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I'm debating a lot whether to reply in this thread, because I hesitate if it's worth my time only to be downvoted by people who use that function to express dis

I'm debating a lot whether to reply in this thread, because I hesitate if it's worth my time only to be downvoted by people who use that function to express disapproval with legitimate opinions. I don't work for any of the device manufacturers, but I put myself in their place to think about why I would object. Maybe you should too as you debate over this. It's possible that a certain class of things in modern life are not repairable in the way that they used to be. Things have generally been repairable because their size, complexity, and more importantly, their connectedness related to function is able to operate at the size of a person's hands. Your lawn mower, your car, your refrigerator. These are the things that are self-contained and you can see the parts and handle them competently. Those are the kinds of examples he gives. He doesn't talk about trying to resolder the memory controller on a hard drive. Yet even hard drives have been around for 20 years, and no one talks about how they should be able to self-repair those. Your cellphone is getting farther and farther away even from that. Its parts are microscopic. It takes an advanced factory to put those things together, and you demand at the same time that it be small and light and have good battery life. It relies on communicating with other hardware that are upgrading all the time. You don't play networked Doom II on your old computer for a reason. Do you use a 10 year old cell phone? How many of your friends do? People every day are giving companies the signal that they value new and cool and small and light over the ability to repair and keep hardware around for a decade. Those tiny earbuds are selling like hotcakes. They're impossible to fix, yet people buy them. With your purchasing choices, you are signaling what companies are incentivized to make. Yet at the same time, you wish to tell the companies not to make those things in that way. Are they compatible? I mean, have you really thought about what would result if you imposed requirements that batteries be interchangeable now? If those earbuds had to be maintainable by the user? Would they exist in anywhere near the form they do? I think you have to think about the unintended side effects of what you want, and not just imagine that the one thing you want is all that happens. Very few people who advocate for this stuff seem to be responsible for designing the hardware, which makes you think whether they're completely right.

duck2 6y ago
Most sane right-to-repair advocates don't oppose microscopic parts or glued batteries. They oppose deliberate measures against repair, such as: - Parts which are produced by a third party who signed a contract with the manufacturer to not sell the part to other people. So you cannot find whatever $2 power management unit in your phone's main board even if you are willing to use complex equipment to replace it. - Parts which "marry" their devices and refuse to work when you plug them into another device. This kind of behavior actively fights against you repairing the device. I find it unacceptable.
canadian_tired 6y ago
I am a life-time fixer of things. And I support right-to-repair. However, I agree with everything you are saying. Your cellphone example is excellent. I grew up in the 70's and recall how HUGE anything electronic was. Sure, they had piles of discrete, reparable parts, but there is no way anyone would go back to that old tech. It's a wonder how cheap the modern stuff is today... I remember the $4K 1Gb HDD... and now it's pennies. People want cheap and easy and small. The form factor these new things come in form a huge part of their general utility...it's not just good enough to work... it needs to be small, and portable, and pretty, and cheap. In the end, I think some things (like the lawn mower or compressor) can be optimized to be fairly easy to fix...and building them otherwise is just assholery. Some things...well, they are gonna stay disposable. Vote with your wallet people.
bserge 6y ago
I've been lamenting the increasing difficulty of fixing phones, tablets and ultrathin laptops, and I just concluded that since I can't change anything, I might as well get more advanced tools. It used to take a few screwdrivers and a soldering iron... well, newer tech is much more complex, so you just need better tools. A heat gun, thermal glue, prying tools, magnifier, a rework station, and you're good to go. Everything being soldered on one board is a real travesty - a failed system board on a new laptop means you throw away the CPU, GPU, RAM and even the SSD. That just seems insane to me, a laptop that's a few mm thinner is not worth it, I'd rather have the CPU socketed, GPU, RAM and storage slotted. People with laptops that use MXM slots are upgrading from Kepler GPUs to Maxwell, Pascal and newer, everyone else is buying whole new machines. What a waste. But that might actually make it cheaper to fix or upgrade BGA chips since you can buy the whole failed system board pretty cheap. Just gotta have the right tools.
ksk 6y ago
Your comment is unfair, and if I'm being honest sounds very disingenuous if you've really spoken to people in the right to repair movement. If a business is willing to invest time, learn board repair, and offer it as a service without demanding Apple or anyone else change their design, what right does Apple have to block that? Apple prohibits sale of spare parts (by third-parties) to anyone but themselves, they outright ban people from accessing schematics, and other tools that repair shops need to fix boards. They are extremely hostile to the repair industry. Its one thing to demand Apple change their design (as if anyone can do that), its quite another to politely request that maybe perhaps Apple shouldn't focus their energy on crushing the repair industry. Its laughable that Apple happily certifies their own products as "green" when they are so hell bent against repair. Apple's (and others') anti-repair policies generate a ton of e-waste.
analog31 6y ago
I've fixed things all my life. I just fixed a wireless mouse by harvesting a switch from a wired mouse in my junk bin. It took not much more time than ordering a new mouse. I get that things have gotten smaller. I can't do transistor level repairs when the transistors are 7 nanometers across. I've fixed nearly every appliance in my house, some twice or more. What I've learned is that a remarkable number of repairs involve something that is basically mechanical, and big enough to work on, if you can get at it. I resoldered the headphone jack on my son's cell phone. But design measures that frustrate repair and don't really add much value, such as tamper proof screws, prevent what might otherwise be a perfectly legitimate and easy repair. That bothers me. Design features that seem to gratuitously frustrate repairs. IP built into components to prevent aftermarket replacement parts from working.

duck2 6y ago

Most sane right-to-repair advocates don't oppose microscopic parts or glued batteries. They oppose deliberate measures against repair, such as: - Parts which are produced by a third party who signed a contract with the manufacturer to not sell the part to other people. So you cannot find whatever $2 power management unit in your phone's main board even if you are willing to use complex equipment to replace it. - Parts which "marry" their devices and refuse to work when you plug them into another device. This kind of behavior actively fights against you repairing the device. I find it unacceptable.

canadian_tired 6y ago

I am a life-time fixer of things. And I support right-to-repair. However, I agree with everything you are saying. Your cellphone example is excellent. I grew up in the 70's and recall how HUGE anything electronic was. Sure, they had piles of discrete, reparable parts, but there is no way anyone would go back to that old tech. It's a wonder how cheap the modern stuff is today... I remember the $4K 1Gb HDD... and now it's pennies. People want cheap and easy and small. The form factor these new things come in form a huge part of their general utility...it's not just good enough to work... it needs to be small, and portable, and pretty, and cheap. In the end, I think some things (like the lawn mower or compressor) can be optimized to be fairly easy to fix...and building them otherwise is just assholery. Some things...well, they are gonna stay disposable. Vote with your wallet people.

bserge 6y ago

I've been lamenting the increasing difficulty of fixing phones, tablets and ultrathin laptops, and I just concluded that since I can't change anything, I might as well get more advanced tools. It used to take a few screwdrivers and a soldering iron... well, newer tech is much more complex, so you just need better tools. A heat gun, thermal glue, prying tools, magnifier, a rework station, and you're good to go. Everything being soldered on one board is a real travesty - a failed system board on a new laptop means you throw away the CPU, GPU, RAM and even the SSD. That just seems insane to me, a laptop that's a few mm thinner is not worth it, I'd rather have the CPU socketed, GPU, RAM and storage slotted. People with laptops that use MXM slots are upgrading from Kepler GPUs to Maxwell, Pascal and newer, everyone else is buying whole new machines. What a waste. But that might actually make it cheaper to fix or upgrade BGA chips since you can buy the whole failed system board pretty cheap. Just gotta have the right tools.

ksk 6y ago

Your comment is unfair, and if I'm being honest sounds very disingenuous if you've really spoken to people in the right to repair movement. If a business is willing to invest time, learn board repair, and offer it as a service without demanding Apple or anyone else change their design, what right does Apple have to block that? Apple prohibits sale of spare parts (by third-parties) to anyone but themselves, they outright ban people from accessing schematics, and other tools that repair shops need to fix boards. They are extremely hostile to the repair industry. Its one thing to demand Apple change their design (as if anyone can do that), its quite another to politely request that maybe perhaps Apple shouldn't focus their energy on crushing the repair industry. Its laughable that Apple happily certifies their own products as "green" when they are so hell bent against repair. Apple's (and others') anti-repair policies generate a ton of e-waste.

analog31 6y ago

I've fixed things all my life. I just fixed a wireless mouse by harvesting a switch from a wired mouse in my junk bin. It took not much more time than ordering a new mouse. I get that things have gotten smaller. I can't do transistor level repairs when the transistors are 7 nanometers across. I've fixed nearly every appliance in my house, some twice or more. What I've learned is that a remarkable number of repairs involve something that is basically mechanical, and big enough to work on, if you can get at it. I resoldered the headphone jack on my son's cell phone. But design measures that frustrate repair and don't really add much value, such as tamper proof screws, prevent what might otherwise be a perfectly legitimate and easy repair. That bothers me. Design features that seem to gratuitously frustrate repairs. IP built into components to prevent aftermarket replacement parts from working.