When capitalism makes a phone

Apple are the masters of programmed obsolence with usury prices

My Fairphone 3 is almost as good as new. Although it was behind competition from the beginning, I hope more recent iterations filled the gaps!
I have not much hope for corporations, but what disappoints me the most is other people. Every-time someone needs to buy a new smartphone around me, they just stop considering Fairphone when they find out their latest model is at 700€ and end up buying a 550€ model from Google or Samsung. Like, people complain they don't want their manufacturer rely on child labor or any dirty sourcing but they actively make that decision on their own to spare a few bucks or not risk the discomfort of having a phone running transitions at 50 FPS instead of 90 ...
- We can't fix systemic issues by relying on individuals to make "moral" decisions in a system we are all exploited under.

“Capitalism is when companies piss me off.”
I swear you should have to prove some minimum-level understanding of a term before being allowed to use it.
- I read it as profit maximization is a perverse incentive that doesn't achieve what people promoting capitalism claim.
- No its when profits are more important than the customers a company claims to serve, under capitalism companies are incentivised to make products that dont last.

Is this ironically funny?
Like… it’s funny people are stupid enough to believe this nonsense.
- I'll give you a personal story. I'm not saying anything about apple but this is my personal experience with a tech hardware company I use to be an engineer at in Silicon Valley.
  We had a product we sold to other companies. Something not consumer grade at all. Think major data center products. This product we'll call it, Product X, was sold in different levels of speed. So you had the baseline product at speed 1x and another at speed 2x.
  Now, due to hardware delays and hardware issues the 1x (which was meant to rollout first) actually got its production schedule pushed back to the point that the hardware testing had been fully verified on the 2x model as well as the 1x. So mass production had not started yet but both models were verified through beta testing and development.
  So, it actually ended up being cheaper for manufacturing to only produce all 2x hardware and have me (the software engineer) just reduce the throughput on the same hardware. They would simply just stick a different 1x sticker on the models running the purposely speed limiting software.
  The company released 1x the next quarter. Again, with hardware identical to the 2x. And then waited two quarters to release the 2x. Now technically the 1x models could literally be upgraded by a software update. But that would expose this scam. So companies we sold 1x models to that wanted to upgrade would literally throw away the same exact hardware to buy the 2x model.
  This is just my personal story. You don't even have to believe it. But, having worked in the industry now for 10 years, this is not uncommon practice. I would not put it past Apple to do what the above post suggests.
  
  It is literally reported in the media that Apple was doing this. These commenters take issue with ascribing the problem specifically to capitalism. They believe that, yes, capitalism causes enshittification. But they may also believe that it is not unique in this, or that even if it is unique in this, it is also unique in encouraging the innovation that brought about smartphones.
  It's silly, but it's what they believe.
  
  this is standard for a lot of server products: sell the exact same chassis with the same specs and then feature-gate the hardware to under perform
  yes, it’s shit… but also, you’re not buying the physical thing: you’re buying the r&d… it’s either that, or they say suck it buy the expensive one we don’t have another option
  that’s very different to what’s being expressed in the original image