We talk a lot about enshittification of technology, so tell me about technology that is getting better!
I personally love the progress of electric scooters. I’ve been zooming around on a 400$ escooter for a year and it works so well. It has a range of around 20 miles and top speed of 15 mph, so it works just super well for my uses, and 10 years ago scooters with that range/speed/price were no where near a thing.
I could not think of one initially but actually my washing machine is better than yesteryear.
Yes and no.
Modern sensors and timing cycles are a FUCKTONNE better and you get much cleaner clothes in less time with less water.
BUT
It will die in 5 years while your grandma’s Whirlpool washer dryer stack will outlast the heat death of the universe.
true. it was more about the cycles and just it pausing and starting in a nice way when the lid is opened. Oh and I love it has a soak cycle.
I don’t think that’s all that true. There’s a lot of survivorship bias at play, a whole lot of cheaper models failed long ago and were replaced. Older washers have less protection against user error too, stuff like load balancing alerts. Finally the market has widened, washer/dryers are much less of a luxury as they once were, so the low end of the market has filled out with poorly constructed models.
What is definitely the case is that they are harder to repair. Part of this is cultural, part of this is companies being dicks (looking at you samsung) and part of this is genuinely more complexity.