Louis Rossmann: A Conversation with Steve Lehto on Right to Repair [video] | Hacker News Reader

Louis Rossmann: A Conversation with Steve Lehto on Right to Repair [video]

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229 pointsdanuker32 comments

Hope "Right to repair" keeps its momentum. Not for being cheap but for a lower downtime and re-use opportunities in developing countries and low-income houses.

My retina MacBook pro overheated and needed a paste replacement and fan cleaning. I live in a small city in Mexico, so no there is no local Apple Store. Results: 2 weeks without a computer while being in the shop.

Now I use an old Thinkpad T440p, it's older and cheaper than the MacBook, but faster because I was able to upgrade the CPU and RAM... and probably will support new versions of Linux and windows for another 5 years at least (I have no idea what will happen to Intel MacOS). Yeah, it's heavier, and the screen it's bad. But it's reliable and can be repaired everywhere, a lot of places don't accept Apple laptops because they are painful to repair, let alone upgrade.

Why the comparison of orange to apples? (no pun intended) even without covid and chip shortage, here in Mexico, it's really hard to get access to hardware for anything less than one or two months worth of salary for the average worker. And thanks to old laptops that are easy to repair like the Thinkpads, Dell precisions, or HP EliteBooks. A lot of people here were able to re-use 2nd hand corporate hardware with something like 70% of the capabilities of a modern computer (not top of the line) for a 1/3 of the price.

Those machines just require a little bit of care and time. Something people in developing countries have, but people in a good position will probably prefer just to get something new for the convenience.

So yeah, the right to repair can help not only corporations reducing downtime, but the world reducing e-waste and adding real opportunities for developing countries repurposing old hardware that's still good.

Right to repair is not about being cheap, it is about not caving in to the needs of an industry that doesn't know how to be profitable in a world without consumerism.

Nowadays phones are much more powerful than ever, and can thus last much longer without becoming obsolete. Lots of people (including myself with my Galaxy S8+) are still holding on 3 years old phones, and I honestly don't see any reason to change it any time soon, given that it still works really well.

In a world devastated by the amount of waste we produce it's morally intolerable to force people to throw away what still works and serves them well.

Responding to this from an iPhone 6 (non-S) purchased in either late 2014 or early 2015. This phone doesn't have the latest and greatest software/hardware (version locked at iOS 12), but it does its job and does it well enough that I haven't had to pay for a phone in 4 years.

It's definitely slowed down and the battery is rated at 76% capacity now, but it can still browse the web, play a handful of games I occasionally open, and handle the few social apps I use.

When it comes to browsing, JS and animation heavy sites can tank performance though, e.g. Apple's product pages and https://blloc.com

I'm only just starting to consider getting a new phone, but am willing to wait till the fall if I can to see if Apple brings back TouchID with the iPhone 12s/13 or whatever they choose to name the upcoming models.

> and the battery is rated at 76% capacity now

I hate this. I was a holdout with an LG G5 (last flagship-esque phone with a removable battery), and went through three battery replacements until the GPS antenna failed, and now I have an LG V35 with a potted battery.

I wasn't able to find a way to configure the charge controller with software, so now I just never plug in overnight and try really hard to manually unplug it before it reaches ~70 or 80%.

This works... The phone is ~2.5 years old and the battery is still fairly close to nominal capacity. I just wish it wasn't such a pain.

This "new" phone is also well out of the support window, so I haven't gotten Android or security updates in over a year, and it had limited enough release that custom ROMs are not an option. With LG leaving the market, I'm considering gritting my teeth and getting an iPhone when this one dies, if only for the longer software/security support window, which feels absolutely ridiculous.

Perhaps buy an old school timer outlet and before charing, set it to turn off after x mins.

I think you can estimate how much time it does take to charge from x to 80.

Or for folks who have home assistant and some controllable socket - automation should be possible as mobile phone reports battery charge!

If you're rooted, you can use Advanced Charge Controller App. Gets you a charge limit and charge rate throttling.

> This phone doesn't have the latest and greatest software/hardware (version locked at iOS 12), but it does its job

I hope you do not browse the Internet on it, since a lot of security bugs are probably not fixed in its browser (and you're not allowed to install another one). So you put all your data on the phone at risk when using the Internet.

That's false.

iOS 12 gets security updates every few months or so. The last update, 12.5.2, was a little over a month ago: March 26.

Source: I also have an old phone.

Thanks, I stand corrected. Do you expect it to last though?

Personally I expect with the release of iOS 15 we'll probably see this happen. Though Apple is the one with the knowledge of how many iPhone 6 and earlier phones are active in the field (assuming telemetry), so decisions would probably be based off that.

iOS 12 is currently in the n-2 slot, but even on macOS older versions have gotten security updates as needed.

I expect updates it to last one or two more years given their track record. And even when it stops for months, they always come back for emergency security updates.

I only upgraded from a OnePlus 3T to a 6T because the former got stolen. I hope LineageOS becomes stable enough on the 6T so that I can keep using an Android OS with recent security patches, but like most phones, the battery will probably be the first thing to give up.

Many of my earlier smartphones had batteries that were easily replaced. The 6T requires special tools, among them a heat gun to soften the glue on the back cover. And ifixit says that's "moderate difficulty".

I would frame the right to repair as the public's desire to understand and manage the total cost of ownership for the decisions they make. For simpler goods such as clothing or bags people already have this "inherent" right.

Cheap wouldn't be my way to put it either, but predictable pricing of repairs is part of understanding the total cost of ownership.

> Right to repair is not about being cheap, is about not caving in to the needs of an industry that doesn't know how to be profitable in a world without consumerism.

Beautiful.

Note that the industry does know how: it's called planned obsolescence. But the replacement rate is not good enough if people get to also repair their stuff.

Also with Moore's law dying there is less and less need to upgrade the hardware, and the semiconductor industry will push more and more planned obsolescence.

> Hope "Right to repair" keeps its momentum

As someone who believes in running things until they simply aren't worth fixing any more, I wholeheartedly agree. I have a riding snowblower built in 1983, a riding lawnmower built in 2005, most of the computers I've owned in the last 10 years have been bought used (generally off-lease from large corps), we haven't bought a new car since 2005, etc., etc.

I'm a huge believer in buying used stuff and I think the rush to upgrade to the latest phone, etc., "just cuz" is a tragedy. Learning how to open up old radios and appliances and repair them was a strong push in me wanting to become an engineer.

Now, I'll admit that a large part of the reason I repair things is to save money (and the pride in getting them running again), but I really don't think the individual motivations matter. What matters is that we're able to do this if we need or want to and not hampered by arbitrary restrictions.

Repairability was the single largest reason for my move from an iPhone to a Fairphone.

>Why the comparison of orange to apples? (no pun intended)

They are almost the same internally, similar processors, similar batteries, similar GPU/memory, PCH, etc.

>My retina MacBook pro overheated and needed a paste replacement and fan cleaning

This should be rather trivial job - likely 25-30mins if you have the pentalobe screwdriver.

I have replaced the thermal paste on a 2016 MBP before and that was far from trivial. It took close to 2 hours and everything felt very stuck. It was overall a bad experience.

Even though Thinkpads like the old xx20 and xx30 series require more parts to come off, they are easier and faster to replace the thermal paste on. Nothing feels as awfully stuck, overengineered and way too small as on the Macbook. Newer business Notebooks from Lelnovo and Dell are even better with that.

I’ve opened a Macbook. It would be irresponsible to recommend someone attempt to do this unless they somewhat experienced. There is a reason why iFixit gives most newer Macbook Pros a 1/10 repairability, and it is not an anti-Apple conspiracy; they’re tricky devices.

Okay what's the worst to happen while opening, if one is moderately cautious and don't rip off the flex cables?

I am in no way defending Apple's policies that are openly hostile to repair and maintenance, yet I'd expect most people to be able to open a Mac, if they read a guide/watch a video and they have the correct tools.

I do maintain/install/repair most of stuff home - the worst offenders are the ones that consider epoxy a viable engineering tool for fastening. Macs at least don't do that... yet. Also they don't contain built-in mechanical points of failure (printers are notoriously bad when it comes to weak springs and certain plastic gears; I don't consider having too short flex cable 'mechanical')

> if you have the pentalobe screwdriver

This is already a problem - what's the reason they couldn't use a standard screw beyond making it intentionally more difficult to repair?

Screws are still relatively tame and easy to work around but I'm sure if they could come up with some smart, DRM-powered screw that only an official, Apple screwdriver could open (after an online check) they'd do it.

The screws are the epitome of Apple attempts to circumvent repair/maintenance of their product. There is zero reason to 'invent' them aside being a barrier for a normal human to open the thing. If they wanted decent screws that don't cam out - use the torx instead. (Phillips are overall bad screws, designed to prevent overtorque).

I'd guess the 1st pentalobe screwdrivers are machined initially.

I really hope his ballot initiative fund raising succeeds [0]! Maybe one day everything will be repairable again

[0] https://www.gofundme.com/f/lets-get-right-to-repair-passed

Aside from repair, the wider issue is, do you own your device and can you do what you want with it? There are three angles.

First, in the law as Lehto points out, if they put obstacles to you modifying your device, things stray from Magnuson-Moss into antitrust territory.

Second is the war on general purpose computing [1] where the corporations want you to have a curated, walled garden experience with no liberties of your device or the content it's carrying.

And third, germane to a device maker, of course this gets into planned obsolescence as well. There's no conspiracy here, just economics going back 30's where a new car every 2 years was viewed as essential to the car makers.

1. https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

https://www.gofundme.com/f/lets-get-right-to-repair-passed

This needs to be posted more often

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