Fighting for the right to repair your own stuff
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If I'd done same thing on my retina MBP you'd be looking at a serious repair, either by me or Apple (= $$$). Making me seriously consider where I'll buy my next laptop from.
https://www.amazon.com/BRIGHTFOCAL-Thinkpad-1920x1080-Replac...
What are you saying no to? That's what I said - an old-style low-res Full HD screen is cheap and standard. A modern retina screen is not. That's why they're harder, and so more expensive, to replace.
old-style low-def
I have done this numerous times on older Thinkpads to put 1080p IPS screens in.
On top of that the entire lid assembly is 500% less of a shit show than the MacBooks are (I have repaired several of them as well) for 2mm or so of extra thickness.
Do they do that?
That's the point. The Apple retina one is non-standard because it's more modern. That's why it's harder to replace. That's why it's more expensive to replace.
> I have done this numerous times on older Thinkpads to put 1080p IPS screens in.
Yes... I'm saying that's the easy one. The hard one is the modern retina MacBook.
How did I break the screen? Well I dropped it three inches onto my sofa. Yes that fragile if you get it at the right angle. No thanks!
I've had several thinkpads and nearly beaten them to death basically and they just keep going. I poured an entire cup of coffee in one a couple of years back and fell over with it while running and it had a cracked keyboard footprint which was replaced for £15 from ebay. It still worked fine when I sold it.
The only thing worse is the fact that the duty cycle on the USB-C ports is so stupidly low. We ended up getting everyone these little port saver things because we got tired of sending laptops in for worn out ports.
All are soldered directly to the motherboard :(
the mechanisms are much simpler in a tractor and mechanical in nature.
trying to do the same with other appliances could be dangerous or fatal if mistakes are made. farmers are literally hacking their machines (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPYy_g8NzmI ) likely voiding warranty.
The mechanisms in a tractor are different, not necessarily simpler. Replacing a keyboard on a Thinkpad is both mechanical and as siple as it gets.
Messing up a mechanical repair can absolutely be dangerous: it's a few horspower you could suddenly have out of control.
You need another new skilset from designers and mechanical designers to not only make small, beautiful and "easy to build and durable things" but also easy to fix things.
You also need more from the production chain to be able to ship parts and instructions how to change them. And ship them.
Things needs to be recyclable and should be fixable. Just saying, IMHO, that it is harder and I understand why in some stage it's not done.
Deere Employee, but not speaking for my employer.
If you don't buy products with these conditions you never once face these problems.
The title really should be: "fighting for the right to repair products I happily bought when the EULA clearly said I couldn't do that"
Maybe stop buying these products and the companies will change their tune like the wind.
https://medium.com/@jlkoepke/we-can-change-these-terms-at-an...
https://web.archive.org/web/20201017150508/https://medium.co...
Until they're the only kind of products left. See smart TVs.
I think this (emphasis mine) is somewhat disingenuous. Sometimes there are no other options, or they have significant tradeoffs (in ways that aren't due to that clause in the EULA).
I think a better phrasing would be something like, "fighting against the ability of EULAs to restrict the buyer's right to repair".
Drawing a parallel to an extreme, to show where the argument comes from: we also don't allow people to sign themselves into slavery, even though in some circumstances people will "happily" do just that.
That requires quite a high level of market efficiency to work. It might work if this was enterprise-enterprise trade, but it is unrealistic to assume the end user will compare (or even read) the long lawyerish EULAs and determine which will be more beneficial in the long term.
I do agree that a specific law can feel like "a hack" and less elegant than a free market solution, but I don't really see how to achieve that here.
It is way cheaper to just produce a new product from scratch.
The cost of labor has absolutely nothing to do with this. A single person who wants to fix their own phone or tractor should be able to do it without having to jump through ridiculous hurdles or being outright blocked from doing so by the manufacturer.
I'm all for right to repair that allow consumer freedom to repair their own device, i.e the manufacturer can't sue you for repairing your own device.
What I won't support is if it require the manufacturer to design the product differently, i.e forcing apple to make thicker device/using different screw in order to make battery replaceable.
I'm sure car manufacturers would love to exclude all those pesky expensive safety features from their new cars, but they're not allowed to do that. We've required them to design parts of their product in specific ways.
Or how about airplanes? Boeing sure seems enthusiastic to get rid of safety features on their airplanes, should we really allow them to do so?
Or how about the phone you might have in your pocket? It talks to a cell tower right? We've restricted the designs of the radios in the phones and cell towers such that they don't emit more EM than a set limit. Surely Verizon could get much better coverage if they just crank up their signal, drowning out everyone else?
Point is, we regularly and consistently restrict how manufacturers can design, manufacture and eventually operate various goods. Why should Apple get a pass?
As such, I do not see why it would be wrong to impose additional controls on Apple (and other companies -- I'm not singling out Apple) to such effect. If you really need a way to spin this as a net positive to society, how about that we would throw away fewer phones and thus do less damage to the environment?
As to the government controlling design of products, the precedent is narrow and scoped only to prevent direct harm to consumers for a reason - liberal democracy is based on the principle of freedom as long as you aren’t harming anyone.
If you broaden the scope to the government imposing arbitrary design decisions on companies, you stop having a liberal democracy, and move into fascism.
I know that’s an inflammatory word to use - but state control of companies is a defining feature of fascism, and limiting state control to only what is needed to prevent direct harms is a defining feature of liberalism.
So I think we must oppose the generalization.
The environmental argument is reasonable to consider, in the sense that it is within the scope of liberal democracy to control environmental harms, because those are ways we harm other people through our actions.
By this logic, design changes could only be required if they had a substantial impact on reducing waste.
Apple themselves are investing an enormous amount in increasing the life of their products, especially phones.
I think it’s likely that if they had to compromise their designs in arbitrary ways, there would almost certainly be more broken phones and more waste, not fewer.
This is where the rubber meets the road for me.
Does making a phone easier to repair make it last longer? I’d say most likely not.
Things that make phones last longer are more robust physical designs so they can withstand heavy use, and everyday use without breaking.
Reasonable people may disagree on this, but for me this is where the argument gets interesting.
What designs lead to the most sustainable products?
of course you can, you can make any law, if you can gain enough support. Its matter of preference. I'm okay with safety regulation, even then there is a limit with that, I'm not okay with too much safety regulation.
It should be easy and cheap to recode eBay parts, but only once they are verified not stolen.
I had a phone with a user-serviceable battery. It took no special parts to replace it. And so I used a machine that otherwise would've gone to electronic waste for several more years.
- make public the schematics of electronics
- let your users buy spare parts, don't use lawers or DRM to prevent using an un-official part as long is a choice I am making ( who would like that his car won't work if you replace the stereo or a light bulb with an equivalent or better one but that is not from the approved companies)
- let anyone use the debugging software and ports, I should not have to travel and pay so some guy would use a proprietary tool to read and translate an error code.
- let people salvage parts from broken devices and fix with them other broken devices, don't be evil and DRM stuff or destroy good parts because you want to sell new shiny things.
- if you sell a device you should not have the right to brick it with an update, if you can't support it anymore you should be forced to unlock it and if is IoT thing open it up enough so people can use their own server alternative.
I am sure someone will say something about batteries exploding but from my memory we had devices with batteries for a long time and we could change the batteries, we could mod the cars, we could mod the computers and no precious billion dollars companies "shiny" image had to suffer for it.
I 100% agree with your comment.
However the biggest arguments I can see are around security and counterfeiting.
I don’t want to worry about whether the device I’m buying has been compromised with replacement parts that leak data, or render otherwise render the device insecure.
Second hand always has a risk and the price reflects that. I know the stress my family had before deciding what second hand car to buy. But I also know the fact that they could replace a car mirror,body parts and even an engine with parts from cars in the junk yards - in the future your Apple/Tesla car will not let you start it if you replaced the windshield with one from a different car, you will need to use official replacement parts and use an official dealership that will remove the DRM locks for a big price. In this future a car with a broken engine will be scrapped instead no part will be reusable because it will be more profitable to make a new car or only fix the cars in the official dealerships.
If other people buy insecure or faulty devices, I can be harmed.
How can you say that I should not repair or upgrade my phone / laptop without Apple blessing because my device could harm you WHILE at the same time I can repair my car at a third party mechanic and fucking cars have more potential to cause damage then electronics and tractors, though car manufacturers are hating this are against right to repair and pushing this FUD campaigns. As long as you have the choice to repair your phone at an official place then is not your bussiness that some guy is capable to cleanup the water from the device itself or he is competent to fix is speackers or his car and fix it itself.
When I was a kid I was "fixing" digital watches by replacing broken parts from other broken watches(most of them were using compatible displays or bracelets) but in future this evil corps want to make it illegal, make proprietary scres and copy right them so I can;t open the device, put DRM in them so I can't change a display etc the result would be a lot e-waste and more money for the corporations. And who knows maybe if you see a kid that opened up an electronic device you will call the police to handle the dangerous situation.
Easy:
The work of third party mechanics is not remotely comparable to diy repairs. They are:
1. Are strictly licensed
2. Are strictly regulated
3. Are liable for safety problems they cause.
4. Are required to carry insurance because of #3.
Your warranty should be voided and the manufacturer should no longer be liable if you make unauthorized repairs.
That’s a piece of legislation about cars.
It doesn’t apply to anything else, nor should it.
If you want to talk about things that only apply to cars, this isn’t a very useful conversation to be having on Hacker News.
If you want to explain how this law would be applied in a more general way, that might help.
Though let's be honest, most people that end up in third party repair shops are there because the warranty expired already and for example Apple charged them almost the full price of the device to have it fixed.
What kind of repair are you talking about?
Maybe we should also solve the crime problem more directly by catching the criminals or giving them jobs and not by screwing the society with making things un-repairable (and what I coincidence this is also very profitable for the big companies and affects only the small business and citizens, but yeah coincidences happen I am sure Tesla and Apple were thinking about theft and not about money)