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>One possible explanation for the complexity and heft of Apple’s self repair toolkit is that iPhones are intricate devices, ... There is nothing Apple can do to

by ouid 4y ago

>One possible explanation for the complexity and heft of Apple’s self repair toolkit is that iPhones are intricate devices, ... There is nothing Apple can do to make such repairs quick or easy. ESH, The tools are not to fix the phone, they are to open the phone. Replacing a battery is not an academically challenging proposition. I'm not altering the hardware, I'm playing with legos. The difficulty arises because Apple has glued the legos together, and John Gruber thinks that this is an absolutely mandatory feature of the device for, as far as I can tell, the reason of being having paid to argue this, or worse, parroting someone who was paid to argue it.

jdlshore 4y ago
I don’t always agree with Gruber, but I do this time. I also think you’re doing him a disservice with your “paid shill” implication. He stated very clearly why he thinks it’s mandatory: > If it were possible for iPhones to be more easily repairable, without sacrificing their appearance, dimensions, performance, water-and-dust resistance, and cost, Apple would make them more easily repairable. That iPhones are not easily repairable is of no benefit to Apple whatsoever. What’s the theory otherwise? That $69 in-store battery replacements are highly profitable? Engineering is about tradeoffs, and Apple has made the exact same tradeoffs decisions every other premium phone brand has: they’ve sacrificed repairability in favor of the features Gruber made above. You can choose to make that tradeoff differently—and a few niche brands have—but I don’t think that’s what the market wants. Ultimately, complaints about repairability come down to “ why doesn’t everyone else value the same things I do?” The answer: because they value other things more. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
- danaris 4y ago
  Just to add a bit more nuance into this... Personally, I am an Apple fan, and I generally agree with Gruber. However, I think he's being slightly disingenuous here. It's certainly true that all the mainstream phone makers are prioritizing the same features, but what he leaves out is that Apple led the way. Since 2007, Apple's choices for the design of the modern smartphone have been what every other smartphone maker has imitated. Yes, occasionally individual features have gone the other way, but the overall design and philosophy behind them has absolutely been guided by Apple's decisions. So yes, they are doing the same as most other phone makers, but these absolutely are Apple's choices, and Apple's priorities, and they get to take full responsibility for that.
  - jdlshore 4y ago
    Yes, I think that’s fair. From my perspective, they’re making the right tradeoffs—I personally value size, waterproofing, and cost more than repairability. I might feel differently if Apple wasn’t essentially giving away battery replacement service for free, or if I had to replace my battery more often. But as it is, my phones last me years and years with just one battery replacement and no other service needed during their lifetime. Making that once-in-a-phone’s-lifetime replacement easier at the cost of other capabilities doesn’t make sense to me.
    - ouid 4y ago
      oh, what do you consider your phone's lifetime?
      - jdlshore 4y ago
        6-8 years. My last phone was an iPhone 6; my current is an iPhone 12 mini. Previous to that, I had a Palm Pre, and before that, a Palm Treo (which I got in 2000-2001).
- ouid 4y ago
  >If it were possible for iPhones to be more easily repairable, without sacrificing their appearance, dimensions, performance, water-and-dust resistance, and cost, Apple would make them more easily repairable. That iPhones are not easily repairable is of no benefit to Apple whatsoever. What’s the theory otherwise? That $69 in-store battery replacements are highly profitable? This is manifestly absurd. Apple has measured that it can sell an iphone for $1200 that costs them $600 to produce, to each person who buys iphones, about once every 2 years. They have also measured that humans are very bad at recognizing slow degradation of battery life and OS compatibility. Consumers regularly "update" their devices, and deplete the lifetimes of their batteries. In actual fact, restoring a phone to like new condition, through a cheap replacement of a battery, and rolling back software manifestly incompatible with its hardware, results in an experience that is essentially indistinguishable to the experience of obtaining a new phone. It should be notable to you, then, that these are exactly the operations that Apple disallows, either through extremely locked down software, or with literal glue, but it is possible to simulate the experience by buying up, say, an old iphone 5s that has had its battery replaces, and mercifully been prevented from upgrading to newer OSes. I can tell you from experience that this phone feels good and works well. It has a headphone jack, even, providing a superior experience to having to charge and keep track of an extra 3 pieces. In fact, Apple's business model can be concisely described as creating problems with old hardware after you have bought it. This is a crime. The right to repair is one half of this story, of course. The right to downgrade would be the other half, which could easily be amended to the right to root access, which is manifestly a form of the right to repair. >You can choose to make that tradeoff differently—and a few niche brands have—but I don’t think that’s what the market wants. I think you are starting from an assumption that what the market wants is defined exclusively by what consumers want. There are two types of actor in "the market", one of whom is the producer. What the market wants is an amalgam of what the consumer wants and what the producer wants, and a rather simple analysis indicates that the status quo is much better described by what the producer wants in the case of Apple products. This is not a degenerate case of market economics unless your idea of market economics is hilariously idealized. Apple has done many things to increase their customer inertia in legal, but obviously immoral ways (that we should be in the business of making illegal). How frustrating is it to you, as an obvious iphone user, that iMessage has no port to non-apple devices? I can text with apple phones from my computer, but only if that computer has an illuminated apple with a bite taken out of it on its back monitor panel. It would require cooperation between the major businesses with messaging apps to have a peering agreement for messages, benefiting the consumer over the companies cooperating. There is no "competitive free market" solution to this problem, because it intrinsically requires cooperation. This is what the producers want, but not what the consumers want. It is therefore what the market wants, but it is clearly antisocial.

by ouid 4y ago

jdlshore 4y ago

I don’t always agree with Gruber, but I do this time. I also think you’re doing him a disservice with your “paid shill” implication. He stated very clearly why he thinks it’s mandatory: > If it were possible for iPhones to be more easily repairable, without sacrificing their appearance, dimensions, performance, water-and-dust resistance, and cost, Apple would make them more easily repairable. That iPhones are not easily repairable is of no benefit to Apple whatsoever. What’s the theory otherwise? That $69 in-store battery replacements are highly profitable? Engineering is about tradeoffs, and Apple has made the exact same tradeoffs decisions every other premium phone brand has: they’ve sacrificed repairability in favor of the features Gruber made above. You can choose to make that tradeoff differently—and a few niche brands have—but I don’t think that’s what the market wants. Ultimately, complaints about repairability come down to “ why doesn’t everyone else value the same things I do?” The answer: because they value other things more. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

danaris 4y ago
Just to add a bit more nuance into this... Personally, I am an Apple fan, and I generally agree with Gruber. However, I think he's being slightly disingenuous here. It's certainly true that all the mainstream phone makers are prioritizing the same features, but what he leaves out is that Apple led the way. Since 2007, Apple's choices for the design of the modern smartphone have been what every other smartphone maker has imitated. Yes, occasionally individual features have gone the other way, but the overall design and philosophy behind them has absolutely been guided by Apple's decisions. So yes, they are doing the same as most other phone makers, but these absolutely are Apple's choices, and Apple's priorities, and they get to take full responsibility for that.
- jdlshore 4y ago
  Yes, I think that’s fair. From my perspective, they’re making the right tradeoffs—I personally value size, waterproofing, and cost more than repairability. I might feel differently if Apple wasn’t essentially giving away battery replacement service for free, or if I had to replace my battery more often. But as it is, my phones last me years and years with just one battery replacement and no other service needed during their lifetime. Making that once-in-a-phone’s-lifetime replacement easier at the cost of other capabilities doesn’t make sense to me.
  - ouid 4y ago
    oh, what do you consider your phone's lifetime?
    - jdlshore 4y ago
      6-8 years. My last phone was an iPhone 6; my current is an iPhone 12 mini. Previous to that, I had a Palm Pre, and before that, a Palm Treo (which I got in 2000-2001).
ouid 4y ago
>If it were possible for iPhones to be more easily repairable, without sacrificing their appearance, dimensions, performance, water-and-dust resistance, and cost, Apple would make them more easily repairable. That iPhones are not easily repairable is of no benefit to Apple whatsoever. What’s the theory otherwise? That $69 in-store battery replacements are highly profitable? This is manifestly absurd. Apple has measured that it can sell an iphone for $1200 that costs them $600 to produce, to each person who buys iphones, about once every 2 years. They have also measured that humans are very bad at recognizing slow degradation of battery life and OS compatibility. Consumers regularly "update" their devices, and deplete the lifetimes of their batteries. In actual fact, restoring a phone to like new condition, through a cheap replacement of a battery, and rolling back software manifestly incompatible with its hardware, results in an experience that is essentially indistinguishable to the experience of obtaining a new phone. It should be notable to you, then, that these are exactly the operations that Apple disallows, either through extremely locked down software, or with literal glue, but it is possible to simulate the experience by buying up, say, an old iphone 5s that has had its battery replaces, and mercifully been prevented from upgrading to newer OSes. I can tell you from experience that this phone feels good and works well. It has a headphone jack, even, providing a superior experience to having to charge and keep track of an extra 3 pieces. In fact, Apple's business model can be concisely described as creating problems with old hardware after you have bought it. This is a crime. The right to repair is one half of this story, of course. The right to downgrade would be the other half, which could easily be amended to the right to root access, which is manifestly a form of the right to repair. >You can choose to make that tradeoff differently—and a few niche brands have—but I don’t think that’s what the market wants. I think you are starting from an assumption that what the market wants is defined exclusively by what consumers want. There are two types of actor in "the market", one of whom is the producer. What the market wants is an amalgam of what the consumer wants and what the producer wants, and a rather simple analysis indicates that the status quo is much better described by what the producer wants in the case of Apple products. This is not a degenerate case of market economics unless your idea of market economics is hilariously idealized. Apple has done many things to increase their customer inertia in legal, but obviously immoral ways (that we should be in the business of making illegal). How frustrating is it to you, as an obvious iphone user, that iMessage has no port to non-apple devices? I can text with apple phones from my computer, but only if that computer has an illuminated apple with a bite taken out of it on its back monitor panel. It would require cooperation between the major businesses with messaging apps to have a peering agreement for messages, benefiting the consumer over the companies cooperating. There is no "competitive free market" solution to this problem, because it intrinsically requires cooperation. This is what the producers want, but not what the consumers want. It is therefore what the market wants, but it is clearly antisocial.