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It's your device, you should be able to repair it

bbc.com

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Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#51

Post by rozab »

fouric wrote: post #7
css wrote: post #2

This article moves the goalposts on what "right to repair" is several times. It generally means that manufacturers should not hide schematics from device users or disallow third party manufacturing of first party parts. However, the author states: > The law doesn't yet cover smartphones and tablets that she says are getting harder to fix. One problem is keeping older devices updated with new software. Now "right to r…

I'm not very happy with the quality of the article, overall. It seems useful for a consumer, but obvious, and old-hat, to HN denizens. HN submissions are supposed to be "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity", but we've seen dozens of right-to-repair articles by now, and this doesn't bring anything substantially new to the table (unlike the top previous submissions https://hn.algolia.com/?q=right+to+re…

I think the reason it was posted was more to point out that the BBC was running this article on the homepage, rather than the content itself.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#52

Post by Workaccount2 »

david_allison wrote: post #30
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #5

A bit of a tangent, but I'm really surprised one of the android vendors hasn't focused on the niche of easy to repair phones. Maybe even making them four or five times the thickness of the latest i-sung devices. extra hot swappable batteries and the like. I know the ostensible reasons waterproofing, planned obsolescence, looking cool, and being light weight. Though I suspect the real reason is they're just chasing th…

Fairphone[0] is a European manufacturer which does this (modular replaceable components, 10/10 on iFixit and usable by non-techies). In my experience it's the annual release cycle of Android coupled with the lack of OS updates by manufacturers which contributes to e-waste, closely followed by the lack of battery replaceability. My first smartphone (OnePlus One - 2014) still has the specs to be a perfectly usable phon…

Can anyone enlighten me about 5G? To me it seems to be absolutely nothing more than a marketing tool meant to sell a new generation of phones and phone plans. The fact that it is pushed so fervently just sets of red flags galore for me.

4G is plenty fast and works well for me. I see nothing gained for my phone by going from 100Mbps to 1Gbps(?). Nothing. But its pushed like the second coming of Christ.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#53

Post by leoedin »

PCs and even most laptops have been very repairable for decades. You can still run Windows or Linux on a 10+ (20+?) year old laptop without an issue. The idea that a 5 year old laptop would be unusable or not get the latest version of Windows is unacceptable.

Yet phones cost similar amounts and have nowhere near the repairability. A decade ago you could argue that it wasn't that important - specs were changing so quickly that new phones became obsolete too quickly. But now it's a maturing technology, older devices are perfectly good and we still don't have an ecosystem which encourages longevity and re-use.

This is eminently doable - phones are essentially integrated computers. The only reason phones are locked and PCs aren't is historical. If phone manufacturers aren't willing to do it themselves, we should legislate before even more e-waste is generated.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#54

Post by bcrosby95 »

viro wrote: post #41
balozi wrote: post #26

A persistent question in my mind is why do customers buy unrepairable products, from smart phones and high-tech tractors. Why is the market failing? Or is it working perfectly?

Because as "tech people" we live in an echo chamber. where we conflate our specialized knowledge as "easy with just a quick google". But in reality my Aunt that can barely troubleshoot her computer(avg person) probably shouldn't be risking an $800 device to save $80 on a repair. So when she buys a phone why would she care about the repairability of a product, she's just going to take it to a professional anyways.

The whole point behind right to repair is allowing 3rd party professionals to repair products.

Apple doesn't do board repair. They make you buy new, whole components. So when your laptop breaks, instead of spending $120 to fix it they say you need to buy a new $1,000 component and with labor that's more than the price of a new laptop.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#55

Post by ncallaway »

antattack wrote: post #50

Given opposition to 'right to repair' from corporations, some of it on valid grounds IMO, I would be fine with the following compromise: If company does not want to provide resources needed for consumer to repair a device- it ought to provide extended warranty to the consumer for free or a small fee.

> If company does not want to allow consumer to repair a device- it ought to provide extended warranty to the consumer for a small fee.

I would modify that:

If a company restricts a consumer from repairing a device (either explicitly in warranty policies, or implicitly by producing devices that are hard to repair, restricting part availability, or not having manuals available), then the company must (not should) provide an extended warranty for all damage scenarios at cost.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#56

Post by duped »

swiley wrote: post #15
css wrote: post #2

This article moves the goalposts on what "right to repair" is several times. It generally means that manufacturers should not hide schematics from device users or disallow third party manufacturing of first party parts. However, the author states: > The law doesn't yet cover smartphones and tablets that she says are getting harder to fix. One problem is keeping older devices updated with new software. Now "right to r…

my interpretation is that there should be no artificial barriers. Don't hide schematics, don't lock bootloaders, don't use NDAs to prevent sharing driver code, don't prevent component manufacturers from selling to third parties.

I think requiring schematic disclosure and non exclusivity for venders of custom parts is entirely unreasonable with catastrophic first and second order effects. Particularly the latter. We want more contract manufacturing, not less of it. If you take away the ability of companies to negotiate reasonable deals with their venders, they'll just buy them out and vertically integrate.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#57

Post by Guest42 »

corty wrote: post #11
css wrote: post #2

This article moves the goalposts on what "right to repair" is several times. It generally means that manufacturers should not hide schematics from device users or disallow third party manufacturing of first party parts. However, the author states: > The law doesn't yet cover smartphones and tablets that she says are getting harder to fix. One problem is keeping older devices updated with new software. Now "right to r…

The general aim of "right to repair" is to extend lifetime of devices. All the things the author mentioned are means to achieve this, and all are necessary: Schematics, repair manuals, deliverable parts for a sufficiently long period and software support ("repair" also includes software defects of course). Sometimes also software extensibility and replaceability, i.e. no signature lockdowns and other DRM measures. Th…

Regarding software, I think that pushing updates that essentially kill devices should fall under right to repair. I generally delay my ios updates out of concern whether space and ram will get eaten up. There probably won’t be an os update that enables a new app or feature I’m looking for. I’m not one to run unknown software and with the walled garden can’t really download any executables anyways.

Also had win 10 updates kill a laptop in this manner that was then extended another 7 years by switching to Ubuntu.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#58

Post by fsflover »

zepto wrote: post #48
qzw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the underlying issue planned obsolescence as a business model? It’s anti-consumer and anti-environment, and maybe we shouldn’t incentivize it as a planet.

The problem is that planned obsolescence is not in fact everyone’s business model. Apple’s penetration into the US market is not because the iPhone matches Android in terms of sales, it’s because iPhones last longer and get handed down or resold. Apple literally continues to sell years old devices. That isn’t planned obsolescence. A really simple step in the right direction would be mandated labeling showing how many…

> That isn’t planned obsolescence.

Yes, it is. Even though Apple devices last longer, after the support is ended, I cannot do anything with them. I cannot update, install anything. They effectively become bricks. If this is not planned obsolescence, then what is?

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#59

Post by zepto »

balozi wrote: post #26

A persistent question in my mind is why do customers buy unrepairable products, from smart phones and high-tech tractors. Why is the market failing? Or is it working perfectly?

I buy ‘unrepairable’ iPhones.

I actually have repaired iPhones myself in the past, including screens and batteries.

That turned out to be a waste of time because the replacement parts failed in a much shorter time than the originals

The reason I continue to buy iPhones is that more recent models don’t typically need to be repaired. I would much rather have a phone that doesn’t fail easily than one that can be easily repaired.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#60

Post by corty »

Guest42 wrote: post #57
corty wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general aim of "right to repair" is to extend lifetime of devices. All the things the author mentioned are means to achieve this, and all are necessary: Schematics, repair manuals, deliverable parts for a sufficiently long period and software support ("repair" also includes software defects of course). Sometimes also software extensibility and replaceability, i.e. no signature lockdowns and other DRM measures. Th…

Regarding software, I think that pushing updates that essentially kill devices should fall under right to repair. I generally delay my ios updates out of concern whether space and ram will get eaten up. There probably won’t be an os update that enables a new app or feature I’m looking for. I’m not one to run unknown software and with the walled garden can’t really download any executables anyways. Also had win 10 upd…

Updates that kill devices are at best a defect that is the manufacturer's responsibility to fix or pay for. At worst computer sabotage, which is a crime.

Unfortunately courts have yet to get "bitey" on this issue. I guess it needs to hit a few more judges until the hammer comes down hard.

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