Cars these days can run half a million miles in their lifetime if you treat them right and replace the pieces that break. Could you imagine a future where cars followed the Apple model?
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17444076 [1]: https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup
These mature cheap reliable mass-produced electrolytic capacitors of which we rarely see fault today, sure had quite the rebellious stage[2] [3].
Interesting, from the announcement on badcaps.net[3]:
"Back in April 2002, I had an idea to start a business (actually spinoff of another business) servicing motherboards at component level amid the mass capacitor failures plaguing the PC industry."..."The store boomed from its launch all the way up until about a year ago. Over the last 6 months or so, I have sold very few capacitors. Once my stock depletes, I will be shutting down the Badcaps.net store."
For laptops this kind of environment is common; in fact most of Louis Rossmann’s repairs are about liquid damage.
I'm a mechanical engineer masquerading as a software developer so I could be talking out my ass, but I'm fairly sure that board failure rate is proportional to the amount of discrete components on said board.
Electric cars are so much easier to repair in my opinion because of their simplicity, with the exception of the high voltage stuff, which I won't touch. Replacing the drive unit in most electric cars is like 2 sets of wires and 4-8 bolts. Ever tried replacing the camshaft in an internal combustion vehicle? I'd say the difference is, the aftermarket car parts business is very good at making camshafts, bearings and pistons, but not so good at making high power inverters and charging systems. But that'll change as electric vehicles become more common.
This is FALSE, small size do not explain Apple not publishing schematics, not selling parts, attempting to stop third parties to repair Apple products by sending them to justice etc.
I think you need to research more this subject and if you are honest with yourself you will stop excusing Apple for this.
Basically, whenever a company says: we don't want third party X to do Y because of user experience, it mostly boils down to 10% user experience, 10% PR & Marketing, and 80% legal crap.
Imagine your side mirror of your car is broken(say a Ford). Now imagine Ford is not allowing you to buy any other brand of mirror to replace it, you can't even buy the Ford mirror to replace it yourself either, you must go to a Ford shop pay 10x more for the mirror replacement but in some cases the guys there say that is to expensive to try replace only the mirror and they will change the entire car body but all is fine if you bought the extra insurgence package, if not you will pay 25%-50% the original full car price to have it fixed.
Again, inform yourself, this thread has many references and be honest with yourself, you can like Apple for the things that they do right and don't try to excuse them for the things they do wrong.
If you read what I wrote, you should be able to understand that:
> they say is for keeping the brand standards but is for the money.
is exactly this:
> whenever a company says: we don't want third party X to do Y because of user experience, it mostly boils down to 10% user experience, 10% PR & Marketing, and 80% legal crap.
But without assuming malice or planned obsolescence. It doesn't make sense for a company to create a workflow, train people and build up logistics for an integrated product if there is no money to be made off of it. You can argue that you don't like that, but assuming that they (Apple as a company) makes tons of extra money because of that is a bit unfounded. It's not likely that a company would retain a client base if they actively practice such rules against incentives. If you turn it around, would you be able to say: "the company (Apple) would make more money if they sold spare parts and repair guides to anyone"? I think not. I don't agree with it, but it doesn't mean it's going to make a difference. A law would make a difference, and since this isn't an Apple discussion but a repair discussion based on Tesla, I'd think you would be more interested in a structural solution than trying to assign malice and speak emotions all day long.
The discussion should be about whether we agree with the rules, and if the rules are lawful (and if we can change the law to enforce a better set of rules). Not the personification of a company and assigning malice, that doesn't get anyone anywhere.
I think one of the biggest problems with business today is that fact that we in society have removed "personification" from the company, companies are made of people, and allowing companies whole to act as if they are amoral automatons with their only goal profit seeking removes the ethical obligations of the people that make up said corporations. Allows management to hide behind phrases like "it is not personal it is just business".
So no a company may not be a person, but people are in charge of it, people make the choices and policies of the companies, and as such those people though be personified and held to an ethical standard and foundation on behalf of the company.
Explaining away all of Apples anti-consumer policies simply because "Well the damn lawyers" as you have done here is a massive evasion and redirection of responsibility that the management, engineers and really every employee of apple as to their customers
Business scholars devise calculations where you can put in the laws and requirements of your business and out comes the way forward, often not in favor of the consumers. If you want that to change, well, then capitalism gets in the way and that's when you need laws or shareholder/board-level influence if consumers want that to change.
Your opinion is based on the idea that you can make overall structural changes based on the same principles as making changes to government; but the difference is that there is no way to reach the business part of a company short of changing a law or simply not buying the product.
The scale of operations often doesn't allow for certain changes due to the cost involved, especially when it comes to catering to an insignificant amount of people (such as independent repair shops or consumers that want low level access to everything).
When I write about where the policies come from and why things are in a certain way, that is not opinion but a reflection of current operations. My opinion and the reality don't match, but that doesn't mean I'm going to declare my opinion as fact or yell on a social media platform that "personified company X is malicious". It doesn't help, it doesn't change and it is far from constructive.
On top of that, most policies in larger corporations are in place because they were implemented buy lawyers by directive of business management driven by the wishes of boards and shareholders. Unless you can communicate to, and convince the shareholders, boards and other actual decision makers, all the screaming and opinions are worthless. Especially when it's 1000 people yelling and 100 million people not yelling but being consumers all the same (and paying for products).
In my opinion, all devices should be completely open and manageable by whoever owns them, but that has yet to become reality. Even basic stuff such as parameters for the ECU in almost all cars isn't freely available. Plenty of good & bad reasons for that, but still a bummer when you simply wanted to change a bit in a register to enable or disable a function that suits you.
I do not agree with you on many points but that these kinds of policies are hard to change is obviously true.
I do not see other manufacturers doing same as Apple, so it is FALSE that laws are the ones causing Apple to behaive like this, that would mean that all the rest are operating illegally and let the users open and repair the products, some of them even DARE to sell the parts.
Also, I'm not blaming IP laws, luckily, we don't have the USA IP laws in the rest of the world.
I think most of the pitchforking at Apple is just happening because it's an easy target, not because it's a good example or the first step to fix a structural problem. That USA bill for the right to repair (or was it a state? or county? who knows...), that's the right kind of thing.
Also, have you ever tried to get spare parts from Microsoft for your Xbox, or schematics? Or perhaps for your PlayStation? It's not new or different what Apple does, and it's not going to fix anything by picking the easy target.
Again my point is that there is no excuse for Apple, some parts can be replaced, Apple should sell me parts(like car manufacturers have to provide parts) and I should have the right to replace or fix the parts or give it to a third party to repair.
I agree the world needs laws similar that there are for cars in some countries to prevent abuse.
This is incorrect, there are way smaller, lighter and thinner devices than Apple's laptops and phones that are far more service friendly. Case in point - Checkout Huawei's premium laptop lines.
They have the highest margins, by far, in the whole industry, and well they are raking in money so it's working for them, as far as revenue/income is concerned.
It's easier for them to repair because they have access to the manuals and diagnostic software necessary to quickly identify the issue.
> Electric cars are so much easier to repair in my opinion because of their simplicity
Parts of them, but the highest cost repairs on Tesla's are by far the body work; which is somehow an order of magnitude more expensive than other cars.
> Replacing the drive unit in most electric cars is like 2 sets of wires and 4-8 bolts.
That's a gross oversimplification and completely ignores the necessary reprogramming to make the replacement actually function in the new vehicle, which is precisely the problem with their repair model; you _can't_ actually do this yourself due to software barriers.
> But that'll change as electric vehicles become more common.
And as soon as the manufacturers release the necessary information to make them functional on their platform.
> Tesla offers very long warranties (I believe is 4/8 years for vehicle/drivetrain), so making things hard to repair would likely be costing them money.
The Apple analogy is a good one. Tesla makes similar tradeoffs, but instead of optimizing for size and weight, they are optimizing for safety, performance, and ease-of-manufacturing.
Sometimes, there is no conflict. For instance, Tesla's battery is designed to be super low to the ground to lower the center of gravity, reduce rollovers, and improve turning. They managed to achieve this via a bolt-on assembly that is easy to install and and just as easy to replace. Hurrah!
But in other places, the tension is very much felt. Replacing the front radar (even on pre-facelift cars, before it was hidden) requires removing the entire front bumper cover. Replacing a broken paddle gear in a rear door handle often requires removing the door's window.
If modularity were a first-order goal, these procedures would be a lot simpler, and major hardware upgrades (like Autopilot hardware or the 2nd gen MCU) would be reasonably feasible. But to the extent that modularity comes at even the slightest structural cost, or unnecessary weight, or any difficulty in robotic assembly, Tesla has erred away from it.
I assume their calculus is:
* Safety and performance are what they compete on
* Ease of manufacturing is their competitive advantage
* Modularity and cheap repair costs are "nice to have", but less important than the previous two.
The original iPad was rendered unsupported after 2 years on the market. At that point, the lack of software updates combined with inevitable unknown security vulnerabilities mean that Apple's model actually generates a safety hazard.
It's common for Android hardware to become unsupported after 2 years, but the degree of success of cyanogenmod and postmarketos (and now project treble) demonstrate that there is a better way.
As time passes, an iPad's unknown vulnerabilities become known. Similarly, the scenarios and environs in which a Tesla is driven also change unpredictably.
Apple and Tesla can't support their designs indefinitely and remain profitable. The ethical solution is either don't sell the product (rent it out instead) or simply allow owners to accept the maintenance burden.
I don't see any indication of this. The support windows for all Apple and Tesla products are in line with consumer expectations. The two-year shelf life for iOS devices is driven more by market demand and the way that phone contracts (used to) work than anything else. You don't see that problem with Macbook Pros or iMacs, where consumers expect a longer lifespan.
The expectations for a car are even longer, which is why Tesla still supports its earliest vehicles, and says it will continue to do so moving forward. I don't see any reason to disbelieve this, nor evidence that the company can't sustain it.
"...hard to repair because they optimized for weight and size over maintainability."
How did Apple achieve those goals? Through greater integration and reduced modularity.
I often face two challenges when repairing my own stuff (cars, phones, appliances) these days:
tightly coupled designs
finding replacement parts
The book "Design Rules: The Power of Modularity" deeply influenced how I look at architecture and design.
Since I'm an Apple fanboy, I'm clearly okay with their choices, priorities. But I'm also fully aware of what I'm forfeiting.
I watched the Sandy Munro videos about their Tesla teardowns. The same forces are at work. Fascinating. (Since I'll never be able to afford a Tesla, I won't have to determine if their reduced repairability is an issue for me.)
That hardly seems like a valid business plan for such a large company. If they were to do it purely to create such a construction, they'd be losing clients and money faster than you can hear a YouTuber rant about it.
It seems that everyone is assuming malice in every case while that is not often the cause. Internal Lawyer/security/IP departments, DFM and business rules are like 99.999999% of the reasons why things are the way they are at any large company that tries to serve markets above the bottom/budget line.
There are probably quite a few more cars I would add to that list without hesitation, and it's only going to grow.