That happened to my Chromebook too, so I just installed GalliumOS on it, and it's been getting updates regularly for over a year now.
All electronics makers should be required by law to supply security updates and spare parts for devices for at least 10 years after the point of sale (not after the release date).
Another thing I think would have a big impact is requiring all consumer electronics with a battery to have a user accessible method for replacing the battery. This used to be standard with all consumer electronics until very recently.
These laws aren't just needed to protect the customers from corporate bullshit, they are critical for the survival of our environment. Designing electronics to last for 2-3 years is devastating.
Let's start by requiring then that chip vendors sell and support their chips for at least that long?
To stick to "10 years since introduction to market" which is a much easier requirement: 2009 was the year of AMD Phenom II (EOL 2012) and Intel Nehalem (EOL around 2012), and Qualcomm MSM7227 (couldn't find EOL date, but its direct successor came out 2011).
How much stock should they keep around for the 10 extra years after 3 years on the market? (and what happens if they underprovision, will they be sued, or overprovision, throw it all in the bin? they can't sell it, or the 10 year clock starts again)
> to have a user accessible method for replacing the battery. This used to be standard with all consumer electronics until very recently.
... and then vendors sold thinner and thinner devices, and customers preferred them over the others. The only way to get the same mileage out of a thinner device is to put batteries in every nook you can find, which doesn't work so well if the battery is supposed to be a single replaceable part. Also, there are two layers of plastic (chassis, battery container) that take away space that could be better used to store energy.
Can I import a device? What vetting / certification process will be applied? Who does that? What happens when devices are manufactured by subsidiaries which get folded after 3 years? What if "updates" are provided that don't actually fix any vulnerabilities? What counts as a vulnerability for the purpose of the law?
>How much stock should they keep around for the 10 extra years after 3 years on the market? (and what happens if they underprovision, will they be sued, or overprovision, throw it all in the bin? they can't sell it, or the 10 year clock starts again)
There is no reason they need to replace parts with the exact same chip they came with. If newer CPUs/chips are available they could put a new model in. There will likely need to be more standardization so individual parts can be replaced/upgraded but this is not impossible and is very common for parts like GPUs and pci cards.
There are also mountains of these parts floating around after sale. The OEM could encourage the return of unwanted electronics and then gut them for parts to use in repairs after they have been tested. Any leftovers after 10 years can be sent to recycling.
>vendors sold thinner and thinner devices, and customers preferred them over the others.
Customers preferences need to take a back seat over environmental needs. A customer can live with a 1mm thicker phone. They can't live without air and survivable weather.
None of this is trivial and it will be a massive shakeup to the status quo but there is no other alternative. In the end we will all be better off.
The tighter integration of components (instead of routing everything through pluggable buses) reduced power consumption.
Every time a data line passes through a connection (solder joint, connector) you have to crank up power a bit to make sure that the signal makes it. Every time you have to decrease clock a bit, which means more parallel connections (with higher physical requirements == more waste at some point) for the same throughput.
At some point there's a trade-off to be made between inherent eco-friendliness (because it runs on much lower power) and replacability.
> There are also mountains of these parts floating around after sale. The OEM could encourage the return of unwanted electronics and then gut them for parts to use in repairs after they have been tested. Any leftovers after 10 years can be sent to recycling.
Return programmes already exist (although they generally end up in recycling, not as reused parts), and some countries mandate them (e.g. WEEE in the EU, plus RoHS to eliminate troublesome compounds).
Reuse can be troublesome since quality control is so much harder than for parts in factory fresh condition: All the paranoia here (and elsewhere) about three letter agencies tampering with devices during shipment? Multiply that by some large number because supply chain attacks just became trivial.
I'm all for designing products in an eco-friendly way, but a 2019 laptop is so much better in that regard than a 2009 model, that the decision doesn't seem simple to me at which point the 2009 model shouldn't be refurbished any longer.
> Customers preferences need to take a back seat over environmental needs. A customer can live with a 1mm thicker phone.
I agree and a thicker phone has more room for longevity (eg. sufficient shock absorbance built into the frame simply by virtue of being larger than the components inside) than a thin one that I long for a robust device. The majority of customers seems to prefer other aspects though.
You should make laws as close to the desired effect as possible. The market will sort out the most efficient way to accomplish that. Manufacturers will start placing availability terms into their contracts or stockpile as necessary.
Not every consumer wants or cares about this, but every consumer would be forced to pay for it. How would this even be enforced? Who will be the judge of what updates were important and what were not? What if they provide only cheap replacement parts which regularly fail? What if the company goes out of business a few years later? So many problems...
In my opinion it's one thing to create protections that prevent the stoppage of unauthorized repair, or the development of 3rd party replacement parts. However, it's another thing entirely to force companies to provide these services themselves for an arbitrary length of time.
For the same reason we have laws on fire safety, food safety, carcinogens and asbestos. Average consumer may not know or care about their existence. But if we get rid if them all, organised society will collapse.
However I still have difficulty in the grey area between "security" and "other" update...
Addressing known and reported vulnerabilities would be a start - many routers and phones have known vulnerabilities and can be pwned in minutes.
Then I would include degradation of service - example, I have samsung bluray box that came with YouTube functionality. Withing 1 year that didnt work any more because of changes to youtube. Withing a period of time they should be judged to maintain such software degradations.
>Not every consumer wants or cares about this
What consumers want or care about is less important than the ability to live on the planet in 100 years.
Newer products are often more efficient. It's not clear to me that supporting older products is always better for the environment. For example, newer tractors may be orders of magnitude more efficient in fuel consumption and pollution control. I don't know this for a fact but I think there is sufficient precedent to make this assumption for at least some products. Many consumers will favor short-term gains (not having to pay the cost of a new tractor) over long-term solutions (upgrading and recycling equipment).
Leaving aside products that fit into the above category, lets look at an example of a product commonly discarded before it's usable life. Laptops, for example.
Here again it's not clear to me that legislating requirements for spare parts and security updates would make much difference. After 5 years or so all the laptops of average users that I've encountered are in terrible shape. Tons of spyware, extremely slow, and almost unusable. In this case I would usually just erase and reinstall. Now add a broken part to the list. Especially on cheap laptops, components are increasingly integrated so a single broken part could mean replacing essentially 50% of the machine. Laptops are so cheap. What do you think the consumer will chose: pay for the repair and cleanup of an essentially useless machine, or just buy a new one? So often it's the later.
The closed ecosystems that have sprung up thanks to the App Store have actually improved this, but still, in my experience, people tend to just buy something newer (and better) rather than deal with (and wait for) a repair.
I'm not claiming there would be no impact in legislating around this, but I believe it would be small, riddled with holes and problems, and that there are better approaches (to solving environment problems).
Just a wacky example but consider the following.
Manufactures typically design for a particular lifespan (such that no more than a certain % of devices would fail within a specified number of years). The idea is to reduce the amount of devices being trashed, so perhaps we could create tax incentives to encourage (a) longer life spans and (b) better recyclabiltiy.
I think the idea is great, filling your proposal with Xs ans Ys isn't. This is not code, it's a suggestion :)
I don't think that is feasible and could ruin manufacturers. But in the case they end the support, they should provide access for users to install other sofware solutions and remove protective barriers.