Right to Repair Fight
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Apple's design flaw defected my mother's macbook panel (flexgate). It was a 5 dollar display cabel that desintegrated after about two years and was built into the panel in a way that rendered the entire display unit unusable.
So not only did the repair shop have to throw away the fully functional panel, but also apple tried charging 750 euros for the repair because they have a monopoly on the display supply.
Even if congressmen are not trading on inside info and getting rich, if you have a 401k you are gonna get dinged in net worth by this kind of regulation. On AAPL especially.
However, I stipulate people will still buy and gov't will repurpose the money raised from taxes to do other things.
As well, there is an angle about the fiscal health or the middle class as well. Depending on how much you think the average congressperson feels about them.
Campaign finance reform and moving away from the plurality vote. How do you do that? I don't know, but these two things are required to repair the U.S. to a functioning democracy.
This is literally not what right to repair is about. This is exactly what anti-right to repair lobbyists are saying. Right to repair does prevent warranties, nor does it require a change in how you make a product. It simply allows a person to repair their very thin phone if they know how to do so, or hire someone who does and is not "authorized" (but is a professional, and is capable) to perform the repair.
> I don't want companies to be forced to sell components that they don't want to sell.
This is about preventing companies from preventing other companies from selling parts on the open market. If you don't want to sell parts, fine. If your suppliers do, you should not be able to prevent that for the purpose of making repair impossible.
TFA says it: "when the battery failed, it took another seven hours to replace that. Both the screen and battery had been glued into the computer, requiring surgery-like precision to replace them without breaking something else." - in other words, instead of gluing components, screw them. That makes hardware thicker.
>This is about preventing companies from preventing other companies from selling parts on the open market.
This is not a problem in practical terms. If you go on aliexpress you will see that you can find any single component inside of an iphone. But they are knockoffs and they suck. They want to force Apple to sell parts even if they don't want to, and I am against that. (This is just an example: I think Apple is selling parts now.)
What's wrong with manufacturers being forced to sell parts?
IMO, once once a manufacturer is selling more than small batches, then yes, they should be forced to provide parts and manuals for things you get money for. That was once considered normal, is still legally required in many industries (though enforcement tends to be scarce), and should be required and followed in pretty much any industry. What is the downside except manufacturer's convenience (and profits from generating garbage)? IMO it's a net-win for society.
There are no alternatives on the market, so this is not an option.
This is a problem born of over-regulation, where we've slowly allowed regulation (especially copyright) to chip away at Mangnus-Moss (which was passed in the 1970s to make sure you could fix your own dishwasher or car), which made it clear that people were allowed to work on the equipment they owned.
Would you abolish those laws as well? Note that most manufacturer wouldn't do those things voluntarily, or rather, unless forced, they couldn't even if they wanted to, because they wouldn't be competitive.
Yes, some consumers are knowledgeable, have the time to choose wisely and funds to pay more upfront, but it's not realistic to expect consumers to do extensive research on each item they buy. In such a market, a good manufacturer is relegated to be much more costly, because they don't have economies of scale, hurting both good manufacturers, all consumers and the environment.
> This is not a problem in practical terms.
This is a problem when I cannot buy a standard (not custom) power amplifier chip because a manufacturer deal prevents the manufacturer of the power amp from selling to retail distributors. This is why I have to buy cheap knock-off parts most of the time. The original part would cost $7 and the cheap knock off is $3. The labor - $200. Why take the risk of having to fix it again because of the cheap part?
Every argument against right to repair requires you suspend common sense and buy into some scenario where reality doesn't apply. It's absurd that people are forced to replace $1000 phones over $7 parts, and even more absurd that a farmer has the same problem with his $1 Million combine over similar component level repair issues.
Apple sells some parts now, and the prices make new devices attractive.
This is a huge question, that applies far outside the boundaries of this particular issue. Think security, privacy, ... hell, even our entire democracy.
I guess one of the problems is that people who do care actually work against it. E.g. Apple developers doing what they are told, instead of what they think is best.
Sounds cliche but people are the conduit for change.
Even if you only write your politicians you did something.
Even if you only call your politicians you did something.
Even if you walk door to door with a petition and get signatures you did something.
Even if you organize a PAC to support candidates you believe will treat this seriously you did something.
Even if you start a trade association to get manufactures to commit to supporting these policies with their own dollars then you did something.
All of this might seem like too little or too unrealistic but it’s something.
You can even bodge repair it for free (time) https://youtu.be/e_ElLlBsnvs?t=346
Repair shops don't have any panels to replace it, because Apple doesn't supply anyone with them.
And the entire display unit needs to be replaced, that's called the Flexgate. Major design flaw on Apple's part to make the lid as thin as possible.
The Apple support charged 750 €.
>The Apple support charged 750 €.
earlier you wrote "repair shop have to throw away the fully functional panel, but also apple tried charging 750 euros" which at least to me means you didnt pay apple for repair, or is your post just a hypothetical scenario?
You can fix flexgate displays. Its not as simple as replacing easily serviceable part, but its not rocket science. Here is example company doing it https://absolutecircuits.co.uk/flexgate-solved/
bus seeing you used Euro currency there is no need for all that, just sue Apple in small claims court or report to your consumer protection agency and watch them fall over themselves helping you out of the goodness of their hears.
As a repair shop, how do you warranty one of those Alibaba panels? I've received defective ones from the factory.
When removal carries a significant risk of breaking the device and the only spares are bootleg, the repair shops wind up paying the price.
Customer comes in, pays for a replacement panel, the replacement is defective and removal is potentially destructive. So now you don't get to return the defective panel to the vendor for a replacement.
Who buys the second panel and covers the work of disassembly a second time? Because the bootleg panel was faulty.
Doesn't have a TractorOS (yet?)
https://blog.project-insanity.org/2020/04/16/running-postmar... https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/kux9xx/success_iphon... https://linuxoniphone.blogspot.com/2010/05/iphone-3g-binarie...
This is unrelated to support from the manufacturer.
The manufacturer may not provide any software support at all and still be friendly to software right to repair.
For instance, it would be sufficient if they did not go out of their way to prevent regular users from running a software they like on the devices they own.
I agree that regulatory capture is a problem in software and services platform/aggregator categories, but it tends to work differently for physical goods.
The other part of right to repair, parts availability is more difficult because there really isn't an existing "right to repair parts". There are a lot of cases where, for example, a product manufacturer will put a clause in contracts with suppliers, preventing them from selling standard (not custom) parts to consumers, to distributors (who will sell to retail), or in small quantities. This kind of restriction is really just an anti-competitive market restriction, and probably should be made illegal.
But in general, I don't see how not actively working against repairs would take a big toll on small companies. And yes, I think smaller companies (too) should be responsible, respect the end user's desire to repair a broken object, and avoid creating unrepairable eWaste. Anecdotally I've seen plenty of small companies be very helpful with regard to repairs.