There seems to be more to it than that.

Planned obsolescence is a very real thing, and appliances can be designed to die sooner than they have to.

Aside from that, a lot of tech got unnecessarily complex, thereby raising chances of something breaking naturally, without even PO in mind.

On average, tech from 70’s actually was more reliable, even though it’s not AS reliable as some peoppe think exactly due to survivorship bias.