Let’s face it: nerd toy ownership pride is a big deal. Everyone feels like they’ve got to plop down 500 bucks every 6 months, instead of waiting the normal 2 years or so, to get the latest and greatest version of their smartphone…even if the latest and greatest isn’t really THAT much better than the last one.
Not only that, the manufacturers build in programmed obsolescence at increasingly aggressive intervals of use (the phone may look great, but they always leave a glitch in there to annoy people into upgrading…or they break surprisingly easily…moreso than gadgets just 5-10 years ago).
This is an ultimately unsustainable model. Even if every single person were to properly recycle their gadgets properly, it’s still horribly inefficient in regards to resources and energy used to produce these gadgets en masse. The manufacturers feel they have to play this type of ball to compete…but it only means that the other manufacturers start doing the same and ultimately it only hurts the average consumer.
This doesn’t take into account all the lead and mercury this crap leaks into the environment. We’re already watching the Gulf of Mexico fill up with useless crude oil and cancer causing dispersant chemicals…and we’ve seen this going on in Africa for years as well as the North Sea and Russia. But really, when you think about it, a whole lot of really toxic geek toys that no longer bring the owner pride are filling up those landfills too…and not enough are being redistributed to people who need them because the services to power them and make them function optimally are expensive anyway.
I’m sorry, but if you find a sense of pride in owning the latest and greatest phone or computer, you’re kind of a jackass and you have deeper problems you need to deal with. You’re contributing to fucking up the best planet we’ve found so far in this galaxy.
A solution would be to add value from the software side. Hardware IS the problem. The only carbon footprint software produces is the need for electricity to power the device that runs it. When you throw it away, it gets eradicated and produces no mess. So, how do you make that work? You make hardware that is TOP of the FUCKING LINE. The best stuff you can manufacture. Best quality cases, as much memory as you can pack in there, best phone call quality, and the best power consumption rate you can tweak out of it. You put an operating system on there that can be updated very easily over the air. And instead of spending all your resources making slightly less shitty hardware every 6 months, you spend your resources making kick ass hardware that is released every 5-6 years and you pour the bulk of your resources into producing great software goodies that you pump out to your users.
Now, how do you get that whole brand competition thing? If you have 5 companies producing kick ass phones/laptops/whatever, each of them needs to figure out what niche they want to compete for and fill that niche as best as they can. Create awesome peripherals that make your devices keep up with the times and work effectively for certain markets. Here’s how you make your dough: You set up partnerships with developers. You take a cut from the sale of applications…just like how the app stores do today. If you’re producing better phones, you ask for better kickbacks from the carriers. If you’re producing better laptops, you ask for better margins on the sale of your systems.
And god forbid, stop it with the whole brand lock out and platform lock down crap. It’s stupid. If you want to compete for real estate in the market, make your apps as cross platform as possible and lure people away from other platforms, knowing they can take their apps with them to YOUR platform, which you have spent more time being better at what those customers want. Open up your platforms and let the developers in…and spend the money to make your platforms robust so developers can develop apps that integrate extremely well with your platform. Don’t make it hard for them or you won’t get consistent quality developers sticking by your platform and evangelizing it.
These are the things you have to do to make a lot of money not on hardware device turnover, but on software services and sales. Stop contributing to the damn problem…we’ve got enough toxic shit going into our Earth’s crust as it is that doesn’t belong there. We’ve been screaming for this kind of business approach for years, and unfortunately, the big players won’t listen. They’re taking cues from 1940’s GM. Look at General Motors now. They’re shit because the foreign auto companies basically did exactly what I just said (well, except for software…but they produced better quality product and rode their reputation up to the top). GM is just finally figuring this out after hitting rock bottom, and I figure the Googles and Apples are going to go through this too…and probably at a higher rate given the freneticness of the gadget market.
To add to all that…these phones are basically made in Taiwan or China essentially by slave labor. The way their contracts work is that they’re paid some cash up front, and they have to work ridiculous hours for a certain length of time to get the rest. They literally work people to death, with safety standards that would make the safety standards of most 19th century assembly lines look fresh and modern.
Look, if you thought that hard working Americans were assembling Apple products in Steve Jobs’s garage, you’re a lunatic. These things are made in the same types of plants as Dells and HPs, with a lot of the same components. Wonder how I can run MacOS on my MSi Wind? Because it’s got the same components as a Mac Air that costs almost twice as much.
These companies are oozing massive amounts of mercury and other toxins in the air and water and soil at such a rate that it’s going to make China look like the Gulf of Mexico eventually. Plants don’t LIKE mercury. Animals need plants to support the food chain. It’s going to take longer, but it’s almost as bad. We’ve got to cut back on how many gadgets we buy and most importantly, how frequently we update them. Now.