Carl WinbergWhy do printers have to be so shit?
🎴Kabuki, ronin@carl it's by design so they can sell more printers.
§ Jason 🥄*see “The Shoe Event Horizon” theory for an examination of this phenomena.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Shoe+event+horizon
Urban Dictionary: Shoe event horizon
The Shoe Event Horizon is an economic theory that draws a correlation between the level of economic (and emotional) depression of a society and the number of shoe shops the society has. The theory is summarized as such: as a society sinks into depression, the people of the society need to cheer themselves up by buying themselves gifts. This is usually done through the purchase of shoes. As more money is spent on shoes, more shoe shops are built, and the quality of the shoes begins to diminish. This makes people buy more shoes. The above turns into a vicious cycle, the end result being that other industries begin to falter. Eventually the titular Shoe Event Horizon is reached, where the only type of store economically viable to build is a shoe shop. At this point, society ceases to function, and the economy collapses, sending a world into ruin.
The result of this decision is the phenomena.
The theory covers that businesses, in order to maintain profits, have to design shoes of poorer and poorer quality so that they either hurt the feet and/or fall apart so that people have to buy more shoes.
Replace "shoe" with "printer" and "hurt the feet and/or fall apart" with "constantly run out of ink and/or stop working" and I think we have a match.
"Planned Obsolescence" has been around since at least the 1980s.
I remember a powerful lesson in this from the Osborne Computer (early 1980s). They made the first "portable" computer and sold a bunch of them becoming the darling of the tech industry at the time.
Problem was that they sold one to everyone who wanted one at the time. They came out with an updated mode, but had no planned obsolescence to get people to upgrade. So sales plummeted and they went out of business.
@jcct @carl wait.... So are you arguing that this is normal? As in... It's ok for companies to jab their customers just so they can stay afloat? Because not only is planned obsolescence dumb... But also NOT a phenomenon. I understand the word phenomenon as a marvel. I don't consider late stage capitalism tactics as a marvel
Normal, yes.
I approve of this, no.
And I'm not saying that planned obsolesce is the phenomena.
The phenomena is the downward spiral of quality that planned obsolescence can often cause.
Printer technology has hardly advanced in 20 years, so the only way to get people to buy a new one is through designing them to only work for a few years.
@jcct @carl better yet... I found an article https://gizmodo.com/epson-printer-end-of-service-life-error-not-working-dea-1849384045
PastaThief@carl Because they have to be VERY FAST but also compact, not too heavy, surprisingly inexpensive for the components they have, and they work by repeatedly heating shit to a billion degrees then letting it cool off, which would kill just about anything you did that to under the same constraints.
In the old days, laser printers were nearly indestructible, but they weight a million pounds and cost $2000+.
Just got my first color laser printer in decades (~$400) and have no idea why I ever used inkjet.
xanna@jcct @PastaThief @carl same same Mine is b&w, and doesn't have duplex, which brought it in line with colour duplex inkjet price point. Totally love it.
Jason Burnett@PastaThief @carl But even those old laser printers (I'm a former LaserJet 5 owner) beat the hell out of any inkjet printer. Inkjet printers are like grunge rock - an evolutionary misstep that I hope we eventually evolve around the damage.
Faye@carl To remind us technical solutions aren’t the holy grail of life…
Nick@carl Isn't it one of Asimovs law of robotics?
The Shoe Event Horizon is summarized as such: as a society sinks into depression, the people of the society need to cheer themselves up by buying themselves gifts. This is usually done through the purchase of shoes. As more money is spent on shoes, more shoe shops are built, and the quality of the shoes begins to diminish so that people will buy more shoes.
Darfash@carl because they are designed that way?
ghostdancer