Consumer electronics used to break down all the time, but in almost all cases that was due to manufacturing defects, which were much more frequent, because many operations that are now automated were still done manually then.

The consumer devices which survived infant mortality, because they were free of manufacturing defects, had a negligible aging rate after that.

Modern electronic devices have far fewer initial manufacturing defects, due to automated production, but all age much quicker, due to very small component sizes, lower safety factors, surface semiconductor devices (MOS transistors) instead of bulk semiconductor devices (bipolar transistors), lead-free soldering and other similar changes in technologies.

They used to break down and they could and were repaired. Nowadays if something breaks it goes in the garbage can. I had an extension cable which died staying in the basement for a year. When i opened it to check the reason i was shocked. It looked like a spider net made of dust but this was metal.

> Consumer electronics used to break down all the time 50 years ago

But they could be easily repaired.

"Consumer electronics used to break down all the time 50 years ago"

Citation required