WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 Man, buying products used to be so simple. 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:06.960 You pay money for like a hammer, and then you can use it however you want, 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 00:00:11.680 --> 00:00:14.880 have hidden features that for one reason or another, 00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:18.840 you can't even use? There are actual functional parts in your devices 00:00:18.840 --> 00:00:23.480 that you, the paying customer, are totally blocked from accessing. 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. 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, 00:00:33.280 --> 00:00:38.120 you might have noticed that certain cores or execution units are there in the die shot, 00:00:38.120 --> 00:00:41.440 but are disabled. So you might think it logically follows 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. 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, 00:00:53.480 --> 00:00:57.560 which could be unlocked to quad cores, sometimes. 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. 00:01:03.320 --> 00:01:06.560 You see, when CPUs and GPUs roll off the assembly line, 00:01:06.560 --> 00:01:11.560 some cores or execution units don't function at peak performance, or they have enough impurities 00:01:11.560 --> 00:01:15.360 that they might not even work at all. And other cores might work perfectly fine, 00:01:15.360 --> 00:01:18.680 but aren't good enough to hit the advertised power consumption target. 00:01:18.680 --> 00:01:22.160 Now, it would be a shame to throw out the entire chip 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 00:01:27.340 --> 00:01:30.740 are factory disabled, sometimes even at a hardware level, 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 00:01:36.100 --> 00:01:40.060 to get in there and enable these extra components, and even if you could, 00:01:40.060 --> 00:01:45.100 you might run into serious stability problems, and maybe even a crisis of conscience. 00:01:45.100 --> 00:01:49.060 Moving on. For another example, the reason printers are cheap 00:01:49.060 --> 00:01:54.540 and ink is expensive is because printer companies make most of their profit on ink cartridges, 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. 00:02:00.220 --> 00:02:03.380 Lure an unsuspecting grandma in with a cheap printer, 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. 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 00:02:14.220 --> 00:02:18.260 by serving users low ink warnings, even when there's a significant amount of ink 00:02:18.260 --> 00:02:21.300 left in the cartridge. And while it's true, ink cartridges 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, 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. 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. 00:02:35.280 --> 00:02:39.840 But there's ink in there. Unsurprisingly, there's been backlash 00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:43.360 against these practices. So printer companies have actually thrown customers 00:02:43.360 --> 00:02:47.280 a small bone in offering models with refillable ink tanks 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. 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 00:02:58.480 --> 00:03:03.600 after you buy the car. For example, Tesla installs batteries in lower range cars 00:03:03.600 --> 00:03:07.400 whose full capacity can be unlocked microtransaction style. 00:03:07.400 --> 00:03:10.880 And BMW has plans to sell features like heated seats 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 00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:19.560 and turn them off during the summer. That's horrible. 00:03:19.560 --> 00:03:23.360 That's a bad. That's so dumb. 00:03:23.360 --> 00:03:27.960 It might seem expensive for the companies to make cars with features consumers might never use, 00:03:27.960 --> 00:03:33.520 but the justification is that it simplifies the manufacturing process to build mostly identical hardware 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. 00:03:37.400 --> 00:03:41.780 Another argument for this practice is that it could make reselling cars easier 00:03:41.780 --> 00:03:45.680 as a new buyer could just enable features that the previous owner may not have wanted. 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 00:03:48.920 --> 00:03:52.800 to squeeze more money out of you by getting you to pay again for materials 00:03:52.920 --> 00:03:55.920 that were clearly covered well enough by the price you paid. 00:03:55.920 --> 00:04:00.080 And the truth is, unfortunately, probably somewhere in the middle. 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 00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:08.080 of taming wild beasts and using them as your steed. 00:04:08.080 --> 00:04:11.360 Whoa, that was a video for sure. I thought it was pretty good. 00:04:11.360 --> 00:04:14.440 If you agree, give it a like. If you don't agree, give it a dislike. 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. 00:04:18.820 --> 00:04:22.600 Check out our other videos, slash channels, whatever you want. 00:04:22.600 --> 00:04:25.800 And don't forget to subscribe to this channel and follow 00:04:25.800 --> 00:04:28.440 Tech Wiggy, cause we're gonna make more.