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Check out the comments on my iPod reliability musings below. We've got two extremely thoughtful considerations of planned obsolescence in consumer electronics today: "Quality sucks everywhere. I think of it as a very pernicious form of inflation. Companies discovered that consumers would buy on price and features, and that usability and reliability were not important. They had no choice, really but to eliminate quality." Then, in comment #3, from Walter A., we have a vivid illustration of the point. Walter castigates me for daring to expect that my four-year-old first-generation iPod should still work. "Who the hell still owns a 1st gen iPod, anyway, let alone wastes everyone's time and patience by whining about its flaws?"
Well, pardon me for expecting that a $500 device not disintegrate in a handful of years! I guess Apple (and everyone else in the device marketplace) has done a very good job of training the public to expect short-term failure. People (including me) continue to buy iPods despite this failure rate, and that, I suppose, is an indication of its many other attractive qualities. But it doesn't exempt Apple from reasonable criticism.
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