On Wed, 24 Sep 2008, Vitaliy wrote:

> sergio masci wrote:
> > No it's called planned obsolesence (Economics 101) ...
> 
> Which college teaches "planned obsolescence" in Economics 101?
> 
> > What would happen to car manufacturers if they made rust proof cars?
> 
> Nothing. In fact, the industry is already moving in that direction.
> 
> I live in Arizona (desert climate, 300 days of sunshine a year). Guess what? 
> People still buy new cars.

Some people will buy a new car purely as a status symbol, some because 
they have a lot of disposable income and just like new toys, some expect 
them as perks of their jobs... there are many reasons.

But consider this as proof that in general people would prefere to hold 
onto their cars longer - there is a big market for second hand cars.

> > With regards to "more money for Apple", I seriously doubt that someone
> > that has bought a wintel box is going to chuck it and buy apple because he
> > doesn't like vista s/he might revert to a copy of xp until a better
> > version of vista comes along then just maybe he'll pay for that to get
> > what vista promissed in the first place. How have M$ lost, they are using
> > their age old tactics of FUD (fear / uncertainty / doubt) to make
> > (average) users want to upgrade.
> 
> There we go again, with more Microsoft-bashing emotional nonsense.

This is not emotional nonsense, it's a fact of life. This is the main 
reason why brand recognision works.

> 
> > I remember one of my lectures telling us "don't build them a rolls royce
> > if you can sell them a mini for the same price, once you've saturated the
> > market with minis, then start selling rolls royces". In other words sell
> > whatever crap you can get away with today for as much as you can, then go
> > back and sell the same punters better crap tomorrow.
> 
> I'm sorry you had a stupid professor. :)
> 
> I'm joking of course, but you don't build minis or rolls royces, you build 
> what the market wants.

No you manipulate the market to want what you make. As an example consider 
the electric light blub. Clearly people want to illuminate their 
environment when it gets dark but they already had this ability before the 
electric light bulb was invented. And simply inventing it didn't cause 
people to switch to it. There was a whole infrastructure that had to be 
developed and put in place. There was no market for light bulbs until the 
market was created.

Regards
Sergio Masci
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