Unobtainium
literaryreview.co.uk
literaryreview.co.uk
China has done a terrifyingly good job of capturing the production stream from raw materials to components. This makes it very attractive to move product assembly to China as well.
Developed countries backed themselves into this situation, largely by established companies failing to continuously improve their production methods and quality[1].
Disclaimer: I work for GM, any opinions are solely my own.
1. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/561/n...
I originally wanted to link steel and textiles, but I don't have actual sources for that. Both steel and textiles went overseas for price considerations, but I think that if US management and labor would have focused on improving quality and cost for each of those they would still be in business in the US (and Britain, etc).
In the 1970's GM and Ford started the steps of getting out of the vertical integration business. This meant that their components could come from anywhere - competition was based on cost and quality; but mainly cost. Some perverse metrics here meant that internal suppliers drove themselves out of business because they did not improve quality.
For example: for a very long time, automotive components were produced on an Inspect and Reject scheme, where a large lot of material was built up at one site (internal or external) and then inspected at point of use. The manager at the component production site was compensated based on number of units produced, effectively driving down quality. The manager at the point of use was also compensated based on number of units produced, again driving defects into production units as bad material was used in production.
People who work mainly with code would do well to remember that physical production is hard. Also, incentives will always have perverse outcomes over a long enough timeframe. There's no way to list all of your assumptions when you set up incentives.
Anyway, I'd love to hear stories like this from other physical products (like textiles and steel for instance).
Regarding the competitiveness of the US car industry: Vaclav Smil makes a slightly different case in "Made in the USA: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing", where he points out that "For too long the machines stayed too large, too inefficient, and, on average, too unreliable." Add two oil crisis to that, quality problems and high prices and you get a perfect storm.
The NUMI story from This American Life was a great listen.
"...Abraham’s main message is that we need products that can be improved or repaired (rather than having an in-built ‘death clock’, like most Apple devices) and that we should recycle more assiduously what are actually valuable materials within that old computer or phone."
I thought, (anecdotally as the owner of a iPhone 5 running fine) that apple is actually ahead of the curve here. Maybe on MacBooks where battery replacement is hard? Even then my MacBook has outlasted any other laptop I've bought. Seems weird to call the battery degrading a "death clock."
Is this a common sentiment or known fact I've missed?
I have some iPhone4 devices still around, as they power 30 pin connected speakers and other devices. But their iOS is locked to an old version, and as the apps I use continue to upgrade (and some force upgrade), the devices are forced to the ground. Hardware itself is not terrible or low quality, but the combination of Apple's control on hw and sw makes things it hard to consider these as "investments" in any way, given the high price.
Perhaps it's a handheld thing; Macs and PCs appear to have better backward compatibility and longevity.
Compare to any kind of android devices: They rarely get obsoleted by OS Updates since there are none.
Edit: My Macbook Air 2nd gen (2010 (?), can't really remember) still runs El Capitan. It's getting a bit limited in what you can do on it, but it's fine for browsing and lightweight work. Obviously no gaming :)
The Android & iOS/Apple differences are interesting. Both are great, in my opinion.
In 2005, it was a frustrating and nearly impossible task to use software made for Windows 95. In 2016, it's much easier to emulate a 2005 environment.
Same for mobiles. As the relative gains from each generation to the next taper off, there will be less to radically change from the ground up.
> Maybe on MacBooks where battery replacement is hard?
Isn't battery replacement hard on all iOS devices?
Good point. I guess it's macbook's batteries stand out as hard in the laptop world, and on the mobile side I must have been comparing it to recent android devices from samsung and htc, forgetting that until very recently most had removable batteries, even cheaper to replace than laptop ones.
I'd argue that old-fashioned desktop PCs were (and are) ahead of the curve. No need to wastefully throw everything away, just upgrade the components you want. A reasonable level of standardisation has allowed this to happen.
Desktop PCs might not have the polished, all-in-one usability of an Apple device, but the ability to add or remove components from a PC make them very amenable to re-use. For example, I have an older hard drive (HD) that I removed from my desktop PC and put into an external HD case. It's now used as a backup and storage device.
Edit: I think I should give the parent comment more credit. After thinking about it, maybe the real goal should be to make partial hardware upgrades (like the DIY pc's enjoy) more accessible to end consumers.
It's famously made of wrought iron, not steel. I wonder if that mistake comes from the book or the author of the review didn't want to have to explain the difference between the two.
So here's the authors page http://www.davidsabraham.com/
where he has a link to purchase the book.