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0 pointsSilhouette10y ago0 comments

This is begging the question. How do you know your customer won't need those components to last longer than your arbitrary timeline?

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3 comments · 1 top-level

cbhl10y ago· 2 in thread

There are a bunch of techniques here: market research, price discrimination (i.e. charging more for "enterprise"), engineering techniques (e.g. testing for mean time to failure, and making it two or three times higher than whatever your warranty is).

SilhouetteOP10y ago

Right, but aside from the first those aren't techniques for knowing when your product would no longer be useful, they are techniques for forcing it to no longer be useful. That's not so much another way of looking at it as what forced obsolescence is by definition.

cbhl10y ago

I disagree. I believe that the second and third are techniques that also give you a signal as to how strong the product needs to be.

For example, if users buy the more-expensive longer-lasting product, then that's a sign that those users feel they need it. (For example, "ruggedized" laptops sold for military and educational uses.)

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