It’s almost always a commercial issue, where you would find yourself in a legal bind.
I do think the “first sale” doctrine should extend everywhere and include tinkering. I understand that would cause a lot of changes in the licensing industry but it’s worth it in my opinion.
If repair involves calibrating some software control system to the new part, and that can't be done without diagnostic software that nobody has access to. That kind of thing.
Not sure why this is a controversial take. Personally, I support most of the goals of the so-called "Right to Repair" but it should be pretty obvious that its name is a rhetorical trick to make people say "wow this company who's products I continually choose to purchase is really trampling my rights."
You can vote with your wallet and don't buy anything from such company :) But curbing such nasty behavior from companies is still good, especially if they all start following that trend of locking things up.
Yes and no. Yes, I think owners of devices should have much more access to the parts and tools needed to repair their own equipment. But, there's an argument in this article that I don't completely agree with, although I can sympathize with the need.
Those activation locked iPads would be very helpful to address the device shortage at schools and it would be great if we could find a way to do that. But, it's not simple either. Activation lock is the problem in this scenario, but it's also a solution in another scenario.
Activation lock has dramatically decreased theft of Apple phones and tablets. Right now, there's not much point in stealing one of these devices since it cannot be used by someone other than the owner. But I can remember a time when device theft was a daily occurance in public. The problem expressed in this article is that the legitimate owner has changed, but the lock has remained, and that is a valid problem.
If a recycler can suddenly unlock them, that solves one problem but creates two more. Now you've resurrected the black market for stolen apple devices and created a new black market for the unlocking of these devices. Sure, there is probably a technical solution to solve that too, but my point is that a solution needs careful thought and not just free-for-all legislation.
There's a notable lack of refurbishment/recycling businesses in western Europe. The UK is leading here, the Netherlands is also decent, but Germany, France, Belgium are surprisingly behind. Sure, there's quite a few small outfits that do it, but very few companies doing it at scale.
I'm looking at possibly opening such a factory somewhere between FR/DE/BE, though it would ideally need some investment to get it up and running fast.
We need to get rid of this stigma of buying used/refurbished. Nothing wrong with an older appliance that has been fixed, tested and cleaned properly. And the environment benefits.
Nothing wrong with an older appliance, except that you get what you pay. It might be too power hungry or hot, it might be unsupported/obsolete [1][2] or too slow, e.g. Core 2 Duo can barely play FullHD YouTube videos; AV1 and H265 are also too slow on the first generations of Core CPUs (i5-520M, i3-2120).
For these reasons I've recently avoided buying anything before Haswell - the first generation with AVX-2 instructions. I would have preferred Broadwell or Skylake because of the new Intel graphics Linux driver [3], but they were too expensive.
Sure, my first computer was a 486 at the time my friends had Pentium2 . Nothing wrong with a poor kid getting a slower computer and this computer had to wait a few more years before was thrown to garbage (I passed it to a cousin when I had more money to get something more powerful that could play mp3s )
Core 2 Duo is ancient. But people are tossing 2-4 year old machines, and they've got everything one needs. Not to mention smartphones and tablets, which get old in 6 months. That's ridiculous.
It's even worse with home appliances, which do not have any significant improvements yoy, or indeed, any improvements at all. Nothing but the design changes. They can be easily fixed and will last just as long as a new appliance.
This! Think of companies that replace their laptops every 3-5 years. A five years old laptop is still fully functional (believe me, I run a 2014-2015 ThinkPad T440 as a personal machine and it works fine). A three years old laptop... Even better.
People are too rich to care in Western Europe. Perhaps if you sell it with some environmental marketing and get Greta onboard as mascot or something, then it could become trendy to buy used, like minimalism and zero waste. But it's still a subculture niche. You could also rely on poor people (immigrants, students etc) as customers, but there's not much profit to be made based on poor people.
I doubt it, the used electronics/appliances market in the UK is huge. And other EU countries import refurbished products from the UK, as well.
I worked for a big recycling company, there's no shortage of suppliers and customers, even though Brexit scared away a lot of them, they simply have no alternative closer to home.
Selling the parts out of appliances/electronics is just as profitable, by the way. And there's a big market for them in the EU, thanks to the many small repair shops.
One washing machine can either be sold as a refurb, or stripped down for parts for about the same resale cost. Same for laptops, desktops of course, and even smartphones.
Eastern Europe is a good market, along with western Europe, but only the latter is a good location for a recycling/reuse factory, as it's got the largest number of possible suppliers.
In Belgium I’ve heard of quite some people using the website https://www.backmarket.be/ (I think it’s a French company) — if you look into how they work, they resell the output of a lot of smaller refurbishing outfits. Finding a way to scale up the refurbishing process would be great, if you go through with your plan I’m rooting for you!
The only actual issue listed in this article is a screenshot of a tweet, that says there’s 5 million activation locked iPads sitting in lockers.
I’m a HUGE fan of RTR, but I don’t really see how it helps anybody in this situation. You’re legally allowed to unlock/root iOS devices. Nothing legally stopping you. Now there are strong technical barriers indeed, though I bet most of these iPads are vulnerable to rooting.
>Bypassing factory reset protection seems fine as long as its done as eminent domain seizure from the trash, not paying potential thieves.
Thieves (or a third party they sell to) will find a way to officially claim it was from the trash when it wasn't. People are clever and when there's money involved a system to exploit something will be found.
This conveniently ignores the existing huge volumes of secondhand Apple devices which were obtained legally for the refurbishing market, which will always be larger than the volume of devices from theft.
If the owner is giving the device to a refurbisher, then the refurbisher can explain how to disable the factory reset protection (it can be done online without device access).
If it's not the owner, then was it really legally obtained?
In practice, it never happens this way. Apple has detached activation protection from the device reset process that people are normally aware of (a factory reset will NOT remove an activation lock, nor will it prompt you to authenticate and optionally do so).
I guarantee there are recyclers that are scrapping piles of legally obtained Apple devices on a daily basis that were donated from private and corporate owners that neither have the knowledge nor extra time to remove activation locks on devices they no longer care about. I've seen it firsthand repeatedly.
Not true. Initiating a factory reset through the settings app DOES automatically remove the activation lock. Only a recovery mode reset will not remove the lock.
Categorically untrue. Apple only respects this if you are the first purchaser. Any electronics recycler who has obtained Apple devices legally, as their 2nd or 3rd or Nth owner, has no avenue to unlock them.
No, you need the original proof of purchase for Apple to unlock a device for you, and it has to be in your name. I run repair shops and we have had this conversation hundreds of times from customers. People buy iCloud locked devices from Craigslist, FB Marketplace, and eBay constantly. Apple will not help in these cases, and if they paid cash or used an app without purchase protection, they got screwed.
We have even had people who have presented death certificates to Apple to get devices unlocked from someone who died, and that is hit or miss. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Rooting and activation unlocking are NOT the same. Activation-locked Apple devices are essentially soft-bricked, as anything related to iCloud cannot be used. Apple controls activation on the server-side and you CANNOT circumvent it as a user.
There’s no supply shortage of Chromebooks, you can buy them on Amazon and have them delivered Thursday. Maybe schools don’t have money allocated for this, but refurbishing old PCs isn’t really going to solve that problem. A chromebook is pretty cheap compared to the overall cost of education in the US, so a school that claims it has a computer shortage is probably just not prioritizing the acquisition of additional computers, rather than being totally unable to acquire them.
And those chromebooks are how repairable and maintainable? And how usable for an average school without Google software? This is larger than the immediate issue you think you're talking about.
Neverware Cloud-ready is an entire OS derived from Chromium OS and designed to provide an experience very uniform with that of Chrome OS on old PC and Mac hardware:
The market disagrees — when I was sending out teams of people to buy laptops at retail during peak COVID crazy, those devices were in stock all over.
Chromebook is awesome from a management perspective, but you need to buy Neverware to chrome-ify the boneyard stuff, and you still need to deal with batteries, power supplies, etc.
I have computers that are over 15 years old and still work today because they were designed to be upgraded and to last.
There are many Chromebook lines that are similar to phones in that you can't just install Linux or a new version of Windows once Google stops supporting your hardware.
Sure it's possible, but then you make a single mistake during booting and your Linux install is wiped out. And the prompt you see during booting is worded to encourage you to disable developer mode and revert to ChromeOS.
Mine was something like 'Your Chromebook is in developer mode, press enter to start ChromeOS' along with some messaging about how dangerous developer mode is. Very easy to accidental press enter -- I know because I did it.
I was responding to my parent, which was about running Linux on Chromebooks, presumably to extend their life beyond the relatively short time that Google will provide updates. And that's not because schools want to, but because supply is tight right now. It sounds good in theory, but Google and/or the manufactures didn't make developer mode friendly enough -- you'd be better off converting low-end Windows laptops instead.
You can install Linux on every single Chromebook that has ever been produced (even the very first one). You are probably mistaking "managed" Chromebooks as a different line of Chromebook models.
I made no such mistake, and ARM Chromebooks are similar to ARM phones in that the devices don't have enumerable buses and often need a forked kernel to run.
I have used many different computers in past 20 years, and all of them becomes unusable after 4-5 years at max. And this happens to all the people that I know of. You are likely lucky that your hardware is in working condition for 15 years.
That would depend a lot on the manufacturer. I would imagine that enterprise-targeted Lenovo Chromebooks, like Lenovo Windows laptops, are probably easier to repair than unibody metal consumer-targeted devices like the Pixelbooks.
The board level components (memory, CPU, etc) are not individually replaceable as the boards are designed by Google, not the OEMs.
This all assumes that you are not paying for repair labor, however.
For very inexpensive Chromebooks, The repair technician's time may cost more than a whole new device.
Disclosure: Chrome OS engineer, but my positive opinions about Lenovo devices are my own.
My local school district provides Lenovo chromebooks to all 2nd - 12th graders. They are easily repairable and Lenovo has a self maintainer program which allows the school district's technicians to become Lenovo certified and perform warranty service themselves. This means quicker turn around and reduced price from Lenovo since they don't have to pay for warranty repair labor.
Seems like a great arrangement. I wonder if one could even use a program like that to train more "hands-on" (vs. academically oriented) high schoolers as a step towards technician careers.
Sort of like how many people who ended up in the corporate IT support/management field started out working as computer lab support techs in college, or before that, kids who worked in the high school auto shop (remember when those existed?) sometimes ended with good careers in auto manufacturing.
I always read about employers who have a hard time finding good technicians.
The school district still offers many "hands-on" career training including auto repair, many construction trades, EMT, firefighter, HVAC, multiple health technician fields, culinary arts, welding, tv production, digital animation, and several more. In addition they have a Cisco networking and a computer technician curriculum. At the end of the computer technician program the students should be able to get their CompTIA A+ and Network+ certificates. All of these programs include practical instruction with local businesses.
A chromebook is a toy. You would want to have a device pupils can actually work with. Like writing texts and do homework. A tablet isn't even good for reading, it is good for holiday photos, painting and some superficial communication. It cannot supply much educational value. That is ok for what it is, but it isn't more.
But the story is totally vague. All he says is that there's a shortage, and that ability to repair could help.
How exactly? Would it help in a comprehensive view of things?
Certain aspects of making hardware affordable (for a given design) is being integrated and somewhat harder to repair.
If manufacturers were required to make their stuff repairable, would that increase the costs of production and the price of laptops? Would fewer people be able to afford them? Would the specs of computers have to change in order to fit/enable removable parts?
Are people likely to buy refurbed old computers at $200 versus $300 for a new one? Would the price of new computers go from $300 to $400 if this were required?
None of these things are answered.
The article/author is otherwise just advocating for something he desires (and I could go so far as to say using Covid as an cover, given the lack of detail) without being responsible for its implementation or feasibility.
If the details were addressed, I could get on board with requiring companies to do so.
> If manufacturers were required to make their stuff repairable, would that increase the costs of production and the price of laptops?
No. The difference in the manufacturing cost would be trivial, because the primary costs are in the high value components, e.g. CPU and display.
> Would fewer people be able to afford them?
No, because the costs would not materially increase. Moreover, the people for whom cost is a primary concern buy from the second hand market anyway, and increasing availability there would reduce prices by supply and demand.
> Would the specs of computers have to change in order to fit/enable removable parts?
We have some good evidence of this already, because repairable devices do exist even though they don't represent the majority of the market, and the specs are... basically identical.
> Are people likely to buy refurbed old computers at $200 versus $300 for a new one?
Yes, that's kind of the point.
> Would the price of new computers go from $300 to $400 if this were required?
Does increased competition usually result in higher prices? If anything they would need to take thinner margins in order to compete with the refurbished market. Which is why they don't want to do it.
I don't know that most of your blanket assertions are true.
Just taking one example, the cost of manufacturing electronics is not just the raw cost of the component. And you seem just fine to have increased costs passed along to manufacturers and not believe it would have an effect on them, but then state that such small $ differences would have a big effect on people buying the stuff.
But anyway, why should companies be required by law to build a product a certain way, for a feature that's not safety/public health/deceptive advertising related?
If your statements are true, go out there and offer such a great product, and let it take the market.
Otherwise, I don't agree with the logic of having laws intrude into the design choices of products that are voluntarily manufactured and purchased.
Right to repair isn't about forcing companies to build stuff a certain way, it's about forcing companies to give open access to everything you need to repair the device. They can do this at close to no extra cost: Just publish their existing internal repair manuals, publish their existing internal schematics, don't force your manufacturers to exclusively sell components to you, don't cryptographically make components non-replaceable by just you.
> We have some good evidence of this already, because repairable devices do exist even though they don't represent the majority of the market, and the specs are... basically identical.
In 2018, Apple has a 7% market share for laptops [1]. Dell has twice that, and every Dell laptop I've had was easy to repair. Sure, you now have to remove a few skrews to change the battery, but it's built with servicability in mind and the service manual is in the official downloads. Parts are all over ebay, or you buy new from a reseller (which I've done in the past). I've heard the same from Lenovo owners (22% market share). I also don't think anyone but Apple does Activation locks.
As far as I can tell the majority of sold devices are repairable with easily sourced parts, partly because there is market pressure to be repairable (from enterprise IT). I really don't see why legislation would be nessesary in this instance.
I feel sad that we need to educate and demand 'The Right to Repair'.
Yesterday, I accidentally noticed that my iPad Air 2 which I 've been using as a external display for ~ a year has its battery bulged and even pushed out the display[1]. If I hadn't noticed this, It could have ended really bad.
But now I have to wait for the heat gun to arrive to remove the battery for safely discarding it, as Apple has made it really hard to change batteries. I don't intend to replace the battery, as I think any device with battery and without charging pass-through feature is a potential fire hazard when using for any application which involves charging constantly. I have removed other such devices (incl. iPhone) preemptively.
More over I'm tired of spending money on expensive hardware which I don't own completely. There's absolutely no reason for not making user-replaceable batteries other than planned obsolescence, which are bad for the consumers as well as for the planet.
I will vote with my wallet for Fairphone, Pine64 like brands here after.
So, the fact that the battery is glued into the tablet the way it is, is part of why it was at a certain $ price and had the form factor it did.
Would you buy an iPad that cost say $100 more, and was twice as thick, so that you could repair it? I don't know, but that's not for me to mandate.
If people are willing to buy what is being offered, why put a requirement that they build something different, by law?
Let people/companies build what they think people will want, and have the market decide whether it survives. Nothing is stopping you from offering that product.
Companies don't want to offer that product because then you wouldn't have to replace it as often. For example, point me to the iPad with the replaceable battery. How can the market decide if the product isn't available? More people would buy it, but then they wouldn't have to buy it as often, so the overall number of sales would go down, so companies stop offering that.
In theory in a competitive market you would then expect someone to defect and gain that business, but that doesn't work in highly concentrated markets. Apple and Samsung together have more than 70% of the US market. So you can either have right to repair, or you can do some trust busting. Or both.
It's much easier to do battery replacements on apple products then almost any of their competitors.
Seriously - you can go in and just pay them to do it. It's something like $99 for parts and labor all included for ipads.
What other tablet provider even offers this as a service? I'm serious - can you provide some names and examples with this level of convience?
I ask because my parents used an ipad for something like 7 years, and it got updates FAR longer than ANY competitor out there, and they got the battery updated. One of the reasons apple gets to charge a premium is BECAUSE their items hold value for so long relative to the competition.
Look at used prices for tablets (or phones). Some android phones ship with a 2 year old OS and NEVER get an update. The value of these phones after 2 years is basically zero.
Well you can pretty much take products made by anyone else to any town repair shop (in UK) and have it replaced for far less than £80 (~$100).
That Apple repair probably costs them a tenner, and they're presumably primarily bringing you in to market new products to you.
Apple offer battery repair as part of their anti-competitive practices - they legally hassle other companies who offer repairs, because they want to make it hard and costly to drive the idea of disposability and sell more new products.
Apple and Samsung are both repaired at the "phone shop" I used to pass on my way to work (I don't work in town now). Can't imagine a MS Surface, or a LG/Huawei/whatever device is much different if they can get an aftermarket battery.
Fair point - checking the local repair places to me - they all actually lead with apple repairs in terms of being able to give a price / in stock etc. LG I guess they need to order LG Tab 10.1 - they were not actually stocking parts for at least that brand.
> It's much easier to do battery replacements on apple products
> just pay them...$99...to do it [for you].
That's not doing the replacement, that's paying a significant amount of money to have a specialist do it for you. Having the specialist available does not remove the original problem, it solves it with the side effect of cost and inconvenience.
Just because the side effects don't bother you doesn't mean everyone should be subjected to them. Replacing a battery should not require a specialist in the first place. Most people consider $99 a very expensive repair.
OS updates are orthogonal. We are talking about hardware.
The more I hear other engineers discuss this type of thing on HN the more I realize how unique apple is.
They look at their products as a whole. So in the apple model, hardware and software run together. Seeing this with my parents and when I resell stuff you see the payoff. The apple products are usable FAR longer then competitors and sell for more even after a year or two.
You are not "subject" to buying an apple product. Apple has obviously chosen to optimize for a different user group than you are in. The market seems to appreciate that, their margins are nuts (they sell $100 worth of stuff for $200).
I say this has someone who used to by batteries for my laptop and other devices online, who did the ifixit stuff. The problem, the quality is wildly variable when you order online - so I at least can see that for the VAST majority of folks, apple's approach results in a pretty reliable / high quality result. And they charge and get paid a remarkable premium for the trust users have in them as a result of this.
There are plenty of ways that you can get batteries replaced. I replaced the battery in my iPhone 6s before batteryGate and my son kept it until earlier this year - 5 years.
Yet I have a PC laptop from 2009 that still runs the latest version of Windows and Linux and has a battery that I can replace in three point four seconds which costs less than $30.
It was my Plex server until earlier this year. It’s thick, it weighs over six pounds, it runs hot and even with a new battery it wouldn’t last more than a couple of hours.
Apple just released a bug fix update for the 2011 iPhone 4s, June of last year. How many Android phones got security patch/bug fix releases for a 9 year old phone? Yes you can still get the battery replaced for it.
Have you tried using a ten year old Android phone?
I can’t believe we’ve gotten to the point where there is even an argument about this! Every single consumer electronics device in my home that has batteries makes it easy to replace them—except my cell phones. Everything from remote controls, UPS backups, alarm system, smoke detectors, computers, toys, even my car. They are all end user serviceable. This is how it’s supposed to be! I shouldn’t need to take anything to a business in order to replace a battery. How did this become a weird point of view?
Smartphones are power hungry. In order to keep them running for more than a few minutes they need high capacity batteries. In order to put suitably high capacity batteries in smartphones that fit in pockets manufacturers have gone to lithium polymer batteries. In order to get the most capacity out of the available volume manufacturers have done away with hard puncture resistant casings on the batteries, letting the phone chassis be the protective shell. Without a protective shell no insurance underwriter or regulatory body is going to approve the batteries as user serviceable.
You could make a LiPoly battery with a hard user serviceable hard shell but it would have far less capacity than a glued in battery. Not only would the volume of the hard case take away from electrical storage volume but there needs to be free space for the electrolyte material to expand when it heats up. Batteries heat up when charging and discharging in addition to heat absorbed from components like a phone's internal circuitry. Without expansion space the battery is just a small bomb.
Older cell phones and smartphones had far less power draw than modern smartphones. The old Nokia BL-4 batteries were around 800 mAh. The original iPhone's battery was almost twice the capacity and a modern iPhone is 3-4 times that capacity. Smartphones would weigh twice as much and easily be twice as thick if they had replaceable batteries with the same capacity as their non-replaceable ones. While you might be fine with phones being thicker most buyers would rather have the thinner and lighter phone if the extra weight and bulk didn't offer any extra run time. They definitely wouldn't go for phones that had a quarter of the run time because they could replace the battery themselves.
It's not a conspiracy, it's just battery technology and physics. Also concerns about safety by way of insurance liability.
And it has a substandard camera, heavier, thicker, face detection that is not secure, a less than top end processor and a fingerprint reader that isn’t reliable.
And since it is a Samsung device, by the time you get ready to change the battery, Samsung more than likely won’t be updating the operating system.
The $399 iPhone SE has a better processor, camera, finger print sensor and given Apple’s history, will probably get operating system updates for five years.
You could get the battery replaced, and have an updated operating system for years and still be at slightly less than $499.
These are irrelevant digressions to the post that I was responding. The parent comment appeared to be implying it was technically impossible and that does not seem to be true. Your ad hominem and irrelevant attack on Samsung is weird: 1) you don't know the support cycle of this commercial device, and 2) often options such as LineageOS become available for such devices.
You keep changing the narrative to one that favors your Apple advocacy. You can think of no reason why I might strongly prefer this Samsung over your Apple? Not one? I have seen hundreds of your comments on this site on Apple threads and you never seem interested in seeing the opposing parties point of view. Why? Before you accuse me of the same, know that I have a MBP 2020/16, an iPhone 6s, and other Apple devices. I have recommended Apple to people to whom I felt it would be a fit. I ask you again: can you think of any reasons why I would prefer this particular Samsung?
Your “advocacy” is that a replaceable battery increases the longevity of the device. But how does it increase longevity of a device if it is not going to be supported by the vendor for more than a couple of years instead of six like the original SE? How is it better for the consumer if the phone you linked to is more expensive than the iPhone SE + one battery replacement.
The phone you linked to is worse in every objective measure.
The fact is that even the best Android phones also don’t have a replaceable battery. Are all the manufacturers under the same delusion that consumers don’t care about replaceable batteries?
You never answered the question. Not once. You are not even trying. You changed the topic to me 'advocating' for this phone when I, to clarify to you for the third time, was responding to someone who I felt was stating that it's technically impossible to build phones with replaceable batteries.
For once, just once, I'd like to hear you say something even slightly bad about Apple. Come on, just once?
No one was saying that it is impossible to create a phone with a replaceable battery. There have been phones with replaceable batteries for four decades.
The argument is that the market doesn’t care.
If the market cared about replaceable batteries why are all phone manufacturers creating high end phones with none replaceable batteries? It’s not just Apple it’s the entire industry.
Engineering is about tradeoffs. The phone you linked to proves exactly that - the phone is bulkier and heavier than the state of the art phones from Samsung
Maybe so, but I still am unsure how the words `heavier' and `thicker' can apply to a software function.
Is it maybe a way of saying more computationally intense or more layers in a neural network? It could be a non-native speaker, but to me those adjectives only really apply to physical things. I'm not sure.
The fact you managed to find one out of dozens of models Samsung sells and it is targeted for business fleet sales is telling. Replaceable batteries are not a hot consumer feature. Samsung's other phones of similar size are thinner and lighter.
Non-replaceable batteries are a net benefit for consumers most of the time. They get the lighter thinner phones with all the features they want. If you want to keep the same phone for a decade, even with a replaceable battery, I wish you the best of luck. In the US I don't think there's any active 2G service and 3G services will be turned off in the near future. It'll make a decent media player or WiFi browser but it won't act as a phone.
That's the one that came to mind - I am sure there are others. You appeared to be claiming it was technically impossible and I found a good example. You keep asserting that you know what is good for me or other consumers with no evidence and this is a pattern I see repeated in this and other threads. Why? What's it to you that I want some control over my device?
Edit0: I've often found much better (repairable, long lasting) products for myself by looking in the enterprise/ fleet catalog. My oft-mentioned HP Elite X360 is another example of a device targeted to the corporate market and as a result, enables easy replacement of the SSD and battery.
I didn't at any point claim it was impossible. I said batteries are a trade off. If you want a thin and lightweight phone with a user serviceable battery, you're going to have to sacrifice capacity. If you want user serviceable and high capacity you're going to at least sacrifice on thickness.
I also didn't claim to know what is good for consumers. It should be obvious that given the choice between thick and heavy or thin and light consumer sales have favored thin and light for the past decade. That's not me dictating what is good, it's just me paying attention to the smartphone market for more than ten minutes.
I am happy for you that you find phones and laptops that last you a long time. Bully for you. But you are not the bulk of the smartphone or laptop market. You represent a tiny portion of both markets. I know this because you have to hunt down phones and laptops with replaceable batteries while pretty much everything on sale at BestBuy is all glued together. Buy the shit that you want but don't pretend that you represent some silent majority quietly yearning to replace batteries in their phones and swap hard drives in their laptops.
I don't understand why this makes you and the other guy so angry. "Bully for you"? "Buy the shit you want.."? It's just sad that you can't or won't appreciate a different viewpoint.
No one is complaining. If you want a phone with a replaceable battery. There is one available. So why complain? I don’t post endlessly complaining about Android manufacturers piss poor support when it comes to upgrades. I just don’t buy them. I don’t look for the government to give me “rights” that I already have by using my own free will and buy a device that meets my needs.
In fact you complain a lot on any thread where Apple or Android are mentioned. Even your response above appears to be dripping with contempt about Android manufacturers and users. Your comment about "rights" sic is surprising: you appear to support corporation's rights to tell me how to spend my money and to pretty much tell us peons to stfu up right to repair. Why? What harm is there to offer an opinion to companies about what they make? You got what you wanted with your sealed/non-repairable black boxes. Companies get repairable devices because they ask for them. Is it wrong for us mere nothings to try to ask for the same? I have read hundreds of your postings and I just don't get you: you would not like it if I did to you what you are doing to me and yet you don't see it. It's sad.
Apple and Samsung, offering laptops and tablets that people buy voluntarily, and have plenty of competitors who offer such products at lower price, are trusts that need to be busted?
So then your claim is that Apple has market power because they can charge higher prices than "competitors" and still do more business. I was confused, I thought you meant to be arguing that they weren't a trust?
> Comcast is a clear physical monopoly, the only ones allowed to build and sell internet/cable access to your house.
And yet people still "voluntarily" subscribe to them rather than some slower services like DSL or Satellite.
Products that can charge a premium because they offer something others don’t, aren’t a trust. Is Nike a “trust” because they can charge more for Air Jordans?
Economies of scale normally mean to sell variants that people want (thicker / more modular / easier to repair) the price may be substantially higher.
You've got to generate a full supply chain, from design, mfg, qualification, qc, parts, diagnoses / repair / maint etc.
Just sell version with normal sim cards (old complaint). Then it was I'll never buy an apple product if it doesn't have a headphone jack. Then it was I think the move in progress to get away from nano sims to things like esims.
I know galaxy and others have been making fun of apple for not having a headphone jack (I'm one of the folks who really misses it because it worked great for making music / audio pass thru stuff with low latency). But do I think there is enough demand to justify the headphone jack vs pushing forward with things like airpods?
I don't think so - proof should be in the pudding. Either airpods are making apple big bucks or without headphone jacks apple should be crushed by samsung galaxy phones.
Sure - but apple has pushed forward and at least in my use cases airpods work really really well. The pairing speed / battery life / distance etc are all very nice. So apple has done something with airpods that the old bluetooth headsets didn't have (yes, I used to use a jabra bluetooth on my old cell phone).
So they have done something to dial up the experience? Does my old jabra work as well - no - the audio quality was terrible (and doing bluetooth to my car speakers - also terrible).
I can do a facetime audio call with airpods - they sound great.
I do a facetime audio call on my cars speaker - it sounds horrible (and the car costs 30K+!)
I agree. I like my AirPods also. People act as if Apple forces you to buy AirPods. It supports the standard Bluetooth spec as well as it can and added extra features to its own products.
The post I was replying to acts as if removal of the headphone jack forces people to buy AirPods. As if I would want to use wired headphones on my watch or AppleTV.
The market is incapable of deciding such things. No one has perfect informations and everyone has a finite amount of attention span. People couldn't even be bothered to think of the long-term cost savings of different light bulbs.
My dad was? Sometimes people would rather pay for not having to think about it. There's a whole industry of tax filing when filing taxes is "easy" for the majority of people.
First, I don't agree with your statement that the market / consumers are unable to decide.
Second, you should have a real think about where you want regulation to have ability to dictate what people can do. Energy efficiency is an area where people both 1) don't have clear info from manufacturers, and 2) it leaves a mess for others to clean up.
Owning something that is designed in a way that causes it to have a lower resale price later is not such an area.
> Energy efficiency is an area where people both 1) don't have clear info from manufacturers, and 2) it leaves a mess for others to clean up.
Isn't that very similar to repairability? Certainly the second point, and I've never seen a display in a shop give information on how phone batteries might be replaced.
The market has decided. You just don’t like the decision. The market has the same downsides as direct democracy (tyranny of the majority) but the votes aren’t 1:1 with people.
Only a competitive market with low barriers to entry. That does not apply to electronics (not outside Shenzhen street markets anyway). With high-end hardware, the vendors dictate the trends (based on guessing what they can market the easiest), and customers have little to no voice.
Except it's more like 5% thicker, and BOM cost of a few cents.
People are happy to throw their rubbish (trash) on the ground wherever they are, but that's not a sustainable system. Mandating a tiny degree of greater sustainability seems reasonable to me.
Water generated from obsolescence & irreparability is an “externality” for market mechanisms, and therefore needs an alternative approach to fix (Eg: government regulation, recycling taxes, etc) since prices will not reflect that naturally.
Even genuine batteries fail, if your device can't cope (eg shutdown) with batteries with low current/voltage then it's defective.
Then it's a case of testing the battery is providing the right current/voltage and continuing.
iPhones at least can cope with defective batteries, by throttling the processor, so presumably other companies can do the same and just not try to hide it from users.
There is no reason to make that supply chain control mandatory. If I want to risk a third party battery on my phone that’s my business is it not? It’s my phone, it’s my third party battery.
I think the concern is less about “people with DIY skills making informed tradeoffs” and more about “sketchy repair places using poor quality or dangerous batteries”. Then somebody’s phone catches fire on a plane and becomes a PR trainwreck for the phone manufacturer.
I also support right to repair, but I think we should be realistic about the objections and concerns the opposition has.
We've had replaceable batteries for decades prior, and the only time there was a PR nightmare over phones catching fire was when Samsung itself supplied phones with faulty batteries that caught fire .
Otherwise i have never come across a story of this happening, so it seems lime a fantasy scenario thats just used as a talking point.
There have been a lot of stories about iphone chargers catching fire and it ends up being some $1 ali express charger. I still think a companies right to good PR is lower priority than right to repair.
Fun fact, a company has no right to good PR. You're welcome to champion an effort to put a "right to good PR" into law, while the rest of us champion right to repair.
Don't you think it would be better to, for instance, regulate dangerous components instead of preventing me from repairing the device that I own with parts I procure? Wouldn't the world be better off if all parts were good, instead of if companies had the right to look good at all times?
Sure. And while a company has no right to good PR, you currently also have no right to support from manufacturers when repairing products you own. As such, we are discussing new legislation for this ‘right to repair’ where (as with all new legislation) the wants of various parties are relevant because it affects the ability of that legislation to get passed.
You can argue that the wants of multi billion dollar corporations should be irrelevant, but the current political system nonetheless allows their option to carry weight.
> And while a company has no right to good PR, you currently also have no right to support from manufacturers when repairing products you own.
Which is why I'm advocating right to repair legislation, not right to good PR legislation.
With reference to GP: "I still think a companies right to good PR is lower priority than right to repair."
I find it really strange when individuals, against their own interests, advocate for the "rights" of a giant multi-trillion dollar company. Especially silly ones like Apple's right to look good. They can advocate for themselves. Let's look out for us, and let them look out for them. They've already paid lobbyists and lawyers to do so -- why do it for free?
What if the corner repair store does it? It's still the user's problem, but this time it's just because they went to a non-Apple store/non-Apple certified store. If the battery is defective, that becomes Apple's problem when it swells, starts smoking, or has 50% capacity within a year.
> but this time it's just because they went to a non-Apple store/non-Apple certified store. If the battery is defective, that becomes Apple's problem when it swells, starts smoking, or has 50% capacity within a year.
The user chose to go to a non-Apple certified store. After that, there is no warranty and Apple is no longer responsible.
Here in the Real World, Apple is responsible and would be held responsible and would suffer reputation damage if a device exploded, regardless of details that might be reported later about whether a substandard part or non-Apple repair caused it.
Apple must prove any damage happened because of the third party battery or its installation. I know you're probably assuming the battery is bad or explodes, but the nuance is important as the manufacturer warranty and their obligation to sell working devices is not abrogated by repairing it yourself.
I agree 100% with regard to most components but there needs to be a balance with regard to unregulated hazardous parts, such as li-ion batteries.
If your phone explodes in your hand because of something you did to the phone, then that's your problem. If you happen to be on an airliner at the time, however, your exploding phone is suddenly the problem of everyone else on the airliner and everyone the airliner will fall on if it crashes.
Similarly, if you're hiking in wildfire season and your phone explodes, that exploding phone is the problem of everyone in the surrounding area.
Further, not everyone who might want to use a third-party battery will have the know-how to appreciate these risks or appreciate that the civil liability from starting a wildfire will vastly exceed the amount of insurance coverage they could buy. The public needs some degree of protection against these kinds of risks because it's not reasonable to expect average people to understand the full implications of buying a cheaper battery.
It's not in the public interest to have widely-used consumer products randomly exploding, which is why people aren't generally allowed to do things like manufacture their own propane cylinders or gasoline cans. Large lithium batteries are similarly hazardous and should be treated similarly.
I think the ideal solution would be something along the lines of a right to repair combined with mandatory safety standards for lithium batteries. There wouldn't be as much of a safety issue if both OEM and 3rd party batteries were required to pass the same requirements and testing.
Weve had replaceable batteries on laptops and phones for decades, and that was fine somehow. Has either of these scenarios ever happened?
The wildlife scenario is particularly fantastical - people have campfires, they carry gas stoves, torches, guns, drones, cameras (with replaceable batteries!), candles, bikes, and hundreds of other things far more dangerous.
Just another point ->
"Anyone in the UK can start a car repair business without needing a certain level of experience or expertise. This is completely legal"
In most places you can repair your own car, buy parts, change breaks, Pour any liquid you want into the petrol tank, or the motor oil compartment. Imagine how dangerous that is!
And people sit here making up contrived scenarios "what if you repair your iphone battery, and then eat the old iphone battery! While on a plane! With a gas leak! With kids nearby!"
In 2016, Samsung's Galaxy S7 phone was the subject of a world-wide ban from aircraft (and eventual product recall) after battery defects caused at least one S7 to catch fire while on an airliner[0].
This is far from the only incident of li-ion batteries exploding on aircraft; indeed the FAA estimated that li-ion batteries exploded at a rate of once every ten days on US-controlled aircraft in 2017[1].
Terrestrial lithium battery fires are at least as frequent[2] and have been far more destructive[3]. Given that litihum battery fires have burned down houses, it's only a matter of luck whether one eventually starts a wildfire or not.
Given the established risks of even OEM lithium batteries, making it easier for the public to use lithium batteries of dubious origin and quality is not prudent.
With specific regard to wildfires, I take it you don't live in an area where wildfires are a serious risk. Open flames and other sources of ignition, including cigarettes, vehicles, and camp stoves are banned in wildlands during fire season. If cell phones exploded more regularly, they would, by necessity, be added to the list of prohibited items.
You've demonstrated that this is a significant issue, but to impose any restrictions on the user you should be trying to demonstrate that unreplaceable OEM batteries are significantly safer, you are proving the opposite! Your example is of a major OEM screwup does not help your case!
For decades batteries were replaceable, and now they are not. If it were true that OEM are more responsible with batteries, then we should have seen a massive decline in lithium battery caused fires. We seem to be observing the opposite?
Maybe rigid replaceable batteries, lile the ones found in cameras, are actually safer and better protected!
Secondly if this is a genuine safety solution, then it should deal with laptops, cameras, electric bikes, drones and other devices that have much larger batteries and which are user-replaceable, and where they have to be.
Thirdly, an unreplaceable battery turns a durable good into a throw-away device. Then it becomes e-waste and might kill more people through lead poisoning than it ever could from a minor fire.
This seems like a reasonable point, until you note that Apple explicitly forbids their manufacturers from selling genuine batteries to anyone. If the issue was simply that Apple didn't want their brand to be tarnished due to low quality third party batteries, they could do what Samsung does and provide public access to their manufacturers so anyone can buy genuine parts.
The glue does not make better products. For ages macbooks used a plastic bracket to hold the battery down but now they use glue thats insanely hard to remove. The Dell XPS is a great example of why this is not needed, the battery is still fixed in place with screws and a bracket and the ram is removable while the laptop is slightly thinner than a macbook pro.
The 15" MacBook Pro went from a 50 watt-hour removable battery to a 77.5 watt-hour plastic bracket battery to a 99.5 watt-hour glued in battery (in a thinner chassis). Dell is putting an 86 watt-hour battery in their current XPS 15.
You may not like what Apple is getting out of gluing in their fragile batteries but I certainly appreciate getting as much battery that can be crammed into the laptop using any means necessary in lieu of having an easier time swapping the battery once every three years (which Apple will do for me for basically the cost of a new battery).
It probably has more to do with the move to SSDs and their aluminum chassis. Other than physical destruction of the case and screen there is not much that can go wrong with a dropped laptop.
> Supply chain control has zero to do with this practice.
This is a completely separate issue—I don’t know Apple’s rationale for this practice.
The issue we’re talking about is whether there are reasons to do it at all, and I still think there are obvious benefits for customers to making it difficult to put defective or dangerous batteries in their devices.
(Just to reiterate, as a technical consumer I’d prefer to be able to swap batteries myself. But I get the tradeoffs that Apple is making, and whether they make sense or not for a given company is a complicated decision that I don’t feel qualified to judge.)
Never heard of the Fairphone before. Seems like a good product, and the price is fairly reasonable for a smartphone. Anyone here have experience with one?
I've seen plenty of good reviews on the r/fairphone subreddit and have been thinking of getting one even though I'm not in Europe, since similar to GP I'm also having issues with a battery that I can't replace without needing a heat gun (Samsung galaxy phone)
Battery bulging is a manufacturing defect, nothing more. Apples battery management technology has gotten incredibly advanced over the years, and it charges and discharges the battery if you leave it plugged in.
Cycling the battery as often as is typically done is worse than doing a bypass around the battery. The purpose it serves is reproducibly wearing the battery, trading battery lifetime for a consistent user experience with the gas gauge.
(Monitoring voltage is not enough, voltage can drop very quickly at end of battery life.)
All it has to do is keep the battery below 4.2v. I don't see anything advanced in purposely cycling the battery. Li-Ion (li-po) chemsitry has not changed much in the latest years. Alternatively if detecting power for prolonged times (say 24-36+ hours, it can keep the battery at 4v)
For the last 10 years that I own smart devices somehow I managed to not cause a water damage in any of them.
I also have to mention that Pebble watches exposed to me planned obsolesce. I purchased Pebble Time in 2015. Yes, the battery is also sealed, because the way is water proof (well, they said it is water resistant, but people were swimming with them). After 5 years of use it every day the battery did degrade, but it still lasts longer than Apple Watch.
It is so sad that the company went out of business.
There are plenty of original Apple Watches from 2015 still in service. Including mine. I gave it to a friend and he's still using it. Apple did battery service on the unit.
Yes, that's the reason everyone seems to be doing it. The other one is making them slimmer.
I've yet to take a tablet for a swim myself.
I could, maybe, be convinced having waterproofing on phones could be such an important feature that it trumps everything else, but I really doubt it's truly (as opposed to: "wow, cool, I can dive to 20000ft and still take a selfie. Best. Phone. Evar.") important to that many people.
The slimness appears to be a good marketing gimmick. And, yes, "pocketability" is important.
It’s not about taking the device swimming it’s about accidentally dropping the device in the water and being able to retrieve it and have it still work.
Casio solved that problem 40 years ago with 4 screws and a rubberband.
It is what it is, the same with soldered ram in laptops. Cheaper manufacturing + worse repairability == bigger earnings per quarter
Two screws on each side of the battery so it doesn’t move and a back cover with screws would get you the same waterproofing as glue. Instead a broken glass back will get you 600€ of repair in an Apple Service Center
Somehow, I have never caused any kind of liquid damage to any electronics I've ever owned. IMO, waterproofing is overrated — especially with capacitive touchscreens that refuse to work with as much as some raindrops on them.
> Somehow, I have never caused any kind of liquid damage to any electronics I've ever owned.
It wasn't until recently that the general public would be carrying around an electronic device 24/7, including in such common situations as: sitting in the bathtub, holding the device around a toilet, using the device on a pier over water, etc. Waterproofing as standard has definitely saved myriad people from having to buy a new phone or ebook reader.
See, everyone is different. My phone never comes close enough to my bathroom to end up in the toilet or the bathtub.
It shouldn't be this all-or-nothing approach. We need choice and diversity in these markets. Same applies to screen sizes, btw — everyone's different, some people do watch video on their phone, some are disgusted by the very idea of it.
I dont understand your point, so you want companies to build two types of devices, one which is not water resistant/proof but can be easily repaired and another device which is water resistant but hard to repair?
Yes but there's not much diversity in the phones themselves. Whichever company you choose, you're most likely getting an impenetrable giant glass slab.
Please tell me you're kidding. I would never, nor do I know anyone who would ever - be so shockingly daft as to use a phone or tablet in the bathtub. Come on. Even if it was 'waterproof', I still would be too paranoid to see it as a shocking hazard...we learn as kids not to put electronics in the bath; at least everyone I know did...
On the toilet, all the time. In the bathtub?! Let's give human beings some credit. We're not daft.
Waterproofing is ideally for the time you accidentally drop your phone into the toilet, and that alone. Just because it's gotten really great doesn't mean people's attitudes on this has suddenly changed.
Electronics and water don't mix. I can't imagine sitting in the bathtub with an iPhone, iPad or laptop. Nor could I imagine anyone I know doing so. o.o
Unless it's plugged in to charge, or otherwise hooked up to something with a cable, it should be safe to use your phone in the bathtub. Though, I'm not condoning this life choice.
Live a little. One of the great ways to relax in life is reading hacker news in a warm tub of water. Instead of mocking it you should try it. Of course most tubs are not big enough for adults so this isn't easy.
Amazon knows that people read in the bathtub and want to continue doing so in the age of ebooks, which is one of the main reasons why recent Kindle generations are advertised as waterproof. You misunderstand the risk involved; a sealed low-voltage device is not a toaster connected to the mains.
Hmm, I just realised the same thing - in almost 20 years of owning mobile electronic devices, I've never once had water damage to a device. I don't use electronics in the bath, shower, on the toilet or anything else random.
Strangely, when I last bought a mobile phone I made sure it had waterproofing... I guess marketing won here, since it's not something I actually need.
Its like insurance, you almost never use it but when things go wrong you are glad you have it.
> I've never once had water damage to a device.
Its both, your conscious effort not to take the phone where there is higher risk of water damage and its also luck that your child/friend/colleague did not accidentally spill water on it.
Sit on a toilet and hold a phone up near your face (not over the front of the toilet). It’s easy to see in this situation how a slippery phone or sweaty palms could cause the phone to fall down and between your thighs.
A shirt pocket. I've dropped a phone in the toilet twice and in a bathtub once this way - it slipped out of the pocket as I was bending to wash my hands or pick up the toilet cleaning brush.
(I've since then stopped carrying anything in open pockets above the waist.)
Not OP, but just a data point, Only once in my 30+ years of life I have dropped my key ring into a toilet, a squat one, so unrecoverable. Otherwise 20+ years of squat & 10+ years of western toilet use, never ever anything has fallen from my hands or pockets into toilet.
People use their phones as social devices, maps, and cameras.
The probability of spilling a drink on them, being out in the rain, or dropping them in a puddle is pretty high. That probability goes up the more a person is outside.
I've never dropped my phone in a bucket of water, but it's definitely gotten absolutely soaked in my pockets when rain suddenly hit or when a faucet in a public bathroom had its pressure set too high and sprayed me like a hose. I've lost a few keyboards to drips of condensation from my cup falling on just a single key, and I'd hate to have my other electronics be that sensitive.
The samsung s5 solved this already. You put a rubber seal around the back plate. This is basic engineering and every other waterproof product does exactly the same thing.
Do you feel like you bought, and thus own, something which you were surprised was designed to maximize integration for minimal size? I mean, it might not be what you want, but doesn't Apple explicitly state that like everywhere?
I'll happily pick something that is harder to break, even if that means it's harder to repair. Other people may have other priorities, and that's okay. That doesn't make one choice better than the other.
I believe Apple will just replace the whole device—as wasteful as that is—if you bring it into the Apple Store.
@mdryja on Twitter also recommended this. It seems like you have a point, but are being intentionally somewhat obtuse. You obviously put the device to good use for a year, and are now saying you don't want it. Apple also has a process for recycling the devices they replace, which would save you the trouble. Is it that you have no means to get it to them or what's the deal?
> There's absolutely no reason for not making user-replaceable batteries other than planned obsolescence
Sure there is a reason (thinner devices, easier water resistance, harder for users to damage, etc.).
I'm not saying the reasons are necessarily worth the tradeoffs made, but this is not malicious planned obsolescence. The term "planned obsolescence" has become overused in my opinion, mostly in reference to Apple devices.
No one asked for their phones, tablets, and laptops to be even thinner, especially at the expense of serviceability. Everyone knows that batteries stop holding charge after a while. General public knows it and engineers know it. But nope, let's build a device that's ridiculously thin and not designed to come apart at all because screws are so not pretty, right?
Water resistance is a feature that most people don't need (me included). It's nice to have, sure, but how many people choose one device over another because of it?
As for damage resistance, are you sure about that? Modern gadgets are ridiculously fragile for no good reason.
- A thinner device is likely lighter as well, which people do want. And, people do like the things they own to look good, which subjectively can include “thinness”
- Water resistance is very nice for normal use, even if you don’t explicitly want to use your device in wet places. You can use it near the kitchen sink, in the rain, or even in the bath without damaging it. This plays into the next point:
- Anecdotally, I think at least iPhones are getting less fragile. I had a lot of problems with earlier iPhones, like bendgate and cracked screens. Not only have I not cracked my screen with recent iPhones, I’ve gotten significantly fewer requests from folks for me to repair their screens. I drop my phone all the time, and it basically refuses to break. And I just use a cheap bumper case. Similar for other folks I know. Along with water resistance (which would come alongside dust resistance), I think devices are pretty sturdy.
All of that said, I’m a huge supporter of the right to repair. And I don’t think we have to give up nice designs and even thinness at the cost of repairability. I think if Apple even just changed their stance to be pro-repairability (even selling replacement parts), I’d be happier. I think a heatgun and some torx screwdrivers are cheap enough that it’s not that difficult to teardown an iPhone with some knowledge and practice.
My main gripes with repairing iPhones are the lack of quality parts. Buying cheap replacement parts is possible, but they are worse quality, and some things (like Touch ID) don’t work properly.
On top of that, I imagine you can still achieve thinness and water resistance with screws rather than glue. So I’m with you there, they could design the products to give us the same features and also be more repairable.
> A thinner device is likely lighter as well, which people do want
I want think and light devices - but not at the cost of everything else. A replaceable battery is important - realistically, how much thinner and lighter does a fixed battery make it?
I fully agree that some manufacturers (cough Apple) are obsessed with thinness, but I strongly believe the main driver behind fixed batteries is planned obsolescence.
> I fully agree that some manufacturers (cough Apple) are obsessed with thinness, but I strongly believe the main driver behind fixed batteries is planned obsolescence.
i've worked with companies making the kinds of products you're concerned about. this never comes up. they are however terrified about lithium batteries in consumer products catching fire, and want to keep you, the user, far away from them. thin flat batteries also tend to stay a bit cooler, which helps in multiple ways.
> No one asked for their phones, tablets, and laptops to be even thinner
I asked for this.
> Water resistance is a feature that most people don't need
I need this.
So how can Apple satisfy both of us? How about let them research the market and decide what to do themselves?
There's something so arrogant about the right-to-repair and user-serviceable crowd who think devices should be crippled to suit their minority requirements at the expense of the majority.
> There's something so arrogant about the right-to-repair and user-serviceable crowd who think devices should be crippled to suit their minority requirements at the expense of the majority.
I want to buy a device once and use it forever. That's it. It's that simple. The glued-together construction artificially limits the lifespan of the device.
And, actually, it's possible to have both. I remember there were water-resistant Sony phones that had user-replaceable batteries.
Ok... but most people don't. So you aren't going to get that. You can't expect phone development projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars to cater to your particular views. And guess what more: people who buy a device just once aren't going to be anyone's priority for anything.
> And, actually, it's possible to have both. I remember there were water-resistant Sony phones that had user-replaceable batteries.
> Ok... but most people don't. So you aren't going to get that. You can't expect phone development projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars to cater to your particular views.
Imagine HTC unveiled a new phone that is the Desire S but with a modern-ish multi-core CPU and a non-potato camera. Everything else — the design, the size, the screen, the removable battery — is the same. How many people would buy one, given that the current 7" glass slabs remain a (prevalent) option?
And, I mean, people buy and keep iPhone SE (1st gen) and 5S for that same reason. The SE wasn't a flop, despite having a small screen no waterproofing. There's definitely a market for these.
> How thick were they, though?
I don't remember the exact model to google it, so given the period, I'd bet at least 8 mm.
Then why aren’t you rocking an iPhone 5s? Still gets security updates. Or an iPhone 4? Probably still works on all phone networks.
The problem is you don’t see your own cognitive dissonance in demanding the latest most powerful phones last longer, but refusing to use old phones longer.
And iPhones are held together by screws, the glue just holds the components together better making it harder for falls and bumps to break connections, which makes the phone last longer without any repairs.
> Then why aren’t you rocking an iPhone 5s? Still gets security updates. Or an iPhone 4? Probably still works on all phone networks.
Well, close to that, I have a first-generation Google Pixel because iOS is too crippled for my taste. And, yes, I've replaced the battery twice and the glued-down screen is a major nuisance.
Sales of devices in the real world rebut every single one of your points. Customers notice lightness and thinness when they heft phones and tankers, and overwhelmingly choose light and thin.
That’s not true but don’t let it stop you from demanding phone makers make custom models for every handful of people who want unique features.
Of course if you believe your design actually has a market, it’s never been an easier time in world history to manufacture your own smartphone designs with easy availability of parts, android, Kickstarter, Chinese contract manufacturers, etc.
Are you are the type of person who complains but never does anything about it?
User replaceable doesn't need to mean tool-free removal.
You can use tiny phillips/hex/torx screws instead of glue to hold the back in place.
You can use thin rubber gaskets and silicone grease to seal the case instead of a custom punched adhesive sheet that is nearly impossible to replace without destroying the device or compromising future water resistance. Literally every water resistant wristwatch made before Apple entered the market used to work this way. They're designed to have batteries replaced or mechanical bits serviced every few years and are expected to continue to be water resistant, and many of them are extremely thin. I'm surprised that no phones do this, as it seems like it could be marketed as a super premium build-quality feature ("built like a dive watch").
The batteries are already connectorized instead of soldered. You can use replaceable pull-tab-removable adhesive strips to hold the battery in place if needed, instead of glue that exceeds the yield strength of the material it's attached to.
Some of these things might cost a few cents more, but none of them should materially affect thinness, rigidity, water resistance, etc.
Gluing everything together will absolutely affect your drop tests, and your conversations with ID, and your conversations with manufacturing who don’t want to have 18 screws in the assembly. There are many more stakeholders other than consumers and evil bean counters who don’t want you buy a third party battery. I’ve seen drop tests alone dictate the use of adehesives.
Right to repair and user-replaceable batteries have nothing to do with each other whatsoever.
This misconception comes up every week on HN. I don't know where it came from, but I wish it would go back there.
Right to repair is important! Farmers have been suing John Deere to make it legal to replace the controllers in their tractors with an open-source board, because the company sells tractors with a license that requires farmers to use their 'authorized' repair networks.
Car companies get into this same game, and pushback is important: the playing field for repair should be level, when you buy a physical object, you should own it, and so on; all of this is good. Apple has lobbied against this sort of legislation, and shame on them.
But from where on Earth do you derive the right to repair your tablet easily and without any specialized tools from this?
How does that follow? What right do you have to demand that things be manufactured in a particular way?
I don't want my tablet's battery to be user replaceable! not as much as I want it to be thin, and solid, and resistant to splashes.
It's great that you want to buy those things. I don't. We should both fight for the right to be legally allowed to repair our gizmos, for the right of third parties to do that work, and even demand that companies which sell a manufactured good also sell the consumable components of that good, for some reasonable period after commencing manufacture.
And we should stay out of each other's way on matters of personal preference, such as whether batteries are glued in place or kept in a bay behind a door.
Maybe I am not getting your point but I have my car repaired many times outside of the dealer (windshield replacement, stereo fixes etc). Are you saying this is illegal? What Apple is doing is something else, no?
> Within the automotive industry, Massachusetts passed the United States' first Motor Vehicle Owners' Right to Repair Act in 2012, which required automobile manufacturers to provide the necessary documents and information to allow anyone to repair their vehicles. While not passed at the federal level, the major automobile trade organizations signed a memorandum to agree to abide by Massachusetts' law in all fifty states starting in the 2018 automotive year.
"While Tesla offers mechanics the ability to pay for access to car manuals (as much as $3,000 a year), Benoit says the company limits access to its diagnostic toolkit to official Tesla service partners and attempting to become one could easily cost six figures and still be unsuccessful."
It's not illegal but it's also not required for car manufacturers to give 3rd parties the necessary equipment/parts/documentation required to repair their cars. This allows the manufacturers to have a monopoly on repairs and parts if they want to. It's not prevalent in the automobile industry but Apple and John Deere are two companies that heavily lobby against Right to Repair.
> It's not illegal but it's also not required for car manufacturers to give 3rd parties the necessary equipment/parts/documentation required to repair their cars.
This is where you're wrong though. Car manufacturers are required to provide all of that in the EU, because it's a prerequisite to having competition in that space.
It was codified around 2007-2011 into EU laws, but most European countries already individually had laws for this.
How do EU laws impact the US here? From what I hear it's only thanks to these laws that some independent repair shops in the US are able to fix certain things at all, because they can receive tools and such by proxy of the EU (and other places).
The US has similar laws. I used to work for third party scan tools, in 2006 every manufacturer was giving us information. The big companies made them available for "a reasonable price" which I'm lead to believe was in the range of 50000. The small companies gave it away and begged us to support them. (small companies knew that if their car broke down in the middle of nowhere the only mechanic would be independent and so they wanted every mechanic to have a chance, big companies knew every mechanic would want to work on their cars so they didn't care to make it easy)
I would 100% prefered replaceable battery that does not have to be recharged as often and the damm thing ro fit into pocket.
I can honestly f-ck how thin it is, just make it so that it fits into pocket and is small enough so that my finger comfortably reaches important parts on screen.
They asked for thin and water-resistant. Apple removed the head-phone jack to achieve that. People were initially surprised but Apple was right that really they didn't need it anyway and they're fine about it now. So much so that other manufacturers copied it. People got what they wanted!
Is it not possible that they give people _almost_ all of what they want, while making one or two changes that are detrimental but not quite dealbreakers?
This is a ridiculous argument against the claims above. If you've invested $100s in iOS apps, you've maybe got homekit, and other apple products, lightning cables, you use iMessage etc, the fact that headphone jacks were removed or batteries are not replaceable and that the products still sold is not proof that's what consumers wanted as there are too many tradeoffs.
The only way to truly tell if that's what consumers wanted would be to go back in time and release 2 nearly identical products. An iPhoneX without headphone jack, non-replaceable battery, water resistant, and an iPhoneX with headphone jack, replaceable battery, same price but not water resistant and see which people choose. I suspect at the time most would have chosen replaceable battery and headphone jack.
Also BTW there are phones that are waterproof that have a headphone jack. Those 2 things are not mutually exclusive.
I don't think you can chalk apple's success up to the hardware, or at least not just the hardware.
Despite my... dislike for the iPhone ecosystem and the way apple runs their app store, it does produce a level of quality and safety that most other systems don't. It works pretty well for people who don't want to have to google things.
I think that for some people that would be worth it even if they don't get the hardware they want (so long as it meets some theoretical "good enough" threshold).
Apple are giving the best option for their userbase compared to other products on the market. That doesn't mean it's all, or even mostly, what these users want. It only means other products give less.
This is incorrect; there are several phones that are water resistant and thin, despite having a headphone jack.
The primary motivation was to help sell AirPods (which customers then have to discard and buy new ones every year, because of the battery degradation.)
> What right do you have to demand that things be manufactured in a particular way?
What right does the corporatocracy have to poison the world and create wasteful, planned-obsolescent, proprietary, non-modular tech? What right do Global North countries have to create monopolies for intellectual 'property' that keep people from understanding the basic building blocks of our modern world (and who are therefore easier to rip off/cheat)?
> I don't want my tablet's battery to be user replaceable!
Tell that to the kids in Ghana choking on your (and our) e-waste
Read the comment you were so quick to get enraged about again. They do want their devices to be repairable, just not “user-replacable”. And maybe don’t link a video from a Russian propaganda channel if you want to be taken seriously.
GP didn't demand a flip-up hatch to swap out batteries, just that it be possible on some level. As it is, you generally can't buy even first-party batteries to replace even if you have the 'specialised tools' (aka a screwdriver) to open it up.
Sure, and that's a reasonable thing to want. That's still not what the right to repair is about, though. It's about preventing arbitrary restrictions on your rights to repair, not about forbidding practical limitations on your abilities to repair (unless of course those practical limitations were created in order to impose arbitrary restrictions on your rights).
If Apple decide to integrate the battery & screen to shorten the electrical paths to that power-hungry component, then the battery becomes effectively non-replaceable. That might annoy you, but it's not a violation of the right to repair.
On the other hand, if Apple do things to ensure that only Apple repair shops can replace the battery (eg via cryptographic signing, secret APIs, or physical keys that they prefer to call screwdrivers) then they've run afoul of the right to repair movement.
There may be times when it'd be good to mandate replaceable parts (environmental motivations come to mind), but that shouldn't be the default -- those restrictions should be applied to individual industries in narrow ways and only as needed.
The right to repair movement is pushing for something that reasonably could be the default, and we would instead make exceptions for things that shouldn't be generally repairable (eg, perhaps modifications to an odometer should be tightly controlled.)
Yes it is - if the battery isn't just a dumb power source, and has some kind of ID verification built in, that's a monopoly on repair, and if they don't even sell the replacement part, it's impossible to repair.
>That's still not what the right to repair is about, though.
I'm just curious as to how replacing a battery doesn't fall under right to repair. It's probably one of the simplest 'repairs' you can make to a battery powered device.
Pretty much any battery powered thing, aside from a modern cell phone or tablet, my first go to if it won't turn on is either, take the battery out and put it back in, or try a new battery 90% of the time, this works, even for my old phones, right up to my current one, which is the first i've owned without a replaceable battery.
It's been about two years and as seems to be inevitable with phones, my battery's life has deteriorated, previously, when this has happened with phones, i've replaced the battery and gotten another couple years off it. Now...what am I supposed to do?
I can't repair it by replacing the battery. The phone is fine, the screen is.fine, it functions fine. But the battery dies noticably faster and from what I've read, this is directly because of the high speed charger i've been using and my charging habits in regards to these kinda of batteries.
Changing the battery absolutely falls under the category of repair. Changing my battery would restor my phone to a better state than now. Yet by design, I am unable to easily do this.
The reasoning is that the internal design of devices like phones/tablets/etc cannot take self-repair into account when the priorities of most manufacturers these days are to make them small and light (not to mention things like water resistance which also poses design problems). Focusing on user-replaceability makes the design process much harder with these restrictions.
Personally I doubt that's the _only_ reason things have gone in this direction, but it's certainly one of them.
>most manufacturers these days are to make them small and light
I bought pretty much the smallest phone with decent specs I could find when I bought my last phone. Most of the new flagship phones were huge. Like things that would not fit in my jeans pocket with my wallet. None had a replaceable battery. Yet, i've had plenty of small, light, sturdy, water resistant phones with replaceable batteries.
I really have a hard time believing that argument i'm sorry. The only real reason I can see not to allow replaceable batteries is to increase profit for manufacturers. Same with every other 'feature' i've seen marketed to people with the same excuse.
It's nonsense. There's alway a profit motive behind things and the bottom line is...
The less modular consumer devices are, the more restricted our abilities to repair, modify and use our devices become, the less user friendly they become. The only ones benefiting from removing modularity, repairability and turning devices into black boxes without standardized parts requiring either replacement of the entire device or specialized repair services are the manufacturers period.
It's not consumer friendly. Anything else is marketing bullshit to make people accept less control over their devices and more profit for device makers.
There's zero legitimate consumer friendly reason not to standardize things and allow easy repair of devices, including replacing batteries, again a long standard feature in consumer electronics.
Just because it takes a couple years for batteries to die now, doesn't mean they don't die and need to eventually be replaced like old alkaline batteries. The time scale doesn't change the fact that eventually, yes they do need to be replaced, like any other batteries in battery powered devices.
The manufacturers are benefiting, but’s its reductive to say the benefit is solely keeping the walled garden. I work in consumer electronics (but not phones). Here’s a breakdown of your stakeholders when you’re going through the design
-ID, who have a particular vision of what the device should look and feel like. They probably want things thin
-Manufacturing/automation, who wants something production line friendly. They’ll probably be angry if you replace a stamped adhesive sheet with 6 screws
-You and your manager, who want you to keep COGS as low as possible
-The reliability team, who will raise a fuss if you keep failing your drop tests and water/salt spray ingress tests
-HW compliance, who aside from ROHS FCC certs are mostly concerned with battery safety
-Whoever is keeper of the PRD (PM, lead engineer). This is where concerns about user friendliness of the assembly will show up
Given all the other things you need to juggle, and how many of them can be solved with judicious use of adhesives, the line item about user replaceable batteries is going to drop off very quickly at most companies. You can argue that this PRD doesn’t capture your needs, or that incentives are misaligned, and that’s fair. What you’re looking for is a company with industrial designers and product managers that deeply care about repairability and there aren’t many. But the status quo isn’t a nefarious plot, they’re just prioritizing other consumer and company needs over this one particular consumer need.
Sorry, i'm glad the needs of everyone trying to make money off me and everyone adding to the worth of their shares comes before the consumers you're squeezing every fucking penny out of.
>More corporate marketing bullshit
Yes...things looking sleek and shiny as opposed to functional and long lasting is exactly what marketers tell consumers they want so they waste more money lining shareholders' pockets.
>before the consumers you're squeezing every fucking penny out of
No one, except for Apple and Samsung, is making any meaningful margin on consumer handsets. Many people would prefer a cheaper device vs a replaceable battery.
It's about 40x40x10mm, and I can dive wearing it, as long as I don't get too crazy.
Here's the trick: write the legislation, before this object is invented, which allows it to exist, while still mandating that cell phones have replaceable batteries.
> I'm just curious as to how replacing a battery doesn't fall under right to repair.
Right to Repair means manufacturers must release the necessary documentation and technical information required for repairing the product, to remove artificial legal and technical restrictions (trade secret, copyright, authorization, DRM), and possibly to provide replaceable parts, and even to allow third-party modification... So that the end user (or a 3rd-party repair technician) would theoretically be able to repair it independently.
But it has nothing to do with the underlying (not artificial) difficulty of the repair, and rightfully so (otherwise it's out of its scope, and you need a different set of regulations to address that) - Right to Repair asks manufacturers to open up the design, not to dictate how it's supposed to be designed. It doesn't matter if troubleshooting requires an EE degree, it doesn't matter if the repair requires a $1000 machine, it doesn't matter if the device is so delicate that it would only ever be successfully repaired by a trained technician with 100 hours of experience.
Using battery replacement as an example: Right to Repair means you should be able to get a service manual, a new battery, a set of tools, and possibly the technical specification of the battery management protocol from the OEM to replace the battery. But if your phone has been completely sealed for waterproofing by design, it can be extremely difficult to open the cover, remove the battery, and put a new one in without damaging anything - but you still have your Right to Repair, and you should support Right to Repair legislations, since it's still possible for you to find a skilled technician to repair it. On the other hand, without your Right to Repair, you won't even get the service manual, and the OEM can brick your device after you've replaced the battery via DRM.
Just like the Right to Free Speech, the Right to Repair is mostly a negative right, in the sense that it must eliminate restrictions on the (theoretical) exercise of the right, on the other hand, it does not actively empower an individual to exercise the right. The government cannot take my blog down, but I may be unable to get any meaningful traffic from the web.
What I understood, the right to repair is more about the papers than the actual device. The manufacturer can write on the contract that only they have the right to repair the device you bought. It does not mean that it has to be easy to repair it but you should be allowed to try it without them suing you.
>I'm just curious as to how replacing a battery doesn't fall under right to repair. It's probably one of the simplest 'repairs' you can make to a battery powered device.
I think the GP is making an important distinction in the technical aspects of the law in order to ensure that this legalislation doesn't create an undue burden on manufacturers and the government that would get this bill killed easily.
What does it mean for the government to regulate that a device must have a user replaceable battery? Does that mean the device must use phillips head? A clip on pack? What about the battery? Does the battery size have to be standardized? Must it use AA batteries? Any of these will make our current devices inoperable. Likewise if we just take the standards today and encode them into law, we could be crippling devices in the future. I don't think it's a pedantic point - when you say "replaceable", it also means by ""whom"? You the user? You can't assume everyone is as technically sound as you - if grandma can't replace her battery then does the manufacturer fall into hot water?
Next, why stop at the battery? Almost every device has some sort of radio that if rendered inoperable would brick the device, just like a battery. Does this bill now mean that the radio of every device now has to be user replaceable? Standardized? Modular? It's easy to see how such a bill is must more hairer than a law that just says "Provide documentation, and don't add legal restrictions on repair".
>What does it mean for the government to regulate that a device must have a user replaceable battery?
Seems pretty simple...
'Manufacturers must not knowingly make batteries inaccessible and irreplaceable without standardly available tools'
Your whole post is just quibbling and semantics making what is a pretty clear issue to be more complicated than it is.
Again, it's been standard for years and years for batteries to be contained below a cover that can be either pulled off or screwed off.
Trying to act like a phone is somehow more complicated and all these factors matter and some poor device manufacturer might sued because grandma can't take her battery out is....
So much disingenuous corporate lawyer babble bullshit.
>Next, why stop at the battery? Almost every device has some sort of radio that if rendered inoperable would brick the device, just like a battery.
You're absolutely right. I should be able to replace the individual components of my phone, the way I can replace components in my computer, car, bike, stove, most of my appliances, my guitar, nearly everything else I own to be honest. I completely agree with you.
>So much disingenuous corporate lawyer babble bullshit.
Surprise, surprise, that is exactly what you sign up for when you ask the government to get involved. Who do you think is going to write up these laws? What are standardly available tools? Who defines the standard? What defines inaccessible? If you are going to make a law these things have to be defined, or else Apple will just pay $10MM to a lobbyist to make sure that Apple iScrew is a standard. If you make it too strict, some troll will sue will you for everything because grandma couldn't reasonably repair the device.
I agree that the right to repair needn't overlap with user replacable batteries but it seems a false choice that we have to make between thin and replacable batteries.
In the time of the Walkman there were some seriously compact devices and I realise that expectations have moved on, but the most compact Walkman designs were all thinner than the average without resorting to sealed units. I'm sure there is some structural impact from removable parts but if they were end loaded (as has been done with lots of compact consumer electronics) they could still be pretty sturdy and deliver a better experience for users tired of their devices' poor performance from something like 8 months to a year after purchase.
This doesn’t tell us much. Could the batteries have been larger and/or the device even thinner if the batteries weren’t user replaceable? (I don’t know the answer, but it seems plausible.)
My old phone was as thin as my new one but it had a larger batter and was replaceable. I always chosed the replaceable battery first if I had a choice. Last time however I didn't find a phone that had a replaceable battery. I usually use my phones a lot longer than most. My first one lasted for more than 10 years with several battery changes (Nokia 3210)
> "But from where on Earth do you derive the right to repair your tablet easily and without any specialized tools from this?"
Suppose you have passed your right to repair. I can design a device so that it takes unreasonable effort and eqipment to repair it. Makes it more expensive to repair than to buy a new one. You would have achieved nothing.
This has already happened - have a Samsung A50 with a broken screen, and you can buy a new screen for £40. However the phone is basically a glue sandwitch, and it costs the same to repair and to buy a new one.
> Suppose you have passed your right to repair. I can design a device so that it takes unreasonable effort and eqipment to repair it. Makes it more expensive to repair than to buy a new one. You would have achieved nothing.
No-one is going to buy a car or tractor that can't be repaired at all. And it'll hit pretty hard if people realise even apple can't replace their screen and they'll need to buy a new thousand-dollar device every time the screen breaks. Apple and John Deere have a huge incentive to make devices repairable, they just want to monopolize that repair business. That's the problem here.
Oh boy, do you know that device manufacturers are actually refusing to repair plenty of devices - I am not talking about warranty shenanigans, but refusing to repair for any money at all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-NU7yOSElE
I have taken my A50 to Samsung, and they are not fixing it no matter how much I pay them. On my Withings smartwatch the glass cracked, and was considered under warranty. They explicitly told me it is unrepairable, and replaced the watch with a new one! How the Fk are they unable to replace glass on a watch?
Just about everything has already became either unrepairable, or uneconomic to repair, from fridges to TVs to phones to smartwatches. The are a few exception like vehicles or large equipment, but the events so far indicate that people will buy unrepairable equipment because they have already done so in many industries. Consumers generally have no way to know how repairable something is, especially for a new product.
Lastly, a device does not have to be completely unrepairable - it could require absurdly specialised and expensive equipment, that only the OEM will ever afford, so you will be back at the monopoly problem.
To play devils advocate: It might just not have been possible. The only way to "repair" many devices today is put a whole new PCB in Perhaps ypur A50 was no longer stocked or made. Does your "pay any price" include 100k%USD to spin up a whe production line and its supply chain to make 1 replacement PCB for you?
The problem with the imac pro repair is not that apple couldn't repair it, they're perfectly capable of doing so, it's that they refused to. Under right to repair Linus would have been able to purchase replacement parts and either repair it himself or get it repaired by someone professionally. You've given a perfect example of a case where right to repair is absolutely necessary.
There's plenty of devices that are still (with some effort) repairable. And there's plenty of consumers who take repairability into account when purchasing, like me and probably yourself after your experience with the A50. Also it's difficult, but the A50 is certainly repairable: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Samsung_Galaxy_A50
I had a slightly different issue. I had a Samsung Smart Watch (Samsung Gear Live) the charger was a cheap custom POGO pin cradle. After a month of use the cradle assembly cracked. I contacted Samsung for a warranty repair and they were going to charge over $50 to replace. I decided not to get it replaced and sold the device on eBay.
Couldn't they just use a standard USB micro interface or Qi standard charger?
I worked delivery in the past at a big box home improvement store. Samsung and LG fridges, if anything happens (such as the ice maker stops working), in some cases the otherwise perfectly working fridge is just thrown out and a new one is shipped. Somehow it costs less that way, I was told.
>The are a few exception like vehicles or large equipment, but the events so far indicate that people will buy unrepairable equipment because they have already done so in many industries. Consumers generally have no way to know how repairable something is, especially for a new product.
But this is only because people have no choice but to buy unrepairable fridges and phones. If people could buy repairable ones then that would factor into brand reputation and people would buy the fridge or phone that's got 3% lesser specs for the same price for the peace of mind that being able to repair it in the future brings.
> No-one is going to buy a car or tractor that can't be repaired at all.
I respectfully disagree, most buyers don't consider repairability. Things just need to last a reasonable time given their initial cost and expectation for level of duty.
If a car could be made that was economically reliable for a 7 year warranty period plus another 3 years (10 years in total) without maintenance, yet be totally unrepairable at the end of its life, would consumers care? Not if it was cheap and had the right amount of cup holders.
I just had a Bosch electric hedger fail on me. I opened it up and discovered the bearings had been sitting in slots moulded into the plastic shell; one bearing had seized and spun causing the plastic to wear/break/melt making the unit unrepairable. I was surprised, since it was a Bosch, and expected better. I then realised I bought it over 15 years ago, and it had worked flawlessly without maintenance of any kind. Therefore the engineering was superb and totally fit for purpose.
UPDATE: I will add that farm tractors are different. These are capital equipment and have an economic life that could span decades.
End of life is important to cars. Many cars are leased, calculation of the resale value at the end of the lease is important to the price you pay. Then the next buyer expects to have some value in the now 7-10 year old car to apply to the next one. That is only possible because it is repairable for the most part.
Of course computers are cheaper, nobody really expects a computer to last more than 5 years, so repair isn't nearly as important.
I'm still using a late `09 Mac Mini I bought new, so over 10 years old now and I still have no imperative reason to replace it. I've replace the HD and maxed out the RAM about six years ago and it's still all I need to get my work done. And a newer "faster" PC won't improve my productivity. I write code and use BBEdit to do that.
Back in the 80s and 90s the tech was changing so fast I had to purchase a new Mac every couple years to run the software I needed, but I've not done that for over 10 years now and I don't see any good reason at all why a new PC can't or shouldn't last ten years for the average user.
Aside from gaming and video editing, neither of which I do much of, there's really no compelling reason for me to want a new Mac.
> I respectfully disagree, most buyers don't consider repairability.
That is... incomplete. A buyer's lack of conscious consideration of something is not the same thing as placing no value on it. They simply assume it is present and not substantially different than the norm.
> Therefore the engineering was superb and totally fit for purpose.
I disagree. Now your tool is polluting somewhere in a landfill. With superb engineering this tool would have been repaired and be of use.
My late grandmother bought a fridge in the sixties. She kept it all her life (she passed away 5 years ago), the thing never failed and was as much cold as a new one. Afaik it was bought by someone that thought it looked cool and is probably still working right now.
> And it'll hit pretty hard if people realise even apple can't replace their screen and they'll need to buy a new thousand-dollar device every time the screen breaks.
That’s almost word for words what an Apple Genius employee told me the other day when I wanted to repair an iPad. He told me very clearly that Apple doesn’t repair and only replace iOS devices, and I would lose any data that isn’t backed up.
Not just the laptop. The entire surface line is a nightmare to try to work on. Recently, I was doing a "simple" repair on a Surface Keyboard -- just trying to flatten out some dents from the inside, so the power port would fit in right.
It took 4+ hours -- to get it open. After that, it took another 15-20 min to remove the mobo on the inside, 30 to try to fix the dents, 15-20 to put the mobo back in, and another 10-20 to get the back on again.
All for a repair which may or may not actually work, because MS doesn't sell parts.
iFixit gave the latest Surface a fairly decent reparability rating. I was surprised to see how much more improved the teardown was compared to the mess of the earlier versions.
> I don't want my tablet's battery to be user replaceable! not as much as I want it to be thin, and solid, and resistant to splashes
Why do you think these things are mutually exclusive? Every time some manufacture has made a phone without a replaceable battery there has been some other manufacture making a device the same or smaller or thinner or lighter that had a replaceable battery and that was splash proof proving this is not some tradeoff that has to be made.
The phone market is pretty competitive these days. Why don't you see Chinese brands capitalising on this unmet demand? They seem pretty aggressive in every other respect.
Right to repair isn’t about giving every single user the ability to repair their own device. Without right to repair, a shop can’t replace the battery in your tablet for you, it has to go back to the manufacturer who says “oh this is 2 years old you need to buy a new one”, or “there’s water damage so you need to fork out $700 on your $800 device so you may as well buy this $1000 model as we don’t sell the $800 anymore”
Instead of taking it into the shop down the road that has all the tools and who can do it for $60.
+1. Right to Repair is about not allowing artificial legal and technical restrictions on repairs, it's about providing necessary technical information, diagnostic software, and parts, but it has nothing do with the underlying difficulty of the repair.
Without Right to Repair, you won't get essential service manuals or schematics, the vendor can brick your device after you've replaced the battery via DRM, the vendor can refuse to provide replacement parts. With Right to Repair, you'll be able to get service manuals, schematics, replacement parts, and there won't be anti-repair DRM - which is why you should support Right to Repair legislations.
However, it has nothing to do on whether the repair should be technically easy. Under the Right to Repair, a device can still be so delicate that it would only ever be successfully repaired by a trained technician with 100 hours of experience with $1000 dollar rework equipment - if it's the case, your best hope is to find a repair shop with skilled technicians and adequate equipment, and maybe you'll get it fixed at a lower-than-official cost - which is certainly a possibility - but without your Right to Repair, even this possibility cannot exist.
If someone really wants to make something easier to repair by everyone (in other words, impose legal restrictions on how a device should be designed), you'll need a different set of regulations to address that. But at the present stage, I recommend to get your Right to Repair first, and understand what does it really mean - similar misunderstandings of Right to Right (= the vendor must make repair easy for everyone) has already been used in many strawman arguments by its opponents in the industry, using excuses such as safety, portability or costs, and in reality none of them really applies.
Does this also hold for the software installed on the device? Would a company be required to provide access to the system, and to provide all possible documentation?
Newer ThinkPads have encrypted DRM for batteries - and I'm sure they're not the only offender. Even if it were difficult to do, removing crap like that would make it a completely different game.
>Right to repair and user-replaceable batteries have nothing to do with each other whatsoever.
I never said they are the same, my statement on 'Right to repair' ends with this -
> I feel sad that we need to educate and demand 'The Right to Repair'.
Rest of my comment are about user-repairability and I disagree that it's just a matter of personal preference. In most parts of the world, electronics recycling is unheard of; longevity of a device is improved when there are user-replaceable parts. Even in the countries where there is proper electronics recycling infrastructure - there are numerous complaints on how these products are becoming harder to recycle(especially the batteries) by 3rd party recycling companies.
In short, environmental pollution is not a matter of personal preference and everyone has a right to demand good practices from the manufacturer for the sake of the planet.
> It's great that you want to buy those things. I don't. We should both fight for the right to be legally allowed to repair our gizmos, for the right of third parties to do that work, and even demand that companies which sell a manufactured good also sell the consumable components of that good, for some reasonable period after commencing manufacture.
The problem is that the market will only serve the majority well. Most people don't need general purpose computers. Following your logic, why should a company be required to make a computer accessible to hackers?
> How does that follow? What right do you have to demand that things be manufactured in a particular way?
They have every right to demand something be manufactured a specific way. The manufacturer doesn’t have to listen but the consumer has the right to demand. Manufacturing is not some black box process that happens “over there” and you get whatever rolls out of it. Consumers have every right to give feedback to manufacturers and request for the production of products that better suit their needs, and if the manufacturer fails to do that the consumer can go somewhere else. The whole point of this is preference
This sounds like the usual free speech debate. There is a difference between the legal protection of free speech and a culture valuing free speech. Yes, legally farmers should br able to repair their tractors on their own, but the spirit of the right to repair is that manufacturers should not intentionally put up user hostile barriers to repair--especially if solely to make repair difficult.
It looks like your iPad had a defective battery. You can’t expect 100% defect free - at a large scale.
I, like many other parents who deal with kids throwing these in tubs and toilets, really like devices for being water resistant. It’s just a trade off you’ll have to make.
Why? Education is never finished. New people are born every day and they do not know anything. If it was not necessary to educate people on "the right to repair", that would mean that this idea is not useful nor interesting. Now, that would be sad!
Got a Google Pixel 1 a few months ago. Great hardware and goes for about $50 as "second hand", but actually like new. Very happy with it.
Unfortunately Google stopped providing updates in Dec 2019 (just 3 years after first device was sold) and many models by Verizon are locked, so it's impossible to use third-party ROMs.
It's disappointing that there are no vendor security updates, even though there are so many devices in active use and being sold. And even worse, Verizon prevents you from using your own ROM.
I think there is a case for mandating security updates for at least 3-5 years after the last new device is sold and removing protections, like bootloader locks after that.
It's hard to believe that we can buy $2000 smartphones which will get security updates for utmost 3 years if lucky.
Can we imagine a computer manufacturer pulling this off with a $2000 computer i.e. where we cannot use the operating system of our choice? Although we are getting closer with integration of proprietary hardware without proper Linux driver support and of-course abysmal user-repairability score(don't tell that's it's for water proofing laptops).
Smartphones are and should be treated as portable computers. we need international regulations to force smartphone manufacturers to allow installation of any 'operating system of choice', else they are just forced e-junk; This can help address anti-trust issues concerning Appstore/Playstore as well.
As for removing the battery to run only on powersupply: Some devices need so much power that the charger can't deliver it fast enough and the device just shuts down. This is when the battery is supposed to take over to provide enough power for the temporary surge. This is more a question for laptops I guess since surfpads and phones are optimised for battery only usage.
The 1 million laptop shortage in California was reported by the Sacramento Bee after polling school districts. I worked with school boards and school districts in California for 3 years selling education software, and I have to say that the people in administration are the most unaware of what the district's technology needs really are. For every heartwarming story of a school setting up a maker lab for its students, there is another school which was allocated funding for a hackerspace, bought all the necessary equipment, and then stuck it in a closet until the right person came along to set it up. I have seen brand new 3D printers grow obsolete sitting in a public school's storage room and shelves stocked with brand new Chromebooks as a "strategic reserve".
The other thing about public school administration in California is the attitude that parents and rich benefactors will make up for any budget/equipment shortfall that a school faces. Administrators have an incentive to underreport their school's technology assets, since their requests are filled one way or another.
Teaching and computers don't mix. Certainly not before eighth grade.
Maybe give every student an iPad every year. Tell Apple to just gift them for the tax write-off and goodwill.
Maybe have computer labs, whatever curriculum units are called. Starting with logo turtles. Along side chemistry and other science units. Then maybe grant access to desktops and printers starting in ninth grade.
Never provide internet access.
I'd be okay with a computer skills class starting in middle school if there's a motivated teacher to staff it. So kids can play with Scratch, other proto programming stuff, some art stuff. Whatever's cool. Treat this like music, art, woodshop, and other electives.
I'm VERY on board with a school sponsored, hosted "hackers" club. Like math, debate, young entrepreneurs, cheerleading, etc. clubs.
Kids have more computing power and information access thru their phones than what any school district should be responsible for.
No school should expend any resources whatsoever trying to monitor, filter access. They can't win.
I'm on the fence about internet access thru their libraries. Public libraries placing their computers in plain view of everyone doesn't deter porn surfing and so forth. So I don't even know if it's a battle worth fighting.
I got to witness The Talk once and it consisted predominantly of introducing and explaining the idea that there are Things You Cannot Unsee, they are all on the Internet, and thus you should not click on everything just because you’re curious.
a) They're afraid of their computers being used all the time for porn (for example by the homeless) thus preventing other uses more inline with their mission statement
b) Hygienic issues with computers being used for porn in enclosed space (masturbation, jizz, etc.).
There's these things called books, think of them like a paper backup of a webpage. So anyways these books can have all sorts of information in them.
I have heard about, but not seen, books about computers and programming. Apparently some were entire reference manuals for various programming languages! Can you imagine? These books don't even need to be charged to use them!
I know it sounds crazy but they're real things. I once met an old guy, you know over 25, and he told me that before YouTube and StackExchange that people learned to program entirely by using books and typing at their computers.
> There's these things called books, think of them like a paper backup of a webpage. So anyways these books can have all sorts of information in them.
Read: Only children who can afford a computer + internet outside of school can use the (obviously superior for beginners) tools available online, everyone else relegated to books.
It's not a given (or obvious) that online tools are superior to books for learning to program. Even if that was objectively true it's trivial for a school to make online resources available to students without external Internet access.
The point the GP was making is schools can provide technology to students but don't have to let them goof off on the Internet. Students definitely don't need Internet access to learn to program. Generations of programmers learned to program quite well without YouTube tutorials.
I look forward to my kids reading the npm, GitHub, and stackoverflow books.
Like it or not, learning coding and actually coding has changed (almost entirely for the better) since the days when I typed in page after page of code from books or magazines.
I would concede however that although generations of people learned to program using books, they were small generations.
The increased accessibility that came with the internet has drastically increased the number of people able to acquire those skills.
Accessibility is probably the priority in a K-12 setting where you're accommodating kids with a wide range of skills and interests in a single class, not just the kids intrinsically interested enough to actually read the book after school.
>Teaching and computers don't mix. Certainly not before eighth grade.
I believe this is categorically and catastrophically wrong.
I have led a very privileged life. I'm 45 and I was exposed to computer programming when I was in third grade. That's 1983. With old Atari computers. It was basically 10 print "Jonathan is great" 20 GOTO 10 But already we had an understanding of job flow and loops. By 5th grade I was playing Robot Odyssey. At the time I never took it seriously; there's only so much you can do with BASIC but myself and my friends already "got" how computers worked by the age of 8.
I can't tell you how much of an advantage I have over not only my peers but even people younger than I am. Those precious few moments I spent in the computer lab hacking (yes, hacking. I figured out how to change the color of the background/border and the main screen, figured out how the color codes were expressed and learned how to generate random numbers, and wrote a program that would probably induce a seizure in some epileptics) resulted in me having a fundamental understanding of not only how computers work, but how to hack.
Trust me, 8, even 6 & 7 year olds can learn how to program computers. Even if it's LOGO/Turtle Graphics. You can gamify problem solving and instill in young kids a fundamental understanding of things that will serve them for their entire professional career.
Thanks for bringing this up because I have struggled to understand why I seem to have such an advantage over my peers when it comes to working on computers and I just realized why. None of my peers were "programming" before high school. To me "hacking" comes naturally because I first learned it at such a young age.
I wouldn't worry so much about the future of our country if every 3rd grader got the EXACT same exposure and opportunity to play with programming and computers that I did. Granted, not all kids are going to take to it like I did, but the point is to expose every young American school kid to these activities so that if and when they choose to become software devs or machine learning engineers or even just spreadsheet jockeys, they get logic, programming, and computers on a fundamental level.
This is just a group that is using "right to repair" to get attention for themselves. Nice and topical, complete with a clickbait headline and "think of the children" plea.
The right to repair won't help the school computer shortage. There aren't enough broken computers, nor enough people able to repair them, to make a difference.
I'm in favor of the right to repair. I've been repairing broken computers and electronics almost my entire life. I have a couple of Apple machines on my bench right now that I'm bringing back to life. But this is just opportunistic attention-seeking.
And even if the most extreme ideals of "right to repair" were in place a decade ago, the situation would be the same as today because the need to manufacture new machines would have been lower, so we'd still have fewer available computers to sell or repair now.
And they are complaining that they can’t use them because they can’t remove the activation lock without the owner’s consent. That’s kind of the entire point. The government was actually pushing for something like an activation lock making stolen phones harder to use.
I’m not aware of any PC that has an activation lock - maybe a bios password for a few but not many. Macs don’t have the concept of an activation lock do they? Even if it is password protected you can always reinstall the OS can’t you?
Yeah; they didn't cite a great source about how repaired laptops can meet the need, they just had sales figures. I buy that unused computers in closets could help, but it's not clear how many there are or how broken they are. Also, lots of laptops actually are repairable. Maybe this is Thinkpad owner bias, but I've been able to find replacement parts for pretty much everything that'd broken on a Thinkpad. But at $150 to repair compared to $350 for a new, in-stock Chromebook?
If you agree with the conclusion, why wouldn't you just politely concur? I agree it's not the strongest argument, but taking the time to point out that it isn't a strong argument weakens the position you ultimately agree with. With the amount of technology that ends up in landfills, characterizing it as ineffective may not be correct.
If your conclusion is correct but not actually supported by you premises the you are correct only by coincidence, lacking true understanding. Probing the premises upon which a conclusion is made, pointing out flaws, and then pointing out stronger reasons... That process strengthens an argument, it doesn't weaken it.
That's precisely the point. There was no stronger argument presented in the original comment, leaving the entire argument for 'right to repair' in a weaker position.
> The right to repair won't help the school computer shortage. There aren't enough broken computers, nor enough people able to repair them, to make a difference.
I don't know what you're basing your prediction on, but we've managed to provide computers to over half the students that didn't have one here in Slovenia since the pandemic started, by taking broken or outdated computers from companies and individuals that were going to throw them away, repairing them and putting a lightweight Linux on them.
The only reason that was possible is that desktop PC parts are very well understood and available to everyone.
On the other hand, we also have several shelves stacked with various brands of laptops and tablets that we get from people in hopes we can repair and donate them, but even with access to an electronics lab with serious equipment, we have not been able to repair a single one as the process for that is currently:
1. Inspect the board for obviously broken parts
2. Find the board number and search a bunch of fishy Russian and Polish sites for a schematic
3. Buy the schematic (illegal, btw)
4. Read through it to find the correct replacement components
5. If they aren't passive or something ubiquitous like a 555, you basically can't get them - cry
6. If there are non-obvious defects, spend a week studying the schematics to be able to start probing the board
7. If you find a bad part, goto 5., else cry
The vast majority of laptop defects are small things that require very little effort to fix with decent equipment, but access to the knowledge and parts required is intentionally made difficult by the manufacturers. With access to both, more than half of the laptops on those shelves would be in the hands of students already.
> spend a week studying the schematics to be able to start probing the board
Sounds like you lack people with particular skills, no amount of documentation is going to solve that for you. I emailed you a present, feel free to ask for more detailed help if you need it.
If right to repair takes off, it will make room for a Stack Exchange-like site dedicated to debugging and fixing hardware. That in turn will accelerate repair just like SO and github accelerate SW development.
This is also true if we convince more people to start open source hardware companies. I do strongly support right to repair to make illegal some of the most egregious things companies do, but I think that should exist alongside more open source hardware for the things we use in our daily lives.
Any open hardware like that would be extremely to "EEE" (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish). Just look at how Android (AOSP) went from a nice, open ecosystem, to a "technically still open source" pile of mandatory proprietary garbage (Gapps, Play Services, SafetyNet and whatever key attestation-based lock-in is coming next...).
There's no way a small open hardware company can compete with industry giants that are backed by armies of patent lawyers and overseas child labor. This is simply not something capitalism is designed to sustain and therefore requires (admittedly tasteless) things like mandatory standardisation and certain user freedoms (to modify, repair, resell...). Sadly, this issue is not technical, but entirely political.
That's true. Unless the user assembles the device himself there is no way for a small company dedicated to opensource to survive. Unfortunately I absolutely dislike assembling manufacturer provided kits. You can't really review a kit because any potential problems could be caused by incorrect assembly. Scummy manufacturers have an easier time to get away because they don't have to promise a final product.
If you get stuck halfway because of bad instructions that's on you to figure out.
I’m replying to everyone individually so I apologize for repeating myself, but wouldn’t Prusa 3D printers prove your point wrong? The company has grown quite a lot year over year. They acquired a company that designed SLA printers and open sourced it. They directly compete with clones. And then there’s all the open source software projects which survive despite zero sales revenue.
Prusa 3D printers are open source and they are able to directly compete on the market with clones. In fact Josef Prusa is quite happy with the clones.
And then there’s a wealth of examples in open source software on how the engineering can be sustained. Blender is a great example - they accept donations from industry and users and they pull in $2m a year. The raspberry pi foundation is supported by industry players and hardware sales.
All of the examples are things aimed at technically skilled users, which is a pattern you see very often with successful ope source projects.
RasPi is obviously aimed at developers, Blender also covers the more techy part of the 3D world and 3D printing as a whole are a very "techy" hobby. We are willing to accept certain shortcomings (price, UX, stability...) in exchange for other things we value (openness, repairability, being able to hack on it...) - the average person doesn't care about any of the latter. Free software can at least win some people over on price, but hardware can't be free.
I am yet to see a successful open hardware project aimed at the average consumer. System76 is as close as anyone and even they mostly target developers, with maybe Fairphone being second, but neither are even close to the market share of even the smallest of their competitors.
To be clear: I love all of those projects, do what I can to support them and really hope they keep going, I just don't see them competing with industry giants any time soon - and maybe that's a good thing.
ODrive started as an opensource project. Then they started getting customers and knockoffs on Aliexpress appeared. They learned from that "mistake" and the latest version is now proprietary.
Yep I use Odrive daily. The counter example is the Prusa 3D printer, which successfully competes with clones. Perhaps the complexity of assembly and resulting quality differences are more significant for 3D printers versus PCBs. Also Prusa has stated that he is quite proud of the clones. It seems that Odrive did not find success in the fully open source realm, but of course this is new territory.
I’m trying to start an open source hardware project and we’re going to try to form a non profit and seek philanthropic donations to fund engineering. That’s how lots of open source software projects work.
What you describe is called Please-Bro in repair circles. I dont want to learn, just tel me what to replace people. Afaik ZXW has something like that build in. No brain engaging required mode - shows you measuring points and list of possible defects.
I would argue that it just makes learning easier. But that's not the point. The point is to make the repair process more efficient for everyone, including those sharing their knowledge.
Soldering is not like writing code, its literally welding metal. You cant take stackexchange copy pasting snippets until compiler stops throwing errors model and translate it into physical world. Pretty much never works out, typical example of an outcome: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/lcd-monitor-has-rough-s...
You end up with people unable/unwilling to understand what they are doing trying to solder things blindly for the first time. Its a bad car mechanic plugging in diagnostic computer and ordering $1000 of parts to swap because LCD screen said Error 45 and internet says "replace xxx bro" only to learn the fault didnt go away and he just stripped few bolts on the engine block in the process. You never learn anything by blindly following 'if x replace y' instructions, you learn by absorbing the 'what could happen if x, what caused x, what does that mean to the rest of the device' knowledge.
That is true, but it's even more a problem of experience, which is hard to get outside of a niche (like Louis Rossman woth Apple). I understand pretty much everything in a schematic and have replaced some passives and small ICs in the past, but as each schematic is formatted differently, with different amounts of Chinese and redaction, often in poorly-searchable pdf form, even finding the value of an obviously blown cap can take a fair amount of time.
Being able to download a brd file straight from the manufacturer, along with a list of probe points and Mouser links for ICs would surely make it much easier.
P.S.: thanks for the link, it'll certainly come in handy!
> Being able to download a brd file straight from the manufacturer, along with a list of probe points and Mouser links for ICs would surely make it much easier.
Don’t you think you’re asking for a bit much here? You’re asking for board layout in an easily digestible and copyable format. This is most definitely IP for the company and they should just give it away? This would be detrimental to the industry. Apple makes laptop, releases schematic, cheap chinese clones would be available within a few hours. I get that people want to repair their stuff, there’s nothing wrong with that, but when the path forward requires dismantling the entire IP protection system do we really want to push forward so Johnny Brokenwatch doesn’t have to buy a new Apple Watch?
Apple brds are already available if you know where to look and Chinese clone manufacturers have serious connections, so this would've happened already if it were feasible.
Again, schematics and PCB layout are not covered by neither copyright nor patents. This is the reason behind Apple, Commodore, IBM and others fighting clones with bios/firmware lawsuits.
There is no IP protection for schematics and pcb layout due to its utility function and mechanical generation (or something). Chip layout had to get separate considerations to be covered at all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_layout_desi...
But that is beside the point. I have full manufacturing board files (actual files that go into pick&place machine) for designs going as far back as ThinkPad 600X, yet you dont see Chinese made ThinkPad 600X clones.
Note that your wiki articles says it’s difficult to protect, not that it isn’t IP. Further, a quote from the article:
“ So since the 1990s, national governments have been granting copyright-like exclusive rights conferring time-limited exclusivity to reproduction of a particular layout.”
Where did you get these schematics? An individual, or even a small company, having these files is not the same as a large company. Also have you tried releasing a thinkpad clone? have we checked all chinese built laptops to ensure the IP isn’t already being used?
_chip layout_, this wiki article is about silicon, it got its own laws specifically to protect chip layout at the time Western believed they had the upper hand in the high end design engineering. PCB is free game everywhere except I think UK, but good luck fighting it in courts.
Not schematics, actual fab files you send to pcb manufacturer + ones you put in a pick&place machine to populate the board. From China, where else, most likely "backed up" by middle level worker to make extra $ on a side. Still no laptop straight clones despite 25 years worth of designs ready for the taking.
Lawyer telling you he can indeed take your money? I am shocked, sir :)
US copyright law does not protect the mechanical
or utilitarian aspects of works. You can draw a logo (trademark) and a funny animal (copyright) in copper layer on your pcb and try that, but otherwise you are boned.
Schools actually end up with a lot of broken computers because kids are careless and destructive. They would pick the keys off the laptops. You used to be able to trivially replace the keyboard on laptops without pulling the whole laptop apart but now apple seals it up with rivets.
I'd be surprised if macbooks had any marketshare in public schools. They all seem to be favoring tablets or chromebooks since iPads are $329 (probably $300 or less for schools) and Chromebooks are <$300 each and integrate with GSuite, which is also free for schools.
Apple has been, and continues to be, very involved in education. When I last worked with them in education they were testing/bootstrapping a “one laptop per child” program using iBooks. After educational pricing an Apple machine may be cheaper than Chromebook or iPad. GSuite also has a replacement on mac. Really Google is getting to the game about 30+ years too late.
> The right to repair won't help the school computer shortage. There aren't enough broken computers, nor enough people able to repair them, to make a difference.
I don't know how it looks in most of the USA, but in Africa this is absolutely the case. In uni I was part of a nonprofit and as part of that I spent 3 weeks in rural South Africa traveling between schools to help with cleanup, maintenance, installation and some basic computer training for teachers and staff.
The vast majority could not afford classroom computers on their own but relied on donations through organizations like the one who was sponsoring us - in a lot of cases refurbished equipment that in often needed hardware replacements and repairs due to the environment they were in.
A great part of the problem is planned obsolescence - through one of many avenues.
A lot of modern Capitalist economy is based on massive continuous consumption. So much so that if a company sell a viable, well-manufactured, robust product - it might be digging its own grave, because people won't need to buy the same or slightly-better product next year or in a couple of years. So, what does the economic incentive make manufacturers do?
* Make parts that are sensitive to the elements or to pressure, so they are likely to sustain damage faster.
* Make mechanical parts that are flimsy, thin, or just naturally wear out quickly.
* Use electric components with short lifespans: Batteries that can charge less and less (while consumption is kept high), capacitors that pop and leak, solder spots that heat up and detach etc.
* Write software or promote software that uses ever more computing resources even for the same functionality.
* Invest in advertising, "news" and cultural products which encourage repeated consumption, fashions, disdain for what's older etc.
* In extreme cases like that spoiled-princess company, Apple - they actively sabotage their own hardware with lock-ins, slow-downs on upgrades and other such goodies.
I always see Apple cited as some malevolent king of planned obsolescence, but I have a 2013 MacBook Pro and an iPhone 6, both under constant use, both of which I have never had any significant issues with and do not plan to upgrade any time soon. I know they oppose Right-To-Repair, but so far their hardware has been fairly robust for me.
They've intentionally made battery replacement more difficult on their laptops by using strong adhesive on in their batteries (they used to screw them in).
What's more damning IMO is their propensity to solder RAM, and now SSDs, to the motherboard. If permanently affixing the most commonly upgraded parts for laptops isn't planned obsolescence, I'm not sure what is.
Please don't be obtuse and intentionally ignore all the of the legitimate reasons why they are doing all these things. You're clearly and obviously smart enough to know what those reasons are. Hint: they're not "planned obsolescence" or any such bullshit. It would be better if we could discuss those issues honestly.
For starters, instead of providing software updates for THREE TIMES AS LONG as their main competitor in their main product space (iPhone), they'd need to start providing updates for, say, less long. :)
Then, after that, they would need to start making products which, instead of holding their resale value for much longer than competing products (which they clearly and obviously do), hold their value for less long.
I could go on, but really, for anyone paying attention? To the facts which really matter? This stuff is pretty obvious.
There is lots of ideology in your post that blinds you and make you don't see reality.
The concept of "planned obsolescence" is wrong in so many levels. It makes companies bad and customers good, but the reality is that most of what people call "planned obsolescence" is just offering products cheap enough.
The fact is that most people want to buy as cheap as possible, and today polymers could make things extremely cheap to manufacture, but polymers do not last like good quality metals or polymers.
You sell at the store a washing machine with the drum made in stainless steel or polymer and most people choose the polymer one, because it is so cheap, compared to manufacturing in steel.
You put as an example capacitors that pop and leak as part of the "master plan of planned obsolescence". Most of the capacitors leaking in the millions were the consequence of China doing industrial espionage of Western companies, selling those caps super cheap, but doing it badly and those millions of caps failing very early.
Of course the same people that buy cheap and put with their decisions out of business the quality product, then will complain about the cheap product when it fails.
Most companies just can not manufacture high quality products because it is so expensive for them, and will not be able to recoup the investment, not enough people will buy.
Apple can do that and does that. Their products are high quality. They use high quality materials like aluminum to make their computers, and almost nobody can compete with them because they sell in volume.
For example they manufacture clocks with a precision that no company in the world used in volume before they did.
You can like or dislike what they do, but insulting them only shows how biased are you against them.
I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about right to repair... or maybe it just means different things to different people.
It's one thing to make a machine that is difficult to repair - like removing the screen to get to the battery. The real problem is when a company won't provide replacement parts and have patented the parts to eliminate third party manufacturers. The laws around the auto industry got it pretty much right - if the manufacturer mandates that you use a specific part, then they must make it available, and I believe they have to stock replacement parts for 20 years or something reasonable like that. It doesn't mean it's necessarily easy to make the repair (ever do transmission work?).
I can buy used Chromebooks that clearly came from schools for $69 at retail and substantially less in container load quantities. At the same time, schools say they can’t buy Chromebooks. There’s a disconnect here - these devices are supported by Google longer than the schools are keeping them.
Schools need to stop trashing perfectly functional devices as e-waste and should make them available to other schools and cities.
I use my HP G4 11” Chromebooks every day for software development. They are certainly good enough for school work.
I support right to repair, of course, but this article can cause harm to that cause. It mentions overriding activation locks. That’s bypassing security measures on functional products, which is not truly repair.
Should the manufacturer have a process to factory reset low value equipment? Of course. Still, I wouldn’t want to conflate that with right of repair
A repair mindset can also help with wastefulness and standardization. If you expect that you'll need to repair an item, having a certification or expectation that it can even be repaired will force the use of more standardized components. And less junk thrown into landfills.
People who read this would probably be interested in one laptop per child, which was a nonprofit effort to provide $100 laptops to students throughout the third world. There is no need to buy cheaper used laptops when the laptops can just be manufactured more cheaply to begin with. A lot of what people are spending their money on is the software like that of the operating system which is not strictly necessary for young students. The actual components of a barebones computer are dirt cheap.
I don't think OLPC has much if any advantage over Chromebooks today. IIRC the OLPC laptop (not tablet) never reached $100; it was more like $200 with specs (e.g. VIA processor and 7.5" screen) that were weaker than even the cheapest $200 Chromebook.
"The irony is that I’d like to do the responsible thing and wipe user data from these machines, but Apple won’t let me. Literally the only option is to destroy these beautiful $3000 MacBooks and recover the $12/ea they are worth as scrap."
It's going to be interesting if batteries good for far more charge cycles become available and the phone makers resist using them because they will extend device lifespan.
I wonder why there is a "shortage in school computers" still. Computers haven't significantly improved in the past decade, and most of the ones manufactured would still work fine at a local school. All you need to do is put in a $100 SSD into them and they're good to go. I have 3 older machines collecting dust around the house and I don't know what to do with them.
I maintain and repair my electronic devices when needed. Some hardware vendors are better than other. Some of them publish service manuals for open access, and even have youtube channels with videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/c/hpsupportadvanced/search?query=Pro...
Is there really a shortage of school computers? Unrequested: my kids got sent a chrome book and MSFT surface for school this year, when they already had better home computers.
The US has never spent a higher percent of GDP on education,
Again, does every kid need a school procured laptop or pc? Mine didn’t, they had their own. My guess is most kids do so if schools just focused on the kids who didn’t already have computers the backlog would likely disappear.
Agreed, there are plenty of retired machines out there. Hell, if they organized properly I am sure office companies would happily give them computers when they do their cycling every few years. I imagine their local firms probably refresh at least every 5 years.
How many Windows/Linux laptops are as locked down as the iPad anyway? It seems that right-to-repair is specifically a war with Apple at the moment as they make vendor specific components and glue the thing together. Most off the shelf laptops use off the shelf user replaceable parts? To be honest I don't think we should encourage children into the Apple ecosystem until they sort their shit out.
With so many credit-card sized computing devices, I don't know why we're not yet building laptops where you can just drop in some semi-standard computing device into the middle and simply plug in a HDMI screen, 5V USB power connector from a battery and USB peripherals. Kids don't need the slimmest, fastest computing device ever created, they need something robust and reliable. Maintaining these machines is often as simple as just having the ability to swap parts to build working machines - make it so that somebody not trained in tech can do it.
If you think IT repair and refurbishment in education is an amazing solution you're either naive or so brilliant no one else in the industry can see it.
Random thought, physical destruction of hard disks is often required, as it should.
If you could find a way to do it electronically and be auditable, it might be step one. The erasing is easy, the auditing is hard.
I feel we need the manufacturers to provide a design lifespan for each device, and that should mean that at least half the devices sold must reach or exceed that age without significant degradation -> like a half-life.
Nobody wants to buy a laptop that will only last 2 years, so the manufacturers would either have answer some tough questions, or design things to last, and to be repairable (because that's one way of making them last).
Obviously careful through is needed towards the fine print - one should allow some parts to be replaced, like batteries, but not accept that a device lasts 10 years if you spend more on repairs than the device has cost in the first place.
I don't see much about "right to repair" in the article. As @samatman says: "Right to repair and user-replaceable batteries have nothing to do with each other whatsoever."
Some commenters mention how specialised tools are needed, and how a lot of things are glued together making repair difficult. This is a consequence of the engineering choices made between, say, a thin notebook and something like a Dell Latitude, and the purchasing preferences consumers have that drive those design choices.
Wasn't aware of a shortage of school computers, imo growing up in Florida it was more of a shortage of competent IT staff.
In middle school I was able to use Net Send, granted this was pre SP2 for WinXP but that was a great way to have fun, meanwhile in highschool it was veritas backup software, open network directories and simple permissions that, should've been locked down vs any semi competent kid could do, nefarious stuff.
Of course, I never did. Ever. But the computers were never that used, I don't think we even had AD for unique user names, and we did not have email addresses. Computers were on a domain and there were some user names, but simple simple stuff like logging in as admin was possible (by default no password on Pre SP2.)
For the article, they cover refurb, and IMO that's the best answer - Microsoft gives away O365/M365/W10 for school basically free (if not free) and there's entitlements via techsoup for any non-profit, that basically mean if you file a non-profit llc, you get it if you provide a resale license and state leter of incorporation. (Resale license is pretty common for most non-profits, and allows you to waive sales tax on most purchases, because, its' for sale and ultimately will increase tax revenue for the state/county)
And an 5-7yr, maybe 10yr old i3, i5, i7 is all a student needs - a majority of students just need a basic laptop that should have good parts bin because it's probbaly to get damaged, vs having something new and not having that secondary resale/used/chinese market propping up parts.
Old Dell Latitudes, XPS's, For email, office apps, browing, and general computing, I don't see an issue. Especially w/ an SSD.
Now, macbooks, the resale market is strong on these, 2013 macbook airs are still selling for 400$+. Yeah. Right?
2013 Dell's and Lenovos, $100'ish. And they're great computers.
Most of the time the users don't even know the differences, just have Windows 10 and have it O365 ready and look in "good" shape.
Perhaps there should also be a Right to Virtualize? In this way there is less dependence on hardware and app ecosystems, as everything can co-exist and run everywhere; in the cloud or on refurbished hardware.
Fascinating. This looks like the kind of problem the OLPC was created to avoid - it was inexpensive, durable, open, standardized, and trivially easy to repair. It'd also be given to each and every student.
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