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> just that it be possible on some level. Sure, and that's a reasonable thing to want. That's still not what the right to repair is about, though. It's about p

> just that it be possible on some level. Sure, and that's a reasonable thing to want. That's still not what the right to repair is about, though. It's about preventing arbitrary restrictions on your rights to repair, not about forbidding practical limitations on your abilities to repair (unless of course those practical limitations were created in order to impose arbitrary restrictions on your rights). If Apple decide to integrate the battery & screen to shorten the electrical paths to that power-hungry component, then the battery becomes effectively non-replaceable. That might annoy you, but it's not a violation of the right to repair. On the other hand, if Apple do things to ensure that only Apple repair shops can replace the battery (eg via cryptographic signing, secret APIs, or physical keys that they prefer to call screwdrivers) then they've run afoul of the right to repair movement. There may be times when it'd be good to mandate replaceable parts (environmental motivations come to mind), but that shouldn't be the default -- those restrictions should be applied to individual industries in narrow ways and only as needed. The right to repair movement is pushing for something that reasonably could be the default, and we would instead make exceptions for things that shouldn't be generally repairable (eg, perhaps modifications to an odometer should be tightly controlled.)

OJFord 6y ago
Yes it is - if the battery isn't just a dumb power source, and has some kind of ID verification built in, that's a monopoly on repair, and if they don't even sell the replacement part, it's impossible to repair.
grawprog 6y ago
>That's still not what the right to repair is about, though. I'm just curious as to how replacing a battery doesn't fall under right to repair. It's probably one of the simplest 'repairs' you can make to a battery powered device. Pretty much any battery powered thing, aside from a modern cell phone or tablet, my first go to if it won't turn on is either, take the battery out and put it back in, or try a new battery 90% of the time, this works, even for my old phones, right up to my current one, which is the first i've owned without a replaceable battery. It's been about two years and as seems to be inevitable with phones, my battery's life has deteriorated, previously, when this has happened with phones, i've replaced the battery and gotten another couple years off it. Now...what am I supposed to do? I can't repair it by replacing the battery. The phone is fine, the screen is.fine, it functions fine. But the battery dies noticably faster and from what I've read, this is directly because of the high speed charger i've been using and my charging habits in regards to these kinda of batteries. Changing the battery absolutely falls under the category of repair. Changing my battery would restor my phone to a better state than now. Yet by design, I am unable to easily do this.
- redxdev 6y ago
  The reasoning is that the internal design of devices like phones/tablets/etc cannot take self-repair into account when the priorities of most manufacturers these days are to make them small and light (not to mention things like water resistance which also poses design problems). Focusing on user-replaceability makes the design process much harder with these restrictions. Personally I doubt that's the _only_ reason things have gone in this direction, but it's certainly one of them.
  - grawprog 6y ago
    >most manufacturers these days are to make them small and light I bought pretty much the smallest phone with decent specs I could find when I bought my last phone. Most of the new flagship phones were huge. Like things that would not fit in my jeans pocket with my wallet. None had a replaceable battery. Yet, i've had plenty of small, light, sturdy, water resistant phones with replaceable batteries. I really have a hard time believing that argument i'm sorry. The only real reason I can see not to allow replaceable batteries is to increase profit for manufacturers. Same with every other 'feature' i've seen marketed to people with the same excuse. It's nonsense. There's alway a profit motive behind things and the bottom line is... The less modular consumer devices are, the more restricted our abilities to repair, modify and use our devices become, the less user friendly they become. The only ones benefiting from removing modularity, repairability and turning devices into black boxes without standardized parts requiring either replacement of the entire device or specialized repair services are the manufacturers period. It's not consumer friendly. Anything else is marketing bullshit to make people accept less control over their devices and more profit for device makers. There's zero legitimate consumer friendly reason not to standardize things and allow easy repair of devices, including replacing batteries, again a long standard feature in consumer electronics. Just because it takes a couple years for batteries to die now, doesn't mean they don't die and need to eventually be replaced like old alkaline batteries. The time scale doesn't change the fact that eventually, yes they do need to be replaced, like any other batteries in battery powered devices.
    - m-ee 6y ago

OJFord 6y ago

Yes it is - if the battery isn't just a dumb power source, and has some kind of ID verification built in, that's a monopoly on repair, and if they don't even sell the replacement part, it's impossible to repair.

grawprog 6y ago

>That's still not what the right to repair is about, though. I'm just curious as to how replacing a battery doesn't fall under right to repair. It's probably one of the simplest 'repairs' you can make to a battery powered device. Pretty much any battery powered thing, aside from a modern cell phone or tablet, my first go to if it won't turn on is either, take the battery out and put it back in, or try a new battery 90% of the time, this works, even for my old phones, right up to my current one, which is the first i've owned without a replaceable battery. It's been about two years and as seems to be inevitable with phones, my battery's life has deteriorated, previously, when this has happened with phones, i've replaced the battery and gotten another couple years off it. Now...what am I supposed to do? I can't repair it by replacing the battery. The phone is fine, the screen is.fine, it functions fine. But the battery dies noticably faster and from what I've read, this is directly because of the high speed charger i've been using and my charging habits in regards to these kinda of batteries. Changing the battery absolutely falls under the category of repair. Changing my battery would restor my phone to a better state than now. Yet by design, I am unable to easily do this.

redxdev 6y ago
The reasoning is that the internal design of devices like phones/tablets/etc cannot take self-repair into account when the priorities of most manufacturers these days are to make them small and light (not to mention things like water resistance which also poses design problems). Focusing on user-replaceability makes the design process much harder with these restrictions. Personally I doubt that's the _only_ reason things have gone in this direction, but it's certainly one of them.
- grawprog 6y ago
  >most manufacturers these days are to make them small and light I bought pretty much the smallest phone with decent specs I could find when I bought my last phone. Most of the new flagship phones were huge. Like things that would not fit in my jeans pocket with my wallet. None had a replaceable battery. Yet, i've had plenty of small, light, sturdy, water resistant phones with replaceable batteries. I really have a hard time believing that argument i'm sorry. The only real reason I can see not to allow replaceable batteries is to increase profit for manufacturers. Same with every other 'feature' i've seen marketed to people with the same excuse. It's nonsense. There's alway a profit motive behind things and the bottom line is... The less modular consumer devices are, the more restricted our abilities to repair, modify and use our devices become, the less user friendly they become. The only ones benefiting from removing modularity, repairability and turning devices into black boxes without standardized parts requiring either replacement of the entire device or specialized repair services are the manufacturers period. It's not consumer friendly. Anything else is marketing bullshit to make people accept less control over their devices and more profit for device makers. There's zero legitimate consumer friendly reason not to standardize things and allow easy repair of devices, including replacing batteries, again a long standard feature in consumer electronics. Just because it takes a couple years for batteries to die now, doesn't mean they don't die and need to eventually be replaced like old alkaline batteries. The time scale doesn't change the fact that eventually, yes they do need to be replaced, like any other batteries in battery powered devices.
  - m-ee 6y ago