tl;dr: LED bulbs get too hot, lowering their life expectancy. Manufacturers need to include cheap thermistor circuits, which automatically dim the light to a safe thermal equilibrium.
It's a design issue of the bulb, sure, but especially the fixture. LEDs aren't friendly to high heat like incandescents are, and most light fixtures have been designed with complete disregard to the heat of the fixture—so long as it won't start a fire.
The CFL has a huge volume and a huge radiating area for the heat, and that area is well-connected thermally with the environment. Plus, it can operate at higher temperatures anyway.
The LED active element is a tiny chip of semiconductor material. All that heat is dumped in a tiny volume, and you can only put a heat sink on its back. Plus, the heat sink is close to the fixture and therefore necessarily hampered in its function.
It's not an easy problem to solve. If we think pie-in-the-sky solutions, perhaps a re-design of the connectors and fixtures might help - if you made a connector that was designed to take heat away from the bulb, that would help a lot; the whole fixture would become the heat sink.
Further, LED manufacturers design their directional lamps with these applications in mind. See the spiral pattern [1] on the heat sink around Lighting Science PAR bulbs? That's designed to use the thermal differential to create a nice air flow up into the fixture so that it may be used in a recessed or other partially-enclosed fixture.
1: http://www.1000bulbs.com/product/100560/LED-PAR3011HE25WW.ht...
A light bulb.
This isn't a car, which you expect to require some expertise. It's not a furnace that will be primarily handled by an HVAC specialist. It's a light bulb. Consumers have a reasonable expectation that devices like this Just Work. If the device fails to meet its promised service-level without a dozen asterisks in its usage? It's not meeting its intended purpose and it's defective.
Consumers should not have to meticulously research every small purchase. Simple, small purchases of replacement parts should not require reading a 10-page instruction manual of 6-point font, especially since you didn't get this manual until after you got the damned thing home.
By allowing manufacturers to sell these defective devices, we don't just hurt consumers, we hurt the environment with unnecessary waste of electronics, and we hurt the real, quality manufacturers who want to sell good stuff but can't because there's no way to tell consumers "all the other crap on the shelf will break in under two years and we won't" so they end up getting crushed by people who cut corners.
"Educating the consumer" is the onus of the manufacturers. It doesn't mean 10-page instruction manuals with 6-point font or hours of meticulous research [edit: this is a horrible way to educate consumers]. In this case it probably means packaging and labeling which plainly states "not for use in recessed fixtures" in a way which most anyone would understand. This could be a sticker which says just that, it could be iconography, it could be an obnoxious DVD on loop in the lighting aisle at Home Depot, or it could be all of those things.
Yes, it's a light bulb (a light bulb!) but that doesn't mean manufacturers shouldn't attempt to get consumers to use it properly.
If you want to make a special light-bulb that is only compatible with a narrowly defined set of environments, then make your own socket that is only compatible with your bulb and then sell fixtures that provide the needed environment.
If you want to use a standard socket, then you have to take the bad with the good and also deal with the kind of environments you'd find. This is the same bullcrap with devices that completely fail to charge on 0.5Watt USB power-supplies. If you can't charge off a standard USB connection, then you shouldn't use a USB port, because USB defines 0.5Watts and your device isn't USB-compatible. Legally required to support USB? Then stop pussy-footing around and actually support it instead of exclusively supporting a 1 or 2 watt perversion of the standard.
The need to educate a customer usually surfaces when someone was unable to produce a proper product. Sure, you need to warn users when your product can't be used under some circumstances, but if possible, you should aim at fulfilling the users' expectations instead.
I totally agree with what you're saying, though.
The issue at hand is that consumers want something that is impossible for manufacturers to give to them. That is, a 100% efficient lighting solution which shines light exactly when they want it, exactly how they want it, and lasts forever. Consumers have gotten used to a market where there has been almost no innovation for over a hundred years (in the driver side, fixtures are a different story). Now that there's some diversity in the market, consumers are unhappy because it's not matching expectations. The only way that will change is if manufacturers properly set expectations.
He did note that the Cree brand bulbs are actually rated for use in enclosed fixtures, but alas, they're also more expensive at the moment than these other guys.
Everything is a horribly underappreciated aspect of modern life. You'll hear the same sentence with one word changed uttered by audiophiles, vegans, electricians, foodies, urbanists, doctors, social justice advocates, janitors, seniors, juniors, teachers, genealogists, biologists, ecologists, chemists, astrophysicists, philosophers, grammarians, body-builders, trainspotters, mechanics, open-source software fans, designers, photographers, documentarians, readers, writers, gun-nuts, gun-haters, pastors, prudes, perverts and relationship councillors.
We, collectively, no longer give a fuck. We are out of fucks to give. We are way past peak-fucks and into a severe fucks crisis. We have zero fucks.
I just want to buy something and have it work. If the colour temperature is wrong and the aesthetics are therefore sub-optimal? Well that reflects the effort I put in. If it burns out in a week? It's defective, full-stop.
One wonders what the owners of gaslights thought when they bought their first simple "Just Works" light bulb.
And of course many of us were there for Grandpa Versus the Microwave Oven.
This bulb claims to be the exact replacement:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00467E3LA/
But yet this one and others that have similar lumens, temperature, and equivalent watts all don't even get close to the warmth that the halogens produced.
Fortunately, I found a cheap alternative:
http://www.amazon.com/Philips-424374-7-watt-Household-Dimmab...
It's the A19 40W that the article cautions against, and it looks slightly less sexy in the recessed can, but the color almost exactly matches the halogens I have (except when dimmed -- nothing can match the fireplace-like glow).
What's weird is that the lumens and temperature for that bulb aren't even close to what the halogens claim, but they look almost identical. Which has made me wonder if this switch to LED is way more complex than just those two measurements :P
I can't talk specifics (under NDA from a former employer), but this is a problem for which solutions exist. I don't know that manufacturers think there's much of a market there, however.
> Which has made me wonder if this switch to LED is way more complex than just those two measurements :P
It is. There are a bajillion things going on. One which you've already noticed is how dimming impacts color temperature. CRI is also a huge issue. Then there's the optics - LEDs are very directional, so they require pretty advanced lenses in order to achieve a desired lighting pattern [1]. Optics impact all kinds of things, including color temperature, and since the development cost is high you can expect cheap brands to skimp there. If you're comparing them by looking directly at the bulb, internal glare/reflection is hard to match as well.
I'd still caution against using the A19s in a recessed fixture. It's not a safety issue (that I'm aware of), but you definitely won't get the rated life out of the bulb.
Out of curiosity, did you try an LED BR30? I think you might find one from a quality manufacturer to be a bit better than the A19.
1: $20 says the lighting pattern on the Sylvania LED is smoother/more regular than the Sylvania halogen, but I'm biased since I know the guy who designed the lens.
http://www.amazon.com/Ecosmart-Powered-Recessed-Light-Dimmab...
(It's old knob & tube wiring. Electricians claim it's safe)
http://www.oldhouseweb.com/how-to-advice/knob-and-tube-wirin...
The major problem is that since knob and tube lost favor and today, demand for electricity within the home has grown considerably, and a lot of knob and tube systems were expanded improperly; this can happen with modern wiring as well. Also, the insulation issue.
But if exposed and someone can touch it, then it's dangerous.