Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It's because they can see the bigger picture, beyond these 2010s-era complaints of 'user-upgradable RAM.' This is totally irrelevant in a SOC world.

Apple is indeed reducing the carbon footprint of computer manufacturing, by consolidating more and more components on a single chip (SOC) with M1, and creating smaller and smaller hardware.

There's a ridiculous amount of carbon footprint saved by not having to source, ship, and assemble separate RAM, GPUs, Processors, etc from separate suppliers located all across the world.

10 years from now when your entire motherboard and all its components sit inside a chip small enough to fit inside a single AirPod...and 20 years from now when the need for physical LCD/OLED panels disappears...does it really matter how repairable it is? Even 100 million of them won't fill a single average-sized landfill.

Hell, we've already broke 1nm [1]. This means hardware will continue to get smaller and smaller for years to come.

Hardware consolidation and physical size reduction is the bigger gain, and the goal we all should be focused on if we actually care about sustainability.

The fact is, only a tiny minority of consumers would even entertain the idea of replacing computer components in the first place. This has been true for the 4 decades PCs have been around with easily replaceable hardware, so I don't think Apple changing to Philips head screws is going to change that.

[1] https://technosports.co.in/2021/05/20/tsmc-mit-and-ntu-annou...

Yeah no that's bullshit. (and a change of subject)

We're not asking for modular connectors (although those are nice) or larger competents. we're asking Apple (and everyone imitating them) to stop artificially preventing people from replacing parts (either via deals with suppliers that prevent people from buying them or via software lockouts.)

People do surface mount rework all the time (I think the guy TFA is talking about is the same that inspired me to learn how to do it.)

Not having to throw stuff away because a single component that could otherwise be replaced is a huge gain for the environment (especially people in places that ewaste accumulates) and doesn't have to come at the expense of size reduction.

> “People do surface mount rework all the time”

What percentage of Apple customers are doing surface mount rework, or even hiring other people to do this, in your estimation?

My guess is less than .01%.

And how much could that really be increased if Apple were forced to make their parts accessible and available in the aftermarket? Vs the carbon footprint of the extra manufacturing effort and having to set up distribution channels for these parts?

I just don’t see the sustainability argument. I don’t think any large number of people would suddenly say they want to keep their slow, heat-generating Intel MBPs if they were more repairable. The upgrade cycle will always be the upgrade cycle.

It’s disingenuous to play the “green” card here. I’d be more on the side of the right to repair Apple critics if they would just be honest and say “hey, this is a hobby for us and we want to save money and we just want to be able to do this stuff because it’s fun!”

> My guess is less than .01%.

Because it's prohibitively expensive vs the cost of a new device due to the policies being discussed in this thread.

There was a time I could get a screen replaced in a phone for $40-50. Today, Apple literally bricks the device for swapping out a broken button, even if the part is an authentic Apple component. The trend has been getting progressively worse, and while this thread is mostly about Apple it affects far more industries (Farming being a big example).

> And how much could that really be increased if Apple were forced to make their parts accessible and available in the aftermarket?

I'd reckon a pretty high % of people with cracked screens would happily get them repaired if it were not either ludicrously expensive to do so, or if they felt that they could get it done by 'professionals' instead at some random corner store. These shops can't source parts and schematics "legitimately" and the whole process feels very grey market which drives people away.

I spent 3 months researching how to build a SFF gaming PC and a year after I was done, Apple came out with the M1 Mac Mini which covers 90% my PC's use case (And beats it on many dimensions). PC repair is a dying trade, let's not regulate to keep it alive.

> My guess is less than .01%.

On the one hand we have people arguing for the right to repair so we can increase that number.

And on the other hand there's people who go "meh, the screen is cracked, now I have an excuse to buy new toy, I'll chuck this one in the river since its prohibitively expensive to repair cosmetic defect why the fuck would anyone want it."

You even admit to disagreeing predominantly because you think some of us are being dishonest, and it's probably true that some people want to tinker.

But some people just want to be able to pay a service tech a reasonable fee to fix minor damage or fit a new battery, and have parts and guides etc available.

How many people would actually fix a broken suspension on their car by themselves at home? 0.001%, or whatnot.

Now imagine that you have to scrap your car when suspension breaks, instead of bringing it to a car repair shop and fix it at the 20% of the cost of a new one. Especially if you bought the car just 6 months ago.

But now, if you break the screen protection glass of an iPhone, nobody can legally replace it but Apple, to say nothing if the trickier parts like the battery or the screen.

Vechicles have a lot of propiatiary information in them. We are dumping vechicles because Independant mechanics don't have access to repair information.

I believe only one state, which I can't spell, has a Vechicle Right to Repair law.

I went to automotive school, and have been a part time mechanic. The amount of vechicles going to the scrap yard over relatively minor problems I find disheartening.

I agree with your statement emphatically. I just wanted to add vechicles to the Right to Repair debate.

The Right to Repair Movement is bigger than Apple.

It's all electronics, vechicles, Swiss watch parts (I repair watches, and a few years ago Rolex, and The Swatch Group decided to nix all Independant Watch Repairers Parts Accounts.), appliances, John Deere Tractors, etc.)

I guarantee more people would look to repair their broken devises.

The Right to Repair movement is all encompancing.

My biggest gripe isn't even with electronics, it's these pricy vechicles we are buying with priority repair information.

If we could keep cars on the road longer, and my washing machine spinning a bit longer, we could lesson our Carbon footprint. I do see by repairing our stuff, we would be greener in the long run.

I'm kinda with you on the "green card" strategy a bit, but on a different level.

I noticed California trying to pass Right to Repair bills these last few years. They are using E-waste as the selling point. I would rather they just lay it out for their constituents.

Like these companies do not want anyone working on their products because they make more money by repairing the broken products themselfs (Vertical integration), or force you to buy a newer version of their product when that day comes.

I guess they feel using Green, e-waste, carbon footprint is an easier sell? (I don't feel that is the right direction though.)

I wish they would just be honest, and tell the truth.

You bought the devise (Car, computer, washing machine, tractor, blah, etc), and you should have a reasonable way to repair it when it breaks down.

(California has failed to pass two Right to Repair bills. Let's get vocal with our representatives. Email those loafers. Whenever I think about Right to Repair I picture a small farmer trying to replace a priority sensor on that shiney Deere tractor in the middle of a humid field. Bugs sticking to his perspiring skin. He replaces the sensor, and gets in the cab. The tractor is bricked, and won't do anything. Ouch!)

> My guess is less than .01%

I'd say that your guess is very bad.

> It’s disingenuous to play the “green” card here.

No it is actually disingenuous to act like this is about "tinkering with apple devices". Actually it is hard to express how disingenuous the whole spin of "If people are able to repair products they will become worse, I don't want my product to become worse" truly is.

Especially so when we start talking about devices that actually would be repairable if companies didn't spent some truly petty amount of effort to stop it, using DRM and crippling via detection.

Besides that there is a market for refurbished iPhones, actually there are shops that specialize in selling nothing besides them, and the ones buying from it are hardly the evil hacker/tinker people you describe, that want to take away your shiny apple elegance by forcing different product designs...

> I don’t think any large number of people would suddenly say they want to keep their slow, heat-generating Intel MBPs if they were more repairable.

What about the concept of a device being sold used instead of sitting in a box until it gets thrown into the trash? The whole "people just want the new and shiny anyway" is a very priviliged way of thinking. Being able to repair something is more than you keeping your device and repairing it yourself, it also means that suddenly a device still has use instead of contributing to the pollution just because some company rather wants to see you burn that thing in your backyard than seeing it get any use in the hands of someone else.

Besides that: There is more technology than Apple, not everybody has to care what the Apple fan bubble thinks. Apple (and the people that defend this mess when it comes to repairability) just reaches critical levels of hypocrisy when it comes to the "we are doing good for the environment" advertisement.

> My guess is less than .01%

In the beginning it is theorized that humans were a hunter gatherer species. We dedicated 100% of our time to collecting food. At some point we learned about farming and cultivating livestock. People could now generate more food then they would need. This enabled something magical: one person could generate the food required for a group of people and that group of people could do other things! This formation of a group and their social dynamics are sometimes called a "society". Soon people figured out you could do the same thing we did with food production with other things: building things, making cloths, cooking, etc.

I think, even if .01% of Apple customers worked in the repair industry you'd see this same exact effect!

For example: 1 Louis Rossman can fix ~10 MacBooks/day or 3650/year.

There's about 5 Billion internet users and 20% of them are Mac users.

.01% of Mac users would be ~100k globally. That means, if everyone of these people became interested in repair as a profession were as fast as Rossman we could fix all 1 billion Apple user's devices within 3 years. This is about the rate people buy and throw out an Apple product due to some breakage. This would essentially keep the market full of low cost devices for people who couldn't normally afford a Mac.

Also, fun fact, it's estimated there's only about 50k neurosurgeons world wide: https://thejns.org/view/journals/j-neurosurg/130/4/article-p....

So we have an estimated 2x MacBook repair people to brain repair people.

(Obviously this isn't concrete numbers but essentially even if only 40 people world wide want to repair devices it makes sense to let them)

Your Mac user numbers are off by a factor of 10X.

The vast majority of those 5 billion internet users are exclusively accessing the internet through smartphones (cheap android ones), and do not even own a desktop PC/laptop. Android and iOS account for most internet traffic. Android alone is 40% of all internet users. [1]

If the 0.01% number I threw out is correct, then that's not 100,000 Mac users. That would mean there's over a billion people with Macbooks, which is off by a factor of 10. Apple only sells 20 million of them a year. 0.01% would mean more like 5-10,000.

There's not enough demand for MacBook repair for Rossman-types to make a living setting up repair shops anywhere outside of NYC/SF.

And again, this would have no affect on the upgrade cycle. Most people do not throw away their computers because they are broken, they throw them away because they are old tech.

I too am nostalgic for the days of building PC towers for my family, however, when I think about it, all of those towers I built ended up in a landfill.

They were all super easy to repair and upgrade, and yet, nobody did.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...

>There's not enough demand for MacBook repair for Rossman-types to make a living setting up repair shops anywhere outside of NYC/SF and MAYBE Seattle.

That's an odd thing to say considering the I've seen half a dozen of those kinds of repair shops in the small city near my home town (I never went out of my way to find them.)

The grocery store near where I live now has one inside it. If someone's backlight/screen/camera suddenly stopped working and they could either pay $100 to fix it or $1000 they're probably going to pick the cheaper option. There absolutely is demand for it. Even if there wasn't taking away people's options for no good reason is kind of terrible anyway.

I wasn't doing it until I had to replace the backlight chip (in a computer where there was already at least one module on the mother board, so there absolutely was room to put the backlight circuit on a module but I think Apple keeps it on the motherboard to save money which means lots of dead macs.)

Also you only need 0.1%. The computer I worked on wasn't mine.

>>What percentage of Apple customers are doing surface mount rework, or even hiring other people to do this, in your estimation? My guess is less than .01%.

This is a terrible argument. Apple has Teams of lawyers, and engineers doing to best to make sure board level repair is technically and legally unfeasible as possible, and in your circular logic their success is prohibiting repair is justification for continued or increased anti-repair actions

Wow...

The better question is "How man Apple Customers would like to have the option of repair vs replace"

I bet that number is far higher than 0.01%

>Apple were forced to make their parts accessible and available in the aftermarket?Vs the carbon footprint of the extra manufacturing effort and having to set up distribution channels for these parts?

This is not accurate. Apple doesn't make the parts. Apple doesn't "set up distribution channels" for parts. These already exist. Apple buys it on the market. What Apple then does is force the parts suppliers to only sell to them via exclusivity arrangements. We would like for repair shops to also purchase be able to purchase these parts so they can extend the life-time of these devices.

>I just don’t see the sustainability argument. I don’t think any large number of people would suddenly say they want to keep their slow, heat-generating Intel MBPs if they were more repairable. The upgrade cycle will always be the upgrade cycle.

Phones, like other consumer electronics get dropped, bumped, damaged. This can happen in the first week of ownership, in the second week, or at anytime after that. The idea that you should just scrap it and buy the next model is ridiculous.

https://www.repair.org/the-environment

https://www.fastcompany.com/40561811/greenpeace-to-apple-for...

>I’d be more on the side of the right to repair Apple critics if they would just be honest and say “hey, this is a hobby for us and we want to save money and we just want to be able to do this stuff because it’s fun!”

This is nowhere even close to what most people are talking about in this thread. I hate to have to say it, but you really seem to be arguing in bad-faith here.

> My guess is less than .01%.

That do it themselves.

There's quite clearly a market for other people to do it as a service, and I'd bet you that percentage is pretty much everyone who doesn't buy a new laptop when they see the edge of their AppleCare plan, which may be on the order of half the market.

>We're not asking for modular connectors (although those are nice) or larger competents.

You might not, but OP did: "Why can't Apple make their products easily repairable while making them aesthetically pleasing?"

That's not incompatible with what I said.

idk what you are on about, you wanna defend throwing away a whole laptop when the battery's dead or the LCD is broken? You don't think "right to repair" is all about replacing IC's on a PCB, right? There are a ton of vital components in a modern laptop that would easily be replacable by either a dedicated layman or an unlicenced professional. E.g. the webcam, SSD, battery, cables between these and the MB, the LCD, keyboard, touchpad, power button, speakers, screen bezel, digitizer, daughterboards, lid sensor, the list goes on and on and on.

And remember that "right to repair" does not only entail end users, but also local repair shops and IT service companies who simply are not licensed with a specific brand.

What do you think reduces the carbon footprint of a company more:

A) Company consolidates hardware into a single unrepairable resin block

B) All customers are able to use their devices 50% longer because stuff is repairable

As someone who designes PCBs you could save the world by doing the math here for me and convince me how this is better for the planet than e.g. my fairphone where I can swap out my battery when it is broken instead of throwing the whole assembly away or trying to source parts and removing a glued in battery.

Replacing some component in a computer/phone is something every member of my extended family did within the last 3 years. Usually it was a screen, a battery, a home button, a headphone jack, a hard drive, ... Every instance where they did this they used a piece of electronics longer and thus reduced the carbon footprint more than any single engineering change Apple could have come up with.

Clearly A is better. Because those resin blocks will be made smaller and smaller in the next decade or so to the point that arguments like "Landfills!" become irrelevant.

B isn't even a possibility. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology upgrade/purchase cycle, and of consumer behavior in general.

Most people don't throw away their computers because they "break and can't be repaired." They throw them away because newer hardware is more powerful and smaller and uses less energy.

When I went home last year my parents had 4 old PC towers of various generations sitting in their basement, they recently took them all to the local dump. All of them were still completely functional. Literally nothing was broken.

Why did they throw them away? Because they were 1/10th the processing power of a modern MacBook and impossible to move around the house. Nobody was using them.

There's mountains of giant plastic PC towers sitting in landfills that were built with the easy to repair/upgrade mindset everybody here is so nostalgic about. It did nothing to save the environment.

What display technology will be used in 10–20 years? LCDs & OLEDs may be obviated by then, but panels of some sort will still be a must.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com