Hacker News Reader

Comment by pishpash | Hacker News Reader

Closed hardware has what advantages? I can see forcing consumers onto one platform has advantages (as well as disadvantages) but closed hardware by itself has no advantages I can see.

View on HN

It depends what you mean by closed.

Gluing in batteries enables much thinner, lighter construction. Maybe you think that’s unnecessary for a phone, others might differ, but for things like AirPods it’s a huge difference. In any case this issue is at least partly overblown, dealing with glued components makes home repair hard, but professional workshops and recycling specialists can often use heat systems and solvents.

Apple’s touchID is only secure if the system can trust the fingerprint data it gets from the touch sensor in the screen assembly. If anyone can plug in whatever screen assembly they like with no hardware secure identification, guaranteed security becomes impossible. The same is almost certainly true of the FaceID sensors.

So yes there are very real direct advantages from these manufacturing methods and from closed hardware systems. Whether you care about them is up to you, but surely it’s also up to each of us to choose for ourselves?

Did you notice that the recyclers are saying that the new macbooks are difficult to recycle.

If Apple wants to continue to do this then they should be force to pay for the cost of recycling their product.

The non-repairability is imposing a real pollution cost on the rest of the world. In recent news China has decided to stop taking in the rest of the world's garbage. The toxic metals are now going to be leaching in to US water supply not just China's. Recycling/reuse/repairability has a positive economic benefit.

>Did you notice that the recyclers are saying that the new macbooks are difficult to recycle.

Yes I did, if it’s a problem with specific products then yes I think it should be addressed. Apple prides itself on an industry leading record on recyclability and any backsliding from that is unfortunate. However using glue, by itself, isn’t always a problem. It would set a significant ussue for recyclability if iPhones for example.

Apple closes everything so they can maintain their image. The "it just works" image is hard to control if your customers are encouraged to do their own repairs, or pay an unauthorized person to repair it.

Whatever advantages that make consumers choose to buy it.

Lack of options or awareness is the normal 'advantage'.

Companies don't want to say you can repair it when it breaks because that implies it will break.

If it will break, the advantage is cheaper engineering and manufacturing. The price of electronics generally approaches zero anyway, so all problems people have with the industry evaporate as the phones get cheaper, cheaper, and cheaper.

In another comment I suggested a minimum price of around 200$ before the rule kicks in. If it's over that then by definition it's not free.

Remember this is assembly not CPU design or something. Companies want the ability to source from multiple other companies so at some point you get individual components.

People can just buy cheap phones that were as good as the expensive ones a couple of years ago. There's no need to get up in people's business about how they make expensive phones.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com