I used to make some money as a kid by buying batches of broken Iphone 3G/3GS's on ebay, replacing parts on them, and then re-selling them myself. Practically any part of that device could be replaced in less than 30 minutes with $15 worth of tools.
I have a 2012MBP and a 2014MBP that I gave to my family that are still serving their purposes after a few quick(and cheap) battery, RAM and HDD replacements over the years.
I don't expect my 2019 MBP to last more than 5 years without costing me at least several hundred dollars more when I inevitably have to bring it to the Apple store for them to fix something that very much used to be user-fixable in a matter of minutes.
Sorry, I'm not trying to mock you. Just saw an opportunity to be facetious, not facetious.
And, actually, to sort of make a point:
I don't buy into the idea that companies are intentionally doing this — intentionally disallowing replacement parts, although I maybe just be naive. I do in fact loathe SMDs (as a hobbyist) but I am quite sure that companies have moved to them for non-nefarious reasons as well.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with right to repair, but a lot of people don’t understand what goes into designing these things and attribute a lack of repairability with malfeasance rather than just the reality of manufacturing, economics, and consumer demands.
SMDs are not anticonsumer. They are harder to work with but with practice anyone can deal with them just fine. I've yet to see anyone argue for a through hole mandate.
But I have seen people argue for banning clearly anti repair design practices like gluing assemblies together. Or designing a screen in such a way that you have a high chance of breaking it when removing it.
Many of their parts are linked to the motherboard in software, and even a doner replacement from another decide restricts features.
There's a line between warning the user that the repair is potentially dangerous and removing their right of ownership to repair their product unless apple had authorised it.
It's not bigger than existing phones. It doesn't weigh more, it's not thicker. The weight of a battery connector and a couple of screws is what, a couple of grams, if that?
"We needed to make it thinner" is just an excuse.
I believe the generation before was the last one that was repairable.
Right to repair is a complex endeavour. There will be no simple solutions.
Sorry, but what? Being able to repair a device means that you can (and usually will) be able to prevent demand spiking for a brand new device that uses as many or more materials than the last.
For starters, imagine a world where vehicles were not repairable. I'd argue that any mass-produced thing benefits from repairability.
If you have infinite money, yes. Most people in the world do not have it. (And if you do not care about the environment, too.)
Repair shops exist for this purpose. I’m not saying every individual will repair their device themself if it breaks. That would be as out of touch as saying most people will just buy a brand new phone anytime theirs has an issue.
Making things less repairable means that whether you’re willing to pay someone else or not to fix something, you will be unable to.
Right to repair isn't about forcing manufacturers to make devices more repairable. It's about giving you the right to repair it in the first place. Right now we have paired components that can't even be replaced by genuine parts from a donor device, board components that aren't purchasable by anyone other than the OEM and a complete lack of access to repair documentation from OEMs.
Even the most skilled repair technicians in the world with the best equipment money can buy aren't able to repair your device because they can't debug it without documentation, or they've reverse engineered it but can't buy the parts because they're not for sale, or they've taken the parts from another device but they won't function because the OEM software locked them to the device they came from.
Linus from Linus Tech Tips said it best: "The vast majority of the opposition to right to repair comes from people who either haven't had it explained to them properly or from folks that are on board with right to repair even though they don't realize it yet"
There's a similar study focused on notebooks that goes into the environmental benefits of extending longevity: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956053X1...
Finally, we've spent the last year and a half building a highly repairable notebook at Framework, and it is as robust as any other premium thin and light notebook.
I agree with you though that there is a behavioral change required to maximize the benefit. There are many audiences (like a lot of the folks on HN) who are ready to make their devices last longer, but others may need more time to get comfortable with it.
Companies like Apple and Microsoft love to claim they are green because they put money into recycling old hardware. Except their business model for hardware revolves entirely around Increasing consumption and not reducing it.
Its cheaper and better for the environment to maintain electronics than it is to replace them every few years and recycle them. Recycling is far from 100%, especially with electronics. Its not like steel or aluminum where you can just toss scrap into a crucible and get pure ingots on the other end ready to be worked into something useful.
However there could easily be regulation of labeling that could help.
E.g. mandate display of statistical years of working life, and number of years of software support.
At least this way customers would be able to make a choice.
These changes almost never happen. Whatever change you put the first time is likely the only change that will happen. Starting off with a compromise for fear of 'getting it wrong' is the easiest way to make sure you get it wrong.