Comment by d0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by d0 | Hacker News Reader

I'm always fixing stuff. Simply because I hate throwing away tech due to some shitty design flaws or a minor component break. So far in the last 12 months: MacBook Pro disk failure (easy), Nokia 820 glass (easy), Sony Vaio VPCJ1 overheating (hard work - about 50 screws and levering plastic), two ThinkPads overheating and fan failure (easy), XBox 360 overheating (easy), Toshiba laptop CMOS batt failure (medium - soldered battery on motherboard), Nokia Asha drowning (easy), disk failure on another Toshiba laptop (easy), numerous software problems on 50+ machines.that looked like hardware, numerous iPhones with broken glass, knackered batteries galore.

I don't even do this for a living being but it's extra cash and quite fun.

The big thing that always pops up if you look at the above is: broken glass, overheating and clogged cooling systems (dust) and soldered on disposable components.

All this was fine until someone brought me an iPad 2 as well with a smashed screen. Was a total bastard to get inside, just like it's suggested in the article. Took me 20 minutes but I'm less forgiving and know how the materials all feel and how durable they are.

Absolutely terrible that Apple are guilty for making this situation even worse with their shoddy design. It's annoying because I've got a 2011 MBP I'm using as a workstation at the moment and I'm wary about upgrading it to an rMBP when it's no longer supported and not repairable as there's nothing I can do to an rMBP apart from take it back to the Apple Store and get a replacement (or sue them for our statutory 6-year fit for purpose in the UK).

Total disaster on the horizon. Give me a thick, repairable laptop over some thing disposable trinket.

My only choice is to go and buy a Delll or a Mac Mini next time.

> Absolutely terrible that Apple are guilty for making this situation even worse

That's what their mission is: Sell as much as possible. (That's the very "clever" idea our economic system is built on.)

You're not supposed to keep your stuff for a long time, you're supposed to buy a new one every 1 or 2 years.

(The fact that the First World is burning trough several planet Earths on its own (resource-wise) is not of the concern of business leaders of our generation/time, they won't be here anymore when brown stuff really hits the fan.)

Couldn't agree more.

Not many of us can afford to put down £65/month on a device that lasts a couple of years though. If it lasts 4 years, that's £33/month. Much better.

Edit: I expect 5 years daily 8 hour usage from any kit I buy apart from phones and I expect 3 years of the same there.

>That's what their mission is: Sell as much as possible. (That's the very "clever" idea our economic system is built on.)

For a company with such a mission they surely failed miserably. Given the high lifespan of most of their computers, and the undisputably high resale value you get for them even after 3-4 years.

Or, perhaps their mission is: make our high-end industrial designs smaller, lighter and quiter even if it means they are less serviseable, because computers should be commodities who just use, not something for tinkerers.

Its a truly sad thing that the industry is only innovative and successful at "smaller, lighter and quiter" as UI improvements.

When compared to the situation in OS design, GUI design, API design, language design, DRM problems, patent problems, license problems, it really shows "what works" or what is considered a success.

Its a sad situation.

Problem is that all my customers are consumers and want repairs.

And 3-4 years is if you are lucky. Macs are pretty reliable but when they do go wrong, it's always expensive and catastrophic.

A good friend of mine worked in an Apple Store in London and they had a scary high number of machines with logic board failures in 2012. That never gets recorded on the stats because the machines disappear and come back magically working with no explanation as to what was wrong.

They are pretty good at replacements though. I've had several pairs of earbuds replaced for nothing because they've died.

>And 3-4 years is if you are lucky. Macs are pretty reliable but when they do go wrong, it's always expensive and catastrophic.

Well, if it's under 3 years, then you're covered under warranty, no?

>A good friend of mine worked in an Apple Store in London and they had a scary high number of machines with logic board failures in 2012. That never gets recorded on the stats because the machines disappear and come back magically working with no explanation as to what was wrong.

Well, there's not much of an explanation I guess. It just happens that certain productions runs are faulty. Could be a misaligned machine at the factory, some part outsourced that had lower tolerance than expected, etc.

These things happens when you have runs of several million exact same machines outsourced to several factories. So a faulty run of some thousands could have been dropped in London. What could Apple do? Post a bulletin that this sub-component of the logic board is faulty and have users attempt fix it? The logical thing to do was to replace the whole thing and perhaps sell the old machines as refurbished models.

(There was a similar problem with logic boards on G3 iBooks, back around 2003 or so. And there are always problems with a percentage of any production run, sometimes with hard disks, displays, GPUs, whatever. No way to avoid it, nothing is perfect. They cant even test most of those beforehand, because some are issues that develop after some use, and people are always demanding faster delivery and complaint of stores not stocking new models fast enough).

Oh, that explains aluminium bodies, they fall appart much faster than cheap plastic…

Honest question: are you being sarcastic? I've only ever owned one device with an aluminum body: it was an iPod Touch and when I dropped it the screen got cracked (but it didn't fall apart). I've never broken anything on a device with a plastic body. I've dropped all my devices. From this I has guessed that plastic, being more flexible, absorbs some of the impact of falling by bending a little, whereas aluminum being rigid communicates the impact to other parts better.

Yes like those cheap plastic thinkpads with roll cages and titanium chassis that last quite happily for over ten years...

> disk failure

That happens often to laptops thet get thrown around while they're on. Did you suggest an SSD upgrade?

Yeah they end up with a Samsung 840 (Pro if they can afford it) and if a Mac a copy of TRIM Enabler is used.

Usually results in repeat customers when they see the difference :)

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