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Self-repair Manifesto: http://blogs-images.forbes.com/jerrymichalski/files/2012/12/Self-Repair-Manifesto.png http://blogs-images.forbes.com/jerrymichalski/files

by ArtDev 11y ago

Self-repair Manifesto: http://blogs-images.forbes.com/jerrymichalski/files/2012/12/Self-Repair-Manifesto.png http://blogs-images.forbes.com/jerrymichalski/files/2012/12/... I don't buy Apple products anyhow.

gurkendoktor 11y ago
Buying Apple products is great if you plan to fix them yourself - just look up the difficulty on iFixit and go for an easy-to-fix model. Vote with your wallet! My MacBook Air 13" is trivial to open and actually looks gorgeous from the inside. No matter which iPhone you buy, YouTube is full of video guides and you can buy DIY repair kits on eBay for most tasks. It's unfair, because big brands don't have to do anything for these benefits, but that's the way it is. Buying niche products makes DIY repairs a lot harder.
- dmschulman 11y ago
  How are they great for fixing yourself? They're specifically engineered to be completely unserviceable by a regular consumer. Yes you can watch a Youtube video and figure out how to take them apart, Apple's devices have to be serviced by someone after all, but a ton of money, thought, time, and effort go into designing methods and hardware for obscuring the typical consumer's ability to dig into an Apple devices. I've taken my Mac Mini apart multiple times, an impossible task without buying an iFixIt kit first. The reason I took the computer apart was to stuff a second hard drive into the machine. I had to remove every single component of the machine in order to access the hard drive. It was a huge pain in the ass just to add a second hard drive. Good luck doing that to a Macbook. My Thinkpad features a single screw that lets me access the hard drive caddy. The product doesn't suffer at all from providing this feature and it gives me the ability to upgrade my machine as I see fit.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    It isn't free to design for serviceability. It can compromise heat transfer, have more assembly steps (more screws), increase the part count (access panels and gaskets). That said, the newer Mac Mini is much better than the old one in this regard. Some steps were made to reorder the layers in the package, so you no longer have to remove ALL the screws (25? 30?)
    - dmschulman 11y ago
      It's definitely a balance that needs to be achieved between function and form. I think Apple tends to lean too much towards the function part of the spectrum but I'm glad to hear the pendulum might be swinging slightly to the other direction. When I read about Apple designing new screw heads (for example) which can only be unscrewed using a special screwdriver that kind of stuff makes me bristle though.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        They've done that since the original Mac. Had to buy a 3rd-party kit with a 6-inch shaft, hex head with center pin. Just to open the case. So they've been dicks for over a decade.
  - gurkendoktor 11y ago
    I don't disagree with you on the Mac Mini, and I haven't said that all Macs are serviceable. But given that Apple is a very popular brand, you can look up the repair guides for the Mini on iFixit before you purchase it, and then look for alternatives (maybe just a different model year). Good luck doing that with a random Chinese NUC off eBay - it's surprises all the way down. =/
lsc 11y ago
> I don't buy Apple products anyhow. I bought my first apple product six months ago. An iphone 5 32gb model. It had been roughly used, and I got a discount. I bought this, in part, because I can get cheap parts for an older iphone; this is much less true of any other model of older phone. Also, I can get updated software for an older iphone... this is also not true of older android phones (as far as I can tell, CyanogenMod drops support just as quickly as the original manufacturers. Yes, I could figure out how to port the security updates to the device-specific package, but I could also write my own phone OS, given enough time and effort. There's no reasonable/practical way to get up to date software for an old android phone.) A new apple phone isn't as better than a new android as people say... and god damn, itunes is a piece of shit when it comes to managing podcasts. ios might even be worse (no sd card, etc..) But an iphone that is a couple years old and has sustained some damage is way better than an android of a similar vintage, simply because of the software and hardware support. Note, it is pretty unlikely that I would buy an apple workstation, for all the reasons discussed in this article, and because I find their keyboard unpleasant.... but the point remains that in practical terms, it's way easier to repair an old Iphone than an old android phone, simply because of the wide availability of parts. (that said, the fork of the fork of the fork of the nokia linux that came with my nokia n900 many years ago is still going, which is really kind of amazing. But the n900 is pretty primitive at this point.)
- robin_reala 11y ago
  Regarding your last point, sounds like you want http://neo900.org/ http://neo900.org/
  - lsc 11y ago
    If I had more spare time, perhaps. I've got some n900 parts laying about that could be used, if I could find them. I've already figured out how to use swype, so while I'm not yet as proficient as a teenager, I can text on a capacitive screen better than on the mediocre hardware keyboard the n900 came with at this point. Even so, spare parts for the iphone are gonna be way more available than spare parts for the n900. but I am time-poor right now. Perhaps to the point where if my iphone broke I'd give it away to someone with more time to fix such things and buy another.

by ArtDev 11y ago

gurkendoktor 11y ago

Buying Apple products is great if you plan to fix them yourself - just look up the difficulty on iFixit and go for an easy-to-fix model. Vote with your wallet! My MacBook Air 13" is trivial to open and actually looks gorgeous from the inside. No matter which iPhone you buy, YouTube is full of video guides and you can buy DIY repair kits on eBay for most tasks. It's unfair, because big brands don't have to do anything for these benefits, but that's the way it is. Buying niche products makes DIY repairs a lot harder.

dmschulman 11y ago
How are they great for fixing yourself? They're specifically engineered to be completely unserviceable by a regular consumer. Yes you can watch a Youtube video and figure out how to take them apart, Apple's devices have to be serviced by someone after all, but a ton of money, thought, time, and effort go into designing methods and hardware for obscuring the typical consumer's ability to dig into an Apple devices. I've taken my Mac Mini apart multiple times, an impossible task without buying an iFixIt kit first. The reason I took the computer apart was to stuff a second hard drive into the machine. I had to remove every single component of the machine in order to access the hard drive. It was a huge pain in the ass just to add a second hard drive. Good luck doing that to a Macbook. My Thinkpad features a single screw that lets me access the hard drive caddy. The product doesn't suffer at all from providing this feature and it gives me the ability to upgrade my machine as I see fit.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  It isn't free to design for serviceability. It can compromise heat transfer, have more assembly steps (more screws), increase the part count (access panels and gaskets). That said, the newer Mac Mini is much better than the old one in this regard. Some steps were made to reorder the layers in the package, so you no longer have to remove ALL the screws (25? 30?)
  - dmschulman 11y ago
    It's definitely a balance that needs to be achieved between function and form. I think Apple tends to lean too much towards the function part of the spectrum but I'm glad to hear the pendulum might be swinging slightly to the other direction. When I read about Apple designing new screw heads (for example) which can only be unscrewed using a special screwdriver that kind of stuff makes me bristle though.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      They've done that since the original Mac. Had to buy a 3rd-party kit with a 6-inch shaft, hex head with center pin. Just to open the case. So they've been dicks for over a decade.
- gurkendoktor 11y ago
  I don't disagree with you on the Mac Mini, and I haven't said that all Macs are serviceable. But given that Apple is a very popular brand, you can look up the repair guides for the Mini on iFixit before you purchase it, and then look for alternatives (maybe just a different model year). Good luck doing that with a random Chinese NUC off eBay - it's surprises all the way down. =/

lsc 11y ago

> I don't buy Apple products anyhow. I bought my first apple product six months ago. An iphone 5 32gb model. It had been roughly used, and I got a discount. I bought this, in part, because I can get cheap parts for an older iphone; this is much less true of any other model of older phone. Also, I can get updated software for an older iphone... this is also not true of older android phones (as far as I can tell, CyanogenMod drops support just as quickly as the original manufacturers. Yes, I could figure out how to port the security updates to the device-specific package, but I could also write my own phone OS, given enough time and effort. There's no reasonable/practical way to get up to date software for an old android phone.) A new apple phone isn't as better than a new android as people say... and god damn, itunes is a piece of shit when it comes to managing podcasts. ios might even be worse (no sd card, etc..) But an iphone that is a couple years old and has sustained some damage is way better than an android of a similar vintage, simply because of the software and hardware support. Note, it is pretty unlikely that I would buy an apple workstation, for all the reasons discussed in this article, and because I find their keyboard unpleasant.... but the point remains that in practical terms, it's way easier to repair an old Iphone than an old android phone, simply because of the wide availability of parts. (that said, the fork of the fork of the fork of the nokia linux that came with my nokia n900 many years ago is still going, which is really kind of amazing. But the n900 is pretty primitive at this point.)

robin_reala 11y ago
Regarding your last point, sounds like you want http://neo900.org/ http://neo900.org/
- lsc 11y ago
  If I had more spare time, perhaps. I've got some n900 parts laying about that could be used, if I could find them. I've already figured out how to use swype, so while I'm not yet as proficient as a teenager, I can text on a capacitive screen better than on the mediocre hardware keyboard the n900 came with at this point. Even so, spare parts for the iphone are gonna be way more available than spare parts for the n900. but I am time-poor right now. Perhaps to the point where if my iphone broke I'd give it away to someone with more time to fix such things and buy another.