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> This is such bs. iPhone is one if not the only smartphone the oem support for about 5 years. My son is rocking a 5s currently with the latest os update. About a year ago, I swapped out the battery myself.
> This is such bs. iPhone is one if not the only smartphone the oem support for about 5 years. My son is rocking a 5s currently with the latest os update. About a year ago, I swapped out the battery myself.
>This is basically an advertorial for the Right to Repair legislation. I continue to be amazed by how uncritically this topic has been covered. Jason Koebler at Vice has basically been an activist on this issue, rather than a journalist.
And unlike what the name implies, Right to Repair isn’t about giving you the right to repair your devices or products. You already have that. It’s not illegal. Right to Repair legislation is purely about the third party repair industry lobbying to have manufacturers officially support them: with parts, blueprints, manuals, etc.
This may be fine for vehicles (and even that is questionable now that cars are becoming more advanced and require more expertise to repair), it would be silly for consumer electronics which is a much more dynamic and fast changing industry.
And as for the story about environmental standards. EPEAT is a shit standard if it would have prevented Apple from creating a unibody Macbook Pro. It was right to change. The real reason that Apple lobbied them to change it isn’t some silly conspiracy about making them harder to repair, it’s about making better products.
I have to congratulate Kyle Wiens and the iFixit team on having stellar PR. Whenever a silly environmental story about Apple pops up, he’s the go-to guy for a negative quote.
Sorry can you explain why it's silly because the electronics industry is more dynamic?
> And unlike what the name implies, Right to Repair isn’t about giving you the right to repair your devices or products. You already have that. It’s not illegal. Right to Repair legislation is purely about the third party repair industry lobbying to have manufacturers officially support them: with parts, blueprints, manuals, etc.
From an environmental standpoint that doesn't sound like a terrible private interest group. If 3rd party repair gets support from manufacturers it lowers barriers to entry to the repair industry. Which would make repairs cheaper. That in turn would encourage more consumers to consider repairs over replacements. In theory, at least.
> I have to congratulate Kyle Wiens and the iFixit team on having stellar PR.
The saying "doing well by doing good" comes to mind.
I don't think this is completely true. Wasn't a big part of the John Deere controversy about exactly this, i.e. using copyright or some such law to effectively make diagnosing and repairing breakdowns illegal?
Companies can also push consumers into contracts or terms of service that disallow repair or modification.
Other vendors have the exact opposite problem (my LG G5 has a replaceable battery, but I have no idea how long it'll continue to receive OS updates from my carrier).
1) if the battery needs replacing within warranty doesn't that mean the user shouldn't have to? There is of course a case where the user thinks the battery life is bad but apple doesn't agree so the warranty doesn't help.
2) there is a difference between replaceable and user replaceable and my point was that "replacable" is usually enough since batteries are so rarely replaced compared to e.g screens. I have no stats but my personal guess would be that an average iPhone has at least one screen replacement.
And my six year old 5 has long since hit the proverbial trash. It was too slow about four years ago.
I remember previously fast iPhone 4s becoming close to useless when iPhone 5 came out after an os update.