Comment Re:HPE DL380 Gen 11 Server - Locks out SAS Drives (Score 1) 166
I suspect that your conclusion is correct, because we see that in several industries and branches.
It looks like tech made in the 60s and 70s outlasts everything and anything unless it's abused. It's inefficient, loud and wasteful, but it doesn't break.
It could be survivorship bias, though, and I am not sure how to exclude that for personal observations.
But washing machines, fridges, cars, servers, laptops and a lot of other mass produced tech items seem to be lasting shorter and shorter, and they seem to fail closer and closer to the end of the warranty period, in pretty consistent and predictable ways. Often, the right-after-warranty-failures seem to cluster around only one or two components in every make and model, and these components often share several properties across devices and even classes of devices:
The "failure-prone" components of modern machines are always
a) easily identifiable,
b) essential for the functioning of that device,
c) must be replaced entirely instead of repaired
d) impossible to replace with DIY
e) easy to replace for experts, but with a very predictable, very time-consuming operation
f) has a predictable and linear wear and consumption behavior
g) could EASILY be made ten times bigger, more resilient, more robust etc. by the manufacturer without costing more than a few cents in production or compromising the weight, cost and performance of that machine
h) but is not ever made beefier, even in subsequent generations
In short: every consumer- and SOHO-used machine designed after around 2000-2020 will have a component that will break shortly after warranty, the warranty will exclude "high-intensity use" that could make this component fail earlier, the component is easily identifiable, repair shops will know this pretty quickly and they know that once it breaks, repairing of the device is uneconomical for the layman, but can be acquired by the experts to refurbish in their spare time, so the experts can trot them out again. And the manufacturer will never improve that component to make the device last longer. If the failure-prone component can be easily repaired by experts or replaced with a more robust part or bought from AliExpress for pennies, the failure-prone component will be fortified with something that DRM, digital signatures, DMCA, patents can protect OR it will be entirely re-engineered in subsequent generations to become part of a module or assembly that is.