Steve Wozniak backs right-to-repair movement
bbc.com
bbc.com
I terms of providing value to the world at large they should have gone with Wozniak.
Of course Apple has provided a lot of value to users and the world but much more limited than if everything was hackable and repairable.
I guess my point is that I suspect, if you could add up the additional value of an 'open Apple' for every individual, you would end up with a considerably larger amount than the current market cap of Apple.
Let's do some math. Apple market cap is $2.4T right now. Let's say a third of the world could use their products in some form, that's $2,4T divided by 2.7B people or $900 per potential user.
If I could extend the life of my iPhone by 4 years with repairs I've already recouped "my share". And that's without mentioning any other product or the added value of being able to customize and repurpose old stuff.
Of course some of Apple's achievments wouldn't have been possible without their business model, but I think there should be a pressure on companies to open source technology after a certain period of time. It would be to the benefit of society.
And this isn't just Apple, most brands are going the same route. Meanwhile world its sinking in garbage, but shareholders are happy I guess.
A part that 90% of people probably already own 10 of? Sounds like 10% more packaging and 90% less e-waste?
I mean I get the whole "non repairable is bad" argument but Apple stuff has great lifespan and good resale value, thereby being reused instead of junked when upgrading. And they accept devices for recycling, don't they?
Of course it could be better, but there are legitimate ways of looking at these things that aren't as unambiguously "Hypocritical" as you are asserting.
In 15" laptops you additionally now get a slot for a second hard drive and upgradeable RAM without sacrificing much in terms of thickness (look at XPS 15 9500).
I never lose any stuff on my Mac thanks to the seamless integration of iCloud. And the motherboard fire that happened to my XPS15 destroyed the SSD anyways...
About the screen... Don't even talk about that. I was so angry when I first saw it - I paid big bucks for the best screen Dell offers and yet it's so much worse than the screen on cheapest Macbooks (I moved to the XPS from Macbook 2015 - even that old machine has a much better screen). It was flickering when I enabled dark mode in my editor (not a faulty machine, I tried to return it and they have shown me that every machine does it)!!!
And no, the battery life is nowhere near the 2015 Macbook Pro, and absolutely nowhere near the M1 Macbook. The ads say so, but it's totally not true - my MBP2015 still can sustain 6 hours of work with the original battery, while the XPS was dead after 6 hours of not doing anything.
And to top it all off, the whole XPS was creaking even if I just put my hand on it, and raising it into the air made sounds so terrible people around me were having amused looks! None of my Macbooks ever made any sound like that - or any other unpleasant sound whatsoever.
Yeah, I kind of tuned the issues out because for me the XPS is the only machine that combines slickness with repairability and that's what I value. I have the skill to resolve some of the issues (I always do a wipe and a fresh install) and the rest I learn to walk around through time.
I agree that the XPS is a terrible computer for a person who just wants stuff to work, but my point was that nothing prevents Apple from following the same repairability practices that Dell has while having a better QA. Having removable SSD or the battery that's not glued-in doesn't automatically make your laptop as bad as a Dell or as thick as a brick. If tomorrow these practices are written into the law, Apple will still be producing very good machines which will also be more maintainable.
If you don't like glued on or soldered on parts, then don't buy a computer that has them. There's still a ton of options that have the features that you want. Why be bothered when manufacturers are making things that other people want?
It's also perfectly valid to pine for a macbook pro with a socketed CPU, dimm slots, and a standard nvme drive. That doesn't mean that things should be that way just because you want them to be, though, which is the point that you made.
So I did vote with my wallet, and got a beefy ThinkPad running Linux. I wasn't that wedded to the Mac ecosystem, and this thing is a tank. If it needs upgrades or repairs, I can do them myself. So there are choices out there, if you're looking.
No, not everyone has those parts since they purposedly changed the way the part works. I mean, look at Apple, chargers used to be USB Type-A -> Lightning and they the included cable from USB Type-C -> Lightning.
Move also made no sense since these chargers usually may not even outlast the person's device. In the end of the day you're causing more waste.
And yes, they do accept devices for recycling, what they do with them its unknown.
If you have a bunch of old USB A charger chances are you also have a suitable cable. Really it makes less sense giving people yet another USB A cable, considering the Mac lineup is now all USB C and so you don’t have to buy a cable to charge from/connect to your Mac.
After using Android since around 2010 getting a midrange iPhone around 18 or so months ago was almost a revelation for me, so no, it is clearly not all marketing spin.
(Why? Even on a Note II or S7 Edge something as trivial as opening the camera would have me waiting. On my iPhone XR pressing the camera button brings up the camera more or less instantaneously. And there are also a number of small conveniences that are hard to really pinpoint like actually understanding when it is in my pocket and then not turn on and burn out my battery.)
That said, if there was a decent Linux phone, I’d hop on it, warts and all. Pinephone or Librem are getting close.
Battery lasts all day (and it's 4 years old). Doesn't turn on when it's in my pocket.
These anecdotal "I switched to x and its waaay better" things always reek of bias.
That a 2017 phone is slower than a 2018 phone is obvious - plus you'd need to reset the s7 to factory defaults for fair(er) comparison.
I do support on iPhones (not an Apple employee) and I've never experienced the the vaunted "this is so much better" moment.
If you want to see how much value there is in Apple's phones, look at the used phone market. The competition isn't even close and iphones hold their value much better than the vast majority of android phones.
I've used apple products too, but it sounds to me like the differences in quality are deeply exaggerated. I happen to like android mostly because I have access to the filesystem and like to tinker with settings (and I like using my headphone jack).
As far as aftermarket value, I'm not convinced the used marked is completely rational... Or rather, there are plenty of confounding factors that make that a poor argument for which phone is built better.
The used market may not be totally rational but there's a good case to be made for why apple devices tend to hold their value better - they are often built better. You cannot simply dismiss the higher price of used apple hardware as the market being irrational.
So my personal experience makes me doubt that my phones are some kind of exception. These things seem to be plenty durable enough to last several years. I think there's not as much difference in hardware and software as you'd like to think.
If you want to make definitive statements, then I have to ask for your data.
Some basic searching I've done unearthed a paper[1] in the Journal of Industrial Ecology[2] that concludes that economic lifespan (how long a phone is actually used and thus depreciation rates) is only marginally effected by the functional durability (including hardware and software quality). Instead, they suggest that lifespan is more effected by brand equity and related intangibles. People choose to use certain products longer regardless of whether other products have similar functional qualities.
Thinking further on what could cause intangible factors to have such a large impact on the secondary market and depreciation, I can't help but wonder if each brand is attracting different kinds of people with commensurately different attitudes towards their smartphones. That certainly could drive a difference in behavior, and could even be a self-reinforcing trend where the users more likely to retain their products longer are drawn to the brand with the users who are more likely to retain their products longer.
This would mean that the S5's and S6's I've been talking about aren't the exception to the trend. Their users are the exception. That's something I'd be happy to accept. There definitely is a difference in behavior between iphone and android users.
P.S. it's worth noting that the paper itself was seeking to determine if repairability would significantly increase the economic lifespan of smartphones. That's why they were looking at what factors caused people to use their phones for longer or shorter periods of time.
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jiec.12806
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Industrial_Ecology
You can supplement this with the OS share stats of android phone and combine it with the safe assumption that the majority of android phones are lucky to see one OS update. Consumentenbond in the netherlands estimated an average life of around 2.5 years. This is their source Android: beperkt houdbaar. Digitaal Gids
Add to this the resale value number.
I think you're making this more complicated that it needs to be. Android phones don't retain value as well because support is poor. There are few Samsung shops you can walk into to get OEM support and samsung is king of the android hill. Same with google and their name is behind the OS. Apple meanwhile, support six year old phones with software updates and even replace batteries inexpensively.
The point i was aiming for was that android phones aren't any less durable than apple's phones. They aren't used as long and this establishes a feedback loop where android OEMs must cut corners to maintain margins on devices simply because there isn't a revenue stream once sold.
End of the day, your old android phone working well is the exception. Apple know that what sells is the appearance of speed. That is a major reason why their phones sell, not because of GHz or GB or Megapixels.
[citation needed]
This isn't supported at all by the article you linked. It's your own hypothesis, and I simply can't find any basis for it.
The peer reviewed article I linked explicitly shows that behavior (like how long a phone gets used for) is being driven by primarily nontangibles like brand equity rather than hardware and software durability.
The fact that you're ignoring that and still pushing your hypothesis makes it feel like you're clinging to Apple for some reason. I've never understood this kind of brand loyalty. I've stated a couple reasons for my decision to use android, but I'm not attached to Samsung, and I'm even thinking of picking up one of Sony's new phones. Hell, I've used Apple phones in the past, and even tried a Windows phone for a while (that tile interface they had was excellent BTW)
Lucky you.
> These anecdotal "I switched to x and its waaay better" things always reek of bias.
Well, here I am. I don't think I touched an apple product from 2012 to summer 2018 because I disliked OS X so intensely. So not exactly the biggest Apple fan.
> That a 2017 phone is slower than a 2018 phone is obvious - plus you'd need to reset the s7 to factory defaults for fair(er) comparison.
I talk about normal steady state usage after a month or two. My iPhone is still smooth. My Androids were hardly ever smooth even shortly after installation. YMMW. If it works for you, more power to you.
Edit: I know Android devices can be good. My Samsung S II was amazing for its time.
(asking for an Xperia owner)
And yes, as far as I remember Xperia was good, it just failed physically (later realized it was my fault as I used it as alarm clock and ended up applying force to the charging cable each morning.) Also they lost me as a customer when they included Amazon ads in a OS upgrade.
Maybe it was a bad time for Apple, but it was almost traumatic for me. They really did just use marketing to sell phones.
Consistently Apple have been the leaders in all of the above. Even now, superior chip, camera, battery life, pixel density... it's hard to find better.
I've used Pixels since they became a thing and Apple iPhones. Other than quirky App Store bugs the quality issues almost always occur on the Pixel phones. ("Ok google" just stopping, gestures just stopping, ringing phone not responding to touch etc).
The os annoyance was the relentless "type in your apple id password", and multiple times per week updates. A few users have spun the narrative that updates are good, but these were annoying and didn't have any front facing benefits. No widgets really sucked, it was regressive not to have my next alarm time on my home screen.
Finally Apple maps sucked, the podcast app was buggy, I'd hit play and nothing would happen. I'd then hit play a few times and nothing would happen. Then finally something would happen. I can't remember other software bugs, it's been years.
Sure these might be fixed today, but I wonder what other things are bad today. I have ad blocking and a few other non play store apps on my phone, given the App Store, I'm not sure Apple would let such apps through.
To be fair, transitioning from any phone around the S7 era to an iPhone XR bought in 2020 would probably give you the same feeling of revelation.
The longest I've held on to a phone was the iPhone 7 Plus for ~4 years, but even after 2 and a 1/2 years it was starting to show it's age. By the time I got rid of it, a charge would last me a little over half a day from moderate use.
Trying to account for what the original BoM would have been with one in the box is an impossible effort and not very useful. At the end of the day all you need to do is decide if the value provided by the product matches the price the company sells it at. If not, don't buy it. For me the brick adds no extra value so I don't have to account for it.
If I needed the brick and the extra $19 pushed me over the edge to not worth it then I would consider another phone.
Capitalism doesn't give you any extra points for being sustainable. If anything, it can interfere or be in direct opposition to making profits. You win at capitalism by making profits. A non-sustainable competitor will eat you, if you start worrying about the environment too much. So greenwashing is the way to go for most companies, in order to avoid boycotts, and people are ready to believe it because these problems are complex and people don't want to think that the stuff they buy are hurting the environment. This is a very foreseeable result, given the incentives.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. Demand change from the politicians.
No, that is a stupid saying and people need to stop using. Unethical actions are unethical even if the "game" allows for it.
>> Demand change from the politicians.
No again, the solution to this problem is not some authoritarian government response, or even (which is implied by your indirect blame of capitalism for all the problems in the world) socialist economic model
>Capitalism doesn't give you any extra points for being sustainable.
Capitalism does not care about about sustainability or non-sustainable , non-sustainable companies are NOT givin a "competitive advantage" by capitalism.
In reality is current government regulations like provide non-sustainable companies with that advantage in the form of liability shields, and various other government programs written by big business for big business to ensure the status quo
You appeal to government authority is as misplaced as your blame of capitalism for all the problems
Nobody says what Apple is doing is ethical, at least I sure didn't. The point is, the problem runs deeper than one company. The system has an incentive structure where companies benefit by doing as Apple does. It's like blaming a ball for rolling down a hill. If you don't want the ball to roll, go play on a level field.
>You appeal to government authority
You make this sound like I'm for some kind of dictatorship.
I firmly believe in a government democratically elected by the people. Even if the system is capitalist in nature, it should always be subservient to the will of the people. The governments should be tied to the will and interest of the people. Especially in the US it seems that the government acts for the corporate special interests. In that case, the solution is more democracy, not less.
>non-sustainable companies are NOT givin a "competitive advantage" by capitalism
So why are all the big companies ruining our climate then? What's the explanation? Random chance?
I firmly believe in individualism and individual rights, governments are insulted by people to guard individuals rights nothing more. Governments just power and authority comes from that defense of rights, not from majority rule
If 51% agree that the other 49% should be enslaved does not make it ethical or right, but in your worldview that democratic government would be "tied to the will of the people"
No, government like fire is a useful tool but a dangerous leader and should never be left whims of the "majority"
Of course democracy requires a constitution and a stable society to work. If there is no constitution that protects human rights and a majority thinks enslavement is okay, democracy isn't the right tool anymore. That's a description of a failed society at war against each other. I'm not suggesting that all problems can be solved by vote, just that it's much better to solve problems by vote than by bloodshed or by who has the most money, if you have that option. In a failed society, such option does not exist. That doesn't mean that democracy doesn't work. It clearly does in several countries.
The wolf here is Apple. I can't make my own phone. Neither can you. And most users are substantially less tech-savvy from us, to the point where all they can really do is configure the settings on the factory-installed OS. The technology we use is overwhelmingly under the control of tech giants; there is no viable phone OS other than iOS (Apple-controlled) and Android + Play store (Google-controlled).
What do we do? Let ourselves get eaten? Or do we, the lambs (who are the overwhelmingly in the majority in our society) exert democratic power to counterbalance the capitalist power which controls the tech in our lives?
> If 51% agree that the other 49% should be enslaved does not make it ethical or right
Right, which is why the constitution exists: to protect certain individual rights from state overreach. But it absolutely does not follow that, since it is desirable that the government be constrained in some ways, it is always better for the government to do less.
Yeah, but nobody cares what you think is unethical. If the game allows unethical moves to be made, they will be made, because people play to win. And you can cry and complain all you want, but people strive to play optimally, and unless you change the rules of the game, people will continue to play in ways that upset you if it suits them to.
> non-sustainable companies are NOT givin a "competitive advantage" by capitalism.
Yes they are. Or rather, companies that care one way or another are at a disadvantage relative to companies who will make the optimal choice independent of whether or not it is sustainable. If we want to encourage sustainability, we have to use legislation to re-align incentives such that sustainability is the optimal choice. Otherwise, corporations will continue to be unsustainable whenever it suits them.
> government programs written by big business for big business to ensure the status quo
xD
Dominant corporations don't need the government to help them stay on top. All they need is for the government to get out of the way. When you have money, you can use it to influence the market to make more money. That's how advertising works. That's how vertical integration and walled gardens like Apple's app store work. That's how mergers and corporate consolidation work. Money is power, and market share is power. The state is the only thing powerful enough to compete with corporations, which is why corporations spend so much money lobbying the government to de-regulate and back down.
The efficacy of different kinds of action is highly dependent on the existing structures, of course. That's not to say that nothing can be done, it's just a matter of choosing the right tool for the job and gathering up people to join the cause.
You can vote, run for office, participate in demonstrations, strikes or any kind of direct action. The possibilities are endless. No single method guarantees success for a movement and nobody knows what will happen in advance, but in general the bigger the mass of people participating, the higher the likelihood of success. But sitting on your ass and blaming companies is guaranteed to fail, if meaningful change to the system is what you want.
Reasons many devices are not repairable include: DRM built into parts to prevent replacements, no repair manuals (see Thinkpads compared to macbooks). Also measures to prevent people from flashing the firmware or updating the software once a company decides to drop support despite the hardware being still functional, or easy to put back up to speed by changing a battery.
Forcing companies to stop these anti-consumer strategies has 0 impact on the designs while making electronics far more repairable.
I find the "right to repair will make my devices big and ugly and appeasing to the evil tinkerers and hackers" angle really dishonest.
Even given that, I don’t see how “end users must be able to change batteries in a practical way” would not negatively impact the quality of the iPhone I’m holding in my hand right now.
From a water-resistance standpoint alone, I think my phone would suffer in at least one dimension that matters to me. (It’s an Xs Max and yes, I bought used, confident that the water resistance was intact. If I sold it now, the next buyer has that same assurance.) Phones get wet at some low (but not insignificant) rate; it’s hard to avoid that across the entire population.
What you're describing, and I agree with you, is what many legal right to repair advocates are fighting for.
However you'll see many people conflate it with easy to repair and easy to get parts, or repair without voiding warranty. Which IMHO should be separate talking points, but alas, they're all jumbled up when these discussions happen.
It's also why I don't think right to repair will please most people. Because the scenarios you described are limited and outside what most people are thinking e.g home repairs of cell phones
NEC Medias smartphone from 2011, removable battery and IPX7 which is waterproof up to 1m deep. It is 8.2mm thick.
The Iphone 4S was released that year @ 9.3mm thick.
It is possible to make phones that do it, the companies don't want to.
One is the availability of original spare parts like screens and backside covers (aka the stuff that breaks very often) for ordinary people and repair centers. A phone that's glued together and absolutely waterproof as a result can still be called "repairable" under that definition as long as there is non-discriminatory (aka external customers get charged the same as manufacturer repair centers) access to spare parts.
Another is the accessibility of repair without special tools (cough Pentalobe) or the need to discard a fully functional component to access a defective one, e.g. when the screen is to be replaced you need to remove the glued in back cover first, a step that risks permanently damaging it by bending or breaking it. Most waterproof designs have a really hard time here as it's hard to make a waterproof design that is still easily disassemblable and slim/optically pleasing.
The third definition of repairable is if an end-user can replace a common wear item on their own: batteries most obviously, but also outward-facing connectors for headsets and charging/USB.
The fourth definition of repairable is the firmware side - aka, can people repair defects in the firmware like security flaws on their own after the manufacturer has ceased support, without risking to lose functionality. Apple is the worst offender of them all with not allowing "rooting" at all, but in most of the Android world the situation isn't much better - root your device and you'll lose KnoxGuard/TrustZone functionality (sometimes breaking apps relying on it, half the apps on my rooted Samsung don't do fingerprint auth anymore since rooting), and SafetyNet attestation will also fail, leading to apps either stopping to work entirely (banking apps, just f..k off, I know what I'm doing) or offering reduced functionality (Netflix).
And with all of the various definitions of repairability in mind, you will always have some trade-offs to make.
In theory yes, but it also could have tanked Apple resulting in Jobs/Woz going elsewhere and Apple never becoming what it's become, never pushing Mobile, Music, thinner / better quality laptops, etc.
I think in the ideal world we would have a balance between Job's vision and Woz's vision. Having that highly profitable company but the hackable open world.
(if that makes sense)
The build quality is something we have to credit Apple for though, not to be taken for granted.
It does seem like there's a sweet spot in a balance towards Woz's vision of hackability.
iPhone was a first of it's kind. We had smart phones, we had touch screens, but Apple pushed the boundary. Everyone followed.
We had mp3 players, we had mp3 players that played video, (I had a Creative Zen), but Apple pushed the boundary with iPod's high capacity and ease of use. Everyone... Apple stole the market on this one.
We had laptops, decent looking ones, thin...ish... ones, etc, but Apple pushed the boundary with the Macbook Air. Everyone followed.
Apple is great at Marketing, Build Quality, and User Experience. (doesn't matter who disagrees with the last one, its a fact when a non-tech savvy person can pick up an iPhone and use it, but struggles with Android)
I don't think Apple is much of an 'inventor' company, but they do take existing things and make them better or push them in ways others can't or didn't think were possible.
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In terms of the laptop market, I feel Lenovo is the /only/ company thats close to Right to Repair. Pretty much all of their laptops can be opened up and you can swap ram, memory, and ssd's. Their much older laptops back around like T440 you could replace the CPU.
But if any part of the laptop breaks, you can order any part.
I bought a Lenovo Legion 5 Pro for my wife, but in Singapore we can't get the keyboard with Traditional Chinese, can only get it in Taiwan or Hong Kong...
No worries
https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/sg/en/products/laptops-and-netb...
Navigate to Lenovo website, find the part number, contact the local distributor in Singapore, they have ordered the part for me and just waiting for it to arrive.
Bought a 4k screen and think damn I wish I had the 1080p screen instead...
https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/sg/en/products/laptops-and-netb...
Can find the 1080p screen for my thinkpad and replace it myself...
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I do wish we lived in a more Woz world where more companies had parts you can buy and fix yourself etc.
I agree that Apple took the lead, pushed the boundary, and that everyone else followed. But I think it was an inevitable evolution in the tech. In the absence of Apple, another company would have carried the torch, maybe 6 months later, maybe a couple of years later. But it was going to happen regardless.
It's better to be more fine grained here. Apple's highest profits wouldn't be possible without creating walled gardens. It's entirely possible, though, that their gains would diminish very little if they hadn't made the decision to glue everything and make their after-2012 computing devices non-upgradeable.
Third of California, maybe. The world? I don't think so.
Wozniak would have gotten them nowhere, especially in no position to create products worth opening up.
As a personality, I like Wozniak more. If I ever had a chance to meet Jobs and Wozniak in person, I suspect that I would find Wozniak to be a much better person than Jobs. That being said, I think that Jobs provided much more value to the world.
Wozniak's chief contribution to the world is the Apple II. It is a wonderful computer with fun stories behind its development, but the computer industry would have gone on without it. Apple's early years are culturally significant since it was one of the few success stories that wasn't corporate (in contrast to the Commodore PET and Tandy TRS-80), but that story is probably the most significant part about the company.
Contrast that to Jobs. As a minimum, the Apple II and Macintosh can be contributed to him. Without his drive, the Apple II would likely be remembered as one of the multitude of personal computers that didn't make it in the marketplace. Without his drive, the GUI as a consumer product would have been set back years and would probably have looked very different. As expensive as the original Macintosh was, it was far less expensive than many of its contemporaries. As crude as the original Macintosh user interface was, it did provide a model for later products. Perhaps his antagonistic attitude towards user serviceability takes away from that, but it isn't all that different from how appliances were treated in the mid-1980's.
Edit: expanded a couple of sentences for clarity.
I'd be very happy if phones and other devices didn't include already ubiquitous extra stuff. It creates more extra waste than the extra packaging for something you buy only once, anyway. It's different if you buy a printer because you need it to be plugged in and replugging cables behind the desk would be a hassle, but phones only use the cable for charging (sometimes data) and don't need it to be usable. So if you have a cable and a charger that will work for any other phone just as well, just not at the same time if you have multiple.
If you have incompatible plugs there are adapters, too. At least for micro USB to USB-C, which I use instead of buying more new cables. Dunno if you can do that with the connector iPhones use. If not, fuck them, but Apple is right that bundling too much crap is a waste, even if they really just wanted to decrease their costs. Ironically, those two things actually mean the same thing! Or at least they should if all externalities were factored in. So they definitely did the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons. But that's capitalism and at least the incentive points in the right direction.
Woz is the king of hackers, of course he supports right-to-repair.
Depends on your perspective.
If you’re a greedy corporation, Jobs was right.
If you’re literally anyone else (not-greedy corporation, if they exist, or consumer) then Woz.
Personally I totally agree with Woz sentiment on right to repair. Absolutely right.
However from a software POV I absolutely love the Apple ecosystem and the level of integration that comes with it. I love that I don't need to think of my phone as a computer that needs protecting or configuring extensively.
So it's hard to say. I can talk all day how I agree with Woz in principal but ultimately I really enjoy using macOS and Steve Jobs vision is basically why it's ended up how it has.
If your sole advantage is being able to strong arm your customers into paying you for repair, then that’s shameful.
FWIW I’m guilty of typing this from my iPhone.
Apples approach when it comes to repairability is really poor.
Btw C64 provided full CPU bus on externally accessible edge slot.
I know I certainly would pick a repairable phone over an epoxy brick.
When most parts on a computer were through-hole components and relatively large integrated circuits that could easily be hand soldered, the skill required to participate in the repair process was much lower. Today, even relatively open hardware like a desktop PC has a ton of added complexity that would make people far less likely to ever want to attempt a repair on their own. While I've reflowed solder on a faulty GPU in the oven before, that's not exactly a good idea. A person is usually going to replace the things that have been component-ized like the RAM, GPU, SSD, motherboard, etc. rather than try to actually repair them.
Granted, when a component like that breaks on a PC you can just pop it open and replace it, rather than having to find a specialist to repair a laptop or phone where all the parts are glued in or soldered. While I can sympathize with people that do want that (there are projects out there trying to bring products in this category to market), I'm personally okay with that being the niche that it is. Most people didn't hack their computers back then and to this day most people don't hack on their computers.
There probably should be components available for experts like Louis Rossman who can replace these parts. There probably should be schematics available so they can more easily make these repairs and they can have businesses like his who can specialize in doing these sorts of repairs (they already do exist, clearly). Companies like Apple absolutely should not be using any sort of DRM to prevent use of third party hardware components in repairs. Going out of your way to make your devices difficult to repair is unethical. But I think we're well past the point that someone without specialized skills should be able to expect to repair any device that they purchase.
To have Woz-- the hacker's hacker-- answer like that was really shocking to me. (I was really, really sad to hear one of my childhood heroes answer in that way. I know, I know-- don't meet your heroes...)
In this recording his position sounds a lot more reasonable. It makes me glad to have such a well-respected voice out there driving conversation about this topic.
As an aside: I recorded my question and Woz's answer (albeit via my phone in my breast pocket, so the audio quality isn't very good) back in 2017. This was from his October 30, 2017 visit to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I didn't find a recording available online with a quick search, so here's this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lLz56N2PKCmPIGrzt1WT9n4B08P...
For what it's worth, when I think about the openness of the first computers I had, and how many crappy search bars and garbage things snuck past my unsuspecting parents while they used the computer, I'm surprisingly fine with the App Store, too. I don't have to worry about them installing garbage because it's gated by Apple. This is what made it "life changing" by Woz's words, and I agree with him.
There is a lot of benefit to apple's curation of the app store and the locked-down nature of ios brings a lot of security upsides. I have plenty of criticisms of apple's scummy behaviour (e.g. antenna gate) but the app store is not one of them.
The annoying part is how HN users want right to repair, but not enough to pick such options. I hate to say corporate marketing is stronger than the human brain.
Louis Rossman publicly asking Steve Wozniak to back right to repair because it's faster than finding someone in his social circle etc to pass the message
It had been, he said, the only source of profits at Apple for the company's first decade.
"How was Apple hurt by the openness of the Apple II?"
The DMCA creates a liability shield for sites that accept uploads and creates a procedure for takedowns. But without the DMCA, the company's lawyers could still send a nasty letter to the web hosting site, and they'd be even more incentivized to prevent unreviewed uploads from users in the first place because they wouldn't have the liability shield.
Also, the takedown / liability shield parts of the DMCA are also only relevant when the people running the site are not the people who uploaded the content. If you want to host your own website and claim that you're republishing the manuals because of fair use, that part of the DMCA doesn't affect you at all.
(The DMCA does meaningfully interact with right-to-repair in its anti-circumvention provisions, though.)
it is, but schematics are not copyrightable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behringer#Legal_cases :
On 30 November 1999, the U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington, dismissed Mackie claims that Behringer had infringed on Mackie copyrights with its MX 8000 mixer, noting that circuit schematics are not covered by copyright laws.
Data has never been copyrightable. Copyright has only ever protected creative expression. Draw your own diagrams and write your own explanations and you're fine. (See iFixit, for instance.)
It's just like how you can't post a copy of The Matrix online but you can definitely write a plot summary without infringing anyone's copyright. Whether it makes sense that manuals (and firmware, for that matter) are considered as worthy of copyright protection as The Matrix is a separate question, but the law sees them the same way.
I'm thinking about avoiding situations such as when huawei used to provide copied Nortel manuals for their knockoff/IP-theft equipment.
Meanwhile, if someone manages to reverse engineer a product, there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to fix their own product or offer a service for others to fix their products. But currently that is illegal due to the DMCA, and it should not be.
Both of these things should change in parallel.
Today, if there is a bug in your firmware you are pretty much hosed even if there is nothing wrong with it, physically. Some manufacturers are better than others, but some are so bad that flashing anything but some signed firmware image will just produce a brick. Most things that require this firmware to be uploaded at runtime reject unsigned firmware. So again, if there is a bug in there and whoever made it doesn't exist or doesn't care, there is basically nothing you can do.
For that reason I think that anything that requires firmware, or has a mechanism to update firmware should be required to allow loading custom firmware somehow. Maybe make it a switch, or require blowing a fuse and voiding the warranty, but it should absolutely be possible to do.
Problem is that this is fundamentally incompatible for a lot of hardware with the way DRM is implemented. For example, on Intel systems the motherboard firmware is involved in handling HDCP and there is something similar going on with HD Audio. Same with the GuC/HuC firmware for the iGPU. It't involved with handling hardware decoding and handling HDCP. No way that could be opened up without making the DRM scheme useless.
So how do you repair that vulnerability in your CPU when it's already out of support? If you could at least load unsigned microcode you could at least patch it yourself, but you can't, so your CPU remainins unfixable broken even though it's physically fine.
Similar things could be argued for regular software, but in the case of hardware repair it goes, or should go hand in hand with repairability. Otherwise you are quite limited in what kinda thing you can repair.
And right of access for the device-human configuration.
It's feasible, and not even very difficult, to make information on a website accessible to every browser since Mosaic, for example. And that's exactly what I do.
If your site has a "browser not good enough" message on it for some visitors, I think you should be just a little bit ashamed of yourself for giving up.
I think it is the difference between hack and craft.
poncy Someone, something or somewhere which is overpriced, over styled, over rated, or thinks more highly of itself than it deserves.
UPDATE: this is another comment which got heavily up-voted first and heavily down-woted shortly after. I always find such fluctuations curious.
There are lots of other possible reasons.
I doubt Apple stakeholders would have wanted Woz. And I doubt Woz would have wanted to do it.
The same is incredibly likely for most people (including you and me).
I probably came across as rude, and I apologize about that. I hope expanding my thoughts as I did above helps.
Because you have to melt the salt first.
> I doubt Apple stakeholders would have wanted Woz.
They didn't want Steve Jobs either but it turnt out they were wrong.
> I probably came across as rude
Not at all, you came across as original and fun. Boring and/or rude people just downvote silently, cool people say something interesting or provoking. You did. I ended up thinking about that in more details and although I'm not taking the idea of taking over something as big seriously I feel inspired to fix some things and achieve more.
> Because you have to melt the salt first.
Oh, god! You gave me a nice rabbit hole to explore. Thanks!
Also thanks for understanding my attitude. I loved this interaction.