I see fans from both sides of the fence blaming the other company regarding ‘planned obsolescence.’ But, let me show you an example of this. An actual example.
We Knowingly Ignore Real Planned Obsolescence – OnHub from 2016 is Completely Useless, AirPort Express from 2012 Still Works
First and foremost, what is planned obsolescence? We see this term hurled around all the time and yet have no idea what it truly means. Though I could do a deep-dive of sorts and bust a few misconceptions along the way, but let me give you a short version of what it is – it’s when a company decides to make a product forcefully unusable after a certain point, pushing you to upgrade to a new one.
I keep on hearing how Apple is evil and it purposely handicaps its old products to incur a forced upgrade. So far, no one has given me a true example of that. I’ve seen people holding on to their iPhone 7 and they’re happy with it. iMessage works, they still use their favorite apps and what’s important to them is this – it’s an iPhone that actually works.
An iPhone old as the iPhone XR is getting the iOS 18 upgrade. Sure, it might not have the full set of features, but you can’t go and say that’s planned obsolescence. Because literally every device has a shelf life after which it won’t keep up with the technologies that are designed these days. The XR was released in 2018, just to give you an idea how it truly stands the test of time.
Now let’s move away from the iPhone and onto Wi-Fi routers. More specifically, the AirPort lineup of routers.
Back in 2018, Apple officially announced that it is completely exiting the router market and the AirPort lineup was discontinued. Sad news, obviously, because I loved those routers, and they perform phenomenal to this day. It’s one of the most reliable Wi-Fi routers on the planet.
In fact, I bought a second-generation AirPort Express from someone a little under a year ago because they were getting rid of it and it was in nearly excellent condition, so why not. A few days ago, I set it up using the Mac’s built-in AirPort Utility app just for fun and it worked like a charm. What’s even more surprising is the fact that AirPort Utility on iPhone works, too. I could actually connect stuff to it and browse the internet.
On the other hand, I have an ASUS OnHub router which I had used for about a year at home before replacing it with something else. During this time, Google announced that it is ending support for it, too. After all, when new products are brought in, priorities change and support eventually comes to an end.
But should it come to an end like this?
I can’t do anything with this router at all now. It’s completely useless. I know someone is going to scream at me saying I can just flash some weird firmware on it and make it work again, but then you’d miss the entire point. If it’s no longer supported using official means and can’t even function, that is planned obsolescence. Flashing firmware and making it work again does not fix that at all. This product is now paperweight to me. The only thing I can do is just recycle it.
I want an example where Apple pushed out a software update and said ‘hey, we are not going to let you use this anymore.’
To make things awful, I have an old Belkin Wi-Fi router from 2010 and it sets up just fine. Sure, it doesn’t receive software updates or anything, but at least it is letting me go online and I can keep on using it until it suffers a malfunction.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the ASUS OnHub and Google just flipped a switch from its end and it’s now gone.
Just to give you an idea how bad this situation is, the OnHub was first released in 2016. The second-generation AirPort Express was released in 2012. The AirPort Express has more reason to suffer an awful fate than the OnHub, yet it works just fine today.
This has to be the finest example of planned obsolescence you’ll ever see. If someone ever mentions this, just talk about the OnHub and how it still works but was forcefully canned.
