Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair
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reasonstobecheerful.world
Manufacturers could solve this by either:
- Making their things easy to repair
- Creating in house recycling programs
- Making equipment more durable and longer lasting
Any combination of the above. By picking one specific way of reducing waste, we are ignoring other factors. Few people care to repair Android phones because you can't upgrade the OS after 2 years regardless. It doesn't matter if the hardware is repairable, the device is greatly devalued at that point. Like wise, if it's super expensive to repair an iPhone, people aren't going to bother and will just replace it.
By focusing on the end result -> Devices entering the waste stream <- the manufacturers are responsible for ensuring hardware gets responsibly recycled, repaired, or just doesn't break. Obviously, to make this work the cost per device entering the stream would have to be significant compared to the cost of the device.
Also, the cost should be the responsibility of the maker. Currently in some place in the US, consumers pay the cost to dispose of/ recycle televisions. The result is we end up with TVs on the side of the road. Often on the way away from the dump where people refuse to pay the disposal fee then toss the TV out the door on the way home.
The first and third should not be on equal footing with the second. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is meant to be applied in that order. Many environmental crimes can be hidden in a recycling program. Many products are not truly recyclable, but tell consumers they are. Sometimes they are only partially recyclable, or other times the recycling is technically possible but economically infeasible and consequently doesn't actually happen. Corporations know this and have promoted recycling to equal footing as reuse and reduction. They would rather people consume more and casually throw broken products into their recycling bin, naively believing they're being responsible consumers.
Recycling won't be an answer even if, through some miracle, everything would became fully recyclable in practice. The reason is that most materials cannot be recycled indefinitely - they degrade. On top of that, turning trash into input material usually consumes some non-recoverable matter (e.g. chemicals to clean and process it). Then there's production waste that isn't recoverable too. All of this adds up into continuous churn.
So with recycling, instead of a Mine->Manufacture->Use->Trash pipeline, you have... Mine->Manufacture->Use->Trash pipeline where a fraction of matter makes a cycle from Trash to Manufacture. Two perhaps not immediately obvious facts: one, that fraction of matter that gets recycled becomes a fraction of a fraction on its next cycle - which is a series that converges to 0. Two, none of this matters as long the pipeline itself is going through exponential growth. You may slow it a little, but it's still exponential.
I mean, it's fine to look after the environment.
But...
It seems impossible to ask for individual rights. This is after all an individual right. My right to repair something that I paid for.
But...
It's presented as a collective benefit, the abstract save the planet thing.
We're nothing important unless we're a part of the collective. Or even worse, some abstract idea like the purity of our Precious Bodily Fluids. I'll go to sleep now.
Yep
But by the same token, many materials in consumer electronics are mined unethically and/ or end up causing toxic pollution. If companies can effectively recycle these products without, a great amount of environmental (and human) damage can be avoided.
I would argue that having a responsible battery reclamation process is more important that having questionably repairable devices.
Also, while we're being cynical here. If we make a device "Repairable" that doesn't mean it's going to ever actually get repaired. If it doesn't make economic sense from the end user perspective, repairable products end up in the trash. This is particularly true in this world where manufacturers stop releasing software for old hardware. (Or worse, remotely brick old hardware)
What?
>> 1) Making their things easy to repair. 2) Creating in house recycling programs. 3) Making equipment more durable and longer lasting
I read as 1)Reuse 2)Recycle 3)Reduce.
The best thing a manufacturer could do is create a bomb proof smartphone that will be usable forever.
This is illogical. Smartphones become obsolete for technology reasons even if they're bomb proof and usable forever. So they need to recyclable (or components reusable) as the priority.
Old Nokias were built to last and still work.. but they're e-waste because they're obsolete for the purposes almost everyone needs a phone for. Maybe it'd be better if they'd be more recyclable instead of more robust?
It's feasible to enforce repairability conditions and documentation requirements before a device is sold, at the point of manufacture or import - if you're not compliant, you get excluded from the market.
It's not feasible to reliably and effectively enforce consequences for manufacturers years down the road, when it's plausible that the original overseas manufacturer and the importer/wholesale distributor both have shuttered their operations.
We can't wait and see how much waste will be generated from this device, we if we want to charge device makers a percentage based on how long before it enters the waste stream, this needs to be based on an up-front guesstimate - which IMHO is a subjective metric can't be reliable and just invites corruption and abuse.
Yes.
Someone else pointed out just charging for waste at the time of manufacture/ import and that is an excellent way to resolve this.
Though companies which reclaim/ recycle old products should get credit for that effort as well.
Didn't reduce the volume of the respective waste and didn't prolong lifetime of products in the slightest.
Local authorities should be able to collect up all Mcdonalds packaging and hand it back to them. Make them responsible for its disposal. Then they will be incentivised to reduce the amount of packaging that they produce.
Absolutely!
It is far too easy to create disposable crap that ends up dumped all over the planet. I get so frustrated seeing garbage all over the place in natural places.
I do think its a lot easier to focus on the higher ticket items first.
I’d expect they could ship me the bare sd card in a tiny envelope without all that waste if they were incentivized to.
I never understood the mindset of buying only a usb-stick or similar online.
Yes, the waste is obnoxious, but the consumer isn't always innocent either.
The result? Televisions are one of the most common forms of road trash now. Often on the way to/ from the dump. As soon as you charge someone to get rid of something, the temptation to just dump it on the side of the road increases.
Bad idea. The market is supposed to process information for us. Consumers are just individuals who know what they need and what they want, but not much else. The market (if we are to believe the hype) can process enough information to make selfish actors in aggregate cooperate. So why not let the market solve it?
Consumer-responsibility is pure propaganda: in the same way “we” (collectively) drop plastic into the middle of the ocean, “we” (chiefly the corporations and their marketing departments) drop the symbolic responsibility on consumers.
1- electronics HW (HDD, TV, microSD-card, etc..) recycling costs are already embedded in the cost of any new stuff that is sold (there is a little bit of extra price to be paid when buying new HW, that in turn will cover the costs to recycle the old HW that is probably being replaced or that will be replaced in the future). People dump their old HW to collection centers for free, which is then partially recycled (current technology cannot yet recover all metals etc.. contained in HW).
2- Some specific trash (e.g. PET, metals, etc...) can be brought to recycling collection centers and dumped there for free, which is then recycled.
3- To "motivate" people to produce as less non-recyclable trash as possible and to get rid of recyclable stuff in the right way (points #1 & #2), anything that gets into the non-recyclable trash must be paid for - e.g. we have to pay ~2 USD for a 35-liters trash bag, big objects need a special "sticker" that must be bought (don't remember how much it costs) => normal trash bags and big stuff without sticker don't get collected, so you cannot just leave them on the street.
In general, during the last years this put quite some pressure as well on the retailers (meaning the final shops from which you buy stuff): in the past they used e.g. the many small chunks of polystyrene ( https://www.vertapak.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/polyst... ) to cushion what was in their packages, but now they all almost always use small inflatable bags - in both cases still plastic, but the amount of material is like 1000 times lower. They did it because many people continuously complained a bit to them that on one hand polystyrene wasn't environmental, but as well or especially because they had to use a lot of space in the "special costly trash bag" to throw that stuff away.
I admit that I'm not the best recycler (PET+HW+batteries+lightbulbs+clothes always, but rarely stuff like metal and glass and paper), but in the end I think that I'm at least "ok".
Switzerland doesn't have a nation-wide law about it, and if I want I can still throw away stuff into the non-recyclable loop, but if I do it then I have to pay for it (by buying the special trash bag or sticker) as I usually do when I throw away cans and bottles mixed with other stuff => freedom, but at a price - that sentence does sound horrible but in this context of recycling it just makes sense, and for me it works absolutely well :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_management_in_Switzerlan...
Yes, with a bill for the cost of collection and at some point (after repeated failures?), a fine to motivate a course correction.
Failure to do what?
Eg near me is a nice park. Every single evening the car park gets a dump of McDonalds and Wendy’s rubbish.
Yes, it’s their customers and not them, but if those companies addressed their waste by creating less, making more efficient packaging or finding other ways to improve the situation, they would make way more difference than any customer could.
Hasn't really helped, amount of packaging is still increasing.
The "make producers pay" trope is also a fallacy imho. Packaging cost is just passed through the price to the consumer. Packaging and recycling are quite cheap for most products, so unpackaged goods are barely cheaper (often even more expensive, since enviromentally conscious stuff is "premium"). And unpackaged goods are damaged more often than properly packaged ones, so they'll rot on the shelves to be thrown away in a higher proportion. Consumers like their products nice and undamaged in presentable packaging, so they will subconciously prefer packaged goods. Therefore even with a slight decrease in per-item profits, producers will choose prettier packaging. So with only a slight price increase like paying for recycling, packaging will stay.
So to get rid of plastic packaging, we either need to ban it, make it vastly more expensive, far more than the consumer would want to bear, so they'd pick something unpackaged. But that is dangerous, because a cartel of producers could stay with packaging, then it is just another tax the consumer cannot avoid. Or we need to just ban certain kinds of packaging.
Also, there are hurdles for the sale of unpackaged goods, e.g. meat: I cannot take my own (reusable) plastic or metal box to the butcher's and have it filled with meat because of hygiene regulations preventing the butcher from handling my box. Supermarkets also are ill-equiped to deal with unpackaged goods in great quantities, dispensers, scales and stuff needs vastly more space. Just imagine the jam-shelf taking up as much space as the produce section, with some sticky floor due to the drippings...
So in practice you pay more for nothing?
When there is the news leaking out, producer could blame on the contractor and sue them. A nice model. Isn't it?
I'd also like to see a rebate program at recyclers for big-box goods. People are more likely to do the right thing if there's an incentive. Probably paid for by a fee on sale, but again scaled based on recyclability (and possibly repairability / waste from repairs)
The EU has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electroni.... It doesn’t pay consumers for returning items, but does make it easier. Larger shops _have_ to take in old equipment for free, for example (for smaller electronics even if you aren’t a customer)
In some (¿all?) EU countries, if you have an item (washing machine, television) delivered to your house, the deliverer must take in a similar item, working or not, for free. That makes recycling easier than disposing of the item yourself.
I do think any reduction due to a manufacturer recycling/ remanufacturing goods should be reflected in whatever fees are charged.
That seems entirely orthogonal to me, and market forces would presumably be able to handle consumer preference for longer-lasting products (barring other market failures, like monopolies, but that's also orthogonal to the externalities of using certain materials).
The device that gets thrown away in 10 years still imposes the same externality as the one that gets thrown away after one year [0], and thus I don't see any reason for changing a fee based on that. Note that the person who buys the 1-year devices every year pays 10x the "externality fees" as the person who buys the 10-year device.
[0] Of course, the externalities themselves can change over time, e.g. new better recycling methods, so the externalities would have to be appraised periodically.
That may not be clear at time of purchase though. You could express this as an estimated rate per year, though. Both devices have a $50 externality fee. One has a 1 year warranty, 1 has a 10 year warranty, so the first has a $50/year externality and the second has a $5/year externality. Doing it by warranty period also helps prevent claiming a device should last much longer than it does.
We're at the point where repairs are an expected part of a phones lifecycle. Battery replacements are basically required now unless you want to buy a new phone every year or two. We really should start adding info about that to packaging.
The waste issue is important, but so is not invalidating physical things because of planned obsolescence, or that the manufacturer decided to stop reporting it.
This is a mistruth (add: unintentional I'm sure) - and I hope people stop repeating this. I'll explain in detail.
1. Older versions of Android aren't crippled in the way an older iOS version is. On iOS for instance, Safari is tied to the iOS, while on Android none of the apps are tied to the OS version. Any phone running Android 7 (or maybe even 6) would run the most Google and non-Google services without any problems.
2. Most good Android phones such as those from Samsung or Google get 3 years of updates. If you have a Galaxy S8 from Apr 2017, you're still receiving updates in 2021.
3. Finally you have LineageOS. If you choose the phone correctly, you can potentially have very long term support with the excellent LineageOS. Now this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but for most people on HN it's fairly trivial to do.
The LineageOS team has repeatedly emphasized that they do not owe anyone long-term support, so please stop recommending it as such. This is one of the reasons for interest in the PinePhone: it is now supported by the mainline kernel and much easier to build for in perpetuity than an Android device.
PinePhone is great, but it certainly isn't for people expecting a smartphone to do regular smartphone things - run apps like Whatsapp/Signal etc.
Apps are compiled for target SDKs and if your phone is too old the apps wont work.
I sincerely hope the EU will actually do something about that as well. As you point out, it makes no sense to allow to repair something that receives no support for its software components.
What I hope they will do is actually mandating that, if an item is sold as having networking capabilities, the manufacturer is required to maintain (as in, provide security updates for) the software required for the item to continue working as sold, at least for the intended lifetime of the item (that should be explicitly stated by the manufacturer). Maybe exceptions could be granted - after a minimum period of mandatory first-party support - if all code required to build the firmware was open sourced.
I don't care how manufacturers address this issue, but I do think it's clearly their responsibility to address it.
Also, any legislation should recognize that these devices aren't just physical devices that might need to have a screen replaces. A device which you can replace the screen on, but can't get secure software for is just as worthless as one you can upgrade but can't replace the screen on.
A little nitpick but, for Google's phones it's way more than that.
I would suggest requiring some kind of RFID chip or other scannable code which can be checked in the refuse stream.
I simply am surrounded by tens and hundreds of sort-of-broken devices that don't force me to replace yet, but are not fixable either. The laptop overheats, phone compass never works properly, one port in the TV is dead, there is no light in the fridge (but it still works). The list goes on. I just want a world where stuff lasting a lifetime exists.
There are many more locked phones in drawers or acting as mere paperweights than people actually care to disclose.
Several years back we ran a poll to understand lifetime recycling habits. People aren't proud of dropping a phone and shattering the screen, but they are less proud of having thrown a phone into a drawer because they couldn't be bothered to run the obstacle course set up by their telco to keep them in check.
Phone right-to-repair should be EXPLICITLY INCLUSIVE of unlocking, otherwise it is only solving a part of the problem.
However, in reality, not only does the carrier not mind if the phone keeps being used (as long as it’s on the carrier’s network) but the lock doesn’t expire once the customer pays off their plan.
Furthermore the process for unlocking a phone is intentionally made convoluted. Until recently, you couldn’t even figure out which carrier an Apple device was locked to without playing brute-force with all the carrier’s SIMs in the entire world and even Apple support couldn’t be of any help. And when you finally figure out which carrier it is, getting in touch with them is a pain and some have stupid policies like keeping the device on their network for 30 days before being able to request an unlock (a scummy attempt at getting some people to give up and just keep using their network past the deadline, or revenge against someone who doesn’t intend to do so by essentially making their device unusable for 30 days).
Fast forward 6 years, and it is much harder to unlock a phone than it was then. The whole thing backfired for consumers. It was actually easier to unlock a phone in a "non-legal" way before the law than it was right after.
This whole new code of conduct for carriers actually made them convert their SIMlock departments to be more like a customer retention lifecycle.
This mainly applies to US carriers (in the US and Latam), and there certainly are exceptions in Europe where EVERY cell phone is unlocked from day one, regardless of your contractual status.
[1]: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/08/15/heres-h...
I had no idea this was still a thing, it’s horrible. What mechanism is creating the current situation? Phones are all unlocked here in New Zealand.
Lack of general consumer protection regulation (or their enforcement), and specifically with regards to telecommunications the regulator who's supposed to oversee the field (the FCC in the US, or OFCOM in the UK for example) is often in bed with the companies it's supposed to regulate.
Really? I'm surprised because I'm in AU and there are certainly phones locked to a specific carrier. What about $10 burner phones?
It's not usually like that - and I've had a few locked phones.
Usually the deal is that a network, say Vodafone, subsidises the handset by £50 of some such in return for you being forced to use Vodafone services for a couple of years, unless you arrange to unlock it.
It's sort of ok as a deal but a pain in many ways if you want to travel and use a local SIM or sell the phone for example.
I recently paid off my AT&T iPhone X and the process to unlock it couldn't have been easier.
https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1262649
Notably, you have to have been paid up (somewhat understandable), active for 60 days if postpaid (not really reasonable at all), or if prepaid, active for 6 months (absolutely not reasonable). This basically precludes someone selling a phone secondhand entirely if they haven't unlocked it first by holding the value of the phone hostage (phones are worth less when locked). Completely anti-consumer. And AT&T isn't even the worst about this. I once tried to unlock a phone through Rogers and they wanted $120 to do it! This was back around 2011 so their policy might have changed but given Canada's terrible telco situation I doubt it has changed much.
UK: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54692179
EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfair_Commercial_Practices_Di...
But there are Android phones that come with bootloader/OS lock, which often means old device is stuck with some ancient OS version (and some bundled bloatware), instead of being able to be reflashed to a recent LineageOS.
I recently got two iphones from their owners, pulled out of the drawer to monetize them on classifieds. Both locked and unresettable without the previous owners help (one could be unlocked because I got her account password over the phone, huge nogo but she trusts me to not screw with her account). The other not, account was lost.
Apple also now tags and ties both battery and camera to the logicboard. Shame.
Perhaps it's because I was less financially literate in the past, but I remember that as being the only way in the 2000s. There might have been laws passed to limit that practice and its abuses.
The smart solution, provided you have enough money, is to buy the phone elsewhere, and take a plan without a phone. It's always less expensive in the long term.
in Germany, the Telco's gave up locking the phones in 2017. Because it was to expensive. I can not remember if it was a hard lock - as in any other sim card is blocked or just their additions to the OS. bought a phone in 2017/early 2018 - Xperia 10, where on the boot screen a Deutsche Telekom logo appears but otherwise the OS unaffected by vendor edits/additions. But updates are really slow since they go through Telekom instead of directly from sony which is already slow.
I know many who can't do math and paid twice the value of the phone for a locked device and some plan they never really used fully.
That has not been the case for a long time. The last phone I had on contract was an iPhone 4.
/me mumbles something about "Kids these days..."
But the reason I have a handful of paperweight mobiles is not that they are locked but that they are no longer useful. They have low resolution cameras, little memory, small screens, obsolete operating systems, etc. I sometimes try to sell them but no one wants them even free.
It's worth mentioning that the common problem with these anecdotes is that it doesn't account for survivorship bias. That 30 year old refrigerator at your parent's house might lead you to conclude all refrigerators back in the day lasted 30 years, but in reality you're only seeing the refrigerators that lasted 30 years, not the ones that broke down and were replaced.
That's a key aspect of the market here: People tend to compare on purchase price. If manufacturers have to compete on price, of course something has to give in order to make cheaper appliances...
The market tends to give consumers what they want.
It's not all bad, though, because this also puts pressure on manufacturers to optimise, including by using less material. Appliances tend not to be that bad either unless perhaps if you buy really cheap cr*p.
The market tends to give consumers what they buy. This is distinct from what they ask for, which too is distinct from what they want, which too is distinct from what they like (and, while we're at it, from what they approve of).
A major point of markets is to try and figure this out iteratively. You can usefully think of it as an optimization algorithm that in practics prone to local minima but has some mechanisms to try and get out of them, which sometimes work.
So best we can do is observing "revealed preferences", which is what Economists call "what people actually choose".
Their tight grip on retailers also makes it hard to buy their products outside EU because nobody is willing to go through the pain. Add higher than average price and most smaller retailers just sell samsungs, lg and random chinese brands.
The biggest problem remains, manufacturers are not required to sell repairable devices and parts everywhere, requirement is only applicable to EU, so they will continue to manufacture trash and will never have their parts available outside EU. And no, those EUR parts will definitely won't fit 99% of their products outside EU.
1. You don’t see the junk which never lasted 20 years - plenty of stuff died back then, too. Cutting corners to save a buck is a very, very old practice - I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find some Babylonian tablet complaining about it.
2. Manufacturers generally switched from letting prices go up to introducing new products. If you buy stuff which costs as much (adjusted for inflation) as what your parents laid, it often lasts just as long. The problem is that a lot of us only buy the cheapest thing and are then surprised when a $400 purchase now doesn’t hold up as well as a purchase which cost $1,000 in today’s dollars – and the one costing $1,000 today probably does much better.
Styles also change - for example, a lot of athletic gear became very focused on ultralight performance: great for racers but almost always less durable. Does that mean you can’t buy the older style or just that you need to shop differently?
It’s definitely the case that there are areas where it’s harder to find durable options (IoT causing a generation of devices to lose features or fail long before the hardware does) but it’s less pronounced than old people complaining believe. It’s really harder to correct for subtle biases for things like inflation which happen over long periods of time.
- Bosch Fridge Freeze - a couple of the shelves have broken and I have no idea where to get replacements.
- Bosch Fan Oven - sometimes cuts off if it is left on above 250c for more than 30 mins.
- Bosch Dishwasher - had to take it apart once to clean as some paper got stuck in the impeller.
- Bosch Condenser Dryer - no issues so far, other than not RTFM about the drain hose which needs to be elevated above the unit for some reason.
- Samsung Washing Machine - One day I came in and there was water all over the floor from the washing machine. Took it apart and I could see signs of leaking, but couldn't see anything wrong, after that it worked fine. Recently it starting making a lot of noise on the spin cycle, turned out the feet needed leveling, now it's good as new.
- Electrolux Induction Cooktop - There are some cosmetic issues (stains that won't come off) on the glass.
I did not repair any of my fridges (they never failed in all of my adult life), but I did repair my washing machine (AEG 15y.o.) and my beans-to-coffee DeLonghi (10+ y.o). Both were very repairable and it was a matter of identifying the failure and finding the right part on eBay.
You can still do that on most modern fridges, but it's not worth the effort with appliance prices now. They also don't fail often these days.
The same thing happened to furniture.
Still it’s a worthwhile pursuit. At some point pocket PCs/phones will be good enough, just as for many a 2014 laptop is still good enough.
Google is making billions per year, they can certainly afford to support all versions of Android. They just choose to pocket the money and screw their customers instead.
Anyone know why opera can run on android 4 and the latest Chrome can't/wont?
Have you checked whether you could install LineageOS or some other custom ROM on the tablet? That way, you might be able to extend its lifetime by another couple years.
That's simply because "make it easy to replace" has not been a design constraint in a very long time -- in fact, making things hard to replace or fix has been a design constraint that product management has enforced more or less explicitly in lots of places. "Miniaturisation" has been a reality of electronics design since at least the 1950s -- not being able to fix things is a more recent phenomenon.
Even if that weren't the case, IC manufacturing reliability has come a long enough way that, in fact, "everything on-chip" doesn't account for all that many broken units. Virtually all of the phones I've repaired in the last 10 years or so had broken volume buttons, cracked displays and so on. The phone I currently use had a blown battery management controller, which was trivial to replace.
"Everything is small now" is just one of the excuses that companies bring to the table. It is a legitimate reason in that, yes, the fact that everything is small amplifies the effect of the fact that, at best, making things easy to repair hasn't been a design goal. That doesn't mean the design can't be improved.
Edit: also, a lot of the high repair cost comes from constraints that derive directly from the fact that repairing things is all sorts of faux pas. E.g. replacement screens often have to be shipped, in small batches, halfway across the world, which isn't exactly easy or cheap if you're a small repair shop. If repairing things were easier and carried less of a stigma, replacement parts would be cheaper, repairing things would take less time and so on.
Nobody is asking to split the current, high pin-density SoC into eighty chips with DIP sockets, they're mostly asking for things like:
* Publishing service manuals and schematics
* Making replacement parts available (replacing the SoC isn't that big a deal, the problem is that you often can't get that SoC anywhere)
* Not selling things with an EULA that explicitly prohibits "unauthorized" repairs
"Making things discreet" is pretty much a red herring. Sure, making everything discreet would result in bulkier, pricier, and probably worse phones, but you can massively improve the general public's access to repairs without doing that.
This is only partially true. The true cost is hidden and at least by average people like me immeasurable. We are putting a lot of cost out of sight if you consider the environmental impact of e-waste.
If all modern phones were as repairable as those we could eliminate so much garbage!
It seems that most people want more than just usable. They may not want to pay more for a device up front, knowing they will be missing out on the latest technology down the road.
People can still buy new stuff earlier if they want. But their old stuff can be reused by those that do not need, want or can afford the new devices. There are many categories of devices where that's a good option for many, not only phones. Besides, it's always good to have the option to repair that thing you have when it breaks even if initially you did not think you would need that. You might have grown to like it.
I've been using a 6S since 2015 (this thread caught my interest because it's now somewhat of a Ship of Theseus as I've replaced so many parts over the years), but the 11 Pro I bought last year was the first time a multi-year-gap upgrade felt rather incremental, especially for $1100. I returned it and expect to continue to use and repair the 6S until they drop iOS support for it.
* OnePlus 3, released in June 2016, 6 GB RAM.
vs
* iPhone 7, released in September 2016, 2 GB RAM.
* iPhone 12 Pro Max, released in October 2020, 6 GB RAM.
From my perspective smartphones have not changed much.
This is the worst kind of planned obsolesces
Would you be willing to pay whatever your share is of how much generating the update would cost, in order to get it? With a clear indicator when you buy the phone that you automatically get a subscription to 3 years worth of security updates; past that, you pay whatever amount is needed to keep it up to date.
Also, we’ll have to figure out how to manage with a sort of stagnation.
Essentially this entails curbing change. Curbing change means slowing progress (initially in this niche), but if we extend this into other areas it can mean significant stagnation because since things are good enough we don’t need to improve and progress (ie. we’re at equilibrium )
We'll have to grow comfortable with that outlook.
But sure. Repairability is one thing, it just means that devices can continue the things they were made for. For new workloads they would need upgradeability, which is a completely different beast.
I don't think having repairability will slow things at all. It will simply prune some behaviors corporations engage in that destroy the planet, like glueing in batteries. Stopping such practices will not even make new devices more expensive - we have old designs that did it right. Falling back to them and innovating there could even save money.
The problem is that this has happened despite my usage not changing.
Though yes, thank goodness the end of Moore's law is here to help.
I normally find these types of appliances make parts readily available. I just replaced the locking mechanism on my washing machine for example, it was cheap and easy to order the parts I needed.
- no service/troubleshooting manual/videos available online
- no way to identify what replacement part to buy unless you're in the know already
- getting access to locking mechanism looked like it would lead to washing machine completely falling apart structurally (there was a somewhat hidden "safety" screw that looked like a last defense against people removing the front panel just by removing the apparent screws and hurting themselves)
So I bailed on this without a proper guide on safe disassembly procedure.
Thankfully wiggling the connector to the locking switch made the lock and thus the washing machine work again, after a first failure since 15 years ago or whatever. It looked just fine inside (surprisingly). Vibrations probably don't allow much dirt to accumulate. No obvious rusting/leakage. I was surprised.
I'd like to think there was a reason the manufacturer wanted the entire housing replaced?
I, mistakenly, bought the refrigerator with LED lighting because I hated how old-style bulbs would turn on slowly in the cold. LED lighting should be instant I thought. Oh no, totally on purpose it was made slow.
Regarding slow starts - not that it's terribly useful to mention now, I grant, but most incandescent appliance bulbs can be replaced with compatible and much less temperature-sensitive LED ones these days.
The fridge manufacturer probably assumed it’ll always run cold (it’s a fridge right?) and overdrove them too hard to get just as much light out of 20 LEDs instead of 24.
Could bridge the faulty LED with solder to buy some time, and find a donor LED from a “burnt out” LED light bulb or whatevs and solder it in.
I guess you’ve tried a lower wattage bulb ...
That trend has become ubiquitous: cars, laptops, phones...
Nothing is designed to be fixed at home anymore. If there were regulations that required it, we'd still have the same advanced tech, but it'd be repair friendly.
HP Pavilion gaming, ASUS ROG Strix and newer Macbooks have keyboards secured by melting topcase plastic pins or bolts so you can't easily replace keyboard, you need to replace the whole topcase.
And the keyboard is something which degrades by use and can easily be damaged by liquid...
Just as we have with pharma patents, after a protection period it should be free game, and they should open-source if they don't intend to continue pushing updates, say evety 6 months or so.
In all of the following I got a new thing looking for some new feature or because I could I guess, and had the older device outlasted the newer one: Bose headphones, any mobile phone really, Thinkpad laptops, Audi cars, Brother printers, any and all household appliances.
I really don't see the problem. Like you're saying people are buying new stuff because they want the new stuff, not because old is broken. There are tons of extremely cheap second hand things that could do the job and yet people keep buying new things.
How will this right to repair change anything? How much money was spent making it reality that could've been spent productively?
Note: whenever throwing those things out, save the knobs. They’re like $10+ each.
They have to change the whole motherboard, lose all my data. Price of a new machine...
grumble, grumble
I have seen a "for parts" Macbook on eBay with bad motherboard where the seller drilled through SSD and T2 chips to "wipe data". While drilling they damaged the topcase as well.
I think this is part of the point you are trying to make, but everything requires maintenance. Not sure what model fridge you have, but a bulb replacement should be not too hard to pull off on your own.
I quickly come to the conclusion the power supply is broken. And of course the power supply is internal.
I tried to open up the thing, being fairly competent with electronics. But try as I might, I just couldn't figure out how this thing comes apart. I don't want to brute force it, thing is stylish and my SO likes that about it, but also a lot of plastic so easy to break.
Ok, I searched the web for a service manual. Nothing. Not even close.
In contrast, the DVD player my mom uses (mostly as a glorified CD player) died before xmas. It's an old Sony unit, bought in 2000 or 2001, and been on ever since (standby or active). I searched and I found a beautiful service manual, with detailed schematics and instructions for disassembly and reassembly. Even the PCB itself has lovely markings making it very clear what is going on where.
Quickly discovered the issue in the power supply and ordered some replacement parts (still waiting).
Sure I could probably have found a second-hand DVD player for cheap. But yeah it just seemed so senseless to toss away a perfectly good unit when by all accounts it just needs $3 worth of parts.
I think the main freewheeling diode went (it's open now), and the resulting switching spikes from the transformer caused the switching converter[1] to fail.
So far those are the only two parts that appear broken.
As for the sub, I'd love to know!
[1]: integrated switch, I misspoke earlier
Why do I think like this?
I think it is a psychological condition.
It isn't a rational choice. If I apply my educated, articulate self to analysis, I can tell you it's an expression of how I want the world to be, not a realistic evaluation of how modern manufacturing commerce works.
A stereo or an espresso machine that is non-serviceable costs 1/10th as much to buy and performs twice as well as an equivalent device from 50 years ago. The price we pay for that bounty is that 5% of the manufactured items fail early. It costs more to provide repair infrastructure than to run a warranty program, so the dead stuff ends up as waste. I get it.
Still, I don't like waste, and I love repair. My feelings are not economics, they are emotions. And so so they persist. And that's perfectly OK.
This is a terrible example.
How coffee is made has not changed much, so machines don’t need to change much. New hardware trends towards more plastic, more logic boards and at the worst end of the scale, more proprietary parts, including the actual coffee.
I have repaired and built up several 25+ year old espresso machines and grinders, and currently run a 37 year old grinder and a 23 year old espresso machine.
Older machines are easier to service, easy to get parts for and nice to work on. The quality of the coffee is hard to beat and I would need to pay around US$3k for a new version of the machine, where the old one is generally around US$250.
Often the changes over time are few (eg La Cimbali Junior). Brands like La Marzocco, La Cimbali, Rancilio and Mazzer have a lot of great machines going back a very long time. Electric parts often connect with spades or screws, there is documentation and parts are easily ordered and you can usually talk to someone at the supply end about difficult repairs.
New coffee machines at the lower end of the price scale are mostly just disposable crap, and make bad coffee. They are not cheaper over their lifetime.
What changed was not the way coffee is made, but the way coffee is sold and consumer grade machines are manufactured at scale. We now have cheap espresso machines which don't last very long, as you have noted. I bought one last week second hand for $70. The new price for that machine was $300, but the guy sold it to me for $70 because it was dripping water whilst idle. I disassembled the head, cleaned the rubber ball end, stretched the spring, reassembled, and now it works like a new $300 machine.
I'm told the quality of the coffee is determined more by the grinder than the espresso machine, assuming the latter is working. There are no good cheap grinders.
> I have repaired and built up several 25+ year old espresso machines and grinders, and currently run a 37 year old grinder and a 23 year old espresso machine.
Awesome! If I knew someone like you who lived near me, I would be the same.
Manufactured obsolescence is killing us. 2G worked great for things. Those phones had VoIP. I want to get them working with that. Someday...
If you keep it for X-years in your garage, after those years these models won't be actively used anymore and less people will be looking for parts => it will become less worthy to the point you will have to throw them away...
People can have trouble letting go of obsoleted, unneeded object due to some emotional attachment.
[Unless you hoard socially acceptable items, like status symbols or plain money, in that case most people will not see the problem]
> an espresso machine ... performs twice as well as an equivalent device from 50 years ago
...or not. A rational reason for fixing stuff is that many products are objectively worse.
> My feelings are not economics, they are emotions
Another perfectly rational reason is prevent environmental collapse. It does not get more reasonable than that.
The article is wrong to give any credit to Apple for being on the side of Right to Repair, as Louis explains in numerous videos.
I'd have more respect for them if they outright turned around and said "yeah we know we're screwing you over but the lobbyists' money is too good to pass up" but in this case they appear to be getting played without even realizing it themselves.
Given this isn't happening, I'm not 100% convinced the senators are doing this on purpose or if they're legitimately too stupid to understand the argument at play. Furthermore I remember Louis Rossmann saying in one of his videos that one senator turned out to not even be checking his official government e-mail account... that's not someone I would entrust with understanding anything even remotely related to technology.
"robust conversations"
On the other hand, I am uneasy with regulators mandating specific designs (e.g. all phones must have replaceable batteries), or specific standards (e.g. all phones need to use USB-C) or doing things like forcing Apple to include a charge cable or headphones with their devices.
[1] I'm thinking of Jessa Jones and Louis Rossmann specifically.
The rest of the world didn't and yet I hadn't needed to get a different charger per brand for, I'd say, a decade or more.
What's the utility of creating a regulatory and enforcement framework for something that happened anyway?
After a few uses, the chain tightening bolt broke into two pieces.
I begged them to send me just the bolt, but NO. They said I'm not entitled to repair it. I was even willing to pay for it, but I couldn't find it below 15€ on the internet.
So I sent the whole chainsaw to the repair service on their dime and they sent me a brand new one. They probably tossed the perfectly fine old chainsaw into the dumpster. Because of a 0.10€ bolt.
The corporate throwaway culture is incredible.
And then post the info online somewhere - even if it's a random Reddit thread Google will pick it up and a search like "Aldi chainsaw chain tightening screw replacement" should pick it up.
I find the proper use of the saw to be more important that with a petrol saw as it isn’t immediately clear if it’s on or not. Others in the area are immediately aware when there is an idling chainsaw, but not so much with an electric one.
It sure is an interesting feeling how the blade stops immediately. Mine is 2000W. I always handle it like it is spinning, so there is no difference safety-wise.
It was a PITA, but I am thankful that a) iFixit provided a helpful guide and a kit with all of the things I needed except for the rubbing alcohol and b) it was legal and there weren't any software issues to deal with.
Aside from the aging battery and occasionally running out of storage, the phone was completely fine for my needs. For ~$50 and a few hours of time, I've essentially doubled the lifespan of my $700 phone.
Before the Pixel 2, I hadn't purchased a new phone in like 12 years - I had gotten a couple of used Android phones, and used Windows Mobile before that. They all had the issue of essentially 0 support from the manufacturer by the time I got them, so I was dependent on community ROMs to keep them up-to-date. The phone I was using at the time had multiple issues, including an aging battery, physical damage, and something wrong with the GPS sensor.
A couple of the big reasons I bought the new phone rather than another used one were the promise of 3 years of support (which Google delivered) and waterproofing (which has come in handy a few times). I also just liked the phone in general, and there wasn't much on the used market with a similar feature set.
I like tinkering with my phone, but this was shortly before my second child was born and I knew I wasn't going to have the time to mess with custom ROMs to fix whatever was broken that week. Now that my kids are a little bit older and I can sleep through the night most nights, I think I'm ready for that "fun" again.
Did I miss anything by buying cheap. Maybe, but no one with a $1100 phone has shown me my life in "Vale of Tears" App that I cannot have.
The G7 is getting updates and works. the E2 still works and was my "Give to American's who had bad outside of the US" plan.
Several years ago my washer dryer unit developed a crack in the wash basin. Instead of buying a new machine, I ordered a replacement basin from GE. When I received the part, it had developed a crack from shipping. I was told to throw the broken replacement part in the trash and they would send me another. This happened two more times. It took four shipments of new wash basins for me to actually repair the machine.
Right to repair is a good thing in and of itself. We shouldn't need to couch pro consumer movements in terms of other good objectives like resource conservation or environmentalism. I understand that my experience is probably not typical, but one screw up like mine basically wiped out any gain conservationist gains for me and several other people. If we want to further conservation and environmental efforts we should do so explicitly rather than achieving half measures on the back of other causes.
A big issue with paying for disposal is the motivation to avoid payment. It's hard to get people to dispose of trash responsibly. If they had to pay, we'd be surrounded by illegal dumps.
I think there should be disposal fees, but they must be paid upfront. EU actually has recycling fees on purchase, but they seem to be laughably small (like < 1 EUR for a vacuum cleaner).
The other thing is that nothing lasts forever, so eventually you'd need to repair. Most things you can't repair by yourself, so if the repair costs more than new, and the suggested increase for disposal, I'd still end up buying new to save the hassle.
My wishlist is:
- For consumers, incentivize repair over disposal and buying.
- For companies, incentivize manufacturing quality and design for repairability.
But the question still stands how to do either?
> How do I as a consumer know if a product will last or not?
You, yourself, wont know. Not unless you are an expert on the product, which most people are not. The manufacturer may know what they are selling you is terribly engineered and will break, but you will not. So how can we overcome this imbalance of knowledge? I think the automotive industry is a good example of this being addressed. If I want to buy a car, how do I know that it is going to be reliable? I don't. Even if I were an expert, I don't have the luxury to buy the car, inspect its mechanics, and return it if I don't like it. But yet, even when situated with this predicament, I can still make a well informed decision that will give me a great chance of obtaining a reliable car. Why? It's because there is a plethora of institutions I have access to to evaluate what brand I should go with. The IIHS, NHTSA, Kelly Blue Book, J.D. Power, Edmunds, Motor Trend, Consumer Reports, my local car mechanic, and more. As great as these institutions may be, I believe it only part of the solution. The second is there needs to be a *demand* for reliability. The demand for automotives exists because the price of not having it is costly. Failure can mean major surprise repair bills, a ruined vacation, stranded on the side of the road for hours, etc. Such a price doesn't exist for the failure of my little toaster. But perhaps this can be artificially made with a disposal tax as I suggested in my post.
The idea of repairing a washing machine is great. But our world is growing more complex by the day. The average individual is going to lose any hope of having even enough shallow expertise to crack into these devices without endangering themselves and others. If you pursue this fight, I'd put money in the industries developing "needed" technologies that pack toxic gas in vacuum parts to further increase the expertise needed to touch their internals.
This is very much in line when what the Luddites understood. Fixation on "waste" is a by-product of unrelated worries which are fashionable today, but cheap production at a distance is what labor should worry about, instead.
When companies deliberately build products in unrepairable ways then repair labor costs more than automated production.
Imagine if mac butterfly keyboards were replaceable. Or for example I recently fixed my dad's washing machine, but it took a couple hours of labor to replace the pump because you had to remove about 4 other things to get to it (when they could have just made a door on the side/bottom.
It's sort of like if you had to spend an hour disassembling your case to swap the ram in your machine.
They don’t. They optimize for production costs, not repairability, that’s all.
And glueing 100,000 iPhones together is faster and cheaper than screwing them together.
"With consumer electronics becoming increasingly more complex, many electronics manufacturers have instituted systems whereby the only means to repair a device or obtain repair parts would be through one of their authorized vendors or original equipment manufacturers (OEM). " [1]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_right_to_repair
We're not there yet. There are profitable businesses that can do repair and/or replacement of broken soldered IC chips in laptops and smartphones (see YouTube channels of Jessa Jones and Louis Rossmann). So cost of repair is not a barrier in many cases.
The problems they highlight, that should be very easy to fix through regulation, is lack of access to technical manuals, lack of access to diagnostic equipment and tech giants (like Apple) bullying their suppliers to prevent sale of replacement parts to independent repair shops.
When I parted out my 2012 MacBook Air in 2016, I came close to covering the full cost of my brand new 2016 MB Air.
Independent mechanic shops are also a sizable market (around 150k+ businesses in US alone) providing good paying blue-collar jobs for hundreds of thousands of people .. and this competition also lowers repair costs for consumers.
No reason why it couldn't be the case for electronics.
We have finite resources on this planet. Policies like this that deal with negative externalities aren't driven by fashion, they are driven by our long term needs. And we do need to recycle more and consume less. This is part of the solution.
> cheap production at a distance is what labor should worry about, instead
You're simply describing the status quo. The same status quo which has resulted in the warmest year on record for how many years in a row now...?
It's because our entire economic system is oriented toward growth and puts profit above everything else.
What I want to say is we should be able to fix and repair the hardware and software of devices.
I want to reach out and thank citizens of France for leading the way on repair index!
Smaller, cheaper, more tech heavy items might have shorter required warranties, but the point is that you need to align the incentives by forcing manufacturer to bear the cost of the repair.
All durable consumer goods may apply for a repair QR code. At landfills, items with repair QR codes are scanned and the company is charged 50% of the cost of processing the item.
If one is not applied for, the producer must pay the full cost of processing the item up front.
This would encourage companies to make repair & upgrade and longetivity a priority.
It's a rough idea.
What if the QR code is mutilated?
>At landfills, items with repair QR codes are scanned and the company is charged 50% of the cost of processing the item.
This already exists in some jurisdictions, but the fee is levied at purchase time. eg. https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/taxes-and-fees/ewfaqsgen.htm
>This would encourage companies to make repair & upgrade and longetivity a priority.
not really. if you made a phone that lasts 6 years rather than 3 years, the fees manufacturers pays doesn't decrease by 50%, it remains the same. That's because at the end of the day, everything ends up in a landfill. The only benefit to the manufacturer in this case would be the time value of the deposit fee for 3 years.
Manufacturers must pay 100% of the cost of safe, environmental disposal of all consumer goods they sell. This is collected in the form of a tax, for all manufacturers over some threshold sales value/volume, based on an impact assessment of disposal cost. The assessment is based on the typical practical burden to disposal facilities to process each SKU.
There's no need to individually account for every item going into waste disposal facilities. It can be assumed that every item sold will eventually be disposed of. And the problem is in primarily bulk sales of consumer items, so accounting in bulk is fine, and considerably cheaper in processing cost.
Moreover, anything that involves an "assessment" is bound to be gamed by the manufactures. See e.g. the recent VW car emission scandal.
Having the manufacturer pay a tax in advance does put pressure on the consumer, because that tax has to be incorporated into the product pricing.
> Moreover, anything that involves an "assessment" is bound to be gamed by the manufactures. See e.g. the recent VW car emission scandal.
I agree it's a challenge. I wonder if there's some way to close the loop - so that manufacturers who game the system to achieve an artificially low disposal price end up making up the shortfall when the fake price isn't achieved.
One, what drives people to replace devices? I feel (not scientific at all!) that wanting a new shiny device and, if broken, cost of repair, are higher on the list than not being able to repair.
Two, the law of unintended consequences: Making devices more repairable may increase their footprint in terms of material and thus waste. If people do not have their devices repaired more (e.g. because of (1) above ) then the net result might be worse than the current situation.
I had to abandon my last few phones due to cracked screens, water damage and other hardware faults. Even if I could find replacements for the damaged parts (and I tried), they wouldn't be official and would likely be of a lower quality. Furthermore, most modern phones are really hard to put together to the original quality standards, requiring for example new pre-cut adhesive and whole new backplates, since the original ones will get scratched during disassembly.
My purchases are (at least partially) driven by wanting a shiny, new-looking device that doesn't have any flaws. But, perhaps counter-intuitively, proper repairability would allow me to maintain my devices in this state for a much longer time, which would lead to me purchasing fewer new devices.
Repairability this good would also be great for the used market. Right now you never know what faults a phone/notebook/other miniaturised device might have and if they're there, getting rid of them might cost as much as the device. This means that people who want 100% working devices are more likely to buy new. For other products (for example desktop PCs), the chance that an irreparable fault exists is much lower, so buying used is safer.
This isn’t just about phones and laptops, but also appliances, and people aren’t really upgrading fridges or stowes because a new model is available. Many only get new cars because the repair bill now exceed the monthly cost of a new car.
That's not a given. For things like smartphones I would much rather they enact laws to make them more recyclable than more repairable. And, let's be honest, smartphones don't require repairs often, if at all. Most common issue is probably shattered screen and that is already replaceable everywhere.
> and people aren’t really upgrading fridges or stowes because a new model is available.
Indeed, but they may replace an appliance (which already tend to be quite repairable) that is 5-10 years old and that has broken down because the cost of repairing it (parts plus labour) is in the same ball-park as the cost of a new one. Making appliances even more repairable won't change that.
I've had people come to me with broken screens, old batteries, non-functional/muffled earpieces, wonky USB connectors, cracked lenses and other problems. Smartphones do require repairs and people, at least the ones I know, do want to repair them. But when I tell them the part will take a month to arrive and might not have the same quality as the original, not to mention the non-zero risk of cosmetic damage during disassembly, I can't blame them for rather buying a new phone.
My parents have a washing machine that's now over 15 years old. It still gets repairs regularly. The parts cost is going up though, because they haven't been made in a long time now. Imagine how long we could keep this washing machine if the parts were standardised or their CAD files available online, maybe some manufacturer would be making clones of them right now.
My grandparents old laptop finally died, and they offered me it for parts but I had to straight out tell them that there was nothing on it that was worth anything.
Where? I’d wanted to repair the most popular electric kick scooter in one of the Northern European countries for couple of years and I couldn’t find any place to do it (I asked all the sellers, sent lots of emails to different web shops, etc.). The economy in prosperous countries appears to be such that repair (especially of less fancy products) is so costly that it makes no sense often or is not possible as in the case described above.
Recently I rebuilt a 1996 car. The previous owner had misplaced a fuel tank topper that contained valving for the emissions controls. The parts needed were simply not available for purchase from the manufacturer or the aftermarket. At the time I couldn't source a used fuel tank for the 96, but I was able to find a 1999 model year of the same car in a junkyard.
Between 1996 and 1999, the fuel vapor emissions controls went from "somewhat complicated" to "really complicated." In theory I should have been able to either hook up just the plumbing needed by the 96 system, or upgrade the whole car to the 99 system. However in practice I could do neither. The fittings had all changed. The charcoal canister was changed from round to square. (And really what is the point of installing either canister when both are probably "used up" at this point? Why can't I buy new canisters at the same stores where I can buy new air filters?)
But the biggest impediment was obtaining information on the two systems. The information in the service manual was perfunctory and nonspecific; multiple different systems had been used in different years and regions. The diagrams of internal valving on the tank toppers small enough that important connections (or lack of them) were obscured by smudges. I had more luck reading EPA whitepapers to at least get a theory of operation.
In the enthusiast community I can find information about how to put a cylinder head from one year of this car onto a block from another. I can even find information about what ports to block off or drill open to remount the cylinder head on BACKWARDS, if I'm so inclined. There's not a similar subcommunity for people trying to repair their emissions equipment.
A similar problem exists with safety equipment. Most enthusiasts of this car just delete their ABS, or they never service it. I want to rebuild mine (this just consists of replacing internal O-rings), but I can't find information or get parts except from overseas. In Europe and other countries that are not the USA, the manufacturer did service and rebuild these ABS units.
I just had my washing machine break. It kept giving error codes and the door won't lock.
I called the company who said the model is way to old to have warrenty, which is true, and then said they couldn't assist me in repairing. They said they could only send a (paid) technician.
I Youtubed the model and found an array of DIY repair videos. I used those to dissassemble the door lock mechanism only to find out it had short circuited. Here's the pics: https://imgur.com/a/ECM5AuI
And after I called for replacement parts they started berating me for trying to fix it myself, saying it could be dangerous and a potential fire hazard.
I hope this new law will help in this aspect; it's ridiculous I have to go to YouTube to find out how to repair a washing machine and the company itself refuses to help...
And 2 year warrenty is way too short anyway. I hope they change it into something dynamic like 1 year per €200 sale price or so.
As to right-to-repair, EU seems ahead on that front but US has one regulation which EU does not which is Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act.
I'm not that familiar with US consumer law. What makes this regulation favourable compared to the equivalent EU laws?
You can void a waranty with respect to damage caused by impropper servicing, or damage caused by the replacement parts.
Alternatively you can void warranty on basis of using third party parts or servicing if you provide said parts/services for free.
Idea was: Warranty void is non-GM parts are used => Illegal, unless GM provides all parts for free. Waranty void for getting oil changes at a non-dealer => Illegal unless oil changes are provided completely free at the dealers.
While I suspect that most EU countries have similar rules for cars and the like, in the US these rules apply to any consumer good that costs $5 or more with a warranty (there could be some rare exceptions, as the FTC can grant waiver if the manufacturer can show that it is not possible for a third party to provide parts or service that will work properly, and that granting the waiver is in the public interest). Further free parts and services requirement applies to any form of repair and servicing.
In the US, if you don't provide free screen replacement for a cell phone dropped by negligence, then you cannot legally deny warranty on the battery solely because a third party screen was used, unless you can show the third party screen or the process of installing it caused the battery problem. Of course, if you can show the battery problem was caused by dropping it in the first place, then you can deny warranty replacement.
We are seeing this first-hand with our startup in the EU investment space. The costs to be compliant with the various regulations (MiFID, AML, etc...) are mostly fixed, so they're a lot harder for small firms to implement such as ourselves than for large firms. That's also why a lot of smaller firms are merging into larger firms.
As a solution, there should be relaxed regulations for startups. They would have to be fully compliant only once they reach a certain scale.
When I pay for some physical product it is MINE. If you put something fancy in there, you sold it to me, IT is MINE. I can't copy it and sell the copies, that's fine.
If it's a truly great product, I won't have to fix it. If it wasn't as good as you could make it, you've cheated me. If I can't fix it then you've cheated me in an attempt to keep not just the product but me tethered to your stockholders. Sad.
Sad for you. If it's worth fixing, and you expect to bleed me to fix it, I can fix it myself, or find someone who can. That's a LOT easier than before. And you've lost another customer for a lifetime, one who will spread the word at every chance.
What kind of problems will something like this create for future device manufacturers?
An example would be that if I won 2 identical broken devices/cars I should be allowed to swap parts from one to the other and fix one of them as it was possible before DRM was invented.
Also there should be a "tax" for products with no way to change the battery or one time use electronics.
It consists of three parts: a 2-piece plastic case, and a single circuit board with around 25 smt components. The user can replace the battery.
I'm not going to publish my schematic or board design because I already open sourced my code, and the device is designed to be stupidly easy to manufacture for my own sake. Basically I don't want people to start making their own. A competent EE could figure it out in a day or two, but a anyone with that ability could design their own in the same amount of time.
If something on the board goes bad, I'm not going to offer guidance to repair it. It isn't worth anyone's time. That said, I do offer a lifetime warranty/buyback option since the unit cost is less than $10.
This is a bit of a contrived example since there is literally only one part that can fail, but the point is that there is a very fuzzy line around how far we can go with repairability. Should I be forced to provide a full schematic/board design (giving away my IP essentially)? Should I be forced to provide 'parts' (there is really only one part, and that is the product itself)?
I'm sympathetic to the 'right to repair' movement, but I'm curious how it would be implemented across such a broad spectrum of products. Perhaps it could just be a transparency rule: planned obsolescence (unrepairable) items should be marked as such and an e-waste tax added. If you want to avoid that marking you have to offer to trade broken parts for new for 5 years after first sale at cost.
It's the most un-american thing I've ever seen.
Example: Opel just stopped providing the OnStar service, rendering the hardware useless. My car is only 3 years old, still under warranty, but they're no longer providing service (nor offering an alternative == a repair)
Don't get me wrong I 100% support right to repair/tinker/hack but without software support this is kinda pointless.
Did I miss anything?
The focus needs to be on making things repairable by the consumer, and easy to recycle. Both mean that you need to be able to take the item apart, and that will require redesigning almost electronics.
As some have found out if you try to offer repairs of something as a service because it requires a bunch of technical knowledge in a way that the company doesn't like you can get sued into bankruptcy.
Things aren't repairable by consumers however easy it is to take em apart if you can't get official parts (at a reasonable price) and aren't technically allowed to use alternative ones.
Good ... those fricking drivable iPhones need to be opened up.
https://www.twitter.com/rtb_cheerful https://www.instagram.com/rtbcheerful/ https://www.facebook.com/RTBCheerful
Making things repairable impacts their size much more than manufacturing cost (which is typically about 25-40% of retail price for electronics).
Phones etc working for longer means fewer sales in the long run and I'm OK with that.