The Soul of Creations: Manufacturing vs. Crafting

Ah, no, it wasn't the transistors now that I look it up, it was the capacitors (though some people have had issues with the transistors also).

The point is that, with decades old electrical engineering training (he currently only uses it to build small electronics as a hobby), he could immediately tell that the capacitors used in the television were too small for it, and caused it to break down shortly after the warranty was up. Many others have had the same complaint, so much so that there's instructions online for handy people on how to install new capacitors.

It's like this. Macbook cables around 2006 had this problem with fraying. Okay, I can believe that this might have slipped through the cracks during designing, because it is a problem that takes a year or two of wear to develop. However, it's rather shocking that the newly designed cables have the exact same problem after all of the complaints about the old ones. Fool me twice, shame on me — my knockoff is currently doing better than the brand ones.

@ Ace

Sorta, the Germans get to have the whole world to support their high-end market goods. I'm concerned that means there aren't enough high-end jobs to go with producing those goods if everyone tried competing in the same market space. Because like was said before, they simply don't produce up to a point where everyone has their "lasts forever" and hits that sweet spot of attrition rate.

But, say Canada and United States joined in on the high-end market drive, then can we sustain it? I'm hopeful that we can because we can produce different stuff but when our businesses can't even compete with China over solar panels (which are high-end goods to start with), I'm concerned that we may need the government to give a little kick to businesses to push them in the right direction. We've cost-cut ourselves out of the international market.

Of course, America is a country that laments the loss of manufacturing then goes ahead to buy iPhones instead of Blackberries. Guess who employs tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in North America and which doesn't?

I'm pretty sure we could compete with China on solar panel construction, it's just that we really aren't even trying to do so at any meaningful level.

Hmm... Well, whoever it is that does Blackberries should do more to advertise that fact. (I own a Samsung through Verizon myself, and I usually get the simplest thing I can find. Those blackberries and iPhones just confuse the crap out of me.)

And also that's what subsidies are for. Like Solyndra and similar companies. The problems right now in America are about people trumpeting more about the failures and such and that keeps us from competing in a meaningful way with China.

It's Research in Motion, based in Waterloo (Ontario), who makes blackberries and they have their manufacturing plants right there, employing thousands of Canadians. And I'm quite sure they also employ thousands of Americans as well.

But they get hammered because "they're not cool" or "who cares when I can get an iPhone". A BB price starts at $150 and goes up to $400, while an iPhone starts at $650. Yet, the build quality, manufacturing and the software are much better. The BB security is legendary, the iPhone might as well (and in some cases is) be transmitting everything in plaintext in comparison. Ironically, because RIM is based in Canada, it can exceed American legal restraints on encryption technology, so American companies literally cannot compete by law.

And as for Black Berry data usage, their compression technology allows you to view 10x the content for the same bandwidth, which also means you look at websites faster.

Does anybody care? No. I'll admit I'm guilty of it as well because it's difficult to interact with Americans without using the same gadgetry, but I try to buy what I can that is high quality and North American. I like to support domestic industry when it does something well.

If you ask a craftsman to make you a rifle, he will turn out the Lee Enfield No.4 Mk1. If you ask a (crappy) manufacturer to make you a rifle, he will turn out the SA 80 A1.

A good manufacturer will turn out the AK-74 or the AN-94.

Hence why you should judge quality as an aspect of price. Based on my experiences with selling crap, most people (approx 9/10) straight up won't look at any kind of quality difference and assume that any claims are BS when pressed. Now, in a lot of cases this is true such as food stuffs or fertilizer, it's all the same stuff just with different stickers. However, when you go up to two stacks of products and decide to rummage around in the crap stack because it's a dollar cheaper, you have no one to blame but yourself.

If I understand right, a lot of the problem is that RIM fell behind in a lot of other ways (such as the interface (late to the touchscreen party)), allowing Apple and Google to take a lot of the market share, never mind Apple's marketing prowess.

As someone who's had a Blackberry, an Android phone, and an iPhone, I can confidently say that the build quality is worst on the Blackberry and best on the iPhone, though Android can be all over the map. Software quality? Again, the iPhone wins most of the time, I'm afraid.

The Blackberry's hardware keyboard is the best tiny keyboard I've ever used, but (for what I use it for) it's the sole point of advantage.

Now, Blackberry has some smart people working for them, but frankly every piece of hardware they've released since the iPhone came out has been substandard, clearly rushed to market, buggy as hell and just not ready. They got complacent and have been frantically trying to scramble to keep up since then and it shows.

The problem with Blackberries is the lack of industrial designers. Their stuff isn't pretty and doesn't conform with what consumers want. Consumers don't care about 1024-bit encryption on communication that is unhackable. Consumers don't care about an OS that is impenetrable. Consumers don't care about 5x the battery life. And so on.

The iPhone sells well because it has a nice screen and good interface. That anybody can hack it, that its communication is in plaintext and so on, doesn't really matter.

But the iPhone is $600 flat, whereas the blackberry can be as low as $150. People don't care. They expect it to be the same quality despite having to pay for North American manufacturing costs and cost less.

My mum's got a couple of the old singer sewing machines (looking around our house, we have two similar to◊ this◊ and another like this◊. We use them as tables because we don't have the time to use them at the moment. I think my dad got them for about AU$100-150 each? Is that a good price? And we've also possibly got another one, not a table one. Definetely got the cover for it, anyways. I'm no sure how old they are either. I'll have to ask my mum about how much they cost/how old they are.

I think the reason everything breaks down so fast is so that people keep buying replacements. If you make a bunch of things that last and last, those customers won't need to replace it, which would mean that they're losing sales, people will then lose their jobs etc. Though most companies will focus more on the lost sales than the lost jobs.

Update: asked my mum. Our cabinet is not original to the machine inside, the machine was built sometime in the 1800s and she bought the whole thing for around AU$40. The table ones we have are early 1900s and she can't remember how much they were.

edited 23rd Jul '12 1:52:16 AM by thekikoperson

For the NES example above , I can vouch for that. Most, if not all, Nintendo systems are good constructed items.

I have had several systems, especially handhelds, which have been repeatedly dropped and have still worked for years. I still have a Fat DS which still works despite occasionally deciding to cut out on me, and I had a Gamecube which dropped from 6 foot up in the air and only had a cracked case. Not sure about the Wii though. Really don't want to drop that.

I keep dropping my DS's. No problem with either one apart from the broken hinge on my DS Lite, which happened completely out of nowhere when I was closing it. I looked it up and it seems to be a known and common issue, the most common according to a post on the Nintendo Tech Forums. The only thing that did was cause the top bit to not be able to hold itself up. I solved that by always having it in a hardish case.

@Kiko: Those are actually quite valuable, depending on what sort of condition they're in. Treadle-powered machines are fairly sought after as collector's items, and quite a few seamstresses like the old Singers because they don't break if you maintain them properly.

In comparison, those same seamstresses won't touch a modern Singer (80s vintage and up) because they're cheap crap that breaks as soon as you look at it.

Relavent

I wonder if the Nintendo units were (and still are) made to be tough because they're marketed more to children who have more of a tendency to be rough than adults? Hence no hard drives in the Wii, tried and trusted hardware etc.

I'd have thought that items made in the 80s and 90s was just as prone to planned obsolescence than anything newer - cheap imports have been with us for decades, as have complaints of planned obsolescence. I remember people moaning about stuff from Japan breaking just after the guarantee - now it's stuff from China :)

edited 23rd Jul '12 10:52:17 AM by betaalpha

Books are the same way: On the shelf above me I have several math textbooks that my grandfather used at one time, that are still in excellent shape, with crisp pages and only the slightest signs of wear on the corners of the cover. I also have several textbooks I bought new for last year's classes that are already tattered and losing pages.

edited 23rd Jul '12 11:36:51 AM by EdwardsGrizzly

I wouldn't doubt that things like handhelds are made to be tough since a lot of the games are specifically for children. Parents aren't going to be happy with a hundred and more dollar game system that breaks soon after you buy it. There's only a certain amount of cheap construction people will stand, and for the gaming industry having a system that can withstand rough use is important. Sure it's probably going to be obsolete in a few years, with the way technology is advancing, but you want people to keep buying the games, so that means you build something that can stand up the kid dropping it on concrete a lot. (I myself have to deal with cats knocking all my shit on the floor.)

Well gameboys stand up to bombings so I'm not surprised they can stand a few drops.

@iPhone vs Blackberry: All I know is I bought my iPhone in 2008. it has never given me a lick of trouble except for one time it crashed (and I fixed that by re-booting it, like you fix most every other tech problem). I don't exactly baby the thing either; it doesn't have a case and rides around in my back pocket at work - I use the calculator for figuring stuff and the calendar for filling out paperwork, plus the notes function to record what I need to do that day- and I've dropped onto concrete more times than I can count.

In the same period, my sister went through three Blackberries. iPhone wins.

I've also had the same iPod since 2005. Some of the buttons are kind of finicky and the screen is a little scratched but it still works well enough. Say what you want about Apple, they make good shit.

And all their factories are in China. *shrug* I guess if you're buying Blackberries because the factories are based in America or Canada, you're willing to sacrifice a bit of all that other stuff.

I just want what I buy to work and keep working. I do wish that America would get its shit together regarding manufacturing (we used to be good at it), but I'll use what is reliable and durable no matter where it happens to be made.

edited 25th Jul '12 11:20:35 PM by drunkscriblerian

This thread reminds me of something Sam Vimes said, about how rich people can afford to spend less money than poor people, because they can afford to buy something high quality and well made once and have it last decades, while poorer people are stuck buying cheap crap that wears out after a few years at best, and having to replace it. Really, I think that's the thing.

Getting the quality stuff costs more for the buyer in the short term, but less in the long term. Selling the cheap stuff makes less for the companies on each purchase, but adds up to more overall. It's not neccesarily that things are planned to wear out, because I think good companies will sell both tiers.

edited 26th Jul '12 10:15:28 AM by Katrika

America (here meaning manufacturers that advertise it as made in America) is unlikely to get its shit together because they're hinging on patriotism and advertising on making their sales, rather than any sort of quality.

This mindset is why we need a large body of statistical evidence on it. You never know who gets the good ones and who gets the crappy ones so you need to look at it with large numbers. There's also the fact that your product is from four years ago, you never know how things have changed since.

edited 26th Jul '12 10:42:50 AM by Deboss