terry wrote:
Maybe that's stating it rather strongly?

Although recent discussion/discovery that IPods will exhaust their
batteries in approximately one to two years do clearly raise the
question? "Designed to fail?".

But it's the same reason that I continue to accept and use old
appliances that I can repair myself.
For example I refuse to buy a stove that incorporates a digital
timer/clock; they are virtually unrepairable! Eventually can see
myself, however, ending up with one of those and deliberately
disconnecting the digital timer clock or modifying the stove to use
one my older (saved) clock/timers or just dong away with the timer
altogether.

I think another big factor is the ratio of cost on parts versus labor. In the
"old days" you might have a repair that was 70% parts and 30% labor cost-wise.
Nowdays those percentages would be reversed and that just irks people who just
don't see the value of anyone's labor (other than their own of course).

You see posts about this all the time. "Called a guy to come out and do foo and
couldn't believe what he wanted to charge me!" Labor really induces a lot of
sticker shock these days.