5 ms·

> Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - i

by cwyers 9y ago

> Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that by mandating reparability. Which can increase the original cost of the good.

inetknght 9y ago
When the original cost of the good is so expensive as to significantly prohibit replacement of broken/defective parts, is the good really all that... good?
- cwyers 9y ago
  Watch this video of a crash test between a 1959 Chevy and a 2009 Chevy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g The '59 Chevy gets 13.5 miles per gallon. [1] The '09 Chevy gets 25. [2] Yes, modern cars are more difficult to maintain than older cars -- they require more specialized equipment to maintain, parts are more difficult to replace, so on and so forth. Modern cars are also incredibly more fuel efficient and safer to ride in, and much of that is enabled by the same engineering efforts that make cars more difficult to maintain. 1) http://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/chevrolet_usa/full-size_chevrolet_5gen/full-size_bel_air_3gen_4-door_sedan/1959.html http://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/chevrolet_usa/full-si... 2) https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/25483.shtml https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/25483.shtml
  - ksk 9y ago
    The argument is more like 'soldered RAM' versus 'user replaceable RAM'.
    - cwyers 9y ago
      Which is done because solder is thinner/lighter than sockets, and therefore you can get a thinner/lighter laptop. There are real engineering tradeoffs all over the place here that are being elided over in order to make "things should be easier/cheaper to repair" seem obvious rather than a complicated set of tradeoffs.
      - ksk 9y ago
        You shifted the argument (which nobody was making) to being "modern is better" using your car example. I'm bringing it back to user-serviceable is _better_. >Which is done because solder is thinner/lighter than sockets, and therefore you can get a thinner/lighter laptop. So let them figure out another way to make it thinner/lighter. I don't want them to do it at the expense of upgrading common parts. We're not asking for every single chip to be replaceable. Just the obvious parts that have an established 10+ year history of being serviceable. I bet welding every single part on a car makes it lighter too, but I don't think people want to replace the entire car if their fuel pump breaks. >There are real engineering tradeoffs all over the place here that are being elided Huh? You switched from purely cosmetic factors - thinner/lighter, to engineering. You will have to explain that one to me...
        cwyers 9y ago
        Thinner and lighter are not purely cosmetic (although I think Apple overvalues them) -- laptops are meant to be carried and therefore being smaller/lighter are actual benefits. Even if they were purely cosmetic, however, there is actual engineering required to do them. The laws of the universe don't go, oh, you only want to make a cosmetic change, therefore you can get X into this space/thermal profile without any other tradeoffs. User-serviceable parts are better, all things being equal. But all things aren't equal. You're trying to mandate tradeoffs for everyone else, and I don't think you understand everyone else's tradeoffs well enough to do that.
        ksk 9y ago
        I think at some point you're going to have to present an argument that user-serviceable RAM makes a perceptible difference in making the laptop thin/light going forward. Several assumptions - The RAM itself can't shrink or be made to be more energy efficient, or socket design is static, can be challenged. However a manufacturer without a mandate/incentive will probably never invest their efforts to making that happen. They're going to optimize for the commercial aspect of selling the product in a way that maximizes their bottom line via market segmentation and price gouging on storage. Obviously, making money is not something that I'm against, but I simply would like to see an acceptable compromise made between making money and making it repair-friendly. Like you said, everything is a trade-off.
    - boznz 9y ago
      Re-soldering a chip is pretty easy. Being able to buy that chip in one-off quantities is sometimes next to impossible.
azag0 9y ago
As does any regulation. That does not mean the regulation is bad. I wouldn't regulate this issue with specific rules, just put a cost on waste. Each company would need to deal with the product waste in an environmetally safe way. If they can essentially recycle the replaced products into new ones, then I have no problem with that. But if it ends up as waste, then there should be a price on that. I wonder how much would this motivate companies to make repairable products.
- bonzini 9y ago
  Isn't that how RoHS already works?
  - civilitty 9y ago
    RoHS is a limit on toxic chemical concentrations in materials used for electrical equipment to limit environmental and public exposure to a few egregiously toxic compounds (i.e., the solder in a radio can have a maximum of 1000 ppm of lead, but no more). You're probably thinking of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive which is the one that set recycling goals for electronic waste.
sly010 9y ago
> Which can increase the original cost of the good. ... to better reflect it's real cost by including all the otherwise externalized costs.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  To cross subsidize some kind of use, raising the cost for people that won't have the product broken. I'm not saying that it's a net loss, nor that even if a net loss that it isn't worth it. But there is a cost there, and you are shoving it away on your quest to regulation instead of looking at it and deciding its worth.
  - Joeri 9y ago
    Or, maybe we are looking at it and deciding it is worth it.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    No, you're assuming the regulation is an end in itself and coming to a tautological. Regulation is essentially saying 'wait, let's factor in these unaccounted-for-but-predictable costs (like repairability)' and you're saying 'but what about the costs of assessing the costs?!'. Yeah, incorporating some product standards is going to raise the cost of all units sold, which represents a loss to the buyer who hoped to get the product at the cheapest possible price and was either willing to take perfect care of it or tolerate it not being fully repairable if it were broken. But that's OK, because when regulating something the most important person to consider is the median user, noth the clumsiest/unluckiest nor the most skilled/luckiest. If the median user buys a car expecting to drive it for 5 years, and there's a >50% chance that it will suffer some damage to some major functional component during that time, it would be pretty inefficient for said damage to cost more to fix than the cost of replacing the whole car, unless cars were to become so cheap that it was actually cheaper and better to scrap them - perhaps thanks to some breakthrough in large-scale 3d printing technology or so. That's what happened with computer keyboards; it used to be that they were fairly expensive and if someone spilled coffee into one it was worth dismantling, cleaning, and re-assembling, but then cheap membrane keyboards assembled with increasing levels of automation brought the price down faster and faster, and today you can get a PC keyboard for something ridiculous like $10. A few fetishists still pay out for old-style IBM Model M, but most people will just replace a damaged keyboard. But while cars remain relatively expensive and hard to dispose of, it makes sense to minimize the economic losses stemming for a lack of modularity and repairability across the market as a whole, rather than seeking to minimize the costs for the stingiest buyer.
baq 9y ago
The cost will go up only a little. The price though...

by cwyers 9y ago

inetknght 9y ago

When the original cost of the good is so expensive as to significantly prohibit replacement of broken/defective parts, is the good really all that... good?

cwyers 9y ago
Watch this video of a crash test between a 1959 Chevy and a 2009 Chevy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g The '59 Chevy gets 13.5 miles per gallon. [1] The '09 Chevy gets 25. [2] Yes, modern cars are more difficult to maintain than older cars -- they require more specialized equipment to maintain, parts are more difficult to replace, so on and so forth. Modern cars are also incredibly more fuel efficient and safer to ride in, and much of that is enabled by the same engineering efforts that make cars more difficult to maintain. 1) http://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/chevrolet_usa/full-size_chevrolet_5gen/full-size_bel_air_3gen_4-door_sedan/1959.html http://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/chevrolet_usa/full-si... 2) https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/25483.shtml https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/25483.shtml
- ksk 9y ago
  The argument is more like 'soldered RAM' versus 'user replaceable RAM'.
  - cwyers 9y ago
    Which is done because solder is thinner/lighter than sockets, and therefore you can get a thinner/lighter laptop. There are real engineering tradeoffs all over the place here that are being elided over in order to make "things should be easier/cheaper to repair" seem obvious rather than a complicated set of tradeoffs.
    - ksk 9y ago
      You shifted the argument (which nobody was making) to being "modern is better" using your car example. I'm bringing it back to user-serviceable is _better_. >Which is done because solder is thinner/lighter than sockets, and therefore you can get a thinner/lighter laptop. So let them figure out another way to make it thinner/lighter. I don't want them to do it at the expense of upgrading common parts. We're not asking for every single chip to be replaceable. Just the obvious parts that have an established 10+ year history of being serviceable. I bet welding every single part on a car makes it lighter too, but I don't think people want to replace the entire car if their fuel pump breaks. >There are real engineering tradeoffs all over the place here that are being elided Huh? You switched from purely cosmetic factors - thinner/lighter, to engineering. You will have to explain that one to me...
      - cwyers 9y ago
        Thinner and lighter are not purely cosmetic (although I think Apple overvalues them) -- laptops are meant to be carried and therefore being smaller/lighter are actual benefits. Even if they were purely cosmetic, however, there is actual engineering required to do them. The laws of the universe don't go, oh, you only want to make a cosmetic change, therefore you can get X into this space/thermal profile without any other tradeoffs. User-serviceable parts are better, all things being equal. But all things aren't equal. You're trying to mandate tradeoffs for everyone else, and I don't think you understand everyone else's tradeoffs well enough to do that.
        ksk 9y ago
        I think at some point you're going to have to present an argument that user-serviceable RAM makes a perceptible difference in making the laptop thin/light going forward. Several assumptions - The RAM itself can't shrink or be made to be more energy efficient, or socket design is static, can be challenged. However a manufacturer without a mandate/incentive will probably never invest their efforts to making that happen. They're going to optimize for the commercial aspect of selling the product in a way that maximizes their bottom line via market segmentation and price gouging on storage. Obviously, making money is not something that I'm against, but I simply would like to see an acceptable compromise made between making money and making it repair-friendly. Like you said, everything is a trade-off.
  - boznz 9y ago
    Re-soldering a chip is pretty easy. Being able to buy that chip in one-off quantities is sometimes next to impossible.

azag0 9y ago

As does any regulation. That does not mean the regulation is bad. I wouldn't regulate this issue with specific rules, just put a cost on waste. Each company would need to deal with the product waste in an environmetally safe way. If they can essentially recycle the replaced products into new ones, then I have no problem with that. But if it ends up as waste, then there should be a price on that. I wonder how much would this motivate companies to make repairable products.

bonzini 9y ago
Isn't that how RoHS already works?
- civilitty 9y ago
  RoHS is a limit on toxic chemical concentrations in materials used for electrical equipment to limit environmental and public exposure to a few egregiously toxic compounds (i.e., the solder in a radio can have a maximum of 1000 ppm of lead, but no more). You're probably thinking of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive which is the one that set recycling goals for electronic waste.

sly010 9y ago

> Which can increase the original cost of the good. ... to better reflect it's real cost by including all the otherwise externalized costs.

marcosdumay 9y ago
To cross subsidize some kind of use, raising the cost for people that won't have the product broken. I'm not saying that it's a net loss, nor that even if a net loss that it isn't worth it. But there is a cost there, and you are shoving it away on your quest to regulation instead of looking at it and deciding its worth.
- Joeri 9y ago
  Or, maybe we are looking at it and deciding it is worth it.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  No, you're assuming the regulation is an end in itself and coming to a tautological. Regulation is essentially saying 'wait, let's factor in these unaccounted-for-but-predictable costs (like repairability)' and you're saying 'but what about the costs of assessing the costs?!'. Yeah, incorporating some product standards is going to raise the cost of all units sold, which represents a loss to the buyer who hoped to get the product at the cheapest possible price and was either willing to take perfect care of it or tolerate it not being fully repairable if it were broken. But that's OK, because when regulating something the most important person to consider is the median user, noth the clumsiest/unluckiest nor the most skilled/luckiest. If the median user buys a car expecting to drive it for 5 years, and there's a >50% chance that it will suffer some damage to some major functional component during that time, it would be pretty inefficient for said damage to cost more to fix than the cost of replacing the whole car, unless cars were to become so cheap that it was actually cheaper and better to scrap them - perhaps thanks to some breakthrough in large-scale 3d printing technology or so. That's what happened with computer keyboards; it used to be that they were fairly expensive and if someone spilled coffee into one it was worth dismantling, cleaning, and re-assembling, but then cheap membrane keyboards assembled with increasing levels of automation brought the price down faster and faster, and today you can get a PC keyboard for something ridiculous like $10. A few fetishists still pay out for old-style IBM Model M, but most people will just replace a damaged keyboard. But while cars remain relatively expensive and hard to dispose of, it makes sense to minimize the economic losses stemming for a lack of modularity and repairability across the market as a whole, rather than seeking to minimize the costs for the stingiest buyer.

baq 9y ago

The cost will go up only a little. The price though...