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The problem here was that Apple is the only one who knows what's wrong with this new laptop and they don't have time to try to recover the data. Had the rights-

The problem here was that Apple is the only one who knows what's wrong with this new laptop and they don't have time to try to recover the data. Had the rights-to-repair law passed, the author would have had the option to try with a third party that could have saved his work (or to see whether it is an option). For many, $1000 for not losing two weeks of work is a small price to pay compared to redoing all the work. The issue with having only first-party repair is that you have no choice other than to lose data.

finneganscat 5y ago
You do have another choice: backup your important data, at least daily!
- nomel 5y ago
  What's old is new, I suppose. This is one of the reasons the cloud storage services became so popular. Properly backing up data, with multiple backups, not all piled in the flood prone corner of a closet, is not fun.
- pixl97 5y ago
  Which can be very difficult, on the road where you have low bandwidth especially.
  - cassianoleal 5y ago
    It's really not hard to carry an external drive. Even tiny thumb drives have massive capacities these days. Edit: typo
ska 5y ago
> is that you have no choice other than to lose data. Right-to-repair is great and all, but trusting the storage on a laptop is crazy. I've had basically the same thing happen with Dells, etc. Forget just laptops, though they are more failure prone. Trusting the storage on any single machine for critical work data for any longer than necessary is unprofessional.
- ajross 5y ago
  It's not about trusting the storage, it's that failures in components not storage end up junking the storage in the repair. In all likelihood this board suffered some other sort of component failure (because if it was the flash, something would still boot and display). That 1TB flash device was perfectly good, and with only an ever so slightly compromised design could have been dropped right into a new board and the user would have left happy with "their laptop" still intact. But now the poor guy needs to recover a huge partition from partial backups, and that sucks. And it was totally avoidable.. (FWIW: I don't understand your point about not trusting storage on laptops. Modern SSDs are extremely reliable. Sure they can fail, and you should always have a plan for what happens if they do. But in practice you should absolutely trust your laptop storage.)
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    > But in practice you should absolutely trust your laptop storage As a consumer this is perhaps practical advice. > Trusting the storage on any single machine for critical work data for any longer than necessary is unprofessional. But if you were a customer, would you be okay with a business losing your vital data because they wanted everything on a single machine? It doesn't matter if it's a laptop, it may be a server on the cloud.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      I’m a consumer and a professional. Consumer me cares more about not losing my local data a lot more than professional me does. (Professional me has a lot of other copies even if not perfect backups, I could do a good-enough restore. Consumer me can’t get back a picture of my kids when they were young if I didn’t have backups.)
  - cma 5y ago
    They start heavily corrupting data if left unpowered for around a year or two though, in case this gives anyone false confidence in a use case they aren't designed for.
jmull 5y ago
The moral of the story isn’t we need right-to-repair, it’s back up your data. We need right-to-repair (the sane version), but that’s really not the issue here.
hnarn 5y ago
Really sad to see that almost all comments here immediately turn to "victim blaming" and mention that this is a story about the need for backups, and not the story of hardware manufacturers removing the rights of consumers. And while the RTR laws would have helped here, let's remember there's only one thing we can do in the meantime to put pressure on these companies: don't buy hostile hardware in the first place. Nobody's perfect. I use an iPhone and I just bought a watch from them. But I think it's equally true that you should be able to keep two thoughts in your head at once: even when buying Apple hardware because you're more or less forced to (or really want to), keep talking about how this is unacceptable and lobby every lawmaker you can. It's not cool.

finneganscat 5y ago

You do have another choice: backup your important data, at least daily!

nomel 5y ago
What's old is new, I suppose. This is one of the reasons the cloud storage services became so popular. Properly backing up data, with multiple backups, not all piled in the flood prone corner of a closet, is not fun.
pixl97 5y ago
Which can be very difficult, on the road where you have low bandwidth especially.
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  It's really not hard to carry an external drive. Even tiny thumb drives have massive capacities these days. Edit: typo

ska 5y ago

> is that you have no choice other than to lose data. Right-to-repair is great and all, but trusting the storage on a laptop is crazy. I've had basically the same thing happen with Dells, etc. Forget just laptops, though they are more failure prone. Trusting the storage on any single machine for critical work data for any longer than necessary is unprofessional.

ajross 5y ago
It's not about trusting the storage, it's that failures in components not storage end up junking the storage in the repair. In all likelihood this board suffered some other sort of component failure (because if it was the flash, something would still boot and display). That 1TB flash device was perfectly good, and with only an ever so slightly compromised design could have been dropped right into a new board and the user would have left happy with "their laptop" still intact. But now the poor guy needs to recover a huge partition from partial backups, and that sucks. And it was totally avoidable.. (FWIW: I don't understand your point about not trusting storage on laptops. Modern SSDs are extremely reliable. Sure they can fail, and you should always have a plan for what happens if they do. But in practice you should absolutely trust your laptop storage.)
- threatofrain 5y ago
  > But in practice you should absolutely trust your laptop storage As a consumer this is perhaps practical advice. > Trusting the storage on any single machine for critical work data for any longer than necessary is unprofessional. But if you were a customer, would you be okay with a business losing your vital data because they wanted everything on a single machine? It doesn't matter if it's a laptop, it may be a server on the cloud.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I’m a consumer and a professional. Consumer me cares more about not losing my local data a lot more than professional me does. (Professional me has a lot of other copies even if not perfect backups, I could do a good-enough restore. Consumer me can’t get back a picture of my kids when they were young if I didn’t have backups.)
- cma 5y ago
  They start heavily corrupting data if left unpowered for around a year or two though, in case this gives anyone false confidence in a use case they aren't designed for.

jmull 5y ago

The moral of the story isn’t we need right-to-repair, it’s back up your data. We need right-to-repair (the sane version), but that’s really not the issue here.

hnarn 5y ago

Really sad to see that almost all comments here immediately turn to "victim blaming" and mention that this is a story about the need for backups, and not the story of hardware manufacturers removing the rights of consumers. And while the RTR laws would have helped here, let's remember there's only one thing we can do in the meantime to put pressure on these companies: don't buy hostile hardware in the first place. Nobody's perfect. I use an iPhone and I just bought a watch from them. But I think it's equally true that you should be able to keep two thoughts in your head at once: even when buying Apple hardware because you're more or less forced to (or really want to), keep talking about how this is unacceptable and lobby every lawmaker you can. It's not cool.