The enshittification of everything will eventually lead to some small companies making good quality long lasting appliances I hope, they will make a good name for themselves and have easily repairable parts, but since we live in the real world whirlpool or GE will buy them keep the branding and make it more “intelligent” and easily breakable by adding computer parts that aren’t needed and plastic parts that will fail and not be able to be repaired or replaced.
Some companies already started to make repairable products (eg: fairphone and framework) the problem is that they either cost a lot or have less quality than other products because they are new company with limited marketshare and that don’t make money by making you buy something every 2 years
I am aware of both companies and am a customer because i want to encourage repairability however i also know that once the market is saturated with long term easy to fix products that the manufacturer will then not be able to sell new stock for a while, and Framework and Fairphone both have a solution to that by selling individual components for replacement or upgrade, but how much would a dishwasher or washing machine manufacturer be able to make off of O rings, or timing belts or something else cheap and easy to make, when amazon will sell lower quality ones at 1/2 the price that will work temporarily for either the repairman or cheap customer to fix their own machine. The incentive structure sucks for anything but enshitification at the moment.
Don’t count on it. Instant Pot managed to sell so many units they’re in what seems like almost every kitchen. And then that was that, because everyone already had one, so their sales volume plummeted and they went bankrupt. I still use mine all the time, but the original company went away.
The enshittification of everything will eventually lead to some small companies making good quality long lasting appliances I hope, they will make a good name for themselves and have easily repairable parts, but since we live in the real world whirlpool or GE will buy them keep the branding and make it more “intelligent” and easily breakable by adding computer parts that aren’t needed and plastic parts that will fail and not be able to be repaired or replaced.
Some companies already started to make repairable products (eg: fairphone and framework) the problem is that they either cost a lot or have less quality than other products because they are new company with limited marketshare and that don’t make money by making you buy something every 2 years
I am aware of both companies and am a customer because i want to encourage repairability however i also know that once the market is saturated with long term easy to fix products that the manufacturer will then not be able to sell new stock for a while, and Framework and Fairphone both have a solution to that by selling individual components for replacement or upgrade, but how much would a dishwasher or washing machine manufacturer be able to make off of O rings, or timing belts or something else cheap and easy to make, when amazon will sell lower quality ones at 1/2 the price that will work temporarily for either the repairman or cheap customer to fix their own machine. The incentive structure sucks for anything but enshitification at the moment.
Don’t count on it. Instant Pot managed to sell so many units they’re in what seems like almost every kitchen. And then that was that, because everyone already had one, so their sales volume plummeted and they went bankrupt. I still use mine all the time, but the original company went away.
That’s fine, companies shouldn’t be forever