7 ms·

Apple's fight against right to repair while pushing materials to the public that state they are trying to reduce their carbon footprint is the absolute peak of

by xyst 5y ago

Apple's fight against right to repair while pushing materials to the public that state they are trying to reduce their carbon footprint is the absolute peak of hypocrisy. I understand the closed off design of their products is a result of the Steve Jobs era, but why can't the current leadership make a change? Why can't Apple make their products easily repairable while making them aesthetically pleasing? The typical "private companies must satisfy the shareholders" answer is just a scapegoat. Truly innovative companies (and companies of Apple's size and worth) should be able to solve these problems. Doing anything else is just fucking laziness.

nrp 5y ago
Apple’s business and design philosophies revolve around control. In exchange for locking down everything, they promise you a seamless, high-performance, safe experience. That extends to designing products in a way that end-user repair is not a consideration, to locking down access to the App Store (see the Epic trial), and more. I personally think it’s a bad direction to go in, especially with the outsized power Apple has over the industry, but they have clearly found willing audiences for it.
- worik 5y ago
  As a Apple developer it is not a "seamless, high-performance, safe experience". Anything but.
  - kragen 5y ago
    You're not the customer, you're the product.
    - worik 5y ago
      Not in this case mate. I paid them. I am the creative cutting edge!
      - Siira 5y ago
        Paying doesn’t magically make them not want to extract all of your value. Apple could sell iPhones at a loss just because of the AppStore theft, and still survive.
        worik 5y ago
        Paying them encourages them!! Silly, silly, me
  - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
    They are focused on the users - not the developers. We already have a sense of the insane dark patterns developers can deliver on the web. Pop up and under ads with unhittable close boxes, recurring subscriptions that can only be cancelled in narrow windows by calling a UK phone number. Seriously - look at the coalition Epic put together for their trial. Almost everyone on there has some sort of abusive billing process / history.
    - tenacious_tuna 5y ago
      > They are focused on the users - not the developers. I'm a former Mac dev--I think Apple likes to use this argument to justify a lot of their choices, but in reality their design decisions often make life difficult for developers in ways that aren't beneficial to the customers. My former company produced screen recording software, and since I started in 2018 to when I left at the end of 2020 each MacOS release required us to spend a good 3 months fixing our apps to run under the new OSes. Notarization required us to change how we signed our libraries and integrated them across the 3 applications we produced; the permissions paradigm for mic and webcam was beautiful, and easy to develop around, but when they added screen recording permissions it was truly awful, and they broke their own patterns. APIs would be deprecated with no replacement, documentation was sparse at best, with header files often being more useful than the examples provided on developer.apple.com.... My point being, we often spent more time bending our app to Apple's will than fixing bugs or adding much-requested features. Apple's argument was that these changes they forced us to make was net-beneficial for end users: less malware with notarization, better privacy controls with permissions--but when it really came down to it, they just want more control over distribution of apps and "special treatment" for their own tooling.
    - horsawlarway 5y ago
      They're focused on making money and fuck all else. Apple is the literal definition of "insane dark patterns" if you happen to be a developer. Made a profitable app on the app store? Oh look! Apple used your market data to clone it, shoved their product to the top of the "marketplace" they happen to own, and now you have no business. Want to improve your user experience by shipping a compliant browser rendering engine? Oh... we're so sorry, only Apple can "safely" let the user view the web, using safari, where they hoover up more data. Want to debug on a variety of hardware/software combinations to better support users? Oh... sadly the licensing agreement forbids virtualization - Go spend 10k on physical devices. Basically - Apple is a shit company that happens to have interests that are currently aligned with customer value (in some places). They will not remain that company. Benevolent dictatorships are by far the best form of government you can get - as long as you're in the in group. The problem is you never stay there forever: Either you will change, or the company will change. See the turmoil happening now around Google products. See the backlash MS got in the 90/2000s.
- MetaWhirledPeas 5y ago
  End user repair most certainly is a consideration. They considered it and wholeheartedly rejected it.
kewrkewm53 5y ago
Funnily enough Macbooks were way more repairable when Jobs was still alive. Apple seems to be getting only worse each passing year.
- asdff 5y ago
  It was such a different philosophy back then even just 10 years ago. The RAM modules were easy to access and work with. The battery could be accessed with your finger and a latch, because it was assumed users would need a new battery in a few years. The HD was also accessible from this same door, because it was assumed users would be upgrading to an SSD in a few years. Users were given all the IO Apple thought they would possibly need. Then Tim Cook came to power and let Jony Ive have free reign of the glue and the solder iron, and Macbooks became disposable.
cgearhart 5y ago
I used to work as a civil service engineer for the Navy in technology development for future weapons. The brass would often complain about how expensive fully-integrated solutions were. We investigated and found that the main cause was vendor lock-in to buy the all up rounds. We couldn’t compete for lowest cost on the power cards, or signal processing cards, rocket motors, etc., because the government didn’t have data rights to the design in order to hold down development costs. (Side note: as a contracting necessity, we’d also put the whole purchase on one huge contract to be managed by the so-called prime contractor and negotiate a profit fee explicitly in the contract itself. The total cost of the prime contract included “pass through” funding for subcontracts that the prime contractor would handle. In some cases the prime would let a subcontract to a vendor who would contract _back_ to a subsidiary of the prime, and we’d pay guaranteed profit margin explicitly on the prime and the subcontract amounts, so we’d pay a profit markup to the prime on the profit they would make from their subsidiary. And folks around here gripe about the 30% app “tax”.) Anyway, vendor lock-in means we can’t compete subcomponents and our long term maintenance costs are really high because we always have to go back to the vendor for service. (Sounding familiar…?) The brass started dreaming up “modular weapons systems” where we maybe develop things like universal power modules, guidance modules, and other components, then we could compete for low cost production and long-term maintenance and achieve utopia. I spent quite a while on this, and what we found is that it wouldn’t work (at least not for weapons). Universal components aren’t well-suited to different platforms (3” rocket vs 14” missile, etc.), the modular design adds weight, reduces efficiency for the electronics systems, increases part count to make them all interoperable, and so on. The engineering trades that you have to make for modular designs are incompatible with optimizing performance as measured by the end user. Ironically perhaps, one of the major case studies that helped argue that point was based around Apple products. Which is perhaps a long way to say that most consumers don’t seem to care about modular computers, and in the worst case many of the changes that modularity would require are counterproductive to the things consumers _do_ seem to care about. It’s one thing to argue that we should use governmental regulation to push negative externalities back onto firms so that they reconsider the design and engineering constraints they prioritize, but it’s not like firms are being irrational or irresponsible by giving people what they want—some combination of smaller, lighter, faster, longer battery life, and cheaper devices. There would be some negative impact on some (or all) of those characteristics if Apple, Samsung, or anyone else switched to fully modular designs—and I think most consumers would choose the cheaper, faster, smaller, lighter, or longer battery life models than to buy a modular one either on principle or because they expect to repair or upgrade it for significantly longer than they expect to own them today.
bgorman 5y ago
Some devices like the Magic Mouse become paperweights after the battery fails and cannot be repaired at all. I think one part of the problem is all of the encouragement and virtue signaling around recycling. A friend told me “Apple is the best tech company for the environment because they recycle more than any others”. Reduce > Reuse > Recycle The fact that Apple peripherals are not user repairable is an absolute environmental disaster.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
duped 5y ago
I mean before you call it hypocritical you need to take a holistic view of the supply chain. Electronics manufacturing is incredibly wasteful, even if you're making something that can be repaired! Apple is at least working towards more sustainable technologies than traditional manufacturing. Photolithography is fucking awful for the planet and yet foundational to many devices, just for example.
newsclues 5y ago
If they want to sell thin and light appliances ok. But give me the choice to buy a repairable long term platform and I’ll stay invested in the ecosystem and pay a premium for thicker repairable MBP
pembrook 5y ago
It's because they can see the bigger picture, beyond these 2010s-era complaints of 'user-upgradable RAM.' This is totally irrelevant in a SOC world. Apple is indeed reducing the carbon footprint of computer manufacturing, by consolidating more and more components on a single chip (SOC) with M1, and creating smaller and smaller hardware. There's a ridiculous amount of carbon footprint saved by not having to source, ship, and assemble separate RAM, GPUs, Processors, etc from separate suppliers located all across the world. 10 years from now when your entire motherboard and all its components sit inside a chip small enough to fit inside a single AirPod...and 20 years from now when the need for physical LCD/OLED panels disappears...does it really matter how repairable it is? Even 100 million of them won't fill a single average-sized landfill. Hell, we've already broke 1nm [1]. This means hardware will continue to get smaller and smaller for years to come. Hardware consolidation and physical size reduction is the bigger gain, and the goal we all should be focused on if we actually care about sustainability. The fact is, only a tiny minority of consumers would even entertain the idea of replacing computer components in the first place. This has been true for the 4 decades PCs have been around with easily replaceable hardware, so I don't think Apple changing to Philips head screws is going to change that. [1] https://technosports.co.in/2021/05/20/tsmc-mit-and-ntu-announce-1nm-chip-breakthrough-weeks-after-ibms-2nm-success/ https://technosports.co.in/2021/05/20/tsmc-mit-and-ntu-annou...
- z-nexx 5y ago
  idk what you are on about, you wanna defend throwing away a whole laptop when the battery's dead or the LCD is broken? You don't think "right to repair" is all about replacing IC's on a PCB, right? There are a ton of vital components in a modern laptop that would easily be replacable by either a dedicated layman or an unlicenced professional. E.g. the webcam, SSD, battery, cables between these and the MB, the LCD, keyboard, touchpad, power button, speakers, screen bezel, digitizer, daughterboards, lid sensor, the list goes on and on and on. And remember that "right to repair" does not only entail end users, but also local repair shops and IT service companies who simply are not licensed with a specific brand.
- swiley 5y ago
  Yeah no that's bullshit. (and a change of subject) We're not asking for modular connectors (although those are nice) or larger competents. we're asking Apple (and everyone imitating them) to stop artificially preventing people from replacing parts (either via deals with suppliers that prevent people from buying them or via software lockouts.) People do surface mount rework all the time (I think the guy TFA is talking about is the same that inspired me to learn how to do it.) Not having to throw stuff away because a single component that could otherwise be replaced is a huge gain for the environment (especially people in places that ewaste accumulates) and doesn't have to come at the expense of size reduction.

by xyst 5y ago

nrp 5y ago

Apple’s business and design philosophies revolve around control. In exchange for locking down everything, they promise you a seamless, high-performance, safe experience. That extends to designing products in a way that end-user repair is not a consideration, to locking down access to the App Store (see the Epic trial), and more. I personally think it’s a bad direction to go in, especially with the outsized power Apple has over the industry, but they have clearly found willing audiences for it.

worik 5y ago
As a Apple developer it is not a "seamless, high-performance, safe experience". Anything but.
- kragen 5y ago
  You're not the customer, you're the product.
  - worik 5y ago
    Not in this case mate. I paid them. I am the creative cutting edge!
    - Siira 5y ago
      Paying doesn’t magically make them not want to extract all of your value. Apple could sell iPhones at a loss just because of the AppStore theft, and still survive.
      - worik 5y ago
        Paying them encourages them!! Silly, silly, me
- whoknowswhat11 5y ago
  They are focused on the users - not the developers. We already have a sense of the insane dark patterns developers can deliver on the web. Pop up and under ads with unhittable close boxes, recurring subscriptions that can only be cancelled in narrow windows by calling a UK phone number. Seriously - look at the coalition Epic put together for their trial. Almost everyone on there has some sort of abusive billing process / history.
  - tenacious_tuna 5y ago
    > They are focused on the users - not the developers. I'm a former Mac dev--I think Apple likes to use this argument to justify a lot of their choices, but in reality their design decisions often make life difficult for developers in ways that aren't beneficial to the customers. My former company produced screen recording software, and since I started in 2018 to when I left at the end of 2020 each MacOS release required us to spend a good 3 months fixing our apps to run under the new OSes. Notarization required us to change how we signed our libraries and integrated them across the 3 applications we produced; the permissions paradigm for mic and webcam was beautiful, and easy to develop around, but when they added screen recording permissions it was truly awful, and they broke their own patterns. APIs would be deprecated with no replacement, documentation was sparse at best, with header files often being more useful than the examples provided on developer.apple.com.... My point being, we often spent more time bending our app to Apple's will than fixing bugs or adding much-requested features. Apple's argument was that these changes they forced us to make was net-beneficial for end users: less malware with notarization, better privacy controls with permissions--but when it really came down to it, they just want more control over distribution of apps and "special treatment" for their own tooling.
  - horsawlarway 5y ago
    They're focused on making money and fuck all else. Apple is the literal definition of "insane dark patterns" if you happen to be a developer. Made a profitable app on the app store? Oh look! Apple used your market data to clone it, shoved their product to the top of the "marketplace" they happen to own, and now you have no business. Want to improve your user experience by shipping a compliant browser rendering engine? Oh... we're so sorry, only Apple can "safely" let the user view the web, using safari, where they hoover up more data. Want to debug on a variety of hardware/software combinations to better support users? Oh... sadly the licensing agreement forbids virtualization - Go spend 10k on physical devices. Basically - Apple is a shit company that happens to have interests that are currently aligned with customer value (in some places). They will not remain that company. Benevolent dictatorships are by far the best form of government you can get - as long as you're in the in group. The problem is you never stay there forever: Either you will change, or the company will change. See the turmoil happening now around Google products. See the backlash MS got in the 90/2000s.
MetaWhirledPeas 5y ago
End user repair most certainly is a consideration. They considered it and wholeheartedly rejected it.

kewrkewm53 5y ago

Funnily enough Macbooks were way more repairable when Jobs was still alive. Apple seems to be getting only worse each passing year.

asdff 5y ago
It was such a different philosophy back then even just 10 years ago. The RAM modules were easy to access and work with. The battery could be accessed with your finger and a latch, because it was assumed users would need a new battery in a few years. The HD was also accessible from this same door, because it was assumed users would be upgrading to an SSD in a few years. Users were given all the IO Apple thought they would possibly need. Then Tim Cook came to power and let Jony Ive have free reign of the glue and the solder iron, and Macbooks became disposable.

cgearhart 5y ago

I used to work as a civil service engineer for the Navy in technology development for future weapons. The brass would often complain about how expensive fully-integrated solutions were. We investigated and found that the main cause was vendor lock-in to buy the all up rounds. We couldn’t compete for lowest cost on the power cards, or signal processing cards, rocket motors, etc., because the government didn’t have data rights to the design in order to hold down development costs. (Side note: as a contracting necessity, we’d also put the whole purchase on one huge contract to be managed by the so-called prime contractor and negotiate a profit fee explicitly in the contract itself. The total cost of the prime contract included “pass through” funding for subcontracts that the prime contractor would handle. In some cases the prime would let a subcontract to a vendor who would contract _back_ to a subsidiary of the prime, and we’d pay guaranteed profit margin explicitly on the prime and the subcontract amounts, so we’d pay a profit markup to the prime on the profit they would make from their subsidiary. And folks around here gripe about the 30% app “tax”.) Anyway, vendor lock-in means we can’t compete subcomponents and our long term maintenance costs are really high because we always have to go back to the vendor for service. (Sounding familiar…?) The brass started dreaming up “modular weapons systems” where we maybe develop things like universal power modules, guidance modules, and other components, then we could compete for low cost production and long-term maintenance and achieve utopia. I spent quite a while on this, and what we found is that it wouldn’t work (at least not for weapons). Universal components aren’t well-suited to different platforms (3” rocket vs 14” missile, etc.), the modular design adds weight, reduces efficiency for the electronics systems, increases part count to make them all interoperable, and so on. The engineering trades that you have to make for modular designs are incompatible with optimizing performance as measured by the end user. Ironically perhaps, one of the major case studies that helped argue that point was based around Apple products. Which is perhaps a long way to say that most consumers don’t seem to care about modular computers, and in the worst case many of the changes that modularity would require are counterproductive to the things consumers _do_ seem to care about. It’s one thing to argue that we should use governmental regulation to push negative externalities back onto firms so that they reconsider the design and engineering constraints they prioritize, but it’s not like firms are being irrational or irresponsible by giving people what they want—some combination of smaller, lighter, faster, longer battery life, and cheaper devices. There would be some negative impact on some (or all) of those characteristics if Apple, Samsung, or anyone else switched to fully modular designs—and I think most consumers would choose the cheaper, faster, smaller, lighter, or longer battery life models than to buy a modular one either on principle or because they expect to repair or upgrade it for significantly longer than they expect to own them today.

bgorman 5y ago

Some devices like the Magic Mouse become paperweights after the battery fails and cannot be repaired at all. I think one part of the problem is all of the encouragement and virtue signaling around recycling. A friend told me “Apple is the best tech company for the environment because they recycle more than any others”. Reduce > Reuse > Recycle The fact that Apple peripherals are not user repairable is an absolute environmental disaster.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

duped 5y ago

I mean before you call it hypocritical you need to take a holistic view of the supply chain. Electronics manufacturing is incredibly wasteful, even if you're making something that can be repaired! Apple is at least working towards more sustainable technologies than traditional manufacturing. Photolithography is fucking awful for the planet and yet foundational to many devices, just for example.

newsclues 5y ago

If they want to sell thin and light appliances ok. But give me the choice to buy a repairable long term platform and I’ll stay invested in the ecosystem and pay a premium for thicker repairable MBP

pembrook 5y ago

It's because they can see the bigger picture, beyond these 2010s-era complaints of 'user-upgradable RAM.' This is totally irrelevant in a SOC world. Apple is indeed reducing the carbon footprint of computer manufacturing, by consolidating more and more components on a single chip (SOC) with M1, and creating smaller and smaller hardware. There's a ridiculous amount of carbon footprint saved by not having to source, ship, and assemble separate RAM, GPUs, Processors, etc from separate suppliers located all across the world. 10 years from now when your entire motherboard and all its components sit inside a chip small enough to fit inside a single AirPod...and 20 years from now when the need for physical LCD/OLED panels disappears...does it really matter how repairable it is? Even 100 million of them won't fill a single average-sized landfill. Hell, we've already broke 1nm [1]. This means hardware will continue to get smaller and smaller for years to come. Hardware consolidation and physical size reduction is the bigger gain, and the goal we all should be focused on if we actually care about sustainability. The fact is, only a tiny minority of consumers would even entertain the idea of replacing computer components in the first place. This has been true for the 4 decades PCs have been around with easily replaceable hardware, so I don't think Apple changing to Philips head screws is going to change that. [1] https://technosports.co.in/2021/05/20/tsmc-mit-and-ntu-announce-1nm-chip-breakthrough-weeks-after-ibms-2nm-success/ https://technosports.co.in/2021/05/20/tsmc-mit-and-ntu-annou...

z-nexx 5y ago
idk what you are on about, you wanna defend throwing away a whole laptop when the battery's dead or the LCD is broken? You don't think "right to repair" is all about replacing IC's on a PCB, right? There are a ton of vital components in a modern laptop that would easily be replacable by either a dedicated layman or an unlicenced professional. E.g. the webcam, SSD, battery, cables between these and the MB, the LCD, keyboard, touchpad, power button, speakers, screen bezel, digitizer, daughterboards, lid sensor, the list goes on and on and on. And remember that "right to repair" does not only entail end users, but also local repair shops and IT service companies who simply are not licensed with a specific brand.
swiley 5y ago
Yeah no that's bullshit. (and a change of subject) We're not asking for modular connectors (although those are nice) or larger competents. we're asking Apple (and everyone imitating them) to stop artificially preventing people from replacing parts (either via deals with suppliers that prevent people from buying them or via software lockouts.) People do surface mount rework all the time (I think the guy TFA is talking about is the same that inspired me to learn how to do it.) Not having to throw stuff away because a single component that could otherwise be replaced is a huge gain for the environment (especially people in places that ewaste accumulates) and doesn't have to come at the expense of size reduction.