Everyone here can think of a cloud-connected product that was killed because the company that made it stopped supporting it. While these corporations have forgotten their products, the US PIRG Education Fund has immortalized them in their Electronic Waste Graveyard.
With an estimated “130,000,000 pounds of electronic waste” produced since 2014, the amount of wasted resources is staggering. The advent of the cloud promised us reduced waste as lightweight devices could rely on remote brains to keep the upgrades going long after a traditional device would have been unable to keep up. The opposite seems to have occurred, wreaking havoc on the environment and pocketbooks.
Of course, we can count on hackers to circumvent the end of companies or services, but while that gives us plenty of fodder for projects, it isn’t so great for the normal folks who make up the rest of the population. We appreciate PIRG giving such a visceral reminder of the cost of business-as-usual for those who aren’t always thinking about material usage and waste.
If PIRG sounds familiar, they’re one of the many groups keeping an eye on Right-to-Repair legislation. We’ve been keeping an eye on it too with places like the EU, Texas, and Washington moving the ball forward on reducing e-waste and keeping devices running longer.
Where I used to work, the guy who ran the model shop had a board with all his “expired” electronics on it. Cell phones, handheld games, I think he even had an Apple Newton…pretty neat display.
This assumes the devices become waste when software updates stop.
Juicero was over-engineered, but the distribution model of vegetables in packets might have worked splendidly. They could even have been transparent: “You can squeeze our packs by hand, or here is a manual squeezer for $49, or consider our deluxe Wi-Fi-enabled model that has juice ready when you wake up.” The real money was in the ongoing purchases, not in the hardware. They could have even done a monthly subscription, shipping to the house.
Hey maybe I should do this lol
There’s a guy I watch on YouTube called AvE. He did a teardown of a Juicero and discussed the business plan as he tore it (both, really) apart. It’s worth a quick google.
I have an idea for a stupid internet appliance, so hear me out: people would buy various branded mineral powders that get added as cartridges to an IoT device connected to your plumbing. The device would distill the water (thus it could actually use sewage or ocean water as a water source) and then add those minerals in microdoses to match certain branded waters like the kind from Fiji or whatever. This would eliminated all the plastic bottles and expense of shipping drinking water around the world. And it would probably use less energy do to all those savings despite the energy-expensive distillation.
Fiji is a Branded Water, however it is not a Blended water.. Good luck trying to match that taste..
The ONLY water I’ve ever had that tasted close to it was from a Mountain Well feeding a Small town in Mountains of Eastern California..
That was a far cry from the Water I grew up on in the Oil fields of California,, you could see that water as well as taste it and smell it!
You can not Replicate Everything in Nature..
Cap
130 million pounds over 11 years… is less than humans produce in fingernail clippings — much less.
My dog eats my fingernail clippings. My dog can’t eat the milled aluminum vise inside a juicero.