Funny how this is completely flipped over. The opposite of what you said is true. Or maybe this is just because you're talking about your life in specific, with your specific circunstances, as if the same could apply to everyone. Anyone who has been into very different places, with different people living in different ways, can see very clearly that our society is sick as fuck, this is big-city-people problem, and your suggestion is big-city-people thinking and big-city-people problem solving. I don't mean to be rude, but thats how I see it.
Or maybe all companies saw the better strategy for the profit of the industry was for people to need to keep buying new phones frequently and so they all removed that option from the customer hands, on a backdrop of design efficiency and 'innovation' and then it was done because consumerism is a big pile of bullshit.
Most people when I see they talking about it, and I suppose most people in general, would like stronger screens and more battery even if it meant a thicker phone, but the illusion of "last generation" and stuff like that make so, for marketing purposes, supported by the profit motive, that it should not be this way because "customers"... I'm sorry, I just think it's absurd that people take those tales uncritically like that.
My current phone is a middle-end Sony, it's screen already has that kind of shatter that starts to spread, the p2 connector stopped working these days, and after I bought it I could not find any of the accessories to help me preserve it(screen protection, cover, etc), had to buy some chinese stuff online that were worthless, it's less than a year old. We're systematically made of idiots. I still have an S3 that I used for 3~4 years, it's screen is intact and all the rest works fine.
Or maybe all companies saw the better strategy for the profit of the industry was for people to need to keep buying new phones frequently and so they all removed that option from the customer hands, on a backdrop of design efficiency and 'innovation' and then it was done because consumerism is a big pile of bullshit.
That line of reasoning makes some sense for Apple - an iPhone user will probably replace an iPhone with another iPhone -- but makes little sense for an Android manufacturer.
There is no great likelihood that Android user is going to buy another Android device from the same manufacturer two years later.
On the other hand, Apple also gets continuing revenue from Its customers after the phone is sold. It has every reason to keep the software updated. I've never replaced an iPhone for poor battery life. It's been because I wanted more speed, more storage or a larger screen.
Sorry but imho this question shows a lack of knowledge of how much banking is tied to the economic system. They are entities that hold unfathomable ammounts of power. The most explicit evidence is that governments in general put their interests and needs above the people's will. This is not just because government really like the guys, they do have more leverage than most about anything and they can make people/companies/countries hostage.
Ah, surely the aristocrats of before would instantly jump at the opportunity of giving up their lifes of free-time, leisure, education, servants, 3-hour-meals, giant houses, countryside retreats, upper-class-socializing, to trade it with the shopping-mall-worker that does 60h weeks(no weekends), for he'd have a smartphone! Funny.
This argument, which I've read before, only works with a really, really narrow definition of 'rich' and 'poor', maybe what you mean is upper-middle-class and lower-middle-class?
As if there isn't a counterpart. Honestly, I've been in farms where simple people lived in with no electricity(my grandparents lived in a farm, and it took some time for electricity to arrive, and around the place there were people living even more simpler, completely isolated, which I'd visit to greet with my cousins), it's actually pretty ok. Now, seriously, using "television" as an argument is just lame, who cares about this trash?
Just because you or someone else never got used to living without these, it doesn't mean everyone else needs it, not at all. From my point of view, autonomy is the greatest thing ever, it is freedom, and dependence is weakness and slavishness, subjulgation. IMHO Only a fool would think in terms of "if I enslave myself I'll get to play with this!"(plus, isn't it a bit like the deal with the devil?), to me it's just an example of how little some people can see what is actually beautiful and good in life to raise stuff to this level. Sincerely, I think people who think like this don't have a clue of what freedom feels like(and gladly, I think I've enjoyed plenty and been introduced to it early on). My life is not made of stuff, it is made of time, living, thinking, appreciation, growing, caring.
As another personal example, my father is also deurbanizing and moving back to the farm(which is not an industrial farm as in a business, but actually a place to live, think straight, work on living things which do need upkeep but not artificially). There's no AC, the only thing he watches is F1 races. He's busy most of the time anyway, usually having a beer and working on the farm, he loves it.
Haha I'm a farmer myself. Your comments seem a bit intense, but objectively it just isn't as cut-and-dried as you have it here. Living in a big drafty house with some servants and a coal fireplace seems somewhat romantic but mostly just cold. One would have time to read, but with no internet and about twenty unique books in the county a lot of that would be re-reading. In every age, we should appreciate new and old things both.
I'd like to point one thing: ever since I started getting more interested into etymology, I've sort of fallen in love with words, and came to see them as much more alive and powerful than before, and I've started to care much more about their weight, their truthiness, their application, etc, so that I'm precise, and of course I also started getting more annoyed when I see them malapplied. I sometimes think that nothing made me feel smarter and sharper mentally than etymology(like the same effect history, logic, philosophy has, but maybe a little bit more fundamental), the confusing there is not just "this is bad!", if you're using confusing words your thinking gets less clear, lies pass through, making sense of things is harder, more error-prone, etc. When you start to notice things this way, a lot changes. And we sort of have to defend ourselves from the tonnes of bullshit we're shot with everyday. So, yeah, I think this shit is real. Of course changing your vocabulary entirely can feel a bit extreme, but still, KNOWING words are loaded or confusing, or just marketing, or plain lie, plain propaganda, plain politics, is useful.
RMS of course cares much more about truthiness than he does what others think of him(and he was right before, remember it?). If one puts 'self-awareness' above 'truthiness' in their mind, it's no wonder they'll think this is weird, eccentric, etc. The cool thing about Truth, though, is that it's way above vanity and opinion. The former scratches the later two, the opposite, not so much or not for very long.
Northeast is historically prejudiced against, it's where people used to die of hunger every day because of drought, poverty and hunger, like 10 years ago an image that's probably imprinted in every brasilian memory(from TV) is of the "sertão" with really dry land that's basically just red dirt, skeletal cattle, bones of dead cattle(because they also died of hunger), poor people with skin that looked like the eroded soil itself from living and toiling under the sun entire lifes. So because of this there was also a lot of migration, with the Southeast(São Paulo) being one of the central destinations because it's an economic center and etc so you can probably guess where the bad talk comes from..
The Northeast has improved a lot today, but it still has a lot of poverty and violence in big cities. Also it has a very rich culture.
(Explaining: Your post only exposes the size of your ignorance)