Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

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Six or seven years ago I was in Chile for a few weeks as a language-learning exercise. While I was there the power adapter to my MBP broke, making it unusable. At the time there was no Apple store in the entire country! I had to go to Brazil or Argentina to get "authorized" repairs.

I needed my laptop and so I ended up fixing it in my friend's backyard with duct tape and superglue. (Works to this day, AFAIK -- but no more Macs in this household anymore!)

I am taken aback by this attitude against "right to repair" people. Do you guys seriously believe that we must all nuzzle up to Apple to fix our stuff?

> They make devices that last

Seriously beg to differ here. My MBP fried its nvidia graphics chip from overheating and all of my iPhones have had battery issues after 2 years (despite battery health reporting 80-90%). In fact now that I think about it the neither the earpiece nor the bottom speaker are working right either.

My point is simply your Acer notebook is even LESS likely to have parts available in country, they are going to be harder to find etc. The number of Acer stores are going to be FEWER.

So on almost every measure (parts, access to stores, etc) apple has a reasonable story. Now when apple starts going direct to consumer with parts and tools to repair you are claiming "bad faith". It's pathetic really.

I may be confusing things, but a power adapter for a MBP should be readily available on ebay etc.

So how is Chilean eBay then? And who's to say I'm going to have a consistent postal address during my time there? Or that the postal/parcel system is reliable? Or that the package will even arrive in time?

And, ironically, generic parts for an Acer notebook may in fact be more available in less-developed economies, due to their relative cheapness and increased reliance on industry standard parts like hard drives and memory. Plus, in my anecdotal experience, there are a lot more people around who are able to do repairs in places where "making do" is a fact of life.

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