The Right to Repair could help address a critical shortage in school computers
uspirg.org
uspirg.org
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
If Apple Store is located nearly.
https://www.cnet.com/reviews/dell-latitude-e6500-review/
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.
What’s the point?
That it was still useful to you until it was ten years old, and it should be the same for phones.
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?
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.
Edit0: specs: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/mobile/phones/g... - 4000+mAh battery.
https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/mobile/phones/g...
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.
And you don’t save any money. The $399 iPhone SE with a battery replacement will be cheaper, smaller, lighter, supported, and faster.
you don't know the support cycle of this commercial device
Has any Samsung device ever had six years of upgrades like the original SE/6S?
often options such as LineageOS become available for such devices.
Yeah that’s something most consumers are going to do. As opposed to just going to settings and click upgrade.
So tell me again what is the advantage of the phone again? It’s not price, longevity, weight, size, or performance.
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?
For once, just once, I'd like to hear you say something even slightly bad about Apple. Come on, just once?
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
Isn't that kind of facial detection done in software? How can it be `heavier' or `thicker' if it's software?
> heavier, thicker, face detection that is not secure,
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.
BTW iPhones are really heavier.
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.
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 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.
Comcast is a clear physical monopoly, the only ones allowed to build and sell internet/cable access to your house.
Your claim is that Apple offers its products at a lower price? Than who?
I never made such a claim. Please read.
> 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.
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.
I've seen a lot of airpods in ears.
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+!)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ironically, Apple products pioneered the "glue everything, fix nothing" mantra AND costed the $100 more that you're talking about.
AFAIK, before the iphone all phones had a swappable battery.
they also had wildly lower power demands.
Come on, it doesn’t take much effort to think of the benefits of controlling the quality of batteries that are put in the devices.
I agree with your sentiment, but it doesn’t help to pretend like there aren’t benefits to supply chain control. Just look at Amazon.
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.
I also support right to repair, but I think we should be realistic about the objections and concerns the opposition has.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!"
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.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37570100
[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/product-safety/whats-behind-...
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-07/lithium-batteries-in-...
[3] https://loudounnow.com/2020/08/23/faulty-lithium-ion-battery...
No, it wasn't. That was Galaxy Note 7, which was a different phone.
(I still own and use a S7, btw.)
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.
Right to repair should exist, but not at the expense of forcing design changes.
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).
Nobody's barring Apple / John Deere to provide the replacement parts.
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.)
(Monitoring voltage is not enough, voltage can drop very quickly at end of battery life.)
That would be a horrid battery charger design, likely keeping the battery overcharged at all times.
Sure there is. Battery bays are a source of water intrusion.
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's a reason why cell phone batteries die after year or two, while batteries in hybrids or EVs can last 10 years.
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.
Water proofing isn’t for swimmers doing laps, though I’m sure many use it for that. It’s primarily for accident protection.
At what percentage would waterproofing be so important that it means compromising on the phone design in ways that are consumer hostile?
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
I dropped my MacBooks at lest a dozens times and never had anything ever break or stop working.
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.
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?
Which is probably a good indication that the market for other styles of devices is quite small, right?
There used to lots of diversity but after the Iphone the market wants an impenetrable giant glass slab.
Agreed. It's shame that all Android device manufacturers similar devices.
What? ...what?!
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
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.
It’s disgusting but I’m not tossing my phone away afterwards, UNLESS IT STOPS WORKING BECAUSE OF WATER FANSGE.
No and every time this comes up I'm having trouble imagining how exactly, physically, could that happen by accident.
(I've since then stopped carrying anything in open pockets above the waist.)
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.
I'm not looking forward to finding a replacement, since it seems like every newer phone drops one or more features that I care about.
The over reliance on glue does not make apple devices more "integrated", it only makes them harder to repair.
@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?
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.
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.
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'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.
I really wish it was. Nowadays devices are thin but heavy so it's unrelated.
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.
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.
How thick were they, though?
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.
What we do right now is toxic and wasteful.
Plus how many devices does Apple save from needing to be replaced by adding water resistance?
And the recycling is itself toxic. Recycling, in the view of people seeking more robust, enduring gear, is mitigation, not a solution.
It is entirely possible to make things that last.
Like big pharma sees real cures as bad for business, buy once, use for a very long time is also bad for business.
There are huge costs associated with both ideas.
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.
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.
In 2020, all phones are the exact same thing with minor differences.
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?
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.
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?
"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."
https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/right-to-repair-legis...
It's not a crusade I have much enthusiasm about, because I admire what Tesla is doing more than most companies. But I think they're in the wrong here.
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).
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.
And i am not getting any of that.
You can’t expect a mass market product to be designed precisely for you.
Such arrogance!
People just don't want the same thing as you. It's not a conspiracy. Different people have different priorities.
The iPhone is massively massively successful, iteration after iteration.
Are Apple doing that by not giving people what they want
That doesn’t seem likely to me.
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.
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).
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.)
This is just cynical and uncharitable.
Or just recognizing that customers choose from what's available on the market, not from the space of all possible design.
Lastly mass market products dont always follow wishes of customers. They often ognore them in secondary properties.
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
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.)
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.
Personally I doubt that's the _only_ reason things have gone in this direction, but it's certainly one of them.
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.
-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.
>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.
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.
Yet, my new phone without a replaceable battery cost more than my last phone with one.
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.
Can't? Great. Let's not make laws like this.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
On another note, Microsoft Surface laptop is unrepairable - https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...
If you pass right to repair without any provisions for ease of repair, it will be a toothless, useless tragedy of a law.
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.
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.
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
Couldn't they just use a standard USB micro interface or Qi standard charger?
I have not purchased a Samsung device since.
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.
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.
Of course computers are cheaper, nobody really expects a computer to last more than 5 years, so repair isn't nearly as important.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for letting me know.
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.
Instead of taking it into the shop down the road that has all the tools and who can do it for $60.
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.
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.
Is this meant seriously? You don't, you can opt not to buy. Otherwise the customer can demand anything, especially large buyers like public educators.
The thing it gets conflated isn't accidental, since batteries need maintenance and are very often the part that needs replacement most often.
Technically you are correct, but it is naive to think that lock-in ambitions of manufacturers don't touch both topics.
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?
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/34072/apples-activation-lock-wil... (biased obviously)
Computrace may cause similar problems on PCs.
A home inspection that reveals a crack in the foundation but doesn't repair it has still rendered a very important service.
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.
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.
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.
If you get stuck halfway because of bad instructions that's on you to figure out.
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.
It seems to me there’s ways to make it work.
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.
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.
Apart from a SE-like platform, I can imagine a site where repair engineers collaboratively build an akinator-like problem classification algorithm.
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!
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?
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.
“ 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?
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.
https://garson-law.com/ask-dr-copyright-protect-your-softwar...
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.
/s
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/20/apple-google-microsoft-are-b...
I worked in the industry, this is first hand experience. But it was 20 some years ago.
High schools mostly chose windows for various science software, otherwise it was macs.
This is very regional. So Google may dominate in one region while Apple dominates in another.
Google could be giving these Chromebooks away to have this metric to throw around. Does this mean they’re used? Maybe, maybe not.
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.
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 think it does deter it, just not as much as we might like.
WRT schools, I only care because the controversy is a huge distraction.
Well, the older kid showing porn to my younger son was also a problem. Again, not something schools should ever have to consider.
Removing internet access hurts kids from poor backgrounds as they may have no other reliable form of internet access in a desktop environment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm not doing a good job of making a distinction between "educational technology" and access to technology and broadband.
Schools just suck at technology. Generally speaking.
Access to broadband is a human right. Along with food, clothes, shelter, etc.
We should be gifting a new iPad w/ cell service to every kid every year. I just don't think the schools should be responsible for those devices.
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.
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.
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.
You know the resources of the planet aren't limitless.
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.
Uniformity is important for management of fleets of devices, free refurbs arent free — they require more labor.
Refurbing broken old dells won't solve the unformity problem. The point of Chromebook is that they are uniform from a fleet management perspective.
And the point of
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1]: "Intel drops plans to develop Spectre microcode for ancient chips", https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/04/intel-drops-plans-to...
[2]: "Support timeframes for Unix legacy GPU releases", https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142/~/s...
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.
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.
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’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.
If it's not the owner, then was it really legally obtained?
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.
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.
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
Some bandwagon jumping going on
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.
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.
The US has never spent a higher percent of GDP on education,
https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending
so why is this a problem and what does it have to do with Right to Repair?
https://nypost.com/2020/08/23/us-faces-back-to-school-laptop...
"Every child a sysadmin"
Any perceived computer shortage is due to lack of will, not lack of funds.
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.
Second question: how are they planning to turn the million desktop PCs trapped in offices into laptops?
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.
Give me a break.
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 is no way that doesn't just turn into a feeding frenzy of people scamming school districts.
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.
Jeg buy 6 million computers. Easy.
A lot might even come from gear they are replacing a anyways.
Hopefully they will step up
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.
The right to repair requires the right to root!
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.
and there's more, I suppose.
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.
"what would apple have to do for you to admit that they are definately going for planned obsolescence?"
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.
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.
"PLEASE SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN"
excuse for getting a law passed.