Maybe as an engineer he should have just cut himself a rectangular piece of cardboard (size 7" / 10" - optional with rounded corners to not harm himself), draw a screen on it and take it into his hand(s).
He might have then realized that the size of the bevel, where to put buttons etc are define by nature (except if you have 4 hands or two thumbs on each) - that's what I would call a light bulb moment.
His explanations have the smell of someone who profits from the system and tries to justify it at-any-cost even if common sense or "engineering pride" clearly are telling differently.
I've seen very little of him, and didn't know he was 'The Right To Repair Guy', but I saw him freak out over an Apple laptop because he took the back off and the fan was not directly over the chip like in gamer PCs.
This, in a machine that's been designed for generations to have a fan pull air aggressively THROUGH a channel, the only path the air can go, that goes directly across the CPU heatsink. This is not a 'circulating the air' situation: a laptop can't do that. It's an overall system with many considerations (turbulence, air handling noise) that is no longer a system at all if you take the top of the duct off. You cannot run that sort of machine with the case taken apart, it's part of the ducting.
Either he's dishonest for effect (and clicks), or he's considerably dumber than a drummer and college dropout (yours truly! derp!) about cooling airflow in a constrained duct inside a laptop. At face value, he's dumber. For his sake I hope he's dishonest.
Why? He’s just hacked on an external cooling system that is in no way meeting the basic quality requirements of a production device. For that you’d want to hire a heat transfer engineer with experience of designing small-sized passive solutions, and with both a valid work visa for Japan and fluency in Japanese.
Kudos to the guy for debugging his particular problem, but that doesn’t make a product.
The article says Ive's consultancy contributed the power/ speed control button and the hinges. It isn't as though they let him play with anything important.
I don’t think he’s ‘dumb’. Just not an engineer. He unscrews computers and replaces parts and puts them back together. I’m disappointed he doesn’t concentrate on the important topic of right to repair and finds things to criticise that seem like they’re chosen to play to the lowest common denominator.
I really don't care what he built by duct-taping motors to PC-104 boards from the back of Nuts-n-Volts. If he throws away scopes and iPhones he's not someone who impresses me as a Hardware Guy.
Edit: keep in mind that his cartoon is mostly a bunch of whining about how he can't do this and can't do that because of how modern electronic equipment is made. Meanwhile, a friend in Portugal just used his homebrew wire-bonding machine to repair an 18 GHz YIG-tuned oscillator for me. (He failed this time, which is damned rare for him, but he sure didn't balk at trying.)
I do respect his generosity, though -- hopefully, some talented kid's going to get a nice present out of it. I try to help out in the same spirit when I can, because I benefited from similar generosity as a newbie.
PulseAudio and systemd and avahi and probably other things he's been involved in solve problems I don't have, in intrusive ways, poorly and with much churn. It's not unreasonable to loathe someone who makes me wonder what exciting thing is going to break next in an exciting new way if i dare to update my system.
It's possible this problem was an excuse that allowed him to mentally justify the <fancy new fridge> he really wanted. The last thing he wanted to hear is an easy fix.
The predecessor or old self did dumb stuff because of being pressured to deliver something quickly and had to cut corners. I don't see how he'd be offended that now it's time to go back and do it properly.
What I meant is he was wrestling with the inverter physically, not intellectually. I.e. the inverter (after they assembled the whole thing) was very large and heavy compared to the one presented by the on ceo.
I guess I should have referred to the end of the video.
Given that he has the source code to the controlling software it's probably a home brew system.
He's no doubt learned some important lessons, but I can't find destroying $12 million in equipment in any way funny. [c0deporn has updated his original to the more accurate and appropriate "interesting".]
So, he attempted to fix the problem, didn't do that correctly, you were an asshole about it, and he called you out on that.
It seems to me this problem (and the related ignorance) could've been fixed in 10 minutes of working together instead of 36 hours of fighting about it.
It would be funny if he's just a normal engineer somewhere who did this as a quick side project and won't come out as the creator because he's too embarrassed that he lost the keys.
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