During a recent episode of The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber shed some possible insight into the company’s view on one of its most important products. Saying that “the mouse built this house,” Faber shares the planning behind a Forever Mouse, a premium product that the company hopes will be the last you ever have to buy. There’s also a discussion about a subscription-based service and a deeper focus on AI.

For now, details on a Forever Mouse are thin, but you better believe there will be a catch. The Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.

  • skyspydude1@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    226
    ·
    3 months ago

    Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.

    Bull-fucking-shit. That’s just not how any of this works.

    There are plenty of companies that make appliances that last a long fucking time, and don’t have to rely on fucking DLC micro transaction AI bullshit. The reason Instant Pot went bankrupt is the same reason a ton of popular companies have recently had issues: They got bought by private equity (who also owned Pyrex and fucked them over), saddled with a shitton of bad debt, squeezed of every bit of brand value they had, and then left to fall apart as the PE firm made off with millions.

    The fact that the writer correlated “quality, durable good” with “unsuccessful business and bankruptcy” is absolutely one of the worst takes, and really shows just how pervasive this disgusting idea of “must be disposable to be profitable” really is.

    • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      53
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Thank you for typing this up because I was not capable of doing it because vitriol messes up my WPM.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Partially true, but also they wouldn’t invest in something that lasts forever (without it costing an absurd amount of money or the subscription requirement). I like this video that shows the issue pretty well. (TLDW: Communist Germany made glass so durable it didn’t break as a product to sell to the west. No company would purchase it though because they made most of their profit from selling replacements. The glass is now what we call Gorilla Glass, which is really only available on phones, which are designed to be replaced every few years anyway.)

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        3 months ago

        100 years ago there was a meeting amongst lightbulb manufacturers that all collectively agreed to only design light bulbs to last about 1,000 hours. They were known as The Phoebus Cartel and Included Phillips and GE. Up until this agreement lighbulbs were typically lasting up to 2,500 hours. The manufacturers essentially created the concept of planned obsolescence because people weren’t buying as many lighbulbs as they wanted and it was decided to stop making longer lasting bulbs with higher costs. The whole thing started falling apart (competition of non members that were making bulbs, but they were all small operations, as well as patent expirations that GE had) and the start of world War two pretty much broke it up, as the Cartel couldn’t keep everything regulated and tested due to all the travel restrictions and such. But it still remains as the first global wide creation of planned obsolescence.

        Extra fun fact: the common light socket screw design/size has remained the same since 1880.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          3 months ago

          That is mostly a myth. They did agree of the lifetime, but it wasn’t planned obsolescence like people act. The lifetime of a bulb is directly related to how bright it is. If you make a really dim bulb it lasts a long time, which is how that one in the firehouse is still alive. It’s so dim it’s effectively useless. The group met to decide on a luminosity target, which also is a lifespan target effectively.

          • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            Yes, A dim bulb is extremely inefficient, it will use a lot of electricity for a very small amount of light.

            On the other hand you can make very efficient lightbulb that will be very bright for a small amount of electricity but last only for a few minutes.

            The 1000 hours limits is a nice middle ground.

            • Cethin@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              3 months ago

              No, even the wiki (under “purpose”) says the myth is probably not true. It was a cartel though, and therefore illegal in many/most places. It just wasn’t because the planned obsolescence. Lowering lifespan also led to selling more bulbs though, so it was useful for that.