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Comment by hawski | Hacker News Reader

I really like Thom Holwerda's from OSnews take on the article. Especially the "glorified toaster makers" part.

https://www.osnews.com/story/133436/microsoft-and-apple-wage...

> What’s good enough for the car industry, is more than good enough for these glorified toaster makers. Cars are basically murder weapons we kind of screwed ourselves into being reliant on, but Apple and Microsoft make complicated toasters that you need to really screw up in order to hurt anyone with. Computer and device makers must be forced to make parts and schematics available to any independent repair shop, just like car makers have to do.

> So many perfectly capable devices end up in dangerous, toxic landfills in 3rd world countries simply because Apple, Microsoft, and other toaster makers want to increase their bottom line. It’s disgusting behaviour, especially with how sanctimonious they are about protecting the environment and hugging baby seals.

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> must be forced to make parts and schematics available to any independent repair shop, just like car makers have to do

The only reason this has been possible for car makers until now is because the technology to stop it didn’t exist. But it does now, and car makers are definitely moving in the direction of “lock down”. You already can’t replace wireless key fobs, and entertainment head units are locked down. Repair manuals are locked behind a monthly subscription web site, and the third-parties who used to publish their manuals are giving up. John Deere is infamous for taking it to the next level with farm equipment. The way things are going in the auto industry, as soon as it’s possible to technically enforce the use of “genuine” crank shafts and head gaskets, they will not hesitate to do so.

> You already can’t replace wireless key fobs

https://www.citrusford.com/parts/parts-tips/how-to-program-f...

https://northcoastkeyless.com/2020-gmc-sierra-keyless-entry-...

The fobs you need to perform those procedures are not third-party — they still need to be “genuine” parts.

not necessarily. At least in Germany competition law broke up the restrictions regarding repairing only in brand repair shop’s. Free repair shop’s have accessed now to the manuals/instructions (at costs though).

"Computer and device makers must be forced to make parts and schematics available to any independent repair shop, just like car makers have to do."

I believe it's only Massachusetts that forces Car makers to share repair information to independant shops?

(We need a broad federal Right to Repair law.)

I'm an Independent Watchmaker and 99.99% of watch companies stopped selling parts to us a few years ago. Rolex was quite a bully. They made guys go out and buy $30 grand worth of equipment if they wanted to have access to parts/info. (Rolex owned many of the equipment manufactures). They then turned around and cut their parts accounts.

I've heard all about the danger of repairing your own vechicle/devices. It makes no sence. Companies are not liable if the devise has been altered, or repaired, by anyone other than them? Right? The second a company thinks they might possibly be liable for a product, they send out investigators hoping they could blame a third party repair?

Consumers just want a choice to bring their broken vechicle/device to a guy who charges a reasonable amount to repair.

They are tired of no options other than tossing it, or having it repaired at Factory prices. My local auto dealerships are charging $270/hr for out of warranty work. This was a few years ago. I have older vechicles, so I'm lucky for now. I've actually gone to automotive school, and the complexity of these newer cars scares me. To anyone looking to buy a new car, ask about parts, and service after the warranty end. Oh yea, avoid the independant auto shop that works on everything in most cases. These new vechicles have deep trouble codes, that only expensive dealership scanners can access. Your OBD2 scanner will not get to the deep layers of the multiple computers in modern vechicles. Nothing will change until the consumer says no. I'm starting to preach sorry. It just bothers me on so many levels. I guess I got it from my dad?

I was with him when he bought his new '98 Dodge Dakota. He told the salesman, "I need the Service Manual too". Back then access to repair information was expected. If anyone told him otherwise, he would never have bought the truck. He ended up giving it to me, and I have been working on it ever since. I couldn't imagine buying a new car without a Service Manual. I was looking at new cars a few years ago for my mom, and asked the sales guy about Service Manuals. He laughed. He said even Independant shop owners bring their cars to us. I couldn't believe customers happily sipping Starbucks coffee, in the fancy lounge, with the shop rate sign right behind them "$270.00/hr". I left thinking the world has changed. (I have no clue to shop rates as of 2021. I kinda don't want to know.)

Why are companies doing this? I think we all know. Some fresh faced MBA realized, "We will get them coming, and going.". They call it Vertical Integration, or greed? There is a lot of case law that protects companies though. It's going to be a fight.

I'm going from memory here, so don't quote me. In the 70's a group of watch owners wanted to buy parts for their broken watches. The government thought it was a fair request. They used the Sherman Anti-trust Act to fight the watch companies, mainly Swiss companies. It was kinda settled, and the judge sided with the watch companies. They were under no obligation to supply part to consumers. They still provided parts to Watch Repaiers for awhile though. I believe all case law favors the manufacturers. If any lawyer reads this could you explain it to me?)

They made guys go out and buy $30 grand worth of equipment if they wanted to have access to parts/info.

Gee. That'll buy some nice CNC gear, maybe even the sort you could use to fabricate watch parts.

(Obviously an exaggeration given the exacting tolerances and other requirements, but if a few dozen of you got together and pooled your resources...)

>Consumers just want a choice to bring their broken vechicle/device to a guy who charges a reasonable amount to repair.

This. I will be happy even if Apple ( and specifically Apple ) will do this themselves instead of charging parts that earn their exact same margin as if you were buying a new computer. Everything is wrong with the logic board, which cost you $400+. Apple speakers are ( comparatively speaking ) easily blown. FlexGate, StainGate... the list goes on and on. What could have been an easy fix which turns out to cost few hundred bucks.

Easy fix is not to buy Apple anymore.

other manufacturers are not any better, barring rare exceptions

System76 offers complete repair guides and lets you buy parts. Lenovo lets you open most of their laptops for self-maintenance as well.

I bought a laptop (Clevo clone) from Schenker year before last. They have videos on YouTube on how to open it up for repair... So apparently some manufacturers are a bit better.

This is wonderfully accurate. :)

Love this take on it. That said, there's a California State Bill SB-605 "Medical Device Right to Repair Act" that's going through the motions at the moment. Medical devices are not "basically murder weapons we kind of screwed ourselves into being reliant on". I'd like to hear what peoples' take on Medical Devices is?

The FDA's report on third party servicing says this:

> The currently available objective evidence is not sufficient to conclude whether or not there is a widespread public health concern related to servicing, including by third party servicers, of medical devices that would justify imposing additional/different, burdensome regulatory requirements at this time. Rather, the objective evidence indicates that many OEMs and third party entities provide high quality, safe, and effective servicing of medical devices.

https://www.fda.gov/media/113431/download

From my personal experience poking at a CPAP machine, there's nothing magical about it. All the sensors and active elements I could track down are available from the respective manufacturers in large quantities. The CPU is a freaking off the shelf STM32F4 with the jtag header still on the board. This is not some impossible to debug hyper-integrated design.

Medical devices differ more in the level of design review and testing than in the designs per se - many of them are fairly straightforward. As long as 3rd party repair a) doesn't cut corners and b) knows how to do full verification testing, it should be fine.

The latter part is interesting, as public side of FDA filings doesn't have all the V&V filings. I suspect that's why FDA is less sanguine about re-manufacturing.

I refurbish medical devices in California. The customer can either talk to sales or talk to me. Medical devices are a computer-controlled apparatus, and the computer. I can fix the computer without affecting the device's calibration. Devices don't break often, but their controlling computers do.

The oldest devices I serviced run on Windows 3.1 and still work fine. There's a touchscreen mono CRT that runs on some custom build of Windows 3.1 in daily use at that office. I use Windows 98 daily.

I disagree.

I think this argument will backfire in a couple of years from now.

A car does not feature my personal data - up to now. A harddisk with your account information and so on is not the same as an engine.

Car makers become more and more data aware and ironically there is no engine in the traditional sense in e-cars anymore.

Encrypt. This is a silly reason. Why not make devices with removable disks? They could be removed and sent for repair. Not everything have to be soldered.

But a slot is 0.5mm overhead over just soldering a bare part!

Other issues aside, "A is just a complicated B, so apply the same rules to A as B" is not a formula for good decision making.

It's a common way to make bad mistakes though.

A Rectangle is just a complicated Square, so let’s just subclass. That should work out okay.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle–ellipse_problem

The OP has a spesific and accurate statement about danger to life and limb. A generic sounbyte does not make a convincing counterpoint

However IMO this is a case of "A is much more complex and dangerous than B, so there is no reason to have B driven by more secretive and restrictive standards than those applied to A"

That's a terrible and misleading paraphrase of the above post, whose main point was contrasting the extreme risks inherent to auto repair to the mundane risks of computer repair. Which makes some specific arguments brought up against right to repair like battery replacement being too dangerous for independents/end users seem unconvincing. Perticularly because vehicles themselves have dangerous batteries.

Here's an allegation of that argument being brought up by Apple.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2019/05/01/apple-iph...

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