> The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) says extending the life of smartphones and other electronics by just one year would be the equivalent of taking two million cars off the road, in terms of CO2 emissions. Looking at you, Apple. https://uk.gofundme.com/f/lets-get-right-to-repair-passed
Why are you looking at Apple? They do the great job providing updates.
It's your device, you should be able to repair it
561–566 of 566 posts
Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it
#562Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It fails when it comes to repairability, re-use and reduction of e-waste Around 1.5 billion phones are sold a year. What percent of phones are thrown out due to breaking versus people want an upgrade? Then compare to the costs and waste of using inefficient assembly techniques. It's also not hard or terribly expensive to get most broken phones fixed at plenty of repair shops. I think you vastly overestimate the numb…
>I think you vastly overestimate the number of phones that become waste due to using glue on parts. Okay, this is your view, and we have a disagreement. We'll just have to agree to disagree :) Also, its not just about glue vs nuts/bolts - Please consider the larger picture here about repair. >It's also not hard or terribly expensive to get most broken phones fixed at plenty of repair shops. That is not accurate, Appl…
The number of phones wasted a year due to non-reparability is a fact, not an opinion like vanilla tasting better than chocolate.
US for example, spends around 80B annually for new phones, 3B annually for repairs, with 300M smartphone users. From this you can dig further or make reasonable estimates of a lot of behavior.
> That is not accurate, Apple for instance, chokes the supply chain by banning sale of components to repair shops.
I have family that both works at phone repair shops and that have iPhones, and they both repair them and get them repaired quite regularly. There is literally over a dozen iPhone repair shops in town, town size ~200k.
You can find more information here https://www.google.com/search?q=iphone+repair+shops
People generally don't throw out a phone because it's not repairable. They throw it out because there is a better, nicer, more featured one. And of those people I know that do get rid of them, they almost all sell to one of those places that pays you for scrap and then recycles the usable parts.
Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it
#563Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If lower repairability is a way to pay for that, that’s great.' You are implying the two concepts are incompatible. There is no reason why they should be other than a manufacturer's planned obsolescence strategy, which is what the Right to Repair movement is all about and fighting to fix.
Assuming there's planned obsolescence, it will make the manufacturer money. This money lets them build better products, stay in business longer, et.c. If Apple made a repairable iPhone with the same profit margins and specs, I'm guessing it would have to be more expensive. I would have to pay for this, even though I don't want to repair my stuff (I just buy new stuff when it breaks).
Who knows, the amount Apple has spent lobbying may have allowed them to create a more repairable iphone without increasing consumer prices.
Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming there's planned obsolescence, it will make the manufacturer money. This money lets them build better products, stay in business longer, et.c. If Apple made a repairable iPhone with the same profit margins and specs, I'm guessing it would have to be more expensive. I would have to pay for this, even though I don't want to repair my stuff (I just buy new stuff when it breaks).
The money can do that, but it can also go to their bottom line instead, or even be used to lobby against stuff like Right to Repair. Who knows, the amount Apple has spent lobbying may have allowed them to create a more repairable iphone without increasing consumer prices.
Apple makes about 38% on hardware, right?
Suppose I pay $100 “extra” for an iPhone thanks to limited repairability.
Without that $100, Apple would have to find $38 somewhere else.
As I don’t value repairability, all the options seem worse.
Maybe it would make me $100 happier at the cost of $38 to Apple’s “bottom line”. But I don’t think they would like that investment strategy.
Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
Manufacturers want planned obsolesce more than anyone. The problem in my view is that we take limited resources and combine it with slave labor to create landfill. Those few years of usage are not even that relevant. Recycling should be the first goal then repair ability. I think we can do this without the manufacturers drawing the proverbial short straw. Maybe we should get a partial refund when returning expired de…
> The problem in my view is that we take limited resources and combine it with slave labor to create landfill. Those few years of usage are not even that relevant. That's an important insight. I only recently realized this too, and conceptualized it as a pipeline: RAW > PRODUCT > FINISHED > A BIT > WASTE MATERIALS > COMPONENTS > GOODS > OF USE > MATTER Now when we say that our economy grows exponentially, it means th…
Say the world (after some unfortunate incident) turns into [say] something like Cuba? In just a few years no one will have a phone.
Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
The money can do that, but it can also go to their bottom line instead, or even be used to lobby against stuff like Right to Repair. Who knows, the amount Apple has spent lobbying may have allowed them to create a more repairable iphone without increasing consumer prices.
I don’t think that’s how it works. Apple makes about 38% on hardware, right? Suppose I pay $100 “extra” for an iPhone thanks to limited repairability. Without that $100, Apple would have to find $38 somewhere else. As I don’t value repairability, all the options seem worse. Maybe it would make me $100 happier at the cost of $38 to Apple’s “bottom line”. But I don’t think they would like that investment strategy.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/complete-control-apple-a...
At the same time, restricting how and what customers can repair is good for future phone/etc sales, which I imagine it's why they're doing it.