The pixel watch is so bad that if you crack the screen, Google tells you to throw it away and buy a new one. Apparently even Google themselves can't repair that.
I can't remember who made it, but some years ago before the big smartwatch boom, someone put out a watch that had a standard mechanism, but also a tiny one-line screen that would show information like texts to you. That seemed like a good middle ground. But I don't see a lot of watches that fit that middle ground anymore.
And they’re awesome. Battery lasts weeks on a single charge, works like a watch should, tracks all sorts of things and gives you silent notifications like a smart wearable should.
Sometimes you have to kobayashi maru things in life.
Part of being a conscious consumer is having the willpower to forgo convience for something bigger.
Unfortunately, we are in hyper simulated/consumerist society, so I really only see this trend getting exacerbated until some global calamity happening.
That's the logic behind every one of those decisions that made things harder to repair. The only fix really is government intervention, because capitalist logic by itself dictates that this is how you make more profit.