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I find Rossman insufferable due to his hyperbolic approach to shaming Apple and having a bone to pick with just about everyone- he's the definition of a narciss

I find Rossman insufferable due to his hyperbolic approach to shaming Apple and having a bone to pick with just about everyone- he's the definition of a narcissist. I agree in principle to "right to repair", but Rossman's motives are purely financial and self promoting. I've watched over 100 hours of his content and realized that his audience is primarily made up of anti-apple PC Master Race fanatics that just want to hear Louis troll apple for an hour. Rossman always presents himself as the ultimate victim. Apple has it out for him, NY has it out for him, people less successful than him have it out for him. When you've watched as much of his content as I have, you start to see where his head is, and it's not a pretty place. Anyway, I have found other repair guys that are better than Rossman and don't have so much negativity on their channels. I can get a deeper understanding of repairing tech without the hyperbolic commentary.

GuB-42 5y ago
I think he just understood how YouTube and social media works. New content is more rant and less repair. Anyone can enjoy a good rant troubleshooting motherboards and soldering components is less accessible. Makes me think of Thunderf00t. This guy is a massive troll with, from time to time, great scientific content. He has a lot of followers just here to enjoy the trolling, as evidenced by the fact he is never questioned by his fans even though it is what his channel is supposed to teach.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I do not understand how or why people prefer spending time listening or watching people talk to each other. Is it not much quicker to read transcripts? And why would I want all the noise that happens in the conversation? Reading a summary of the meat and pickles is far more efficient. “YouTube culture” puzzles me. I love it for instructional videos though.
  - GuB-42 5y ago
    Intonation, body language, etc... Generally transcripts don't make good reads. Well written articles/stories are a different thing. As for summaries, long form / short form is an endless debate. Some people say summaries are worthless because you don't get the context and nuances. Others say long form articles (and videos) are a waste of time. Most people are somewhere between these two extremes.
- kiba 5y ago
  I am not sure why people are assuming that Rossmann is some kind of savy youtuber looking to pump up views.
dijit 5y ago
It’s a shame to see this downvoted because even if it’s against what many people believe (we all have “hero’s” and “villains” I suppose, and our hero’s do no wrong) it’s something I also see. I used to watch a lot of Rossman and glossed over his Apple hate because ultimately Apple are putting him and people like him out of a job, so it’s fair to be salty. But a large portion of his content (a few years ago at least) is just hour long rants which are unsubstantiated opinion, he does not see nuance or doesn’t want to try steel-manning the things he disagrees with. Which is something Linus Sebastian is incredibly good at. It does come off almost narcissistic at times, to me at least. But at the end of the day explaining how computers are constructed is great content.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Completely agree. He spews contempt, anger and vile, brings out the worst of people and this is what makes him very appealing. It’s a reality show. Same way how Reddit hooks people in to outrage and justice gifs. With regards to arrogance, it’s difficult to see his arguments for R2R while he is showing off his desoldering skills for a 170 pin BGA. If you want to promote R2R, look at iFixit and EFFs efforts. If HN thinks Rossmann is the hero we should be looking upto, I think we’ve stooped really far down.
  - arvinsim 5y ago
    Textbook ad hominem attack.
- COGlory 5y ago
  It's funny to see this analysis, because in my mind Rossman is simply being a New Yorker and doing things exactly as I'd expect a New Yorker to do them. The mentality that city forces on people to survive produces a narrow personality outcome and Rossman's personality is one of those.
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    I don't understand what his being a NYer has to do with anything. Which statement has he made that was either a lie or an error? What else matters than that? I understand not finding the videoes enjoyable 3 hours of entertainment. That's hardly anyone's cup or tea. I mean finding his arguments questionable. Is it somehow NYer of me to demand this explaination that if you're going to say someone's wrong, they actually have to be wrong?
croutonwagon 5y ago
> I agree in principle to "right to repair", but Rossman's motives are purely financial and self promoting. It’s pretty clear he had built a business on repairing electronics. But that doesn’t invalidate his points. If you own something, you should be able to get it repaired to a reasonable degree. Apple goes out of their way to frustrate even consumables like batteries from being swapped, and I say that as someone that still uses apple products. For him, it makes sense hes more passionate than most, not only is it a passion for him to do this type of work (repairing electronics, not youtubing) but its also his livelyhood, so it makes sense that he would call out companies that make design changes that serve little other purpose than to frustrate repairs and decrease longevity to bolster their sales (and increase e-waste in the process) > I've watched over 100 hours of his content and realized that his audience is primarily made up of anti-apple PC Master Race fanatics that just want to hear Louis troll apple for an hour. Gonna disagree. Regardless of the type of people attracted to his content. It doesn’t invalidate the points he makes there. I don't watch his stuff religiously, and probably haven't viewed as much as you purport to have, but he has a clear schtick (which is basically mandatory for youtubers) but is definitely less negative than many I have seen. The good seems to outweigh the bad. The article starts out saying this was a way for him to vent in a healthy and cathartic way, as a direct substitute to therapy. And it seems to work for him and he has said it before and it shows in the stuff he posts. I wont judge him solely on that just as I wouldn't judge other others who prefer something different, like fishing or hunting and escaping people (myself), or hobbies like music (also myself) or maintaining a garden or yard to work out frustrations. Some even go on the internet to criticize others I guess. What other YouTube channels are showing people to cleanup or swap individual chips, or what part of a board does what? [1][2] I haven’t seen one that compares. It’s pretty neat and a display of a skill set definately don't posses. Even though I work with tech on a daily basis in my own right. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr13FEBRzjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr13FEBRzjM [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUWmqucOkZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUWmqucOkZk
simion314 5y ago
It is fair that you might not like his personality and sometimes he presents things like the Apple engineers are idiots to design such fragile stuff(probably the fragility is by design) BUT all the facts he presents are true and you can confirm by googling things like all the class action lawsuit that were required to force Apple to admit mistakes, or how Apple "geniuses" are incompetent and will not correctly diagnose your issue but instead offer you a new product or just replace the entire motherboard etc. Though I think it would be best to have more people leading the right to repair just for this reason of avoiding people that hate someone personality then opposing this movement.
bogwog 5y ago
When you can’t attack their arguments, resort to personal attacks. The amount of childish personal attacks about Rossman in this thread I think is a good indicator of how right he is. Makes me feel good about that money I donated to his Gofundme.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  I'm not sure why you would say that. Some critics on this thread have given pretty good reasons for why they "dislike" Rossman. while it may seem like some (not most) of those points are attacking Rossmans character, I don't see how some of his character doesn't have a direct impact on his arguments. If he always goes for clickbait titles, has a tendency to exaggerate, prefers to perpetually rant/glorify himself or likes to talk about things that he clearly does not know a lot about that can obviously taint the core of his message to some. FWIW, personally I've watched Louis since the very beginning and he knows a lot about repairing electronics. But I also think the way he kept getting more and more attention as he ranted about Apple really changed the channel and his character at least on video. Also, I honestly think it's more childish to use the "if x is getting criticized it means it's probably right" trope here than it is to criticize the personality of a public figure.
  - bogwog 5y ago
    Bob says "2 plus 2 is 4" > Look, I think Bob is a smart person and knows a lot about math, but personally I don't like him. He's balding, he collects plastic folding chairs in his garage, and he has a Youtube channel with clickbaity titles. Why does that matter? He's right, `2 + 2 == 4`. Why are you posting personal attacks instead of debating his argument? It's impossible to have a productive discussion like that, and it's childish. > I'm not sure why you would say that. Some critics on this thread have given pretty good reasons for why they "dislike" Bob. while it may seem like some (not most) of those points are attacking Bob's character, I don't see how some of his character doesn't have a direct impact on his arguments. If he always goes for clickbait titles, has a tendency to exaggerate, prefers to perpetually rant/glorify himself or likes to talk about things that he clearly does not know a lot about that can obviously taint the core of his message to some. > FWIW, personally I've watched Bob since the very beginning and he knows a lot about repairing electronics. But I also think the way he kept getting more and more attention as he ranted about Apple really changed the channel and his character at least on video. > Also, I honestly think it's more childish to use the "if x is getting criticized it means it's probably right" trope here than it is to criticize the personality of a public figure.
jmpman 5y ago
I’ve learned more about commercial real estate from Louis than I would have from other sources. There are disincentives for commercial real estate owners to lower their leasing rates, as it can drive a re-evaluation of loan criteria by the banks, forcing the owner to immediately increase equity. Banks don’t want this to happen, as it makes their books look bad. Watching his business struggle through Covid fills me with great respect for the small business owner and the difficult choices which must be made. Did NY have it out for him? They were far from business friendly with their Covid restrictions. Recently, his shop was fined for not registering used laptops that his customers had abandoned for repair. Sure, NYC is attempting to prevent stolen laptops from being resold, but the level of bureaucratic idiocy turns Rossman’s channel into a Shakespearen comedy. As for his specific gripes about repeated Apple design failures, he makes a good argument. Two stand out. First, liquid intolerance. Thinkpads from years ago used to tolerate coffee spilt on the keyboard. It flowed right through. From the number of water damaged MacBooks Louis repairs, it appears Apples can’t take a drop. If Apple is upset with Rossman’s criticism, they can easily apply board level coating to solve the problem. Second, he’s critical of the connectors being soldered directly to the motherboard instead of going into a daughterboard and connecting via a flex connector. And, yes, the above design decisions are made by Apple for a number of different, possibly valid reasons. To hit a price point, to fit within a form factor, to deliver in a required timeframe. But Louis brings up the point that Apple may be making these decisions for less than consumer friendly reasons. Planned obsolescence? Could Apple change the design of their connectors so they won’t break? Yes, but maybe they didn’t because they expect 5.8% of the connectors to fail and not be economical to repair in the Apple store, driving 5.8% greater revenue. All that being said, yes, Louis takes the above points, which can be read in a minute, and rehashes them 50 different ways.
- BombNullIsland 5y ago
  I've had three 12" Macbook main boards, two screens, and two keyboards replaced free under Australian Consumer Law because of broken components. Connectors that should have been replaceable onsite in seconds instead requiring depot maintenance and hundreds of dollars in couriers and staff interactions. 10c LVDS cables soldered on instead of replaceable, unrepairable even to Apple, have sent two high quality display panels straight to landfill. Not a great way to run a business.
devwastaken 5y ago
If your largest problem is "negativity" and not about wether it's true the problem is somewhere between your chair and the keyboard. People can have very good reasons to be negative. He makes very valid arguments, how is this "financial and self promoting"? Dont lie about someone's intentions just because you don't agree with their reasoning.
hellow0rldz 5y ago
It's not paranoia if you are right.
fsociety 5y ago
I agree with your characterization but don’t think that it makes him insufferable or have questionable motives. He’s authentic to himself and shows it on YouTube warts and all. Have to respect that. Take his videos as 50-75% opinion and it’s all good.
theshrike79 5y ago
I remember the time I noticed how insufferable he is (to me). He had a video where he was trashing a new MacBook. The largest reason why he liked his current Lenovo over the MacBook was the Lenovo's battery bump. He used the battery bump as a handle when editing videos standing up on the subway. Oof. The sleek MacBook didn't have a convenient handle in the back for him to do his stand-up video editing, thus it was a piece of shit.
- vultour 5y ago
  From the videos I’ve seen there are very few where he doesn’t come off as insufferable. My favourite one is when he starts trashing the Genius Bar for not being able to diagnose an issue with a specific component on the motherboard like he does, and instead they recommend replacing the whole board. I don’t think Dell/HP/Lenovo support is going to bother inspecting a mobo with a microscope and checking voltage levels either.
  - theshrike79 5y ago
    Yea, he seems to be willfully oblivious to the fact that it's not in any way feasible to have every Apple Store staffed with people who have the skills to reflow surface mount components and debug issues with oscilloscopes. It's orders of magnitude easier to just swap whole boards and ship the broken ones to a central place to be either recycled or repaired.
dghughes 5y ago
> I agree in principle to "right to repair", but Rossman's motives are purely financial and self promoting. Self-promoting maybe but if Apple made better products how Rossman would benefit? Isn't it currently the opposite? Rossman does well due to Apple refusing to fix the smallest of issues with their products. And fighting anyone who does whether a customer or repairman.
whoknowswhat11 5y ago
I could not have said it better. This apple employee (BTW - making $20/hr) didn't detect this weird thing I did to scrw up this laptop and so was going to send it to Apple tech people. Dude, if you can find folks to work for $20 / hr with the people skills to fix stuff day in and day out for while dealing with insane repair volume - you could manage your own apple store. Here's the bottom line as an actual customer. I have NEVER been disappointed in the reliability of my iphone. The one time I broke it I walked in an AppleCare had me out same day with a new device. They are also surprisingly waterproof (I know, just resistant supposedly). Does any of this have to do with gluing everything down? How do I know. But my phone has kept on going through some rediculous stuff, so I don't care. Solder everything, glue on top. And USB-C on my laptop keeps on flaking out while lightning seems to seat more reliably. AND my "non repairable" junk iphone seems to have INCREDIBLE re-sale value in comparison to whatever else is out there. So apple IS designing for the long haul, and market rewards that. My wife has an old iphone still getting updates for some reason (in android land this is crazy talk).
- unishark 5y ago
  And I've had motherboards replaced by Toshiba, Fujitsu and just about everyone else whenever there's a major problem with an electronic device under warranty. Seems like the default "nuclear option" they use whenever the problem is non-obvious. And it didn't fix the problem more often than not. Also I have a few ancient apple devices that work fine as ever. Though my wife does have a solid track record in destroying them (or any other brand). Rossman's complaints didn't really bother me though. It's like a car mechanic griping at the manufacturer for making their life difficult, or a patent lawyer bashing the USPTO. Just the kind of thing you'd expect.
sumedh 5y ago
> Rossman's motives are purely financial and self promoting. How does he benefit by teaching others on how to repair stuff for free. You can start your own repair business by watching and learning from his videos.

GuB-42 5y ago

I think he just understood how YouTube and social media works. New content is more rant and less repair. Anyone can enjoy a good rant troubleshooting motherboards and soldering components is less accessible. Makes me think of Thunderf00t. This guy is a massive troll with, from time to time, great scientific content. He has a lot of followers just here to enjoy the trolling, as evidenced by the fact he is never questioned by his fans even though it is what his channel is supposed to teach.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
I do not understand how or why people prefer spending time listening or watching people talk to each other. Is it not much quicker to read transcripts? And why would I want all the noise that happens in the conversation? Reading a summary of the meat and pickles is far more efficient. “YouTube culture” puzzles me. I love it for instructional videos though.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  Intonation, body language, etc... Generally transcripts don't make good reads. Well written articles/stories are a different thing. As for summaries, long form / short form is an endless debate. Some people say summaries are worthless because you don't get the context and nuances. Others say long form articles (and videos) are a waste of time. Most people are somewhere between these two extremes.
kiba 5y ago
I am not sure why people are assuming that Rossmann is some kind of savy youtuber looking to pump up views.

dijit 5y ago

It’s a shame to see this downvoted because even if it’s against what many people believe (we all have “hero’s” and “villains” I suppose, and our hero’s do no wrong) it’s something I also see. I used to watch a lot of Rossman and glossed over his Apple hate because ultimately Apple are putting him and people like him out of a job, so it’s fair to be salty. But a large portion of his content (a few years ago at least) is just hour long rants which are unsubstantiated opinion, he does not see nuance or doesn’t want to try steel-manning the things he disagrees with. Which is something Linus Sebastian is incredibly good at. It does come off almost narcissistic at times, to me at least. But at the end of the day explaining how computers are constructed is great content.

systemvoltage 5y ago
Completely agree. He spews contempt, anger and vile, brings out the worst of people and this is what makes him very appealing. It’s a reality show. Same way how Reddit hooks people in to outrage and justice gifs. With regards to arrogance, it’s difficult to see his arguments for R2R while he is showing off his desoldering skills for a 170 pin BGA. If you want to promote R2R, look at iFixit and EFFs efforts. If HN thinks Rossmann is the hero we should be looking upto, I think we’ve stooped really far down.
- arvinsim 5y ago
  Textbook ad hominem attack.
COGlory 5y ago
It's funny to see this analysis, because in my mind Rossman is simply being a New Yorker and doing things exactly as I'd expect a New Yorker to do them. The mentality that city forces on people to survive produces a narrow personality outcome and Rossman's personality is one of those.
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  I don't understand what his being a NYer has to do with anything. Which statement has he made that was either a lie or an error? What else matters than that? I understand not finding the videoes enjoyable 3 hours of entertainment. That's hardly anyone's cup or tea. I mean finding his arguments questionable. Is it somehow NYer of me to demand this explaination that if you're going to say someone's wrong, they actually have to be wrong?

croutonwagon 5y ago

> I agree in principle to "right to repair", but Rossman's motives are purely financial and self promoting. It’s pretty clear he had built a business on repairing electronics. But that doesn’t invalidate his points. If you own something, you should be able to get it repaired to a reasonable degree. Apple goes out of their way to frustrate even consumables like batteries from being swapped, and I say that as someone that still uses apple products. For him, it makes sense hes more passionate than most, not only is it a passion for him to do this type of work (repairing electronics, not youtubing) but its also his livelyhood, so it makes sense that he would call out companies that make design changes that serve little other purpose than to frustrate repairs and decrease longevity to bolster their sales (and increase e-waste in the process) > I've watched over 100 hours of his content and realized that his audience is primarily made up of anti-apple PC Master Race fanatics that just want to hear Louis troll apple for an hour. Gonna disagree. Regardless of the type of people attracted to his content. It doesn’t invalidate the points he makes there. I don't watch his stuff religiously, and probably haven't viewed as much as you purport to have, but he has a clear schtick (which is basically mandatory for youtubers) but is definitely less negative than many I have seen. The good seems to outweigh the bad. The article starts out saying this was a way for him to vent in a healthy and cathartic way, as a direct substitute to therapy. And it seems to work for him and he has said it before and it shows in the stuff he posts. I wont judge him solely on that just as I wouldn't judge other others who prefer something different, like fishing or hunting and escaping people (myself), or hobbies like music (also myself) or maintaining a garden or yard to work out frustrations. Some even go on the internet to criticize others I guess. What other YouTube channels are showing people to cleanup or swap individual chips, or what part of a board does what? [1][2] I haven’t seen one that compares. It’s pretty neat and a display of a skill set definately don't posses. Even though I work with tech on a daily basis in my own right. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr13FEBRzjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr13FEBRzjM [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUWmqucOkZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUWmqucOkZk

simion314 5y ago

It is fair that you might not like his personality and sometimes he presents things like the Apple engineers are idiots to design such fragile stuff(probably the fragility is by design) BUT all the facts he presents are true and you can confirm by googling things like all the class action lawsuit that were required to force Apple to admit mistakes, or how Apple "geniuses" are incompetent and will not correctly diagnose your issue but instead offer you a new product or just replace the entire motherboard etc. Though I think it would be best to have more people leading the right to repair just for this reason of avoiding people that hate someone personality then opposing this movement.

bogwog 5y ago

When you can’t attack their arguments, resort to personal attacks. The amount of childish personal attacks about Rossman in this thread I think is a good indicator of how right he is. Makes me feel good about that money I donated to his Gofundme.

mardifoufs 5y ago
I'm not sure why you would say that. Some critics on this thread have given pretty good reasons for why they "dislike" Rossman. while it may seem like some (not most) of those points are attacking Rossmans character, I don't see how some of his character doesn't have a direct impact on his arguments. If he always goes for clickbait titles, has a tendency to exaggerate, prefers to perpetually rant/glorify himself or likes to talk about things that he clearly does not know a lot about that can obviously taint the core of his message to some. FWIW, personally I've watched Louis since the very beginning and he knows a lot about repairing electronics. But I also think the way he kept getting more and more attention as he ranted about Apple really changed the channel and his character at least on video. Also, I honestly think it's more childish to use the "if x is getting criticized it means it's probably right" trope here than it is to criticize the personality of a public figure.
- bogwog 5y ago
  Bob says "2 plus 2 is 4" > Look, I think Bob is a smart person and knows a lot about math, but personally I don't like him. He's balding, he collects plastic folding chairs in his garage, and he has a Youtube channel with clickbaity titles. Why does that matter? He's right, `2 + 2 == 4`. Why are you posting personal attacks instead of debating his argument? It's impossible to have a productive discussion like that, and it's childish. > I'm not sure why you would say that. Some critics on this thread have given pretty good reasons for why they "dislike" Bob. while it may seem like some (not most) of those points are attacking Bob's character, I don't see how some of his character doesn't have a direct impact on his arguments. If he always goes for clickbait titles, has a tendency to exaggerate, prefers to perpetually rant/glorify himself or likes to talk about things that he clearly does not know a lot about that can obviously taint the core of his message to some. > FWIW, personally I've watched Bob since the very beginning and he knows a lot about repairing electronics. But I also think the way he kept getting more and more attention as he ranted about Apple really changed the channel and his character at least on video. > Also, I honestly think it's more childish to use the "if x is getting criticized it means it's probably right" trope here than it is to criticize the personality of a public figure.

jmpman 5y ago

I’ve learned more about commercial real estate from Louis than I would have from other sources. There are disincentives for commercial real estate owners to lower their leasing rates, as it can drive a re-evaluation of loan criteria by the banks, forcing the owner to immediately increase equity. Banks don’t want this to happen, as it makes their books look bad. Watching his business struggle through Covid fills me with great respect for the small business owner and the difficult choices which must be made. Did NY have it out for him? They were far from business friendly with their Covid restrictions. Recently, his shop was fined for not registering used laptops that his customers had abandoned for repair. Sure, NYC is attempting to prevent stolen laptops from being resold, but the level of bureaucratic idiocy turns Rossman’s channel into a Shakespearen comedy. As for his specific gripes about repeated Apple design failures, he makes a good argument. Two stand out. First, liquid intolerance. Thinkpads from years ago used to tolerate coffee spilt on the keyboard. It flowed right through. From the number of water damaged MacBooks Louis repairs, it appears Apples can’t take a drop. If Apple is upset with Rossman’s criticism, they can easily apply board level coating to solve the problem. Second, he’s critical of the connectors being soldered directly to the motherboard instead of going into a daughterboard and connecting via a flex connector. And, yes, the above design decisions are made by Apple for a number of different, possibly valid reasons. To hit a price point, to fit within a form factor, to deliver in a required timeframe. But Louis brings up the point that Apple may be making these decisions for less than consumer friendly reasons. Planned obsolescence? Could Apple change the design of their connectors so they won’t break? Yes, but maybe they didn’t because they expect 5.8% of the connectors to fail and not be economical to repair in the Apple store, driving 5.8% greater revenue. All that being said, yes, Louis takes the above points, which can be read in a minute, and rehashes them 50 different ways.

BombNullIsland 5y ago
I've had three 12" Macbook main boards, two screens, and two keyboards replaced free under Australian Consumer Law because of broken components. Connectors that should have been replaceable onsite in seconds instead requiring depot maintenance and hundreds of dollars in couriers and staff interactions. 10c LVDS cables soldered on instead of replaceable, unrepairable even to Apple, have sent two high quality display panels straight to landfill. Not a great way to run a business.

devwastaken 5y ago

If your largest problem is "negativity" and not about wether it's true the problem is somewhere between your chair and the keyboard. People can have very good reasons to be negative. He makes very valid arguments, how is this "financial and self promoting"? Dont lie about someone's intentions just because you don't agree with their reasoning.

hellow0rldz 5y ago

It's not paranoia if you are right.

fsociety 5y ago

I agree with your characterization but don’t think that it makes him insufferable or have questionable motives. He’s authentic to himself and shows it on YouTube warts and all. Have to respect that. Take his videos as 50-75% opinion and it’s all good.

theshrike79 5y ago

I remember the time I noticed how insufferable he is (to me). He had a video where he was trashing a new MacBook. The largest reason why he liked his current Lenovo over the MacBook was the Lenovo's battery bump. He used the battery bump as a handle when editing videos standing up on the subway. Oof. The sleek MacBook didn't have a convenient handle in the back for him to do his stand-up video editing, thus it was a piece of shit.

vultour 5y ago
From the videos I’ve seen there are very few where he doesn’t come off as insufferable. My favourite one is when he starts trashing the Genius Bar for not being able to diagnose an issue with a specific component on the motherboard like he does, and instead they recommend replacing the whole board. I don’t think Dell/HP/Lenovo support is going to bother inspecting a mobo with a microscope and checking voltage levels either.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  Yea, he seems to be willfully oblivious to the fact that it's not in any way feasible to have every Apple Store staffed with people who have the skills to reflow surface mount components and debug issues with oscilloscopes. It's orders of magnitude easier to just swap whole boards and ship the broken ones to a central place to be either recycled or repaired.

dghughes 5y ago

> I agree in principle to "right to repair", but Rossman's motives are purely financial and self promoting. Self-promoting maybe but if Apple made better products how Rossman would benefit? Isn't it currently the opposite? Rossman does well due to Apple refusing to fix the smallest of issues with their products. And fighting anyone who does whether a customer or repairman.

whoknowswhat11 5y ago

I could not have said it better. This apple employee (BTW - making $20/hr) didn't detect this weird thing I did to scrw up this laptop and so was going to send it to Apple tech people. Dude, if you can find folks to work for $20 / hr with the people skills to fix stuff day in and day out for while dealing with insane repair volume - you could manage your own apple store. Here's the bottom line as an actual customer. I have NEVER been disappointed in the reliability of my iphone. The one time I broke it I walked in an AppleCare had me out same day with a new device. They are also surprisingly waterproof (I know, just resistant supposedly). Does any of this have to do with gluing everything down? How do I know. But my phone has kept on going through some rediculous stuff, so I don't care. Solder everything, glue on top. And USB-C on my laptop keeps on flaking out while lightning seems to seat more reliably. AND my "non repairable" junk iphone seems to have INCREDIBLE re-sale value in comparison to whatever else is out there. So apple IS designing for the long haul, and market rewards that. My wife has an old iphone still getting updates for some reason (in android land this is crazy talk).

unishark 5y ago
And I've had motherboards replaced by Toshiba, Fujitsu and just about everyone else whenever there's a major problem with an electronic device under warranty. Seems like the default "nuclear option" they use whenever the problem is non-obvious. And it didn't fix the problem more often than not. Also I have a few ancient apple devices that work fine as ever. Though my wife does have a solid track record in destroying them (or any other brand). Rossman's complaints didn't really bother me though. It's like a car mechanic griping at the manufacturer for making their life difficult, or a patent lawyer bashing the USPTO. Just the kind of thing you'd expect.

sumedh 5y ago

> Rossman's motives are purely financial and self promoting. How does he benefit by teaching others on how to repair stuff for free. You can start your own repair business by watching and learning from his videos.