Honestly, there’s another explanation that I think makes a lot more sense even though it’s less beautiful : the product team wasn’t sure they wanted to ship a battery with the device in the first place. Or at least they wanted to keep the option of shipping the device without a battery.
Removing the battery makes the device cheaper (you can also remove the power brick if any) and removes a supplier from the chain. Keeping this options makes a lot of sense from a purely economical standpoint.
It's also a pragmatic move for a mobile device which might need to work for long periods of time away from power sources. As strange as it may seem to some of us, not everyone has a USB port available at all times. You could take one of these things and a couple of packs of AA batteries on a camping trip without worrying about finding a power point.
Similarly, Windows Mixed Reality VR controllers run off AA batteries instead of the more traditional built-in LiIon battery. The downside is you have to buy batteries for it, the upside is you can swap battery packs and you're not beholden to a custom power source.
Worth remembering that this camera was released 10 years ago. AFAIK, powerbanks weren't really a thing back then, at least not popular and widely available things. I can easily imagine how they could market the ability to power the device with AA batteries as a feature.
That said, it's still great they did that, and they deserve praise.
It's actually remarkable how closely the Rift S has followed in WMR's footsteps. I'd be curious to know how Lenovo has managed the risk of infringing Microsoft's IP (and likewise the risk of being implicated in any possible cases of Microsoft treading on Oculus' toes), given the similarities and their prior experience with WMR.
I think another possible explanation is that the battery was probably designed and developed in parallel with the camera itself - so during initial prototype testing they could pop in AA's even if the final battery was not available yet.
I don't quite buy this romantic image of an engineer trying to fight for the people still using the device in 10 years time - I really doubt this was designed so that it could be used after the lithium battery completely died.
More likely it was designed so you could use some batteries that you can buy anywhere in the world when you are out and about traveling/vacationing and the battery is flat.
I work at a fairly major place you've all heard of with a reputation for software engineering excellence etc. One of the engineering managers said something to me the other day: "You know, we engineers here at <Big Co> write our software with this idea that it needs to be extensible and flexible enough to handle anything, like it's going to be around forever. In reality a project only lasts 3 or 4 years, maybe 5 before it is deprecated, replaced, or shutdown. Imagine how much more we'd get done if we were more pragmatic and not obsessed with future-proofing something we know will be replaced soon"? Food for thought.
Well, to be fair, that romantic image plays pretty strongly on a desire to see my work as something of a legacy--something that outlives my own mortality. I might be unique in that romantic desire, but somehow I doubt it.
Your engineering manager is on to something. I feel like that romantic desire, ironically, gets in the way of making real progress 99% of the time; even the code I'm really proud of, given enough time, will probably end up irrelevant, if only because I'll have learned so much more in all that time. It's easy to think of the act of writing as the hardest part of "writing code." But, really, it's all the learning in all the years prior that's most difficult. So, really, "throwing away" code and starting over isn't actually all that costly. Throwing away engineers, their experience, or skills is what gets expensive.
With that said, one of these days I'll start writing my "The Art of Computer Programming" ...
Are there any established companies that design products like this? Every story I see about consumer friendly design is either the first product from a company that stopped being consumer friendly down the line, or the only product from a company that's now dead.
I really think planned obsolescence is the future for everyone. Why build things to last when you can 1. save money by cheaping out and 2. ensure a future customer by cheaping out?
There's no reason for them to build high quality, long lasting things. So why would they? They don't care about the waste.
I think we're heading in a different direction: products are not owned by the customer, but are owned by the company. You will pay a monthly fee, and it's the company's responsibility to keep the product from failing.
A slightly different thing is happening with Apple. When you bought your phone, you didn't receive full ownership. Instead, you bought a seat in a theater. Apple's incentive is to keep the phone working so they can sell you more apps/movies/songs.
The fact that "cheap" products are important does not reinforce your first statement that "if consumer behavior changes, the markets will to". When a family can afford a swimming pool because there are now ones you can buy for 8 dollars I won't call it a vote. In my opinion, buying can be assimilated to a vote when your wallet is big enough to let you consider several market options.
> In my opinion, buying can be assimilated to a vote when your wallet is big enough to let you consider several market options.
And also, and I keep repeating this, if there even are options.
The problem with voting with your wallet is the same as the problem of voting in a typical western democracy. You never get to vote on a feature/issue in the abstract; you can only choose out of what's available on the market/ballot, and that's always a very large bundle of features/issues, so you have to make trade-offs when voting.
For instance, I very much want to have a replaceable battery in my smartphone, but my current one doesn't have this feature. That's because I had to choose a whole bundle and the replaceable battery lost with considerations like "won't turn into unsupported and underpowered garbage in 2 years", "still has audio jack", "support SIM cards" and "I trust the manufacturer". There's no way for the market to pick up on my preference for replaceable batteries here.
That is a clever solution to a common problem with battery powered devices. Another benefit to the engineering side is that designing a custom battery is hard - you need to work closely with the battery vendor on the mechanical package and the electrical interface. The final battery may not have been available when the first prototypes were out! So having a AA option made it easy to test.
With the battery products I have been part of developing we had a wire lead from the battery which made the mechanical interface more modular. This was not a handheld device however, so the trade-offs are different. Blade or similar contacts are more user-friendly and reliable for many insert cycles.
The last 'flagship' mobile phone with removable battery - the LG V20 did ok and had a diehard fanbase, but still mobile phone manufacturers dropped replaceable batteries as a feature. It certainly is done to force more sales and consumption in the market.
In LG's case though, it backfired as their mobile marketshare dropped with each successor to the V20. I suspect they could have carved a large niche by evolving the V20 design and fixing the problems that plagued it. LG's repairable phones were a point of difference. The V30 and beyond were glued shut and offered very little differentiate themselves.
Canon used to ship various models of pocket camera which offered a similar feature as shown by the original post (ability to use AA or AAA batteries depending on model). This to me was a practical feature but the market must have shown otherwise.
This reminds me of the book "Ends." by Joe Mcleod. It manages to very well describe what the implications are of not taking the end of your product into account.
Give it a read if you are interested in topics like planned obsolence or product design in general.
Durable isn't timeless, that's for sure, for that product looks pretty average.
What I'm more looking out for are companies that create sustainable products, with replaceable batteries and/or a return program that involves the recycling and proper disposal of those batteries/products.
I respectfully disagree. I think most people would be okay with "average aesthetics" as long as the functionality of the product is designed well (flexible batteries in this case)
What looks good to 5/10 people, might not look good to the other 5/10. For an instance, consider an iPhone 4S. It is a pretty average design "aesthetically" IMO. But the phone did extraordinarily well because it was a well engineered phone. Another example is this website that you're looking at. I would call this average aesthetics as well.
Of course good aesthetics is an awesome add-on, but it is not fair to disqualify a product based on just aesthetics.
My favourite item on the list is that good design is _honest_.
This is my main issue with the locked-down, glued-shut nature of modern electronics: it's a lie. A phone is not one thing, it is composite. There are different components inside and their individual functions and relations can be understood - and yes, when they break, they can be individually replaced. But manufacturers have decided that is in their interest that consumers do not understand the things they consume, so they build things that lie to us.
The mobile phone was never a great place for durable design; the market was evolving extremely quickly. Durable design is for single function devices; things like axes and musical instruments and toasters and so on. Why would anyone want this product in 2019?
Removing the battery makes the device cheaper (you can also remove the power brick if any) and removes a supplier from the chain. Keeping this options makes a lot of sense from a purely economical standpoint.