Planned Obsolescence

[Chris-8-6]

Okay so I've been thinking about something recently that has been bugging me and I wanted to know if there were any true apple geeks that might have the answer....

My macbook pro is old, I mean 2006/07 old. It is the 17" 2GB intel one that was top of the range at the time. Now...it had no problems, literally forever, then randomly 2 years ago the USB ports stopped working most of the time and the disc drive fails all the time. There is literally no reasonable explanation for this i.e. the hardware is actually fine, it very much feels like a deliberate attempt by apple to make my product obsolete so that I have to buy a new one. They have already tried this software-wise i.e. they limit how up to date I can keep my mac for no reason other than that they want me to crave the new stuff, but I can live with the software and os that I currently have but I can't live with having hardware fails.

If you read a little online you soon discover that companies all over the world purposely build in mechanisms to force component failure so that you have to upgrade and apple have even lost class action lawsuits in this very area (albeit for their ipods that were designed to fail). Printer companies even use EEPROM in their printers that make them fail after a certain amount of prints, say 100,000 pages, so that consumers have to get a replacement. People have found ways to reset the EEPROM on printers to indefinitely extend their lifespan. Now...does anyone think apple have done this with the macbook pro in question? And if so does anyone know a way to reset any of the features that are causing the problem?

I appreciate that some might be either too naive to imagine a company being so cynical but anyone that isn't then please let me know your thinking.

 

[Kaveman]

like a deliberate attempt by apple to make my product obsolete

Absolutely not, they would have there ass sued every which way if they built in intentional failures.
The reason ports fail is you are plugging and unplugging things into them. How do you know that some 3rd party device didn't short out something?

Apple has an exceptional iteration cycle, they note where there products fail or required support and redesign them to ensure this doesn't happen. Some examples of this, Magsafe power connectors, Flash replacing HDs in iPods, the early AirPort base stations.

No, over the last 15 years of working with Apple products I would say they constantly strive to provide the best designs and components that last a lot longer than all others in the industry.

Good grief, if you had brought a Windows laptop you would have replaced it at lest 3 times by now.

 

[Chris-8-6]

I agree they try to provide the best hardware, which is kind of my point...why would all the ports and disc drive start failing at the same time? I am well aware of the benefits of having a machine that has lasted that long, but even on old pc's I have they normally fail because of being rammed full of viruses and stuff, the usb ports and disc drives certainly don't become temperamental. They haven't failed permanently, they just have a mind of their own. Anyway, I'll take your word for it, I was just curious. Apple really did get sued before for designing devices to have a shorter lifespan, so it wasn't that far fetched a notion Especially as my product was created around the same time.

 

[Morhass]

When I first started my current job 15 years, two of my customers proudly showed me their still working Apple II computers, which were 20 years old at the time. No planned obsolescence there!
Seriously though, Apple don't "make" USB ports or Optical Drives. After many years of customer complaints about the price and incompatibility of Apple Hardware, they transitioned to "industry standard" parts. Yes, the use the best quality parts they can get, but the have to balance the years of testing required to really determine the longevity of a given product/part/manufacturer against the consumers' demand for the latest technology. Seems to me they do a remarkably good job of finding those balance points.
I agree that many manufacturers insist that their designers include technologies to limit the life-span of their products - I know this from a designer who works on USB "sticks" for Sony. But I've never seen any hint of this in Apple products. Apple drives their upgrade cycle through innovation: you get a new Mac because you want the things that the new software and hardware can do for you, or you use your old one until something dies.
Yes, USB ports die... for many years Apple focussed on FireWire rather than USB for exactly that reason - the self-resetting fuses in the FireWire chips helped provide a much more robust user experience. Consumers demanded USB, USB has some flaws. Imagine the patent war if Apple had designed a USB-compatible technology that was better than "real" USB!!! Not financial viable...
I still use a 17" MacBook Pro. It runs Mountain Lion, and works fine. It will probably run Maverics fine too, but at some point, there will be an OS that I want to run that won't work on the hardware. That's not planned obsolescence, that's progress!