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Comment by 35fbe7d3d5b9 | Hacker News Reader

> Your approach will always be a valid choice, for those who want it

This isn't "my approach" – it's the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer. And pining for the good ol' days of technical datasheets doesn't help everybody who can't start their cars without the successful interaction of nearly a hundred proprietary microcontrollers running proprietary code speaking over a high-speed data bus.

And here's the annoying thing: I want a car that doesn't have a hundred microcontrollers speaking over a high-speed data bus. I want a car like my old '88 Camry, that I could take apart with my dad and fix almost all of the problems I ran into with the help of a Haynes manual and a trip (or two!) to the junkyard. But the market clearly does not agree with my desires.

So how do you get there from here?

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All I'm saying is that R2R in no way changes the products that are available to you if you want product-as-a-service. You can still take your phone to the Genius Bar or lease it from a carrier. It just guarantees that there are also options for those who want to fix their own devices.

Do you have a source to cite for "the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer"?

That seems pretty speculative. The market can be manipulated or directed by more than simply consumer choice, e.g. by business incentives of product manufacturers.

> Do you have a source to cite for "the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer"?

I mean, gestures at every consumer-targeted product made since at least the early 'oughts.

People want things that are some combination of more capable, more convenient, more reliable, and less expensive. Different consumers obviously make different decisions, but there's a reason you can't go to a car lot and easily find a car with a stick shift. There's a reason you probably don't know anyone who has a Speed Queen top loader (pre-redesign model of course ;)) in their house, even though it is infinitely more reliable and repairable than the competition. Those offerings are less capable, less convenient, and more expensive than the alternatives, so customers don't want them.

Customers are incredibly short sighted when it comes to purchasing new things - shaving 10% off a price while cutting the expected lifetime of the product down from ten years to three is likely to capture most of the market.

I think this is a case where actors are acting in an irrational manner (i.e. not adhering to the perfectly rational actor assumption that's required for free-markets to function) and that necessitates government or other intervention to ensure that consumers are protected.

It's depressing because I absolutely agree with you that users aren't purchasing devices with an emphasis on being able to repair them. It is a pain point but not one that comes up at the register and so manufacturers are free to exploit the situation to provide marginally cheaper goods that require full replacement more frequently to ensure consistent sales.

Nobody wants to be like Hoover in the 90's that offered free plane tickets with vacuum purchases[1] and caused such an oversupply in the market that first party vacuum sales dwindled to nearly nothing over the next decade and that's fair. But we need to have a balance where we aren't rewarding manufacturers who build products that frequently break and for the consumer to make another purchase.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_free_flights_promotion

Given a choice customers would very likely prefer a toaster that costs ten dollars less and has a 1 in 10,000 chance of burning down their house instead of 1 in 1,00,000 even though saving 10 bucks and accepting a in in 10k chance of burning up your kids, cats, and stuff is an insane choice.

The free market is in short pretty garbage on its own.

> I mean, gestures at every consumer-targeted product made since at least the early 'oughts.

Exactly. Only that proves the opposite of what you think it proves.

You can't buy a new car like an '88 Camry anymore, the government will not allow it to be sold due to safety and environmental regulation.

> This isn't "my approach" – it's the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer.

We don't know that. We might, if the other alternative was available for purchasers to choose from, but it isn't.

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