I've wished this; the Atlantic reports on how we often wish our devices would stop working so we can replace them with something newer and thus 'better'. Unfortunately with much of what Apple produces you have to actually break the device - they just keep working and working.

We're all familiar with the sinister idea of "planned obsolescence," a corporate strategy of supplying the market with products specifically built not to last. Consumer-culture critic Annie Leonard describes such items as "designed for the dump"; she recounts reading industrial-design journals from the 1950s in which designers "actually discuss how fast can they make stuff break" and still leave consumers with "enough faith in the product to go out and buy another one." When that doesn't work, she says, the market suckers us with aesthetic tweaks that have no impact on functionality: the taller tail fins and shorter skirts of "perceived obsolescence."

But the emerging prevalence--anecdotally, at least--of the gadget death wish suggests an intriguing possibility: where electronic gizmos are concerned, product obsolescence is becoming a demand-side phenomenon.

Read Replacement Therapy. Via Small Surfaces.