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> right to repair is valuable and desirable, even if it's not actually easy to do the repair

Huh? If the act of repairing is difficult (and extremely, in Apple’s case), then do you actually have the right, or is it only a right on paper? Is Right to Repair nothing more than printing out manuals no matter how difficult the process of repair itself is?

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No, it's an important distinction. Right to repair is more about a company a) not being legally entitled to punish you for repairing yourself , and b) not making design or manufacturing choices specifically to make it harder (e.g. sealing a component against water ingress may make it harder to repair but is an acceptable trade off, sealing it just to make it hard to repair isn't).

The nature of the device itself may make for difficult repairs, but that's a different issue.

Nobody actively wants it to be difficult, but if you don't even have the actual legal right to modify the hardware or software it doesn't matter how easy it is.

Wait so are we outlawing closed-source proprietary software now?

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