New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill
ifixit.com
ifixit.com
So technically even you can replace those chips, you can't buy them.
And next Apple if putting serial numbers to prevent that even if you get the part, you will have a non-functional device.
This bill does not appear to address that.
Besides, the "information they need to repair" is also where the devil will be. Companies like Apple provide instructions on how to unscrew the laptop cover with a screwdriver (literally), but won't provide any data sheets.
If you work with the greatest stuff in the world all day every day you'll be able to find a million reasons it sucks.
Even the very definition of “greatest stuff in the world” is highly dependent on one’s particular circumstance and priorities.
Here’s a televised CBS report.
He is extremely good at repair while despising the company’s despicable practices - and warns people about them.
In my mind, it makes sense that Apple won't repair a device that has signs of water damage without replacing all potentially affected parts (the bit about humidity is a discussion all on its own). Water damage can surface in a myriad of ways, and the last thing they want to do is charge a customer for a fix, only for them to come back demanding a refund because their device is broken again.
Rossmann has a small enough operation that he can handle this on a case by case basis. Apple operates at scale, so the fact that they have blanket policies like this makes sense.
Of course the debate changes when Apple makes it so that you can only use them for repairs.
Apple can totally scale repair but it won’t be as cheap and profitable.
So what they scale instead is lying to their customers.
The Genius Bar employee presented a lie as a certain fact. They didn’t say that there’s more to be found out, that humidity indicators are sometimes unreliable etc.
They went with the highest grossing lie.
That’s a policy.
Having such policies calls for legislation protecting the customer and giving independent repair some chance.
Or something
I have a couple of audio devices that are ~14 years old and working perfectly fine. If either of them broke then I'd want to repair them (unless of course the fault was fabulously catastrophic). Once upon a time even affordably priced equipment lasted way more than 5-10 years. Maybe it's a generational thing, due to my being on the wrong side of 50 :), but stuff used to be built to last for affordable money. Hell I'm still wearing the Seiko mechanical auto-wind watch I was given for my birthday in 1983, and it still (mostly) tells the right time and day.
Twenty years should be a minimum.
Anyway, the real trick with this of course is forbidding the serial number based lockouts.
Yeah, that is just downright spiteful scumbaggery.
But obviously that's super suspect when the end result is still granting themselves a razors-and-blades monopoly over key replacement parts.
BUT the cost was astronomical as were the storage requirements for parts and the cost of the replacement parts. The oscilloscope I have (tek 7904) was released in 1972 and would cost about $100k now with the plugins I have in it. And that's because it was designed for repair. Versus a modern unit which costs around $5k, lasts 5 years and is disposable. Yeah that's not gonna wash. Also it actually requires some quite extreme skills looking after 40+ year old kit.
What you end up with is a $7000 iPhone and a repair industry where min charge is $500 for some obscure part because the universe has moved on.
Recycling and reuse is better and that's where we're heading. Even cars are going in that direction.
Keysight’s semi legendary reputation for reliability comes from the second hand market which has had all the lemons removed from the table. Their production reputation is “average” and their in warranty fees “surprising” (I’m still getting over having to pay for a new OLED display for a DMM that was 2 years old)
Better buy Chinese these days and plan to throw it away.
I often wonder, if there will ever be a way to make that widening chasm disappear, other than going back to living in caves …
In any case, there certainly have been some proposals for how to bring some of these costs into the economic picture, most obviously pricing carbon and charging upfront disposal taxes for things like automobile tires. More aggressive measures might specifically punish the extraction of anything non-renewable— John Michael Greer talks a bunch about this [1] in a framework where the "primary economy" is in fact the natural processes like rain, pollination by insects, fertilization by animal waste, etc. Anything humans do on top of that which disrupts it is "secondary economy" and should have to pay the appropriate compensations for stewardship.
It sounds reasonable, but obviously it's a political nonstarter in any place in the world (like Canada) whose economy is mostly still built on conventional primary industries like oil, logging, fishing, mining.
For a washing machine or refrigerator, I’d say twenty years is the minimum. For a phone or computer? I’d say at the very least five, but preferably ten years from the last sale of a new, used, or refurbished device sold by them or their authorized resellers. Require security updates for at least twice as long, or when the manufacturer can prove all devices are out of use.
20 years is a long time and I wonder how much use a 20 year old iPhone for example even has.
In the vast majority of cases it is not apple the one producing the chips so it would not really make sense to buy it from apple.
There is even the more severe case where the manifacturer disappeared and no factory with similar technology exists. How is Apple or whatever company supposed to produce that chip?
The essential of right of repair is "do not make second hand markets and resellers illegal".
They don't even need to resort to this. If the chip requires programming, they keep the chip protected from read and the code locked and bingo: you can buy an identical one but it won't work without the original code. Pretty much any digital product in existence works like that today. One could have the entire BOM of an iPhone available, but without their iron level firmware, all programmable chips would just sit there doing nothing thus making the device unusable.
And I am not entirely sure if it is a good idea Apple sell these parts for repairing. Which Apple will definitely do so with their hardware margin. i.e They will sell you the Display Screen with Glass for $300+. At this point you might as well go to Apple and fix it.
I had always wish the Services Strategy of Apple was to raise the price of iPhone and Mac by $100, move those to Services Revenue and included AppleCare+ by default. Also lowering any replacement and fixing price rather than try and gouge their customer at their Genius Bar. Which is increasingly a thing since 2015.
Getting third party fixing also have risk when your Data aren't fully backed up. Which is something likes to push for their iCloud Services.
But Thursday is the last day of session for the NY legislature, and the bill has not yet escaped committee, making a vote by the full Assembly unlikely.
The battle for fair repair in New York will continue into next year’s session, with a strong record of success.
So eventually... maybe.
We have a part-time legislature. The other half of the year lets our politicians earn a living outside politics (as well as politick--it's an election year.)
Our Governor is powerful. If an emergency arises, I believe the Assembly and Senate can be called back into session. But that's rarely required.
You'd be surprised both how much they're expected to get done in a few months, and also how little some state legislatures actually pass. State and Federal agencies serve a huge role in the US, partially for this reason.
Right to Repair bill PASSES in NY state senate! What now? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX6BVQe6Tq4
TL;DR: Low probability than anything will happen before next year
The move to non-removable batteries always seemed like a thinly veild money grab to me.
I miss the days of clip in batteries. I still have a 2013 laptop like that.
Samsung makes a 15.6” laptop that weighs 2.6lbs, which is extremely practical. I’m planning on getting one. I wouldn’t be if it had the bulk and weight of a removable battery.
Why would a removable battery be more heavy? More bulky, probably and with more plastic also a bit more heavy. But not much, as the heavy part is not the plastic.
See if there is a YouTube or iFixit tear down guide, take the bottom cover off, replace battery, put the cover back on.
It’s be better if we had stronger consumer legislation globally that forces manufacturer responsibility rather than demand we can do the job ourselves.
Imagine if you bought a laptop and the battery died after 2 years and the state mandated option was for the manufacturer to buy it back at 60% of the original value because it didn’t last the prescribed 6 year life span. Removable batteries would appear overnight in everything.
Imagine that at the end of the useful life the manufacturer had to buy it back for 20% of the value to recycle it. Global trash heaps would disappear overnight.
Who can be trusted to make decisions by themself.
And the right to repair aims not, that everyone should fix their devices by themself, but that everyone who is capable, has the possibility to do so. Like repair shops. Or skilled individuals. And those who think they are more competent, than they actually are ... find always ways of shooting themself in the foot. I would not want to punish everyone else because of it.
I’m going to slap Rossman here as well who does some pretty scary hack jobbery and passes it off as a fit for purpose repair rather than a data recovery last resort.
But I think, with removing barriers, the repair industry should improve and rather decline.
Systemic problems require systemic solutions that achieve results in the real world, not just ideal one
I'm tired of my closet of broken devices. I don't like spending money on a new item when I was happy with the old model.
I am tired of not seeing all the trouble codes on my car when it breaks down.
I don't like spending money on electronics because a company won't let me fix their product, restricts information, or spare parts.
I came from a family that was too poor to buy new, and repair was just expected.
this old phone works really well still. I do not conduct any work related activities on it. But they see it as a attack vector I guess?
If one does do work things on their phone and, especially if you have MDM installed, it is of course reasonable to require you to be on a current OS. And Apple is pretty good about length of support but it's not forever.
We need mandatory bootloader unlocking for products that the manufacture finds unprofitable to ship software updates for.
The battery in e.g. an iPhone 6S takes some work to replace, but it's still quite easy for a repair shop to do, so that seems like a very reasonable trade-off to me.
Making them doubly non-removable?
I am still looking for a new phone, which removable battery.
There is an argument, perhaps, I don't know about a "valid" one.
The difference between "the battery can be swapped with a screw driver" and "the battery can be swapped by a repair shop in 15 minutes" isn't really that large, so if it can make devices more compact, sure, why not?
Batteries that outright can't be replaced are something else entirely. Maybe some consumers are willing to make the trade, but it's environmentally irresponsible. The Airpods in particular really piss me off given all of Apple's environmental messaging.
I wonder what the minds of HN think about this scenario. Is the move towards non-removable batteries perhaps related to this?
I also wonder about the movement away from physical headphone jacks....I imagine bluetooth is easier to hack then a physical cable.
Edit: thanks for engaging on this. You helped me discount this theory.
You have to undersize parts for a watertight fit, which can result in undesirable characteristics when deformation or dropping of a device does happen. There's also an increasing tendency to use the outer shell of a device as a heat-sink/radiator. Adhesives enable this type of design but make it darn near impossible to maintain.
I'm not going to say there isn't a mustache twirler somewhere with surveillance plans of grandeur... but unfortunately the truth may be closer to it's cheaper to buy a tube of glue than to get a tub of small, self-tapping screws.
That's just my 2 cents from having torn things apart and put them back together to varying degrees of success.
And if it's truly about waterproofing, the companies better include water damage in their measly warranties.
Now, a lot of cars increasingly DO have dedicated antennas for OTA updates, phoning home telemetry and things like that. There might be some wireless CANBUS(It's either that or CAN, I don't have it on the top of my head at the moment).
The real culprit for me is bloody tablets and laptops. No excuses. The ultra-thin form factors are nothing but regressions in maintainability to me. Smartphones I don't even grudgingly accept anymore. The material selection and designs have biased only achieving realistic resilience through off loading that facet of design to accessory manufacturers. Anybody with a "naked" handset should know that current marketing/consumer quality metrics are not aligned on durability in normal chaotic human usage at all.
The first thing to ask if we think that the non removable batteries is related to surveillance is how a non removable battery would help surveillance. And it’s hard to see how it would. The vast majority of people would leave their removable batteries in the phone with it on anyways, since they don’t expect the surveillance. The next level of paranoid people would switch off the phone, in which case it wouldn’t matter if the battery was removable or not. The only crowd it would affect is the people who are paranoid enough that they would additionally also remove the battery. But if they are so careful, if they do have a phone with a non removable battery, then they have a simple alternate solution of simply locking up the phone in a lockbox and not taking it into the room you’re having the discussion (or taking it around with you if you’re worried about tracking).
Insisting on non removable batteries will give you an extremely minor benefit (people who are careful enough to want to remove their batteries for privacy, but not dedicated enough that given a non removable battery, they will still keep their phone around and won’t find an alternate solution).
So really, it doesn’t make sense at all.
Further, there’s a completely explainable, and frankly predictable, trajectory and goal that led to non removable batteries. The same goal that led to other changes such as the removing of the headphone jack, etc.
Please no.
:-) Yeah, no need to go to a conspiracy theory with no rational basis or factual evidence when stupidity,greed, incompetence or a combination thereof will explain the result. It seems to me that these kinds of theories only build up the power and influence of those petty industrial tyrants to the detriment of all.
Still, cold comfort to those of us who have lost the replaceable battery option and dread the day headphone jacks disappear forever.
There are more realistic things like that, e.g. foil-protected credit card / access card wallets that prevent accidental contactless reading.
There's also lots of interest in tracking device communication and I really expect someone to notice a randomly appearing device where there shouldn't be one.
And it would also not show up, in anyone doing radiotraffic/wlan analysis.
So it would be indeed very hard to spot. (don't have the sources, but I think on some defcon was a talk with proof of concept about this)
So if anyone thinks, he is a specific target of some powerful intelligence agency, (like someone strongly engaged with the opposition in Hong Kong) - I think they definitely should consider this scenario as a possible one (but I don't know how likely it actually is, probably not high, if your are not considered a leader).
But that this change for non-removable batteries in general was made, so that even the paranoid part of the population can be tracked non-stop by the global Illuminati ... is indeed very much tinfoil area.
But the part about your phone maybe spying on you, when you think it is off:
Well, Snowden actually said, they can do it.
https://www.androidauthority.com/watch-edward-snowden-phones...
For example there are torque specifications for some of the screws in the trashcan Mac Pro. I doubt getting the torque wrong would cause any issue, and Apple is probably being a bit pedantic. However, iFixit's thermal paste application article specifically recommends spreading thermal paste with your finger[1], which is a TERRIBLE idea and goes directly against Apple repair procedures.
So use common sense when working with iFixit guides, they should not be considered replacements for official Apple repair guides, though they are far better than nothing, which is what Apple provides to the general public :).
[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Apply+Thermal+Paste/744#...
All that being said, thermal paste is pretty poisonous, I'd never even considered someone would just splodge it on with their finger.
"This bill require original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to make diag- nostic and repair information for digital electronic parts and equipment available to independent repair providers and consumers if such parts and repair information are also available to OEM authorized repair providers."
This seems to imply that if something is being sold as non repairable, it will continue to be, since there would be no authorized repair providers.
I'm afraid that for some time we'll continue to see old phones discarded in landfills because there will be no technical information available allowing developers to port open operating systems, drivers and apps to them.
Nobody on either side actually believes those things (regardless of how passionately they claim to). They are both fallacious appeals to get disinterested people emotionally wrapped up in the topic.
RE: safety, people getting hurt trying to repair stuff happens already and will still happen post-regulation. Right to repair will not result in more injuries.
RE: landfills, most people don't throw stuff away because it breaks. They throw things away because newer models are more powerful, faster, smaller, more efficient, or aesthetically "cool." Right to repair will not result in less landfills.
I'll be downvoted, but here's a few real potential downsides (which exist anytime a small group of people with good intentions THINK they understand a complex issue enough to fix it). All regulation has unintended consequences:
Ineffective at stopping E-waste - The main reason people throw electronics away is not because they break, but because they become obsolete. In electronics, the next generation of products is almost always faster, smaller, and more energy efficient. Hence why we have landfills full of old beige computer towers that are fully functional and user-repairable, yet nobody wants.
Dampened innovation - When you tell companies they have to build things a certain way, you remove the option for something better to evolve. Once you pass a law, it's almost impossible to get it removed, and who knows what the future will bring (eg. biodegradable electronics, miniaturization on a microscopic scale, etc)
Increased costs for consumers - baring the extra engineering/documentation costs (which aren't trivial), any requirements to supply spare parts for X years would be insanely expensive. Forcing companies to create small quantity B2C supply chains and retail channels for consumers to purchase individual parts on obsolete models would be an absolute nightmare.
Disincentivized R&D - if you're forced to create manuals that tell your competitors how to clone your products and also let them easily buy all your parts, why invest in creating something unique? You'll just be cloned by an army of chinese competitors even faster. Just sell commodity crap hardware and focus on branding.
Entrenching incumbents - incumbent big companies may simply use this regulation as an opportunity to entrench their position in the marketplace. If they can make it harder for upstarts to get off the ground, that's good for them! Anytime a company is coming out in favor of legislation and "restrictions" on their business, beware.
Sorry to see that you were, indeed, downvoted.
In the long run, it would probably be ineffective as well. Most of the big companies would probably ignore the law and/or sue the state. I'm sure there'll be first amendment issues citing compelled speech with regards to being forced to produce manuals.
1. It complains about downvotes, which is one of many reasons your post is grey.
2. The main reason people throw electronics away is not because they break, but because they become obsolete: Big [citation needed] on shorter time scales. For longer time scales it's intuitively true but irrelevant. With Moore's law being toast, most hardware upgrades are extremely incremental. I don't get any more battery life on my iPhone XS Max than I do on the 6+ it replaced, it's not any more responsive, etc. Beige boxes haven't been a thing for decades. But, people holding onto their devices longer would absolutely result in less ewaste.
3. When you tell companies they have to build things a certain way, you remove the option for something better to evolve: That depends entirely on the nature of the requirements. Nobody's talking about the government dictating the whole BOM. No innovation is being stifled by requiring, say, user-replaceable batteries, unless we're talking about innovative ways to pad the company's bottom line. Let's not lose sight of the fact that repair-hostile design absolutely benefits the company and only the company at the end of the day.
4. baring the extra engineering/documentation costs: which are already done internally, so those costs are irrelevant. Every company that does repairs has documented repair procedures for their own people already. They can put PDFs on a freaking website. No idea what you mean by "extra engineering costs".
5. forcing companies to create small quantity B2C supply chains and retail channels for consumers to purchase individual parts on obsolete models would be an absolute nightmare: That's somewhat fair, but there's no reason it needs to be any more of a retail channel than their ship/replace stuff already is. The infra is already in place, they're just shipping out parts instead of full devices. I think the word "obsolete" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.. a 2 years old phone is only "obsolete" by manufacturer fiat, because they can make more money by marketing tiny, incremental upgrades and simply refusing to support the still-useful device.
6. You'll just be cloned by an army of chinese competitors even faster: Not fast enough for this to be an actual concern. Shitty chinese clones happen with a quickness even today, yet for some reason people still spend billions on name brand devices. I do not foresee this meaningfully changing. Trademark/import law is still a thing, after all.
7. incumbent big companies may simply use this regulation as an opportunity to entrench their position in the marketplace: This is a weak meta-situational argument used by all big businesses against any and all business regulations. I do not see why this case is special.
This is news to me. Not sure if you've heard, 1nm has already been achieved in processors, and Apple has been keeping the progress curve alive with SOC architecture: https://siliconangle.com/2021/04/10/new-era-innovation-moore...
>No innovation is being stifled by requiring, say, user-replaceable batteries
This is exactly my point. You have good intentions and are trying to solve the problem.
But by doing so you've just made a dangerous authoritarian decision for the future of all computing. Who knows what form batteries will take in the future, especially as power needs are reduced. Look at how much less power the M1 SOC takes vs. Intel chips and multiply that by 10. Now think of all the new form factors that would be enabled by this, and where your law might be a hinderance in 20+ years (yet impossible politically to repeal).
New tech is fragile. All it takes is one guy in legal to say "too risky, violates X law" and said experimental product is set back a decade or two.
> Shitty chinese clones happen with a quickness even today, yet for some reason people still spend billions on name brand devices. I do not foresee this meaningfully changing.
I don't have the same crystal ball to predict the future, I guess. How can you be so sure? Because America is the best at everything and will always be the best? History is filled with predictions of a future that never came to be.
Overall, I'm sympathetic to the cause, but I think the RTR movement is a little too dogmatic and authoritarian for my tastes. If the market wanted the same things as RTR, companies would already be creating their products this way and minting profits. The market isn't perfectly efficient, but it mostly is.
...and if Apple is wrong, and people actually do care about user-replaceable batteries, you should run out and start a RTR-friendly hardware company tomorrow and win the market!
This is unnecessarily much broader than the original intent. Right to repair was mostly pushed for by computer repair shops, who mostly work with consumer electronics. The New York lawmakers acknowledged there was some problem with this, that's why they excluded everything medical or automotive. But every other industry is still effected and it will have unintended consequences. They excluded only cars and medical devices, but did they still intend for this to apply to boats, planes, construction equipment, missiles, building access management, even pipelines?
The Colonial Pipeline must have some "digital electronic equipment" that controls it. How likely is it that if all the maintenance manuals for that stuff are released, people will find some security-by-obscurity there? Computer repair shops are not going to repair oil and gas pipelines, so is there any reason these manuals need to be made publically available?
2. Everything this law requires is going to be made public, it won't just be for independent repair shops, and that may not be in the public interest. The law acknowledges that for security-related information, there may be a reason not to make it publically available. It says that "such documentation, tools, and parts may be made available through appropriate secure release systems." But they can't actually enforce that. The law says that manufacturers have to provide these maintenance manuals for free to any "independent repair provider", which could be a 1-person company, and the right to repair folks already stated they want to dump everything online. So all this confidental information will get leaked immediately and there's nothing the manufacturers will be able to do about it.
3. Security. For electronics, security-by-obscurity is all over the place, you can find it everywhere. Devices always need some privileged mode for things like testing, administration, or maintenance, and it's hard to do that securely on processors that are as cheap as possible for business reasons.
Consider e.g. building access control, like the keypads on apartment buildings. These have a need for someone to be able to unlock the door in unusual situations, e.g. for maintenance, building administration, or for firefighting. Instead of a TLS stack, they probably have some obscurity-by-security keycode, like pressing #12345 to enable the maintenance mode. This would be documented in a maintenance manual and not provided to most end users. When the right to repair folks dump this manual on the internet, it's going to help criminals a lot more than repair shops. Repairs to apartment keypads are rare, but thefts from apartment buildings are very common.
This same thing will happen with a million other devices that no one has thought about yet. If the manufacturer created some features that the user is not supposed to access, there's probably a reason for that. But all this stuff will be recorded in maintenance manuals, and making it public won't really benefit users as much as it will harm security.
Why is hardware treated different than software?
If I own a perpetual license for some type of software, should I be entitled to “repair” the software I own.
(Note: I’m not including SaaS in this since your don’t own that)
For all the bravado about standing up to powerful interests, this shows you who the most powerful interests are in that space.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/medicalxpress.com/news/2019-06-...
Sorry for the Google amp link.
There’s also this kind of medical device hacking (again not black hat):
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/15/diy-dongle-breathes-life-int...
And open-source ventilator software:
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/30/professional-ventilator-desi...
That said, Safety is red herring that the industries use to justify their anti-consumer actions with zero actual data to back their position.
The Record are cars is clear and estiblished people self repair and use independant repair all the time to fix mechnical safety systems like breaks with no systemic issues or damage to public safety
For medical devices I have yet to see any data the independent repair causes any harm, in fact I believe the the US Government has a study that states Independent Repair of Medical Equipment is critical to maintaining the US Health System, so in the case of Health Care prohibitions on independent repair may CAUSE public health issues by taking critical equipment out of service waiting on "authorized" repair or parts
Depending on the law, it may also require more documentation, ban on total lockdown of devices and obligation to sell spare parts(but you often can buy genuine spare parts through service centers)
Right to fix also doesn't cover warranties, as you will loose your warranty when doing it yourself.
For cars or medical equipment - that's clearly political influence, masquerading as "public safety".
There's nothing stopping me from modifying my car to be very dangerous right now, without even affecting my warranty. The difference - I cannot install a third party keyfob, because the protocol is locked down.
The kind of medical equipment that hospitals require, already comes with multi-decade support. And your CPAP device can be serviced by someone without manufacturer specific training(that costs a fortune, for little practical value).
The Magnussen-Moss warranty act of 1975 states (IANAL) that a repair cannot void the warranty unless the manufacturer can prove that your repair caused the damage in question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...
IMO it comes down to this: do we advocate for laws that give companies the ability to decide what is right/safe for the public, or do we advocate for laws that reflect trust in the individual?
Well, while this applies to medical devices, worth noting this doesn't apply to cars, for which safety inspections have existed in many states for quite a while.
This is a really great way to put it, and it applies broadly to so many fundamental disagreements in the tech world.
I firmly believe it’s better to trust the individual—so I think users should be able to sideload iOS apps (only if they want to) and install their own root certificates. Others think individuals can’t be trusted, and so we should let tech companies dictate what is safe for everyone else.
In the US, I think, some companies sell weapons and nobody seems to care if people can hurt themselves with them.
people forget all this. this is the same thing people want for farm vehicles and personal electronics.
we got it done for cars and trucks in the late 1980s. I don't understand why it's so hard to get lawmakers on the side of the customer --their constituents-- today.
I also agree with Apple's implicit claim that if iOS users could sideload apps, millions of idiot iOS users would get their devices owned after they followed some "follow these seven steps to get free $POPULAR_MOBILE_GAME tokens!" guide they found on the web, making the platform less trustworthy overall.
Apple makes a good argument that buying an iPhone is also buying, in a sense, a remote managed security service for the device at the same time. The net effect of this is that millions of people now have devices mostly free of the most egregious malware (and it's limited to just spyware, delivered via the App Store). For most users, this is a better state of affairs (at least in peacetime, or outside of China/Vietnam/Russia/etc).
You don't have to install updates.
However, if you install an update to try it out, or because you didn't realize that it would e.g. break 32bit support, you can never downgrade again (unless you happen to be within a two-week-ish period.)
"Apple makes a good argument" Their argument doesn't give near enough excuses for their mafia level racket to shake down businesses of protection money. "Pay us or Joey will break your kneecaps. Its for your own protection."
Millions of Android devices have malware problems, yes. I might even agree with a claim that it is ZOMG millions.
Estimates claim that as far back as 2016, a million new Android devices were being infected with malware per month. The current figures are estimated by AV vendors at 4-7 million infections per month.
My claim is that for most users of iPhones, the situation of Apple being in control of their device, rather than themselves, results in a better outcome for that user (and is oftentimes explicitly preferred by that user as a result, and is reflected in their purchase of an iPhone).
In fact, Apple delegates control of an iPhone's userspace execution environment to any iPhone owner who wants it: they will give you a signing cert for use in xcode to run any app you want on your own device (no developer subscription necessary). This is how AltStore works, and allows AltStore users to run emulator apps on the iPhones they own.
Okay, but that comes out to the same thing, since I can't buy an iPhone which isn't Apple managed. If Apple offered a choice, that would be one thing—but they don't.
> In fact, Apple delegates control of an iPhone's execution environment to any iPhone owner who wants it: they will give you a signing cert for use in xcode to run any app you want on your own device.
What they give you is the ability to sign up to three apps at a time, all of which expire after seven days. It's not useful for anything but testing.
Plus, you're stuck in the App Store sandbox. You can't downgrade to an earlier operating system, you can't inspect the HTTPS traffic being sent out of your phone, and you can't even run anything that uses a JIT.
Well, you know this state of affairs well now, so when you buy an iPhone you willingly opt in to these remote management restrictions. There are lots of smartphones you can buy without such cryptographic boot restrictions.
Many people willingly choose iPhones (even given these constraints), and would prefer a remote party manage their device's security.
Apple's argument is a legitimate one, and you should be able to operate in the market in this fashion. Nobody's forced to buy an iPhone if they don't like how the bootloader is configured or the App Store is run.
I mean, but you're making a big assumption there! I buy iPhones in spite of those restrictions, because the only other options have worse processors and cameras, and because most of the people I know use iMessage.
I'd pay double the cost of a normal iPhone for a Security Research Device, if they were available to the general public.
And if they decide to they can flip a switch on their server to disable your account and stop “your” apps from launching.
Medical devices I think should need a someone well versed to work on it.
With cars, the current model most states in the US have is a good middle ground. You can do whatever you want to your car, but it needs to pass a safety inspection every 2 years to drive it legally.
The inspections in my state are fairly comprehensive. Airbags, seat belts, headlight brightness, and structural stability of the frame to name a few.
It also helps the US has a strong car culture with tons of experienced DIY-ers, which I imagine helps.
Modify a dishwasher and now it fills your kitchen with soap bubbles? Modify a CPAP machine and get killed by it? Not the manufacturer's fault.
The US is too litigation happy as it is...
Without clear quality and regulatory control there must be an objective method to discern between personal repairs and non-personal ones.
Disclaimer: didn't read the actual right to repair being passed in detail. Not sure if it does discern already.
To really fix it we need a non-profit group to be in charge of the certification, preferably one who can be held accountable for failure due to their certification. My removing the incentive for profit we make it so the Medical industry won't try to control it, the insurance industry to mitigate their requirements, and government from trying to have political agendas pushed.
I have more that I would love to put in here but my employer has opinions that might differ from mine, and can be directly involved with some things that the law can impact.
There's no legal requirement in the US federally, or in any state I'm aware of, to have any certifications for general automotive repair. The EPA does require it for working on air conditioning systems, though. [0] However, many employers do require certification and/or will assist in getting the certifications. Some of the smaller shops are more likely to have mechanics without certifications or with expired certifications (I believe ASE certs are five years). ASE does require hands on experience for their certifications in addition to the test, though. [1]
The BLS also describes this, probably better than I do. [2]
[0] https://www.epa.gov/mvac/section-609-technician-training-and...
[1] https://www.ase.com/work-experience
[2] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/installation-maintenance-and-repair/...
That's not nearly nuanced enough. Manufacturers should still be responsible unless they can prove you caused the failure. We currently require this standard for something as simple warranty coverage, we ought to require it for something as severe as death.
Only 4 US states have biannual safety inspections. Another 11 have annual inspections. The other 35 states + DC do not have safety inspections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit...
Car SW that can control the vehicle motion goes through very rigorous ISO processes, it's not something you just casually tinker with as an individual. Given its hard to visually inspect, one needs a way to understand if a car has been modified or not. This article also on the front page here yesterday explains the complexity and cost of integration verification https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/adv...
Enabling serious third party aftermarket companies that have gone through same level of certification, nothing against that, but individuals, not so sure.
I see where you are coming from but right now, if autopilot kills someone, then Tesla are on the hook for it (ok, there may be grey areas but ultimately, they made it so that has to point back to them in a big way when it comes to court cases). However, if I jailbreak my autopilot and kill someone, it's me that has to face the music!
I don't see the harm in scaling the jailbreak hoops you need to jump through.
For example, if I wanted to safely jailbreak my iPhone, there is nothing stopping Apple having an official app that you need to get a special key from Apple for. Maybe a phone call or something, or an email to support. It would come with a caveat that says your jailbroken phone forfeits any warranty claims. Fair enough.
When you are talking about jailbreaking a Tesla, there could be other layers. Like, for example, you have to go to a Tesla dealer where they explain the legal and support ramifications and whatnot. Then you sign a bit of paper with witnesses. Then they send you out a usb dongle in the post after a few days etc. Maybe, though with the Tesla, there would be limits. Like, you can't get the source code, or you are only able to to X things with it.
You get the idea... there could potentially be a scale for stuff like this.
I'm just chucking stuff out there, this isn't a realistic example so please put your pitch forks away :)
But if little Johnny wants to drive his Tesla around a private racetrack with homespun Autopilot software, by all means! It's hardly the weirdest hobby, and who knows—maybe he'll grow up and form a startup that uses modified Tesla's to transport products in large warehouses. That's how innovation happens.
And often with medical devices, they may often be supporting the life of someone other than the original purchaser and sole maintainer.
edit: may have misinterpreted what you wrote. Nobody should have to have amateurs perform repairs, whether they are first party or not.
Given the cost of medical care in this country I think it would be a very good thing if that agreement not to sell parts was against the law. Surely an electric motor to raise a chair up and down could be replaced with the correct part without compromising anyone’s safety.
although in this specific case in example, if the country you're talking about are the US, having access to the $500 motor only means wider profit margins for the hostpital, not necessarily lower bills for hospitalized people.
It would suck to die because the repair guy didn't solder the wire correctly.
It's really tough to draw that line though, and it's in the manufactures interest $ + lawsuit wise to play it safe.
the reason the US has such high healthcare is because healthcare is both private and paid-by-insurance.
a lot of other nations have free healthcare, both in the american continent and in Europe.
Lots of countries have combined public/private systems and get equal or better results with lower per capita and per GDP expenditure than the US.
The US has expensive healthcare because it has an exceptionally poorly designed public/private system, not because it has a public/private system.
There is a lawsuit around that ballot initiative, and iFixit and EFF just filed an Amicus on Monday supporting the law. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/eff-files-amicus-brief...
Sometimes it's better to fight the giants one arena at a time.
The auto industry giants are still being fought - just not over this bill.
I think that if the laws overlap it will be opposed by multiple industry giants and will be harder to pass. At least that’s what it seems from the post above.
I believe that is intended to be read as "digital electronic product or embedded software found in medical settings."
After all, the description of what the bill does apply to is "digital electronic equipment". Interpreting it to apply to "equipment" but not "products" doesn't really make sense.
California's Right to Repair bill, which got very close to passing this year, was solely focused on medical equipment. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xh...
This "greater safety" concern is nothing but masquerade.
(I'm excluding cribs...because my partner laughed at me when I suggested building our crib and told me that was fine as long as I followed all the rules)
Even the GPLv3 makes an exception for this class of device.
Citation very fucking needed, because exceptions for specific fields of work directly contradict the underlying principles of the GPL, and indeed [0] contains no occurence of the word "medical".
The anti-tivoization text in the license applies to these User Products. Medical devices are not included in the definition.
Who are those 12? Name them and make sure they don't get reelected.
I'm sure there's a ton of good reasons why liability wise. Just seems crazy to me.
I guess it's the same when you buy a $1k iPhone and can't run your own unsigned software.
Anyway, it's basically the same thing that's at stake with router radio firmware and RF compliance— yes, you own the device, but the device's hardware has inherent capabilities that if fully unlocked, you would really need additional permits/licensing/oversight to operate in a way that doesn't interfere with other people's devices and wellbeing. Having your device locked down in this regard is a compromise that lets you have it and use it within those parameters while not needing to become a domain expert.
A badly flashed ECU can trivially wreck your engine. It can make it wear out faster. It can increase emissions.
I have no objection with voiding warranty repairs if you reflash an ECU. The important thing is that you should still be able to do it, and still be able to fix the car yourself and get replacement parts.