Ipod made to be broken

Posted By: Saud Alsultan

Planned Obsolescence is a production process that has been developed to encourage people to consume again and that increases the demand of a product. However, consuming a product again means replacing it with old one that will be thrown away. According to Steve Job in his presentation in Jan 27, 2010, he said that Apply had sold 220 million iPod to date. How much waste is that? In "Technology made to be broken," Giles Slade talks about planned obsolescence by focusing on iPods and how throwing them in the landfill poisoning our plant. He focuses on iPod because, as he said, iPods are full of toxics (e.g. mercury, cadmium, chromium, and barium) that are harmful for the environment. Beside, iPods are small and that makes them expensive to take to pieces and chipper to be thrown in the garbage. 

Even though Apply have a recycling program, I believe there is still waste due to the short lifetime of iPods. iPods don’t last long and that why Apply had sold more than by January 2010. Also, Apple offers customers who bring their old iPods to an Apple Retail Store 10% off a new one! Why don’t they make the iPod last longer instead of offering 10% off?



Technology made to be broken by Giles Slade: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0502/p09s02-coop.html