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Comment by voxic11 | Hacker News Reader

I think you are misconstruing the aims of the right to repair movement. Its nothing to do with forcing companies to make it "easy" to repair, but rather about preventing companies from including "features" which serve no purpose besides preventing third party repair.

An example would be a tractor that is designed to be cheaply serviceable, but has a feature which disables any replaced parts until a message signed by the the original equipment manufacturer and authorizing the replacement part has been received.

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There is that but also access to spare parts. Louis Rossman talks about how it’s hard to get replacement chips to fix motherboards because Apple locks down the distribution channels so they have to relay on harvested components from failed boards or chips who fell of the back off a truck.

Also not sending ICE to raid small shops who istall aftermarket parts would help too.

Also providing documentation? I think technicians sometimes have to seek internal documents through illicit means.

> Also providing documentation?

It's also important to specify that we don't ask for MORE documentation (although that wouldn't hurt), just access to the documentation they give to the authorized technician, or their own staff.

Lots of the things people don't like about apple are likely just to make their manufacturing process simpler.

pentalobe screws?

Batteries which are soldered to the board instead of using a connector, motherboard is all one assembly including the keyboard, fewer ports, nothing user serviceable. That all seems like measures to make manufacturing easier from my perspective.

How is soldering components simpler than using connectors? It's more expensive for diminishing returns.

Connectors are also soldered as well and they add to the BOM costs.

Sure, it gives them both the benefit of optimized manufacturing and the benefit from screwing the customers.

It's not a law of nature that making things better for yourself will make them better for your customers. In fact, the opposite is usually true.

Measure that make it harder (but not impossible) for users to disassemble their devices serves to avoid people doing accidental damage (and voiding their warrantee). It's possible to get a pentalobe screwdriver, and anyone not willing to get one probably has no business opening up an Apple product.

Yeah, countless businesses have been bankrupt by the mistake of using standard screws that regular plebs to violate their warranties. Apple simply can afford to take that kind of risk, their margins are very tight as it is!

For those downvoting me, if you genuinely think that pentalobe screws are bad, can you please explain why someone who doesn't have access to a pentalobe screwdriver has even the slightest business opening up an iPhone?

Wow circular logic much? So anyone without a pentalobe screwdriver is not qualified to replace a battery (for example)?

Other way around. Anyone qualified to replace a battery should have no difficulty getting their hands on a pentalobe screwdriver.

In fact, it would not surprise me in the least if vendors selling third-party iPhone batteries included pentalobe screwdrivers with the battery (or offered it as an add-on).

Where do you draw the line at repair-hostile vs. secure? I agree many things are hostile to repair, but let's take the new T2. It's awful for repair, but actually does have security benefits against evil maid attacks, a serious security risk. Stuff like this also applies to unrootable androids (a major pet peeve of mine).

I think we all would do well to remember that it's always easier to say something is wrong than to create a solution. It's also worth noting that governments are arguably worse than anyone else at determining such edge cases as secure vs. user-hostile.

A device is repair hostile if repairing requires the permission of a third party instead of the device owner.

Security is different because a device can be made secure without it being repair hostile - e.g, the owner of the device has the private keys in a signed code update. So a maid can't just Willy Nilly change your baby monitor, but you can.

> has the private keys

How do you store these? It's not really user friendly for the average consumer, and certainly has little recourse if you lose them all. How well does it usually go when people are told to keep track of, say, a dongle? What if each device needs one?

The point isn't that every user will know how to repair their own products, rather that they could if they choose.

Think about your lawnmower. If the engine won't run, maybe you can figure out through a bit of research that it's probably the spark plug. So you can go buy a spark plug and swap it yourself. You don't need the manufacturer to authorize your new spark plug.

However, many people would not know anything about where to begin replacing their spark plug, and don't want the hastle to learn, so they bring it to the manufacturer and pay a premium to have it done for them. But if they someday decided to learn, they could learn themselves. Or even take their lawnmower to a friend who can help them.

To take away those option entirely, only leaving the one option -- paying the manufacturer a premium to do it for you -- is what I have an issue with.

Bonus: the lawnmower manufacturer could include a type of safety lock that does not allow you to work on your lawnmower, to prevent a user from hurting themselves. However, the manufacturer should also give the user the ability to remove that lock, positively asserting that they know what they're doing (like giving the private keys, or allowing a motherboard switch to be toggled which unlocks the system, etc)

> Stuff like this also applies to unrootable androids

I can't flash my Android phone without unlocking it, which format it, and as long as it's unlocked, there's a warning message on boot.

There's always a way to make it serviceable, worst case, allow the user to deactivate theses security feature after a full format.

Yes, and I would say that might be a good middle ground. I personally really like having the freedom to customize the software I run on the device. However, there's always the security question, and it's true that not being able to run unsigned ring 0 code is a powerful security feature.

You're right, I remember this initially, but many discussions about right to repair get hijacked and center around topics like iFixit and their blatantly self-serving anti-Apple campaigns.

As self-serving as it is, iFixit is doing a social good IMO. If it weren't for them, I would have spent more money replacing or having someone else repair my iPhone. So I don't care if they make money off of it, they save me more money in the long-run, and they prevent a larger number of phones and other devices being cycled through the economy before necessary. If that means punching up at Apple, so be it. Apple can take the hit.

Planned obsolescence is a very shitty and cynical strategy on the part of manufacturers, and anyone fighting against it is on the right side.

> iFixit is doing a social good IMO

Agree.

> anyone fighting against it is on the right side

Don't. For example, Louis Rossmann recently kicked up a storm when he claimed that Apple used the customs to seize his "genuine" battery shipments (which was widely reported in the media and gave him significant publicity), except it turned out that he left out the fact that the parts were unauthorized: https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/9pow06/louis_rossman.... Self-serving PR stunts that consist of misinformation and depend on the subsequent media outrage don't help "the right side".

That reddit post you linked to also does its best to avoid focusing on the actual situation. There's no such thing as an "unauthorized" battery. If factories are producing batteries with a default Apple logo (ie to Chinese standards), and he's instructing them to cross it out, that also seems completely legitimate.

> That reddit post you linked to also does its best to avoid focusing on the actual situation.

No, it doesn't. In fact, I think it's pretty explicit in making the situation clear:

> First of all, let me start by saying, I am not defending Apple's terrible stance towards Right to Repair.

> I think Apple's R2R policy is awful - It sucks that once the device you buy is on the "obsolete" list, you can no longer get 1st party service from Apple. Not only that, but there are no legal ways to obtain parts. IMO this is something all of us should be putting pressure on Apple to change. I'd love it if there was a law on the books that forced companies to make spare parts for products available to customers for x amount of years after the warranty expires. That would allow people to continue using the devices they buy.

> In closing, I'm going to continue supporting Louis, iFixit, and their attempts to secure our rights to repair the products we own.

But it is also very obvious that Louis Rossman was clearly dishonest. Actually, I don't quite understand your argument:

> If factories are producing batteries with a default Apple logo (ie to Chinese standards), and he's instructing them to cross it out, that also seems completely legitimate.

How is this "completely legitimate"? Apple is (quite understandably) annoyed that some factories decided to make batteries that Louis could peddle as genuine Apple batteries, when it's clear that they are in fact not these at all (they're crossing out the logos to pass customs, for heaven's sake). Of course they're going to be seized, because they're counterfeit: Apple probably wasn't even involved here. I'm surprised he has the gall to try to make this a huge PR issue by claiming that Apple was trying to stop him from repairing Macs with genuine batteries that he bought when he knows they're just shady batteries from China he's trying to bring into the country.

What exactly does "unauthorized" mean in the context of spare parts?

It means that the batteries were made without Apple's approval, but carried Apple's branding and were intended to be sold as genuine Apple batteries.

Hah, I should clarify that I don't think gratuitous lying is an acceptable way to fight.

"Unauthorized" flies in the face of the anti-tying provisions of the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act.

Go read our laws and do try to keep up with them, eh? You're one of the reasons things like this are happening.

iFixit would have fewer specialized parts to sell if Apple stopped making it so difficult to open. They seem to be pretty genuine about wanting things to be fixable.

All ad campaigns are blatantly self-serving... so what's the point?

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Until recently I also thought that's what the "right to repair" movement/legislation was about.

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