5 ms·

Not OP, but I believe he means the following: As a small company/startup, right now, you design, make, and sell a product. It may just be you or a small team.

Not OP, but I believe he means the following: As a small company/startup, right now, you design, make, and sell a product. It may just be you or a small team. The design of your product may be complicated, but the usability from the user perspective may be simple AND FOOLPROOF. There are no other considerations generally other than the product works, and people like it and my margins are good. With more regulation, like requiring the right to repair, the task above just became a lot more difficult. You now have to design a product that can be repairable, which can be more expensive from your design/production side. You have to make sure there is documentation to go with that for consumers to repair every aspect of your product, an incredible amount of time. And then you have to have a way to "rescue" a user if they really screw up the product and "brick" in in a sense. This will add to the total cost and the time it takes to go to market and/or iterate on the product. Small companies in many ways, can't afford this. not to mention being in compliance of the regulations and the additional cost/time that will take. On the other hand, a larger company will have no issue complying with these regulations as far as documentation, user support, return and fix issues, etc. Making sure consumers have the tools available to "repair" the products as well. Because larger companies have economies of scale, both with supplies, manufacturing, and labor costs, it is much less of a burden for them than a small company barely trying to survive.

kbenson 9y ago
This is the same for every single aspect of going to market. The large incumbent always has advantages, and yet we still get new companies bringing new things to market, and we have more ways for them to make this happen than ever before (crowdfunding, small run manufacturers, 3d printing). I see the largest difference this will make is that larger companies won't put extra time and money into locking down devices so they can't be repaired. For example, locked down diagnostic modes, and special hardware to open devices. > And then you have to have a way to "rescue" a user if they really screw up the product and "brick" in in a sense. Are you sure? There has to be a sane cut-off for when a device is broken and when it's repairable. A company will not be forced to provide directions on how to fix my device if I've decided to use it in a "will it blend" demonstration, so statements like this are FUD without us getting a good grasp of the details of when and what a company will actually need to comply with this.
ghaff 9y ago
>You now have to design a product that can be repairable No, you don't. Pretty much the only thing you have to do is provide the same information that you provide to your authorized repair centers. If you don't repair a product, and therefore you don't have a service manual or diagnostic codes, you don't need to now create them to satisfy the law. This is about having things like "secret" diagnostic codes that require you to go to a dealer to pull off.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
While that's true to some extent it's not that hard. This is a physical analog to the overhead imposed by requiring more generalized code as opposed task specific code. If your workflow is "move fast and break things" or "just ship it, we won't have to support it in a year anyway" then, yeah, this will be a pain in the ass.
snuxoll 9y ago
I haven't read the text of this bill, but the push for Right to Repair isn't that companies need to design their products differently - but they need to provide documentation and components so people other than the manufacturer can perform repairs on them. Apple doesn't repair logic boards, if you have a bad backlight controller on your MacBook Pro and it's out of warranty you can expect to pay $700+ for a logic board replacement - repair shops can replace the backlight controller for a much more reasonable fee. Right now Apple products are the most popular market for these 3rd party repair shops exactly because Apple charges so damned much for out-of-warranty repairs, and they work in a legal gray area because Apple won't give out board schematics or sell replacement components. Without schematics troubleshooting issues ranges from anywhere to a pain to impossible, without parts anything that can't be readily sourced from a manufacturer (thankfully they use bog-standard Texas Instrument controllers for the LCD backlight that you can buy reels of, but other components like the SMC, GPU, etc. you are pulling off boards that were dumped from the factory or if you can somehow find "new" ones the chances that they are DOA is dubious since they're often factory rejects). Nobody wants to make life more difficult for companies designing their products, the Right to Repair crowd just wants to be able to fix their own devices provided they have the skills to do so.
- RandallBrown 9y ago
  Providing that documentation and the components is a non-zero cost.
  - snuxoll 9y ago
    How so? Apple already has detailed schematics, repair shops have been getting them through shady FTP servers for years - making them accessible at this point is the cost of putting them up for download. Hell, ANYBODY making consumer electronics has detailed schematics or at least the gerber file for the PCB. Components? Sure, but you bake that into the cost you sell them at. You're already buying them in massive quantities, so let repair shops order some from you - nobody is going to complain about having to pay x% over cost of materials to cover your expenses.
  - wfo 9y ago
ksk 9y ago
How did you go from what can happen to what will happen? In the realm of what can happen, you can pretty much say anything you want. As an aside.. AFAIK, nobody ever been capable of producing regulations and laws that don't have unintended consequences, or even have guaranteed results. Working off of probabilities, a right to repair law makes sense to me. Maybe it doesn't to you, but your argument is purely your own speculation, which is valuable, but its hard to argue against.

kbenson 9y ago

This is the same for every single aspect of going to market. The large incumbent always has advantages, and yet we still get new companies bringing new things to market, and we have more ways for them to make this happen than ever before (crowdfunding, small run manufacturers, 3d printing). I see the largest difference this will make is that larger companies won't put extra time and money into locking down devices so they can't be repaired. For example, locked down diagnostic modes, and special hardware to open devices. > And then you have to have a way to "rescue" a user if they really screw up the product and "brick" in in a sense. Are you sure? There has to be a sane cut-off for when a device is broken and when it's repairable. A company will not be forced to provide directions on how to fix my device if I've decided to use it in a "will it blend" demonstration, so statements like this are FUD without us getting a good grasp of the details of when and what a company will actually need to comply with this.

ghaff 9y ago

>You now have to design a product that can be repairable No, you don't. Pretty much the only thing you have to do is provide the same information that you provide to your authorized repair centers. If you don't repair a product, and therefore you don't have a service manual or diagnostic codes, you don't need to now create them to satisfy the law. This is about having things like "secret" diagnostic codes that require you to go to a dealer to pull off.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

While that's true to some extent it's not that hard. This is a physical analog to the overhead imposed by requiring more generalized code as opposed task specific code. If your workflow is "move fast and break things" or "just ship it, we won't have to support it in a year anyway" then, yeah, this will be a pain in the ass.

snuxoll 9y ago

I haven't read the text of this bill, but the push for Right to Repair isn't that companies need to design their products differently - but they need to provide documentation and components so people other than the manufacturer can perform repairs on them. Apple doesn't repair logic boards, if you have a bad backlight controller on your MacBook Pro and it's out of warranty you can expect to pay $700+ for a logic board replacement - repair shops can replace the backlight controller for a much more reasonable fee. Right now Apple products are the most popular market for these 3rd party repair shops exactly because Apple charges so damned much for out-of-warranty repairs, and they work in a legal gray area because Apple won't give out board schematics or sell replacement components. Without schematics troubleshooting issues ranges from anywhere to a pain to impossible, without parts anything that can't be readily sourced from a manufacturer (thankfully they use bog-standard Texas Instrument controllers for the LCD backlight that you can buy reels of, but other components like the SMC, GPU, etc. you are pulling off boards that were dumped from the factory or if you can somehow find "new" ones the chances that they are DOA is dubious since they're often factory rejects). Nobody wants to make life more difficult for companies designing their products, the Right to Repair crowd just wants to be able to fix their own devices provided they have the skills to do so.

RandallBrown 9y ago
Providing that documentation and the components is a non-zero cost.
- snuxoll 9y ago
  How so? Apple already has detailed schematics, repair shops have been getting them through shady FTP servers for years - making them accessible at this point is the cost of putting them up for download. Hell, ANYBODY making consumer electronics has detailed schematics or at least the gerber file for the PCB. Components? Sure, but you bake that into the cost you sell them at. You're already buying them in massive quantities, so let repair shops order some from you - nobody is going to complain about having to pay x% over cost of materials to cover your expenses.
- wfo 9y ago

ksk 9y ago

How did you go from what can happen to what will happen? In the realm of what can happen, you can pretty much say anything you want. As an aside.. AFAIK, nobody ever been capable of producing regulations and laws that don't have unintended consequences, or even have guaranteed results. Working off of probabilities, a right to repair law makes sense to me. Maybe it doesn't to you, but your argument is purely your own speculation, which is valuable, but its hard to argue against.