Quote Originally Posted by alan0269 View Post
It's almost like there is some kind of "upgrade" for the phones that you automatically get when you're closing in on an upgrade date that makes your phone act up so you want to spend money on a new one.
Its called Planned Obsolescence.

I used to work with a guy that was a CAD designer. Many years ago he worked for a company that manufactured railroad train cars. One of his major projects was to do computer design studies and testing on the design of their heavy flatbed cars so design them to where they would fall apart at a specific mileage. The warranty ended 500 miles before this specific mileage point.

Thing is their customers knew the train cars were designed this way (they didn't care because it got the cost down ... and I guess in the railroad industry its all about $X per mile for Y miles and they scrap the cars at Y miles regardless of condition anyway ... probably due to government safety rules).

I expect this happens in a lot more industries.