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Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

There's no reason such a laptop can't be repairable. Sure, it may be harder to do, but that's the tradeoff you choose when buying such a device.

The main obstacles to repairability in such devices are intentional: part serialization, lack of documentation, and so on. Those don't help making the device any more compact or easier to manufacture, it's pure greed.

Address those problems and you can happily have your ultra-slim, tightly integrated laptop. It may be slightly less repairable, but as long as repair isn't intentionally being prevented, life will find a way.

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There is such a reason: it isn't modular enough for the economics to favor repair over replacement, what with the economies of scale and that.

Restricting access to documentation, part serialization, or restricting OEMs from selling components directly has nothing to do with laptop form factor though.

Whether repair of such devices is economically viable is one thing and that's up to the market to decide, but making repair intentionally harder is a choice of the manufacturer and has nothing to do with how slim the laptop is.

The reason is simple: corporate control. It's not a good reason.

If only you could take a big old stick and beat the "control freak" tendencies out of all the major corporations out there.

Sorry I wasn't clear, my point is: that reason is completely separate from a laptop's form factor or method of construction.

You can have a somewhat repairable laptop even if it's slim and tightly integrated, and you can also have a completely unrepairable one even if all components are modular and accessible but then use strong cryptography to authenticate to each other.

Form factor is not the primary reason current tech is hard/impossible to repair, though the industry loves that people believe so, since it diverts attention from their intentional efforts to hinder repair.

It's a major reason. Back when TVs were made of tubes, you could expect any tech-savvy guy to be able to learn how to go in there and swap the tubes out.

Nowadays? A techpriest that can take apart Apple's iPhone stacked PCB assemblies, replace large BGA components in there, and then put them back together and have it work is a rare specimen. And "rare" means "expensive".

A hour of labor of someone who does neurosurgery on electronics isn't going to be cheap.

Not that Apple has any good reasons to make it even harder on the madmen who attempt and learn such repairs.

why are Apple (Foxconn) assembly workers paid so little?

Because they put assembly in countries with cheap labor, and optimize the assembly process so that most workers don't have to perform any complex operations, or any operations that involve thinking.

Things like PCB manufacturing? Putting those BGA chips where they go? Done entirely by machines.

Now, a notable exception to this rule is the "rework" or "remanufacturing" lines - where actual human specialists take devices that failed QC, or used devices, diagnose them, and bring them up to standard.

Those can be very involved. But official manufacturing still has strict limits on how far are they willing to go - and unofficial refurbishment lines have them beat on repair complexity.

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