It's your device, you should be able to repair it • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by joshspankit » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:45 AM UTC

scientismer wrote: post #437

joshspankit wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that happens and there are no laws, it will affect more and more products. Don’t buy a laptop? A car? A building? A slab of wood? Yes, my examples are borderline unreasonable, but we’re already at the level of unreasonable products being licensed instead of owned (Tractors, DSLRs).

Unless your country goes full socialism and there is only the government as provider for all those things, competing companies can provide you with repairable products. If people actually want them (which I doubt), why shouldn't companies provide them? With the tractors and DSLRs, again, if you don't like their licensing model, don't buy them. If nobody buys them, they will probably change their licensing model.

It's more complicated than that and is threatening to get even more complicated.

Companies continue to grow larger than countries in both cash flow and influence.

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

#452

Post by joshspankit » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:55 AM UTC

zepto wrote: post #449

michaelmrose wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry they actually settled for 113 million to terminate the lawsuit. I normally read settled for 9 figures as admitting wrongdoing.

Ah, so no evidence at all was presented to support your claim that it was international, and your suggestion that the court found it so turns out to be bullshit since the court didn’t even rule.

Unfortunately we can no longer look at court decisions as arguments either way.

Large companies simply settle out of court in order to silence the facts.

- If they are wrong and are successful in getting out of it, they might walk away with a judge "confirming" that they did no wrong.

- If they are wrong and the evidence is overwhelmingly conclusive, they might write a cheque and walk away.

In either case the public does not have any convincing argument based on evidence. Therefore we have to go by subtext.

Apple was accused of slowing down the devices intentionally. They admitted the bare minimum (low power mode), then wrote a cheque that made the rest of the accusations go away.

To me, that's as convincing as a verdict by a judge.

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

#453

Post by toastal » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:58 AM UTC

1970-01-01 wrote: post #280

Please don't forget how jailbreaking your iPhone was illegal only 9 years ago, and jailbreaking the iPad wasn't legal until 2015!

I think about this all the time. Why is it my bank's business if my device has root access? Most apps will deny you entry if root is detected, while happily I can log in to the website just fine. If a website is better sandboxed and safer, why aren't the website ever optimized for mobile and lacking feature that could be done with web technology?

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

#454

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 01, 2021, 1:07 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #448

35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should demand that any device and any component in any device be second source-able Devices aren't built around discrete components anymore. That ship has sailed, we waved goodbye, partied on the dock, and took an Uber home. Now we're nursing the hangover. But hey, our phones are now marginally thinner than last year's phones, so that might be worth something. I don't see how we get back, considering the market…

> Devices aren't built around discrete components anymore. Huh. Thats news to me. A 0603 resistor is pretty much a discrete component to me. And if it is some other part of the assembly that breaks, the assembly it self is a discrete part (e.g. the microphone of your smartphone might be on a seperate flexboard that costs like 15 euros, which is a lot cheaper than buying a new one). Yeah things got small. But that doe…

[deleted]

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

#455

Post by giantrobot » Sat, May 01, 2021, 1:11 AM UTC

passivate wrote: post #445

giantrobot wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should put the environment and our own interests as a society ahead of the profits of these already obscenely profitable companies. It's not necessarily about overall profit. Apple profits on iPhones because they sell them for many times their cost. A marginal cost increase in manufacturing wouldn't impact them much. The problem for Apple (and other large manufacturers) is production volume. It is a massive (and…

I don't agree with your assessment, so we have a disagreement, no biggie :) Car assembly lines were changed to include adding the seat-belt and the catalytic converter, etc, etc due to regulatory mandates. Heck they had to redesign their entire car to include crumple zones for safety! I don't think a screw is all that much. And so, electronics companies will figure out how to optimize their assembly lines to comply w…

Cars are big items. Phones are small.

Worldwide car sales are tens of millions per year. Smartphone sales are hundreds of millions per quarter.

So not only are phones orders of magnitude smaller than cars there's two orders of magnitude more manufactured every year.

You can disagree with me all you want but it doesn't change the fact of those scales. Phones don't just pop out of a mold or an extruder. Manufacturing billions of them is a big deal and anything making them more difficult to manufacture affects volumes.

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

#456

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, May 01, 2021, 1:12 AM UTC

scientismer wrote: post #436

michaelmrose wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average spend on a computer hasn't gone down recently. In the era when it actually did go down it was because volume and reliability went up, and cost of manufacturing went down as process improved. Phones have been system on a chip since the dawn of the era of the smartphone and few computers are. The difference between repairable and not is the difference between glue and screws and sockets vs solder. You have basi…

Average spend has of course gone down - you can get the same computer you would have gotten 10 years ago for a lot cheaper now. Computers have gotten a lot faster, that is why "spend" has kept up. And you seem to suggest that early smartphones were already as fast as an M1, because they were "systems on a chip". That is not the case. Not all SoCs are the same, more and more things have been integrated over time. And…

You said computers not phones. More power for less money is massively overwhelmingly driven by being able to fit more transistors in the same size wafer due to modern processes not integration as you suggest.

>And you seem to suggest that early smartphones were already as fast as an M1, because they were "systems on a chip"

I never suggested anything of the sort. My point is that smartphones have always been integrated and computers have usually been more discrete. You said the drop in price or increase in value for money has to do with integration. This doesn't appear to be correct because computers have been party to this without largely being integrated in the fashion you suggest.

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

#457

Post by olliej » Sat, May 01, 2021, 1:26 AM UTC

OrwellianChild wrote: post #418

olliej wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple maintains devices for more than five years, the devices themselves keep on working for far longer than that. It’s got nothing to do with planned obsolescence, new devices get new features because technology makes those features possible. You get non-serviceable devices because users want smaller, faster, better hardware. Any latches, connectors, or sockets are purely subtracting from battery life as that’s the…

I understand this thread is about "repairability" of different product designs, and there are definitely arguments on both sides of that issue that are valid... I just want to make sure you're not confusing "repairability" with Right to Repair... R2R is not asking for changes to product design - only that replacement parts and documentation are made available in a compulsory way.

How long should a company like apple that designs its own SoCs have to continue manufacturing replacement ones? That's not cheap - remember phones are only at the prices they are because they're manufactured in millions - how big do you think the market would be?

How long should production lines be kept producing out of date products?

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

#458

Post by OrwellianChild » Sat, May 01, 2021, 1:36 AM UTC

olliej wrote: post #457

OrwellianChild wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand this thread is about "repairability" of different product designs, and there are definitely arguments on both sides of that issue that are valid... I just want to make sure you're not confusing "repairability" with Right to Repair... R2R is not asking for changes to product design - only that replacement parts and documentation are made available in a compulsory way.

How long should a company like apple that designs its own SoCs have to continue manufacturing replacement ones? That's not cheap - remember phones are only at the prices they are because they're manufactured in millions - how big do you think the market would be? How long should production lines be kept producing out of date products?

Lots of open ended questions here that I'm not sure how to interpret the motivation for...

How long should a company like GM that designs its own engines have to continue manufacturing replacement ones? That's not cheap... (etc.)

Thinking about a mature market where we do have right to repair is a good test of these questions and helps reveal the hidden complexities. GM makes replacement parts for a while. A thriving non-OEM market persists long after the manufacturer ceases making more.

This is distinctly different from the status quo in Apple-land, where they prohibit partners like Texas Instruments from manufacturing or selling units to anyone but Apple.

Note also that there is no legislation in front of us with explicit terms set in stone here, so while your questions are good ones to consider when drafting such legislation, they should preclude a right to repair bill passing into law.

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

#459

Post by userbinator » Sat, May 01, 2021, 1:37 AM UTC

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…

Now "right to repair" includes not only designing devices to be easier to repair but also includes legacy software support? Where do we draw this line? If your M1 dies, you can't fab one yourself or run older software on it indefinitely.

If your IBM PC dies, you can definitely create a functionally exact clone based on publicly available information, and in fact many have done so, either virtually or physically.

IMHO if the manufacturer ceases to provide support, then it must open up the documentation and design, or allow all reverse-engineering of it.

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

#460

Post by OrwellianChild » Sat, May 01, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #459

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…

Now "right to repair" includes not only designing devices to be easier to repair but also includes legacy software support? Where do we draw this line? If your M1 dies, you can't fab one yourself or run older software on it indefinitely. If your IBM PC dies, you can definitely create a functionally exact clone based on publicly available information, and in fact many have done so, either virtually or physically. IMHO…

More importantly, you can buy a new Intel chip to replace the one that failed, swap them out, and go about your day. Thinking about the gap between the lifecycle experience on the PC side vs. the Mac side is a good way to understand the difference between an ecosystem open to repair and one closed to it.