My 4.5 year old boy brought to me PEZ menthol ‘bonbons’ holder (this one was with Tom of Tom & Jerry cartoon characters). Something was wrong as we couldn’t slide it smoothly in and out of the plastic frame. Just another cheap mass production to start your day with a frustration.
Then came another — from Internet computer industry, PayPal payment couldn’t be handled properly by eBay database system:
“Ihre Anforderung kann derzeit nicht verarbeitet werden.
Hilfe– wird in einem neuen Fenster oder in einem neuen Reiter geöffnet
Fehler
Es tut uns leid, dass ein Problem aufgetreten ist.
Bitte versuchen Sie es in ein paar Minuten erneut. Sollte dieses Problem längere Zeit bestehen, wenden Sie sich bitte an den eBay-Kundenservice.”
I may add to these AEG CD-cassette-radio player/recorder, which after a very short period (not even 1 year) developed all sorts of faults:
firstly it lost blue backlit on the LCD display, than cassette player started ruining tapes, finally CD player become jumpy and unreliable. Yes, for 30-40 Euro that’s the result. But AEG was a company my parents would swear to. Now it is just throwing money, constantly, through the window…
The time we live in is loaded with a cheap mass production, unreliable technologies (Internet) — it is not only money, it is frustration that goes almost daily with those issues. And no repairs is envisaged anymore — as you’re not expected to repair mains extension box or a toaster – but to buy new one, and keep on buying. They have some special screws (triangular) for which a screwdriver cannot be found, not even in big Bau-markets.
Most of it is product of China… why in Europe must we have so many Chinese products? Equally like products, there are unreliable pawn-shop dealers, who try to earn fast and pocket from the mass market crap.
Which may bring us to the claims of Apple/Steve Jobs about technological excellence because of which they don’t want to have, for instance, Adobe (former Macromedia) Flash developed applications neither Flash player (entering into futile arguments as how many videos out on the Net are not made in Flash environment). But their QuickTime Player/Pro(ducer) or iTunes fall in the same category of buy-nagging and unreliable products. I just don’t know how many versions of QT became obsolete, because of new incompatible codecs etc., and arrogant management policies.
