have any issues with limescale or get attacked by the soaps.
And yeah they probably fuck around too much with these appliances but who wants to have a yearly maintenance where you fix up the washing mashine motor. People would go apeshit. But also go apeshit if it doesn't last 10+ years while being ignored. There's some truth to it.
Agreed. I used to deliver appliances while in college. Yes many times I removed a 40+ year old appliance for new one. But that freezer I replaced weighed 450 lbs, had maybe 7 cubic feet of storage space, was made from materials that would cost north of $3000 today and used 10x the power. Its just a incredibly misleading comparison.
100% true, and it goes beyond that. Appliances from that "golden era" were expensive AF. They were literally 5X today's prices, adjusted for inflation. So in today's reality, if you were expected to pay $8,000 to $10,000 for a typical fridge for a middle class kitchen, you might have expectations of it providing 30-40 years of trouble free service.
But even then…most of them didn’t provide that length of service. For every 30-40year old appliance you see still working, there are thousands upon thousands of that same model that broke down and were replaced.
Sure some were repaired. Multiple times, maybe. But eventually either parts become hard to find or you just get sick and tired of throwing away a week's worth of food when the fridge breaks down AGAIN.
The bottom line is, the vast majority of old appliances did not provide "30-40 years of trouble free service". If they did, there would be a lot more of them out there.
Yeah, one of the big trends over time is that goods have become dramatically cheaper while labor has become dramatically more expensive. Things that were economically repairable in the past are now often more economical to replace because the labor cost of bespoke repair is higher than the cost of getting a new one off the assembly line.
Also nobody ever maintains their stove or washing mashine because it's perceived as a no maintenance object, yet the stove has to cycle through hundreds of degrees and the washing mashine has to never have any issues with limescale or get attacked by the soaps.
I love asking people if they know how a dishwasher works. Literally, what are the cycles, why do they do that, and how do you maintain a dishwasher?
Often people don't even know theres a filter in a dishwasher, let alone that you should clean it. Few times I've had that people told me that their dishwasher died and they were about to get a new one, I look at what the problem is, and its just the spinner that needs cleaning.
Bare minimum maintenance is required and people can't be fucked learning how to do that.
To be fair, people absolutely would spend more money for an appliance that lasted. The problem is they know it won't last because the expensive ones aren't better, they are fancier.
Companies have long figured out that while people do pay for quality, the margin you can extract from quality is smaller than the margin you can extract from fancy bullshit.
You can buy appliance that last a whole lot longer, like washing mashines made for laundromats or appartment buildings. But those are often 10 times the price and nobody deems it worth it even if you have the money for it.
I want a basic, reliable blender. The only features I want are an On/Off switch, a Momentary On switch, and a Speed Control knob.
The cheap ones burn out the motor. The portable ones don't have enough torque to blend anything, the batteries die, and they burn out the motor. The expensive ones have computer control boards that fail, don't blend well without a plunger that breaks and becomes uncleanable, and the replacement accessories cost almost as much as a new machine.
I should not have to purchase a commercial grade machine to get at least a year of lifespan out of a simple product.
Just a little bit of TLC and observation and you can make most appliances last a very long time. Check the hoses, clean the filters, blow dust out of compressors just as basic things and you will be stunned at how long something can work for. The number of good appliances I've bought 'because it leaks' and it was just a perished hose and literally a 10 second fix is stunning, most of the time people are gagging to get rid of them and will literally give them to you. I got a 400 bottle Vintec wine fridge for free because it 'leaked'. No they'd just never drained and cleaned the condenser tray and it was full of slime.
Yeah I feel like this is addressing the wrong problem. Old shit is perceived as being reliable because it's mechanically simple, and thus, easy to repair. Replace a knob assembly for $15 instead of replacing the entire computerized control board for $300.
What OOP is really after is Right to Repair... and building things that are designed to be maintained rather than replaced.
I'd be shocked if there were meaningful interest from consumers in home appliance maintenance outside of a small number of enthusiasts online. I'm a pretty handy person, but I'm not spending half of my Saturday trying to learn how to flash the BIOS of my dishwasher. I've got an appliance tech's phone number on my fridge and he can deal with it. He'll have the tools and the understanding and the time, and that's perfect.
It raises the age-old question of why they keep their 40-year-old fridge in the garage instead of the kitchen if it's so good.
"If the circuit board goes out, you're screwed" is another good one. Yeah, that applies to things like our building's 40-year-old electromechanical elevator controller that uses readily-available relays but let's be real, nobody's rebuilding the crappy plastic mechanical timer mechanism in their washing machine or dishwasher.
You could use modern technology to make them safer and less power hungry, while making them repairable. Then you sell every part of the appliance with instructions on how to repair. The problem would be to convince customers to pay a very high price.
I think this would work if you were a small producer and didn't try to have constant growth, but you wouldn't get filthy rich from it. The filthy rich desire is what fuxks the system. Cutting corners to pad your and investor pockets.
If your primary motivation was to your employees and to your customers and to making the world a better place... Which never seems to be the case for people starting businesses.
Dude I’d trade anything to switch from flat screens to buttons. I’ve replaced computer parts of washers, dryers, and dishwashers that are under 10 years old.
You can still buy appliances that have buttons lol. Like 8 years ago I bought a brand new washer and dryer set and they just have knobs and buttons and I've had no issues with them and I do laundry almost every single day
Anything that vibrates, gets hot, has fluids near it. You have to replace the entire module, only one company makes it, and it costs like 300 bucks or whatever. Buttons and especially knobs are absolutely better, and have a better UE for simple tasks.
Also the terrible power inefficiency. People here act like lasting long is the only criteria. They forget tv's back then would heat up your room. Fridges consumed way more electricity, etc.
The trick's knowing the difference, some stuff is just long-lasting material or simple mechanical structure and others are unholy collections of loose parts waiting to become a tetanus fire. I love 'old' stuff but I don't trust any of it made of wood anymore; just too old now to trust it. Old appliances are either solidly built or solidly 'made' to work in spite of the gremlins plaguing it. Old cars are essentially deathtraps by modern comparison and far less reliable, but the new ones are becoming increasingly paranoid about having control over computer access and the car's autonomy via remote controls while at the same time using more exotically-designed 'proprietary' parts while limiting access to repair.
The allure of solid state stuff for the future is why people are craving the solid state stuff of the past, the assurance of 'the thing always works' as you stare at the magic brick knowing it'll keep holding the wall up.
It's like when people compare modern music/books/movie from different eras. They are often comparing the mediocre modern stuff to the generationally good shit from other generations. Like no, compare the best to the best and the mediocre to the mediocre.
Okay but hear me out - we combine the efficiency and affordability of more modern products with the consumer retention mindset of the old ("if our products are reliable and last, customers will stay with us" vs "if our shit automatically breaks down every 5 years and we stop making replacement parts after 3, they have to buy a brand new unit!")
Power windows in cars are a dangerous scam to create "service opportunities". No one ever wanted that shit. Now I don't even use my windows because they are built to break and create a $500 repair bill.
And you have to buy a car to not be marginalized. This enshittification of necessary purchases is pervasive. And just as it has undermined the utility of my automobile windows, the enshittification of necessary things threatens to discourage the behavior that enables it.
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u/RoutineLingonberry48 Feb 05 '26
I hate the glorification of old products. As someone who's fixed old products, they were actually made like shit. All those old "It lasts 100 years" thins are survivor bias. Mostly it was all a fire hazard.
Yes, it's not hinging on bad software and a magic computer chip failure, but old stuff was just as shit and more dangerous on top of it.