1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,000 Man, buying products used to be so simple. 2 00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:06,960 You pay money for like a hammer, and then you can use it however you want, 3 00:00:06,960 --> 00:00:11,680 provided we're not talking about settling a score with your neighbor. But did you know that many electronics 4 00:00:11,680 --> 00:00:14,880 have hidden features that for one reason or another, 5 00:00:14,880 --> 00:00:18,840 you can't even use? There are actual functional parts in your devices 6 00:00:18,840 --> 00:00:23,480 that you, the paying customer, are totally blocked from accessing. 7 00:00:23,480 --> 00:00:28,480 What's up with that? All right, let's start with something you might be using right now, your CPU. 8 00:00:28,480 --> 00:00:33,280 You see, if you've ever looked at a review of a newly released CPU or GPU for that matter, 9 00:00:33,280 --> 00:00:38,120 you might have noticed that certain cores or execution units are there in the die shot, 10 00:00:38,120 --> 00:00:41,440 but are disabled. So you might think it logically follows 11 00:00:41,440 --> 00:00:46,780 that there's some way to enable them again, and suddenly you have an i7 instead of an i5. 12 00:00:46,780 --> 00:00:53,480 In fact, in the past, enthusiasts have done just that, with a famous example being AMD's Tri-Core Phenom CPUs, 13 00:00:53,480 --> 00:00:57,560 which could be unlocked to quad cores, sometimes. 14 00:00:57,560 --> 00:01:03,320 As it turns out, disabling in this context usually isn't just a switch you can flip in software. 15 00:01:03,320 --> 00:01:06,560 You see, when CPUs and GPUs roll off the assembly line, 16 00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:11,560 some cores or execution units don't function at peak performance, or they have enough impurities 17 00:01:11,560 --> 00:01:15,360 that they might not even work at all. And other cores might work perfectly fine, 18 00:01:15,360 --> 00:01:18,680 but aren't good enough to hit the advertised power consumption target. 19 00:01:18,680 --> 00:01:22,160 Now, it would be a shame to throw out the entire chip 20 00:01:22,160 --> 00:01:27,340 just because a small part of it was messed up. So instead, these cores or execution units 21 00:01:27,340 --> 00:01:30,740 are factory disabled, sometimes even at a hardware level, 22 00:01:30,740 --> 00:01:36,100 and sold as lower tier products at a lower price. In cases like this, there's no way for an end user 23 00:01:36,100 --> 00:01:40,060 to get in there and enable these extra components, and even if you could, 24 00:01:40,060 --> 00:01:45,100 you might run into serious stability problems, and maybe even a crisis of conscience. 25 00:01:45,100 --> 00:01:49,060 Moving on. For another example, the reason printers are cheap 26 00:01:49,060 --> 00:01:54,540 and ink is expensive is because printer companies make most of their profit on ink cartridges, 27 00:01:54,540 --> 00:02:00,220 which they can sell over and over and over again, as opposed to the printer, which they can only sell once. 28 00:02:00,220 --> 00:02:03,380 Lure an unsuspecting grandma in with a cheap printer, 29 00:02:03,380 --> 00:02:09,780 and you've got a sale every time her grandkids come over and print 60 copies of their beautiful artwork. 30 00:02:09,780 --> 00:02:14,220 Unfortunately, it's kind of an open secret that the printer companies often take this too far 31 00:02:14,220 --> 00:02:18,260 by serving users low ink warnings, even when there's a significant amount of ink 32 00:02:18,260 --> 00:02:21,300 left in the cartridge. And while it's true, ink cartridges 33 00:02:21,300 --> 00:02:25,400 that still have a very small amount of ink in them are too dry to be usable, 34 00:02:25,400 --> 00:02:30,680 many users have reported getting lots of extra life out of their cartridges, even after these warnings pop up. 35 00:02:30,680 --> 00:02:35,280 And in some cases, cartridges may refuse to print at all once they get below a certain level. 36 00:02:35,280 --> 00:02:39,840 But there's ink in there. Unsurprisingly, there's been backlash 37 00:02:39,840 --> 00:02:43,360 against these practices. So printer companies have actually thrown customers 38 00:02:43,360 --> 00:02:47,280 a small bone in offering models with refillable ink tanks 39 00:02:47,280 --> 00:02:53,000 instead of sealed cartridges that can lock them out. For our last example, we'll use a more everyday item. 40 00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:58,480 A couple of car makers have played with the idea of enabling certain pre-installed features for a fee 41 00:02:58,480 --> 00:03:03,600 after you buy the car. For example, Tesla installs batteries in lower range cars 42 00:03:03,600 --> 00:03:07,400 whose full capacity can be unlocked microtransaction style. 43 00:03:07,400 --> 00:03:10,880 And BMW has plans to sell features like heated seats 44 00:03:10,880 --> 00:03:16,360 as a subscription for a certain length of time. So you could pay just to have them enabled during the winter 45 00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:19,560 and turn them off during the summer. That's horrible. 46 00:03:19,560 --> 00:03:23,360 That's a bad. That's so dumb. 47 00:03:23,360 --> 00:03:27,960 It might seem expensive for the companies to make cars with features consumers might never use, 48 00:03:27,960 --> 00:03:33,520 but the justification is that it simplifies the manufacturing process to build mostly identical hardware 49 00:03:33,520 --> 00:03:37,400 and allow people who don't want the features to save a few dollars at the till. 50 00:03:37,400 --> 00:03:41,780 Another argument for this practice is that it could make reselling cars easier 51 00:03:41,780 --> 00:03:45,680 as a new buyer could just enable features that the previous owner may not have wanted. 52 00:03:45,680 --> 00:03:48,920 Of course, the other side of the coin would be to say that this is just a way for the automakers 53 00:03:48,920 --> 00:03:52,800 to squeeze more money out of you by getting you to pay again for materials 54 00:03:52,920 --> 00:03:55,920 that were clearly covered well enough by the price you paid. 55 00:03:55,920 --> 00:04:00,080 And the truth is, unfortunately, probably somewhere in the middle. 56 00:04:00,080 --> 00:04:04,080 Of course, you could just refuse to play this whole game entirely and go back to the good old days 57 00:04:04,080 --> 00:04:08,080 of taming wild beasts and using them as your steed. 58 00:04:08,080 --> 00:04:11,360 Whoa, that was a video for sure. I thought it was pretty good. 59 00:04:11,360 --> 00:04:14,440 If you agree, give it a like. If you don't agree, give it a dislike. 60 00:04:14,440 --> 00:04:18,820 But you know what you should do, regardless, give us some suggestions for future videos down in the comments. 61 00:04:18,820 --> 00:04:22,600 Check out our other videos, slash channels, whatever you want. 62 00:04:22,600 --> 00:04:25,800 And don't forget to subscribe to this channel and follow 63 00:04:25,800 --> 00:04:28,440 Tech Wiggy, cause we're gonna make more.