Your other two points are broadly correct though. Also data collection is helpful for seeing how customers use products, which genuinely does influence development.
Hard to believe when a printer manufacturer moves a commonly failing part from cartridges to the printer itself, then makes it impossible to repair that specific part without taking apart the whole thing and buying a replacement part for 160 bucks.
> Also data collection is helpful for seeing how customers use products, which genuinely does influence development.
I'll start calling it helpful once it actually improves product quality and usability.
The effect comes from many sources. When the engineering science is new, tech tends to be way overbuilt because the creators don't know what tolerances are. There's also the ratio of product cost to disposable income of the users. And to their wish for devices over time.
In any case, the natural tendency of a profit-optimizing system of competition is to throw away values (eg., repairability) that consumers at-purchase dont value. In this case, no biz is going to spend extra to include long-life features at a loss to competitors who don't.
The remedy here is regulation, which is the mechanism which sets a floor on competition: since consumers at-purchase are at an extreme informational disadvantage, the gov. should require all biz to build in long-life features given consumers do want them, long after purchase.
It's not a conspiracy, more of a market failure. The market doesnt produce optimal outcomes in cases where these extreme information asymmetries are built in, ie., by the time the product is around for 10yr to be reivewed, it's retired. There isn't a way of getting that information to the consumer.
Ease of assembly is often in opposition to ease of repair. Reliability engineering optimizes failure rates during warranty and extended warranty periods. Why would they optimize repairability? It not in their interest.
The defective Apple MacBooks are great example of this effect. Politically powerful design guy prioritizes design over everything else. Keyboard technology is defective and un-repairable. Result: Billion of dollars of warranty claims.
Was that a conspiracy? No. Just the result of poor priorities, resulting in a bad outcome.
"So they opened the fridge and 15 seconds later closed it again, they might have taken something out, interesting."
What temperature do they set the fridge to? Do they ever change it? How often do they deice the freezer? Do they use the ice maker / filtered water thing / whatever? How often? How long do they leave the door open normally? What are the temperature / power consumption profiles over time?
That's before we even get to any of the smart features (I have no clue what they are).
Sure you're right there is plenty to monitor and collect, it's just not very useful for the majority of people I'd imagine, unless you like other people to tell you when to buy something.
Really now?
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-story-behind-the-story-behind-...