"The crapification of everything"?

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I found an interesting article from Wired magazine about a trend I bet you've all noticed: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough

The quote in the thread title is from the article and I'm VERY split about this. On one side I really do appreciate the (sometimes extreme) extra accessibility products and services like this offer. But on the same time I crave high quality in both what I do myself and from the products and services I buy and use. The example of MP3 in the article is a good one, while I can only tolerate it at near its highest quality settings many people seem to be content with 192k CBR, or even 128k.

I'm certain the trend will continue and strengthen over at least a medium time scale, but hopefully people in general will demand much better quality even from cheap tech products in the future as the technology more and more allows for it.

What do you all think about this?
 
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Did you know that Henry Ford had engineers scouring junkyards for dead model T's, in order to find out which parts had *not* worn out so, so they could be replaced with cheaper equivalents?

Good-enough quality isn't a trend, it's a basic engineering principle that has been around at least since the Industrial Revolution, if not before.
 
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Crapification is definetely not the right word.

From an environmental perspective I don't like this thinking at all.

But aside from that it is great that there are companies to produce what people want, if you want a video camera to put movies on youtube you don't need a really exspensive sony HD cam, you just need a cheap flip. That's how market have worked since ancient times. If the quality is not good enough for you there are always higher quality and more exspensive alternatives so just buy those.
 
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Crapification is definetely not the right word.

From an environmental perspective I don't like this thinking at all.

But aside from that it is great that there are companies to produce what people want, if you want a video camera to put movies on youtube you don't need a really exspensive sony HD cam, you just need a cheap flip. That's how market have worked since ancient times. If the quality is not good enough for you there are always higher quality and more exspensive alternatives so just buy those.

If only you could count on the correlation between quality and price :)
 
Did you know that Henry Ford had engineers scouring junkyards for dead model T's, in order to find out which parts had *not* worn out so, so they could be replaced with cheaper equivalents?

Good-enough quality isn't a trend, it's a basic engineering principle that has been around at least since the Industrial Revolution, if not before.

I didn't quite interpret the article to mean "good enough to meet the design goals", that's just common business sense, I feel this is more about drastically lowering the design goals in many areas -- areas that I personally put great value in -- to instead advance accessibility and price.

The music format example is good here again, where fidelity rose steadily through to the CD format (discounting the "loudness war"), to drop dramatically to widespread use of highly compressed MP3's as the preferred format for many. At least quality of digital music compression has increased and still is, which is normal. But the drop isn't, IMO.

I do believe this trend is more recent, or at least it is broader now. I'm clearly not saying it's just bad since it has some very nice upsides, but it's different.
 
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It's pretty simple, isn't it?

Many people worship money and the idea of getting rich.

If it turns out that you can sell products of a lower quality and earn more as a result - whether that's short or long term - people will do it.

Quality and perceived quality are two VERY different things. You just have to market your product efficiently, and people will believe anything you say about your product. Quality is irrelevant - as your product is good if people believe it's good.

Marketing budgets are larger - products are crappier. Hardly new news :)
 
The reason for using mp3 is because it takes much less space, thus you can fit many more songs in one device, in other words many people are willing to sacrifice sound quality to be able to get more songs into one device, that hardly has anything to do with price, acctually most devices support other formats which could give higher quality also...... and it is up to the user if he wants to use smaller mp3's or bigger higher quality sounds.
 
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Considerung how cheap disk space is nowadays, I don't understand why people just don't use Wave files ? Or other lossless file formats ?

MP3 cuts too much, in my opinion. And even the change from Vinyl to CD cuts things.

I even read recently that often remasters nowadays are made louder, kind of , which even more shortens the dynamic range of sounds ...

I'm a member of this seemingly dying generation of "Hi-Fi".


All in all, an highly interesting article.
 
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I still feel kind of, sort of like it's a trend that's more noticeable now that it has been before, at least in tech-related products which is what the article mainly speaks of.

But I guess I have to accept it's simply the positive process of manufacturers better meeting consumers' needs, even if I personally don't really share those priorities... ;) At least the expensive option is still there in all the areas listed so it's not hurting me either.

@DA: Certainly good marketing is a part of almost every successful business, but I don't think this is only about that. Most people simply prefer the more accessible alternatives at the expense of something else in the product that they don't value as much.
 
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Considerung how cheap disk space is nowadays, I don't understand why people just don't use Wave files ? Or other lossless file formats ?

People are crazy, I heard my little cousine complain his Mp3 player just have a few GB which is way too little he has to buy one with 16 GB ( it cannot play videos or pictures ) I was like WTF 3 GB that can fit you 1000 songs........... the young people of today are just hopeless!
 
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I'm just fine with 128k MP3s and when I get 192 MP3s I'm like 'what a waste of space' lol, but that's cause I'm not an audiophile, I just want to hear music in the background while I do other stuff.
 
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Good-enough quality isn't a trend, it's a basic engineering principle that has been around at least since the Industrial Revolution, if not before.

+1. It's probably been around since Grok found out he didnt need to use the hardest kind of rock for every task. It's a symptom of mature technology rather than something unique to the modern digital world. There is also a significant element of nostalgia in complaints against this kind of development (and that isnt new either). To quote one of the comments:

yes - the 'good enough' revolution is upon us. However, I think it's important to remember that all of these 'good enough' -- are in fact much better than the actual (not theoretical) products of yesteryear. Example: While vinyl is theoretically superior to a digital recording, how many people honestly had a decent LP player, amp and pristine records? The average record player of thirty years ago sounded like crap, wasn't grounded properly - and likely you played your scratched up records with a worn out needle.

Heck, Jap cars of the 80s were "good enough" technology that used less steel and were built less like tanks than their western counterparts...

It doesnt have to be bad for the environment either (to address one concern), as good-enough quality generally uses less resources per unit produced.

EDIT: As far as the MP3 example goes they use too narrow a definition of crap. Compared to MP3 the alternatives (at the time of release) were crap in terms of flexibility. Improved usability is also a quality aspect. The Flip people also point this out on the last page.
 
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MP3 cuts too much, in my opinion. And even the change from Vinyl to CD cuts things.

I can't tell the difference between a 320 MP3 and a wav on anything other than a high quality stereo / headphones, but the vinyl vs cd difference does stand out.

Still, I can't download vinyl and convenience & price are well worth some loss of quality.
 
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The DC Metro is crap. It is becoming increasingly worse and the service is getting increasingly poor. I would just like to state that after my experience tonight.
 
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The Helsinki metro is rather nice. Never too crowded, reasonably clean, short intervals, and the other passengers are only likely to throw up on you if you take it at the wrong time. The new trains are kinda spiffy too. Shame there's only one line, though...
 
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I lived here from January-May in 2008, and I've lived here since March of this year. The Metro has gotten progressively worse since I've started using it - even before the red line crash. It's slow, full of delays, crowded, and so forth. The stop closest to me (as well as the only two that are in any sort of conceivable walking distance) are closed from friday night until tuesday morning at 5:30 for 'maintenance'. HOWEVER, what they did not say was that these stops would ALSO be closed last night for "preparation" for the maintenance work. So I get to my transfer point only to be told there's no metro service (it's at about 10:30 PM at this point). So I had to wait 30 minutes for a shuttle to take me to my metro stop. I was pretty pissed seeing as how I just wanted to go home and sleep after my first night of class.
 
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That's government service for ya, Rith. Choke em down and limit the damage they can do. ;)
 
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Well, if we choked the metro out of existence, I would not be able to get to work, school, or into the city.:p
 
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