8 ms·

Your approach will always be a valid choice, for those who want it, and companies will be happy to provide that device-as-a-service model. R2R is just seeking

Your approach will always be a valid choice, for those who want it, and companies will be happy to provide that device-as-a-service model. R2R is just seeking to preserve the practical access to repairability for those who want to service their own devices.

alwaysdoit 5y ago
No it's not, it's looking to enshrine that standard by law for everyone. Nothing is stopping consumers from demanding phones that are self-serviceable, they just simply aren't willing to accept the tradeoffs involved (larger size, worse thermals, higher price, etc). If you disagree, there's an unserved market segment wide open for you!
- datameta 5y ago
  Let's set aside software RTR, which at first glance I believe has no increased costs associated (besides a decreased profit margin from lack of shortened support windows and a locked-down ecosystem). Could you expand on the specifics of what changes RTR would necessitate the hardware to have? Let's say beyond the fact that a non-reversible bond/connector would otherwise be the cheapest option (saving perhaps fractions of pennies on the BOM).
  - LexGray 5y ago
    Mandated right repair would raise weight for battery containers and latches, higher failure as connections would not be soldered in place and hinges and latches may fail, less water resistance as seals may get bumped loose, easier access for hardware hacks for bad actors, more potential consumer injury device damage during repair attempts, and more likely fire scenarios in planes and public areas from incorrectly installed parts. It is attempting to deny consumers those benefits.
    - kiba 5y ago
      Sounds like exaggeration or either overblown concerns. It's also ignoring the fact that manufacturers going out of their way to make a device deliberately more difficult to repair rather than just implementing tradeoffs. It's one thing to have a waterproof phone that you need specialty tools to fix it, it's another thing when manufacturers try to make repairing deliberately more difficult than it should be, such as limiting the sale of OEM components or using security screws. Either way, your thought what Right to Repair is only one version/proposal of what RtR.
    - OrwellianChild 5y ago
      Important distinction here! Right to repair does not prescribe design considerations! You can glue/solder/integrate all you want! Just need to make sure replacement parts are available and documentation is clear!
    - operator-name 5y ago
      The right to repair doesn't mandate any of that - you could have a product that has glued internal batteries and internal seals yet still release the schematics and allow your suppliers to sell the components to consumers. Just look at motor vehicles - people have the right to change their own brake pads yet or even engines! This is arguably way more dangerous than a badly repaired small electronic device!
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  History is full of things that people did not want to mandate via their purchases, but we as a society decided was important... so we made it legally mandatory.
- munk-a 5y ago
  > No it's not, it's looking to enshrine that standard by law for everyone. That's what's necessary IMO - since if it isn't required for all consumers than there is no motivation to make it available for any customers, we'll continue to be dragged down by the LCD as devices get less and less serviceable. Manufacturers don't like options - options cost money and each additional model you offer drives up how much you spend in storage and production line configuration, so they'll target the majority which probably does want to be able to repair devices but either doesn't realize it's still an option or doesn't have the financial freedom to invest in a higher quality device that has a higher upfront price tag but a lifespan that outlives that difference by leaps and bounds.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > Nothing is stopping consumers from demanding phones that are self-serviceable It's not like anyone asked the consumers. Nor were the options put on the market, for the buyers to vote on them with their wallets. The conclusions are assumed in advance by the companies. Meanwhile, consumers choose from what's actually available on the market - not from the space of all possible products. > they just simply aren't willing to accept the tradeoffs involved (larger size, worse thermals, higher price, etc). No customer can truly evaluate the tradeoffs involved. For starters, necessary information isn't publicly available. Companies don't publish reports from their product teams that describe the trade-off space they're working on. Would a user-replaceable battery make the phone thicker? How much? Does the glue actually helps with thermals? What's the price difference? Nobody knows, outside the people involved in these decisions. Secondly, marketers run interference. Maybe a Joe would pay $100 extra for a fully repairable phone, so that Jane could fix it for him when he unavoidably breaks it in six months. Maybe an environmentally conscious Carol would go for one with user-replaceable battery, because she can only afford a cheaper, mostly integrated device. But they won't, because those issues aren't even on a typical person's radar. Instead, the marketing focuses on vague appeal to emotions, misrepresented specs, outright lies, and bait-and-switch "value-add" services. Most people who know better than to fall for such nonsense will just look at the one clear indicator - price. The point is: when you have a system connected to a bunch of input signals, you can't say that a particular signal doesn't affect the system, if half of the other inputs are flooded with noise that's 20dB higher than any legit signal would be. You first need to shut off the noise! > If you disagree, there's an unserved market segment wide open for you! Not for me. There are too many capital barriers to entry around designing and manufacturing high-end electronics. You can't just start a business in this space and hope to offer a comparable price to established magnitudes. Now if an established company like Samsung or Apple dared to try this, then we'd know. Maybe it would turn out there's no market for repairable smartphones. But I haven't seen anybody giving it a shot in a meaningful way.
35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
> Your approach will always be a valid choice, for those who want it This isn't "my approach" – it's the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer. And pining for the good ol' days of technical datasheets doesn't help everybody who can't start their cars without the successful interaction of nearly a hundred proprietary microcontrollers running proprietary code speaking over a high-speed data bus. And here's the annoying thing: I want a car that doesn't have a hundred microcontrollers speaking over a high-speed data bus. I want a car like my old '88 Camry, that I could take apart with my dad and fix almost all of the problems I ran into with the help of a Haynes manual and a trip (or two!) to the junkyard. But the market clearly does not agree with my desires. So how do you get there from here?
- _underfl0w_ 5y ago
  Do you have a source to cite for "the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer"? That seems pretty speculative. The market can be manipulated or directed by more than simply consumer choice, e.g. by business incentives of product manufacturers.
  - 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
    > Do you have a source to cite for "the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer"? I mean, gestures at every consumer-targeted product made since at least the early 'oughts. People want things that are some combination of more capable, more convenient, more reliable, and less expensive. Different consumers obviously make different decisions, but there's a reason you can't go to a car lot and easily find a car with a stick shift. There's a reason you probably don't know anyone who has a Speed Queen top loader (pre-redesign model of course ;)) in their house, even though it is infinitely more reliable and repairable than the competition. Those offerings are less capable, less convenient, and more expensive than the alternatives, so customers don't want them.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      Customers are incredibly short sighted when it comes to purchasing new things - shaving 10% off a price while cutting the expected lifetime of the product down from ten years to three is likely to capture most of the market. I think this is a case where actors are acting in an irrational manner (i.e. not adhering to the perfectly rational actor assumption that's required for free-markets to function) and that necessitates government or other intervention to ensure that consumers are protected. It's depressing because I absolutely agree with you that users aren't purchasing devices with an emphasis on being able to repair them. It is a pain point but not one that comes up at the register and so manufacturers are free to exploit the situation to provide marginally cheaper goods that require full replacement more frequently to ensure consistent sales. Nobody wants to be like Hoover in the 90's that offered free plane tickets with vacuum purchases[1] and caused such an oversupply in the market that first party vacuum sales dwindled to nearly nothing over the next decade and that's fair. But we need to have a balance where we aren't rewarding manufacturers who build products that frequently break and for the consumer to make another purchase. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_free_flights_promotion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_free_flights_promotion

alwaysdoit 5y ago

No it's not, it's looking to enshrine that standard by law for everyone. Nothing is stopping consumers from demanding phones that are self-serviceable, they just simply aren't willing to accept the tradeoffs involved (larger size, worse thermals, higher price, etc). If you disagree, there's an unserved market segment wide open for you!

datameta 5y ago
Let's set aside software RTR, which at first glance I believe has no increased costs associated (besides a decreased profit margin from lack of shortened support windows and a locked-down ecosystem). Could you expand on the specifics of what changes RTR would necessitate the hardware to have? Let's say beyond the fact that a non-reversible bond/connector would otherwise be the cheapest option (saving perhaps fractions of pennies on the BOM).
- LexGray 5y ago
  Mandated right repair would raise weight for battery containers and latches, higher failure as connections would not be soldered in place and hinges and latches may fail, less water resistance as seals may get bumped loose, easier access for hardware hacks for bad actors, more potential consumer injury device damage during repair attempts, and more likely fire scenarios in planes and public areas from incorrectly installed parts. It is attempting to deny consumers those benefits.
  - kiba 5y ago
    Sounds like exaggeration or either overblown concerns. It's also ignoring the fact that manufacturers going out of their way to make a device deliberately more difficult to repair rather than just implementing tradeoffs. It's one thing to have a waterproof phone that you need specialty tools to fix it, it's another thing when manufacturers try to make repairing deliberately more difficult than it should be, such as limiting the sale of OEM components or using security screws. Either way, your thought what Right to Repair is only one version/proposal of what RtR.
  - OrwellianChild 5y ago
    Important distinction here! Right to repair does not prescribe design considerations! You can glue/solder/integrate all you want! Just need to make sure replacement parts are available and documentation is clear!
  - operator-name 5y ago
    The right to repair doesn't mandate any of that - you could have a product that has glued internal batteries and internal seals yet still release the schematics and allow your suppliers to sell the components to consumers. Just look at motor vehicles - people have the right to change their own brake pads yet or even engines! This is arguably way more dangerous than a badly repaired small electronic device!
RHSeeger 5y ago
History is full of things that people did not want to mandate via their purchases, but we as a society decided was important... so we made it legally mandatory.
munk-a 5y ago
> No it's not, it's looking to enshrine that standard by law for everyone. That's what's necessary IMO - since if it isn't required for all consumers than there is no motivation to make it available for any customers, we'll continue to be dragged down by the LCD as devices get less and less serviceable. Manufacturers don't like options - options cost money and each additional model you offer drives up how much you spend in storage and production line configuration, so they'll target the majority which probably does want to be able to repair devices but either doesn't realize it's still an option or doesn't have the financial freedom to invest in a higher quality device that has a higher upfront price tag but a lifespan that outlives that difference by leaps and bounds.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> Nothing is stopping consumers from demanding phones that are self-serviceable It's not like anyone asked the consumers. Nor were the options put on the market, for the buyers to vote on them with their wallets. The conclusions are assumed in advance by the companies. Meanwhile, consumers choose from what's actually available on the market - not from the space of all possible products. > they just simply aren't willing to accept the tradeoffs involved (larger size, worse thermals, higher price, etc). No customer can truly evaluate the tradeoffs involved. For starters, necessary information isn't publicly available. Companies don't publish reports from their product teams that describe the trade-off space they're working on. Would a user-replaceable battery make the phone thicker? How much? Does the glue actually helps with thermals? What's the price difference? Nobody knows, outside the people involved in these decisions. Secondly, marketers run interference. Maybe a Joe would pay $100 extra for a fully repairable phone, so that Jane could fix it for him when he unavoidably breaks it in six months. Maybe an environmentally conscious Carol would go for one with user-replaceable battery, because she can only afford a cheaper, mostly integrated device. But they won't, because those issues aren't even on a typical person's radar. Instead, the marketing focuses on vague appeal to emotions, misrepresented specs, outright lies, and bait-and-switch "value-add" services. Most people who know better than to fall for such nonsense will just look at the one clear indicator - price. The point is: when you have a system connected to a bunch of input signals, you can't say that a particular signal doesn't affect the system, if half of the other inputs are flooded with noise that's 20dB higher than any legit signal would be. You first need to shut off the noise! > If you disagree, there's an unserved market segment wide open for you! Not for me. There are too many capital barriers to entry around designing and manufacturing high-end electronics. You can't just start a business in this space and hope to offer a comparable price to established magnitudes. Now if an established company like Samsung or Apple dared to try this, then we'd know. Maybe it would turn out there's no market for repairable smartphones. But I haven't seen anybody giving it a shot in a meaningful way.

35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago

> Your approach will always be a valid choice, for those who want it This isn't "my approach" – it's the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer. And pining for the good ol' days of technical datasheets doesn't help everybody who can't start their cars without the successful interaction of nearly a hundred proprietary microcontrollers running proprietary code speaking over a high-speed data bus. And here's the annoying thing: I want a car that doesn't have a hundred microcontrollers speaking over a high-speed data bus. I want a car like my old '88 Camry, that I could take apart with my dad and fix almost all of the problems I ran into with the help of a Haynes manual and a trip (or two!) to the junkyard. But the market clearly does not agree with my desires. So how do you get there from here?

_underfl0w_ 5y ago
Do you have a source to cite for "the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer"? That seems pretty speculative. The market can be manipulated or directed by more than simply consumer choice, e.g. by business incentives of product manufacturers.
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
  > Do you have a source to cite for "the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer"? I mean, gestures at every consumer-targeted product made since at least the early 'oughts. People want things that are some combination of more capable, more convenient, more reliable, and less expensive. Different consumers obviously make different decisions, but there's a reason you can't go to a car lot and easily find a car with a stick shift. There's a reason you probably don't know anyone who has a Speed Queen top loader (pre-redesign model of course ;)) in their house, even though it is infinitely more reliable and repairable than the competition. Those offerings are less capable, less convenient, and more expensive than the alternatives, so customers don't want them.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    Customers are incredibly short sighted when it comes to purchasing new things - shaving 10% off a price while cutting the expected lifetime of the product down from ten years to three is likely to capture most of the market. I think this is a case where actors are acting in an irrational manner (i.e. not adhering to the perfectly rational actor assumption that's required for free-markets to function) and that necessitates government or other intervention to ensure that consumers are protected. It's depressing because I absolutely agree with you that users aren't purchasing devices with an emphasis on being able to repair them. It is a pain point but not one that comes up at the register and so manufacturers are free to exploit the situation to provide marginally cheaper goods that require full replacement more frequently to ensure consistent sales. Nobody wants to be like Hoover in the 90's that offered free plane tickets with vacuum purchases[1] and caused such an oversupply in the market that first party vacuum sales dwindled to nearly nothing over the next decade and that's fair. But we need to have a balance where we aren't rewarding manufacturers who build products that frequently break and for the consumer to make another purchase. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_free_flights_promotion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_free_flights_promotion