Rossman always presents himself as the ultimate victim. Apple has it out for him, NY has it out for him, people less successful than him have it out for him. When you've watched as much of his content as I have, you start to see where his head is, and it's not a pretty place. Anyway, I have found other repair guys that are better than Rossman and don't have so much negativity on their channels. I can get a deeper understanding of repairing tech without the hyperbolic commentary.
Makes me think of Thunderf00t. This guy is a massive troll with, from time to time, great scientific content. He has a lot of followers just here to enjoy the trolling, as evidenced by the fact he is never questioned by his fans even though it is what his channel is supposed to teach.
“YouTube culture” puzzles me. I love it for instructional videos though.
As for summaries, long form / short form is an endless debate. Some people say summaries are worthless because you don't get the context and nuances. Others say long form articles (and videos) are a waste of time. Most people are somewhere between these two extremes.
I used to watch a lot of Rossman and glossed over his Apple hate because ultimately Apple are putting him and people like him out of a job, so it’s fair to be salty.
But a large portion of his content (a few years ago at least) is just hour long rants which are unsubstantiated opinion, he does not see nuance or doesn’t want to try steel-manning the things he disagrees with. Which is something Linus Sebastian is incredibly good at.
It does come off almost narcissistic at times, to me at least.
But at the end of the day explaining how computers are constructed is great content.
With regards to arrogance, it’s difficult to see his arguments for R2R while he is showing off his desoldering skills for a 170 pin BGA.
If you want to promote R2R, look at iFixit and EFFs efforts. If HN thinks Rossmann is the hero we should be looking upto, I think we’ve stooped really far down.
Which statement has he made that was either a lie or an error?
What else matters than that?
I understand not finding the videoes enjoyable 3 hours of entertainment. That's hardly anyone's cup or tea. I mean finding his arguments questionable.
Is it somehow NYer of me to demand this explaination that if you're going to say someone's wrong, they actually have to be wrong?
The entire hour is nothing BUT substantiating the opinion.
...in excruciating exhaustive detail that covers every possible excuse and addresses every possible disingenuous argument, exactly because people will try anything to avoid recognizing something they don't want to think about or admit or deal with.
He doesn't say "I don't like Apple because I don't know why, I just don't like their face." He says Apple did X, and here is the evidence that Ape did X, and here is exactly why X is bad. Exactly specifically and explicitly so that no one can possibly even try to say that the statement is just subjective and open to be disregarded.
And here you are proving how even such exhaustive extremes of thoroughness and correctness and see-for-yourselfness don't matter. That is incredibly disheartening to see. It proves once again that right and wrong don't matter. People use the words to suit their own opinions and wants, but they don't actaully matter.
You don't have to like his style or personality, but to say his statements are unsubstantiated opinion is just incredible.
Some alternatives:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeHILuUwWmHDQqbocxUvVoA
It’s pretty clear he had built a business on repairing electronics. But that doesn’t invalidate his points. If you own something, you should be able to get it repaired to a reasonable degree. Apple goes out of their way to frustrate even consumables like batteries from being swapped, and I say that as someone that still uses apple products.
For him, it makes sense hes more passionate than most, not only is it a passion for him to do this type of work (repairing electronics, not youtubing) but its also his livelyhood, so it makes sense that he would call out companies that make design changes that serve little other purpose than to frustrate repairs and decrease longevity to bolster their sales (and increase e-waste in the process)
> I've watched over 100 hours of his content and realized that his audience is primarily made up of anti-apple PC Master Race fanatics that just want to hear Louis troll apple for an hour.
Gonna disagree. Regardless of the type of people attracted to his content. It doesn’t invalidate the points he makes there. I don't watch his stuff religiously, and probably haven't viewed as much as you purport to have, but he has a clear schtick (which is basically mandatory for youtubers) but is definitely less negative than many I have seen. The good seems to outweigh the bad.
The article starts out saying this was a way for him to vent in a healthy and cathartic way, as a direct substitute to therapy. And it seems to work for him and he has said it before and it shows in the stuff he posts. I wont judge him solely on that just as I wouldn't judge other others who prefer something different, like fishing or hunting and escaping people (myself), or hobbies like music (also myself) or maintaining a garden or yard to work out frustrations. Some even go on the internet to criticize others I guess.
What other YouTube channels are showing people to cleanup or swap individual chips, or what part of a board does what? [1][2] I haven’t seen one that compares. It’s pretty neat and a display of a skill set definately don't posses. Even though I work with tech on a daily basis in my own right.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr13FEBRzjM [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUWmqucOkZk
Though I think it would be best to have more people leading the right to repair just for this reason of avoiding people that hate someone personality then opposing this movement.
The amount of childish personal attacks about Rossman in this thread I think is a good indicator of how right he is. Makes me feel good about that money I donated to his Gofundme.
FWIW, personally I've watched Louis since the very beginning and he knows a lot about repairing electronics. But I also think the way he kept getting more and more attention as he ranted about Apple really changed the channel and his character at least on video.
Also, I honestly think it's more childish to use the "if x is getting criticized it means it's probably right" trope here than it is to criticize the personality of a public figure.
> Look, I think Bob is a smart person and knows a lot about math, but personally I don't like him. He's balding, he collects plastic folding chairs in his garage, and he has a Youtube channel with clickbaity titles.
Why does that matter? He's right, `2 + 2 == 4`. Why are you posting personal attacks instead of debating his argument? It's impossible to have a productive discussion like that, and it's childish.
> I'm not sure why you would say that. Some critics on this thread have given pretty good reasons for why they "dislike" Bob. while it may seem like some (not most) of those points are attacking Bob's character, I don't see how some of his character doesn't have a direct impact on his arguments. If he always goes for clickbait titles, has a tendency to exaggerate, prefers to perpetually rant/glorify himself or likes to talk about things that he clearly does not know a lot about that can obviously taint the core of his message to some.
> FWIW, personally I've watched Bob since the very beginning and he knows a lot about repairing electronics. But I also think the way he kept getting more and more attention as he ranted about Apple really changed the channel and his character at least on video.
> Also, I honestly think it's more childish to use the "if x is getting criticized it means it's probably right" trope here than it is to criticize the personality of a public figure.
Watching his business struggle through Covid fills me with great respect for the small business owner and the difficult choices which must be made. Did NY have it out for him? They were far from business friendly with their Covid restrictions. Recently, his shop was fined for not registering used laptops that his customers had abandoned for repair. Sure, NYC is attempting to prevent stolen laptops from being resold, but the level of bureaucratic idiocy turns Rossman’s channel into a Shakespearen comedy.
As for his specific gripes about repeated Apple design failures, he makes a good argument. Two stand out. First, liquid intolerance. Thinkpads from years ago used to tolerate coffee spilt on the keyboard. It flowed right through. From the number of water damaged MacBooks Louis repairs, it appears Apples can’t take a drop. If Apple is upset with Rossman’s criticism, they can easily apply board level coating to solve the problem.
Second, he’s critical of the connectors being soldered directly to the motherboard instead of going into a daughterboard and connecting via a flex connector.
And, yes, the above design decisions are made by Apple for a number of different, possibly valid reasons. To hit a price point, to fit within a form factor, to deliver in a required timeframe. But Louis brings up the point that Apple may be making these decisions for less than consumer friendly reasons. Planned obsolescence? Could Apple change the design of their connectors so they won’t break? Yes, but maybe they didn’t because they expect 5.8% of the connectors to fail and not be economical to repair in the Apple store, driving 5.8% greater revenue.
All that being said, yes, Louis takes the above points, which can be read in a minute, and rehashes them 50 different ways.
Not a great way to run a business.
We'll never know for sure if Apple is making the right trade-offs, because you can't buy any other machines that run OS X to compare to, but they probably are. People who just spilled coffee on their keyboard really want a laptop that weighs 3x as much to have a keyboard drainage system. The 99% of users that don't spill coffee on their keyboard but do carry their laptop to and from work twice a day probably appreciate the weight savings. (You can kind of infer whether or not Apple is making the right decisions by looking at the PC market. Not a lot of laptops with roll cages and keyboard drainage anymore. People want specs per dollar, not the ability to run their laptop over with a car. When they do run their laptop over with a car or drop it into a pool, they're sad. But if those parts were standard issue, they wouldn't be able to afford a laptop to begin with. Such is the way of the market, I suppose.)
Apple probably doesn't have any good reason to make repairing their laptops so painful for skilled professionals. As far as I can tell, even their own repair service is garbage. That is probably a conscious decision -- paying someone to write repair guides, train technicians, and maintain a fulfillment network for spare parts cuts into new computer sales, so it's spending money to lose money, which nobody will ever do. Maybe government intervention is the right answer, but it's probably a cost the market can't bear. PC manufacturers compete ruthlessly, and all the laptops are junk too. There is probably a maximum amount of money consumers will pay for a certain amount of specs, and it isn't enough to make a reliable mobile computer. The downside is that you'll never have a computer you can spill coffee on. The upside is that even someone without a lot of money can afford a personal computer. That's the tradeoff.
I use a desktop and keep it where I can't spill my coffee on it. Works well.
I saw this complaint and didn't follow what NYC did wrong. If one isn't allowed to sell "unregistered" laptops or whatever, why would abandoned customer laptops get a pass? Did the law state they should? I gather he is still allowed to repair them for people, even potentially thieves, just never "launder" them.
That's the whole problem. He tries for a couple of months to contact them (calls, emails, etc) and if they don't even respond, after around 9 months they get put into the resale bin.
His policy is "no fix, no fee" so I would presume there's no deposit. If there is no transfer of money it seems difficult to make even a weak legal argument that the laptops were "purchased". That is why Rossmann found the whole situation ridiculous.
The law explicitly states purchased laptops, which he did not. Now we can say "But that's not the purpose of the law, just the letter!" But the purpose of the law is to make selling stolen laptops non-profitable to thieves - and abandoning them does not turn a profit. Meaning Louis runs afoul of neither letter nor spirit of the law.
And so I'm legitimately asking, if you think he's in the wrong: what is he to do, when he can't properly fill out LEADS online without a purchase price? He tried calling the city, he tried calling would-be customers to collect their things. The former couldn't tell him, and the latter told him it wasn't worth their time.
Rossman may not be selling under such shady circumstances, but this is how most of these machines are moved. I don't think any good comes out of selling these machines.
If the customer owes him money and he is selling the laptop to get that money because the customer is choosing that outcome, then in a sense he is selling the laptop on behalf of the customer. For this option to be available to the customer, it seems they should still need to prove it was properly purchased. It still seems like this creates a loophole otherwise. What happens if a theft victim spots their laptop being used by someone who purchased it legitimately from a shop like this?
He makes very valid arguments, how is this "financial and self promoting"? Dont lie about someone's intentions just because you don't agree with their reasoning.
He had a video where he was trashing a new MacBook. The largest reason why he liked his current Lenovo over the MacBook was the Lenovo's battery bump.
He used the battery bump as a handle when editing videos standing up on the subway. Oof.
The sleek MacBook didn't have a convenient handle in the back for him to do his stand-up video editing, thus it was a piece of shit.
It's orders of magnitude easier to just swap whole boards and ship the broken ones to a central place to be either recycled or repaired.
Self-promoting maybe but if Apple made better products how Rossman would benefit? Isn't it currently the opposite? Rossman does well due to Apple refusing to fix the smallest of issues with their products. And fighting anyone who does whether a customer or repairman.
Dude, if you can find folks to work for $20 / hr with the people skills to fix stuff day in and day out for while dealing with insane repair volume - you could manage your own apple store.
Here's the bottom line as an actual customer. I have NEVER been disappointed in the reliability of my iphone. The one time I broke it I walked in an AppleCare had me out same day with a new device. They are also surprisingly waterproof (I know, just resistant supposedly).
Does any of this have to do with gluing everything down? How do I know. But my phone has kept on going through some rediculous stuff, so I don't care. Solder everything, glue on top. And USB-C on my laptop keeps on flaking out while lightning seems to seat more reliably.
AND my "non repairable" junk iphone seems to have INCREDIBLE re-sale value in comparison to whatever else is out there. So apple IS designing for the long haul, and market rewards that. My wife has an old iphone still getting updates for some reason (in android land this is crazy talk).
Also I have a few ancient apple devices that work fine as ever. Though my wife does have a solid track record in destroying them (or any other brand).
Rossman's complaints didn't really bother me though. It's like a car mechanic griping at the manufacturer for making their life difficult, or a patent lawyer bashing the USPTO. Just the kind of thing you'd expect.
How does he benefit by teaching others on how to repair stuff for free. You can start your own repair business by watching and learning from his videos.
There’s so much great stuff out there, Friedman seems to get disproportionate attention. Personal attacks aside, I find him tedious to listen to and he often comes across as if he hasn’t done even cursory reading of his guest’s work. It often feels like a sophomore in college waxing about “big ideas” with little substance to back them up. Even at 2x speed I found the talks low signal.
Most of my YouTube comes from mainstream pop science like Veritasium and Arvin Ash; science hackers like Nile Red and CodysLab; geeky DIY like Ben Eater; repair porn like My Mechanics; and whatever YouTube's recommendation engine throws my way based on those entry points.
But nonetheless as a podcast, I judge more on the basis of the conversation and the guest he had, and in both the metrics he is really great. He is really good in making the guests speak in easy and intuitive terms and making them speak the idea behind the discovery/invention. He sometimes even irritates the people in asking question behind the intuition when many guests are more accustomed with saying strictly provable statements in other places. And that is a part that is really missing in the world and that gives the sense of what's going on, instead of talking just formally provable sentences and terse description of their work.
Lex is a humble, open minded podcaster that tries to bring all sorts of topics on the table. Even uncomfortable ones like Anarchy and Religion. This is exactly what we need in times of a massive echo chambers of left and right.
I consider Lex to be one of the best, polite, and cordial interviewer that doesn’t inject too much of their personal agenda into the interviewee’s space (like Joe Rogan).
One of the best interviews was with Jim Keller where it gets a little confrontational and see how he deals with it.
Like who you want to like, but "irrefutably...sincer[e]" does not apply.
The other problem I have with him is that he always assumes Apple is nefarious because Apple is nefarious. He never addresses ulterior motives that Apple may have had for a decision, nor attempts to consult with engineers about why Apple's engineering might have some reason to it. Apple is anti-repair because they're a big company and because Apple hates noble honest people like him, not because there are any other logical explanations.
Finally, my last sticking point with Rossmann as a Right to Repair leader is that he is constantly missing the forest for the trees. He constantly picks on Apple because that gets clicks, but he mostly ignores all the BS that other PC manufacturers are doing or experiencing. When's the last time you saw him talk about a Surface Laptop 3, a laptop with a repair program because the screen was spontaneously cracking? Or the Surface Pro 4 with the battery inflating issue? Or a Razer Blade that spontaneously died on Linus Tech Tips after only a year of use?
Or do you rather that Rossmann talk about what he doesn't know?
The last Intel Macbook Pro? Get out your soldering iron: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+16-Inch+2019+Tea...
Similarly, if you want to replace/upgrade/perform data recovery for the storage? https://www.windowscentral.com/upgrade-ssd-dell-xps-15-9570
Apple? Forget about it. Hope you paid the inflated storage prices at the time you bought it.
Also, this myth that Apple storage prices are inflated needs to die. The SSD speeds are unlike PC SSD speeds on all but the most expensive PCs, and Microsoft charges more for their SSDs on the Surface line.
"He won't. He knows his crowd, and he keeps quiet about criticizing his crowd's products." - gjsman-1000 [2]
"Alright, so today we're going to be taking a look at the new Surface and by taking a look at I mean watching somebody else's YouTube video on the new Surface because hell if I'm going to be walking in to buy one of these pieces of crap." - Louis Rossman [3]
Rossman's video continues for a half hour to bash the Surface Laptop's lack of repair-ability and general poor design...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27257606