iWant: how Apple and the gadget-makers train consumers' covetousness

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/25/iwant-apple-gadget-consumers

Version 0 of 1.

The comedian Louis CK had a wonderful routine called "Everything's amazing and nobody's happy," in which he satirized our modern exasperation with pocket-sized gadgets that, a few years back, would have been considered powerful enough to send a man into space, or at least run a modestly-sized corporation. <br /> <br />"Uh," he mocks one clueless citizen shaking her smartphone, which is taking time to load, "It won't … uh!"

Louis CK comes back with a roaring rejoinder:

"Give it a second! It's going to space! Can you give it a second to get back from space? Is the speed of light too slow for you?"

His searing conclusion is clear:

"We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it's wasted on the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots."

Louis CK delivered his routine years ago, but it has remained exceptionally relevant – particularly in a week such as this, when Apple is announcing several new products of overlapping abilities. The iPod touch, the iPad mini – all at exorbitant prices, while Microsoft introduces its new tablet, the Surface, and Android fans spar over whether it's worth it to buy a Galaxy phone now or wait for the next Nexus to manifest.

But as more consumers obsess this season about the iPad mini and the new iPod touch, and whether the Google Nexus tablet is superior to the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, and the virtues of the iPhone 5's lightning connector versus the old iPhone 4s connector that predated it by less than a year, it's a good time to step back and wonder how we have come to this pass. These devices, as fragile as Faberge eggs, packaged like jewels – and priced accordingly – have become, in many minds, almost immediately disposable as soon as the next device with retina-display resolution makes us salivate for the next big thing.

On Twitter, this kind of behavior would be tagged #firstworldproblems – the indulgent issues of a populace too drugged on comfort and entitlement to see the reality of the privilege we live within. Having thousands of dollars to spend on adorable personal computing devices draws quite a stark contrast not just with the lack of resources of the sick, starving and homeless, but also with an America that is drowning in unemployment, or even with the deplorable conditions suffered by workers in Foxconn factories, giving up chunks of their freedom and lives to earn a living making these technological gems that we discard so blithely.

Thomas Wensma, a designer and founder at Ambassador Design in the Netherlands, is trying to turn the tide. I talked to him to mull over the phenomenon by which some iPad 3 owners are already concerned that they have been "betrayed" by the release of the iPad mini in a brief seven months after the splashy release of their now passé iPad. All of a sudden, as in the world of Louis CK, this perfect jewel-like device, the iPad 3, which was worth $800 seven months ago and has a visual display that was unimaginable even three years ago as part of a consumer product – this gift from consumer-electronics heaven – seems a bit shabby to some, because it doesn't even have a Lightning connector, or its microchip is not the latest iteration.

The iPad 3, when it was introduced, inducted average users into the tech aristocracy, and now, seven months later, they may perceive themselves to be among the serfs. This is ridiculous. There is absolutely no purpose or function for the iPad mini that the iPad 3 doesn't serve except to allow Apple to provide a similar product to the Google Nexus and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD.

Part of this is the psychology of consumers, Wensma concedes. "We want something new, something pretty, the next shiny thing," he says. As a designer, he knows that his peers have to serve that desire for the next novel thing.

But part of this, Wensma says, is because of product makers. He detests "planned obsolescence", the wasteful system by which companies – many of them making personal electronics – put out shoddy or inadequate products simply because they know that, in six months or a year, they'll put out a new one.

Consider that Apple, for instance, introduced the new iPad mini, the iPhone 5 and the new iPod touch within three weeks of each other, and largely within less than a year of the last iteration of those products.

We know this guarantees a stream of revenues for companies like Apple, or Google or Samsung, which can master the perfect cycle of innovation and lust for new products that can keep consumers packing stores for years on end. It prevents financial worries companies have after introducing something like those of the first iPhone or the BlackBerry which, sweeping the world quickly, also quickly reached almost total saturation. That allowed Wall Street analysts to wonder where these companies would find "the next big thing" to guarantee growth – always, infinite financial growth. Apple may have billions of dollars of cash on hand, but in order to survive in a competitive world, it has to find billions more every year.

We are all willing participants in this game of manipulation. Wensma wrote in a recent comment piece:

"Obsolescence plays into a human psychological weakness and companies are very good at making use of it in order to sell more products."

But perhaps it's time to grow up and break the cycle. To respect these thoughtfully created and designed devices for what they are: devices, not new gods to be worshipped. To understand that we should use electronics until they don't work anymore, not until we get distracted or bored by some other device. That would force companies to create better, more reliable products. It would also save us, as consumers, thousands of dollars in our budgets that we currently spend on serving our whims rather than on obtaining something great.