Re: Forced to upgrade
Forced to upgrade | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Herman's blog
And now I feel quite bitter. I have a perfectly functional iPhone that is becoming obsolete, not through any fault of its own or depreciation of the hardware, but due to dwindling support. And the worst part is, I get it! Very few people keep a phone for 7 years. Apple seems to be the best at supporting older devices, and yet I don't actually expect them to support hardware for longer than that.
I have a perfectly good smart tv from 10 years ago that stopped working 3 years ago because hulu, netflix, and youtube would no longer work with old version and refused to update. Now it's hooked up to a god-awful Roku TV box. I hate Roku so much. There's gotta be better options, but there's no sense buying something new to replace it.
The end of software support does make sense in our current society, but it's JUST SO STUPID that we get a refresh of every product every year. Phones, cars, TVs, laptops, GPUs, CPUs, headphones, refrigerators, dishwashers, clothes, and so-on.
I didn't choose to live in a world that needs something "new" every year that is basically just ... slightly different angles and curves, and maybe a different color of paint? I know there's slight technical advancements every year, but they're not really functional advancements.
I drive a 2006 pickup truck. It works. I don't need any new features.
I use a Samsung Galaxy S9. Xfinity sent me a mailer for a FREE NEW S24, and a year of home internet + cell service for only $35 monthly. It would literally save me $25 per month to be done with my perfectly-good old phone and replace it with a brand new one I don't need.
Our modern world depends upon work. Food, shelter, medicine, and culture are distributed based upon work. So if we stop producing "new" stuff constantly and work dries up, we have to figure out new ways to distribute resources and determine who's "worthy" of them.
It's a mess.