A real example of planned obsolescence received this morning by email:
"Important information
Your current SatNav is incompatible with TomTom’s latest map update
TomTom XL IQR v2
What now?
Your trusted device will still work, but you will no longer be able to buy any further map update. In case you think it’s a good time to consider replacing your TomTom device, please see more information on our latest devices below"
OR, in English:
We have ensured that your current SatNav is incompatible with TomTom’s latest map update in order to try to force you to throw away your perfectly functioning electronic map device.
Understand, I assumed you already had Roon. If your music is on a half decent NAS you can run Roon on that. OK, you still have the cost of Roon per year but in comparison to what most of use spend on records or CDs or downloads it’s cheap. Stop buying music and rent via Qobuz and it should easily pay for Roon - or it would do at my purchase rate. But of course you may have different priorities.
I have a (free) satnav app on my smartphone, - I use it so rarely that there’s no way I’d buy a dedicated satnav: i prefer to look up my route on a map, paper when availabke. The only times in Britain that I’ve used it has been once to extricate myself from deep in a suburb of Birmingham riddled with one way roads with only a short time till my destination was due to close. And once in heavy snow finding roads blocked searching for possible alternatives. Otherwise I’ve used it on odd occasions walking in a city, simply because I’ve got it and it has downloaded maps that seem to be retained better than downloaded Google maps.
Yes, some of us prefer to stream from our own stores than subscription services, while Roon’s interface doesn’t float everyone’s boat, and/or is not considered by everyone to be good value for money compared to alternatives that do what they want.
Whilst I sympathise with your plight, it is typical of tech, hopefully, someone will outlaw deliberate obsolescence, but tech will always more forwards at some point and indefinite backwards compatibility will no doubt stifle development.
If it is any consolation this same thing happened to me with my satnav a long time ago, sure, my satnav occasionally shows me traversing fields and sometimes a roundabout ‘springs out of nowhere’ but roads in the UK don’t change much or very often. It has rarely caused me any real problem.
Whilst I quite like mine, (it can shout over the sound of my noisy camper engine) I can see mobiles + mapping fully taking over in due course. My kids, both in their late 20’s) wouldn’t dream of buying a dedicated satnav!
I don’t think indefinite is needed, but say 2 years from when it was last sold would be reasonable.
At least for security updates, bugfixes and perhaps usability improvements, not necessarily (big) new features.
Yes, that’s very true and very good regarding Linn’s Streamers, but with their CDPs, they just dumped all support and hung us out to dry. Whereas Naim still does supoport and repair for almost all of their CDPs.
I had to get rid of my $15k Unidisk 1.1 (luckily I got it pre-owned), for a lousy $2k, while I could still get something for it. It sounded glorious though, and I’m not positive that my digital music will ever be quite as good.
But i’m still working on getting my Naim digital SQ up to that level, And I actually believe I’m almost there. An ND555 would do it, of course.
When Naim stopped making the CDX2, some of us happened to be on a factory tour a few days after the announcement and we asked the then Managing Director Trevor Wilson why Naim had done that.
He replied that they weren’t able to get new CD mechanisms that met their rigorous standards and they wanted to be able to support previously-sold CDX2 units for ten years, so they had to stop making new ones to keep the stock of mechanisms for servicing units customers already had.
I’d like to think that Naim have an obsolescence policy with their suppliers. It means their suppliers have to give them significant notice when the supplier is going to stop making a component. A canny supplier will use such a condition of supply to give notice, make a lifetime amount for their few remaining customers ( often at an inflated rate). Then stop production, if it suits them!
Do CDP mechs would fall into this nicely.
I think they don’t. Naim’s use of component parts is trivially small for most electronic component manufacturers and mostly won’t feature anywhere in suppliers’ strategic planning. No doubt it’s different for bespoke things like casework and toroidal transformers, but for CD mechanisms I doubt that Naim ever bought enough to move the needle on supplier profits.
