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Microsoft and Apple wage war on gadget right-to-repair laws

bloomberg.com

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Re: Microsoft and Apple wage war on gadget right-to-repair laws

#111

Post by wiseleo »

bigyikes wrote: post #77
least wrote: post #23

My main complaint against right-to-repair laws is mostly to the extent that some people push for. I am not against manufacturers being forced to provide things like schematics or parts to third party repair shops. I don't think that companies like Apple should be able to decide who is allowed to or not allowed to access parts to repair their devices. I also don't think that Apple should place DRM on its parts to chec…

Honest question: aren’t schematics trade secrets? Won’t public schematics make it easier for others to copy? That seems like a big deal to me. If I were designing a new piece of technology, I wouldn’t necessarily want to publish my schematics. I ask this as somebody who would love to have the schematics of all my devices. I would love to know why this actually isn’t a big deal.

Schematics used to be included in user manuals for all consumer electronics.

Anyone capable of recreating an electronic device from schematics can easily reverse engineer such device from the board. They are not secret. Reverse engineering them is a little time consuming, but it's not hard. Circuit board design follows established conventions. I can fix boards without schematics.

Re: Microsoft and Apple wage war on gadget right-to-repair laws

#112

Post by judge2020 »

prepend wrote: post #78

Why is Microsoft against this? They don’t really make much that needs repairing. Is Xbox that big of a market for them?

If the right-to-repair includes making changes to the software it literally destroys the xbox business model and they might just have to start selling them at a reasonable profit instead of making money on the back-burner (to the tune of $600[0])[1].

0: https://youtu.be/U7VwtOrwceo?t=703 (I'm assuming that "we only protect against piracy when the attack costs less than 10 games" implies that Microsoft expects to make around this much in post-purchase profit)

1: https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-not-making-any-money-on...

Re: Microsoft and Apple wage war on gadget right-to-repair laws

#113

Post by upbeat_general »

bigyikes wrote: post #77
least wrote: post #23

My main complaint against right-to-repair laws is mostly to the extent that some people push for. I am not against manufacturers being forced to provide things like schematics or parts to third party repair shops. I don't think that companies like Apple should be able to decide who is allowed to or not allowed to access parts to repair their devices. I also don't think that Apple should place DRM on its parts to chec…

Honest question: aren’t schematics trade secrets? Won’t public schematics make it easier for others to copy? That seems like a big deal to me. If I were designing a new piece of technology, I wouldn’t necessarily want to publish my schematics. I ask this as somebody who would love to have the schematics of all my devices. I would love to know why this actually isn’t a big deal.

For most electronics, no. Certainly not the schematics needed to repair them.

Especially when there’s possibly thousands or more ‘official’ repair people, whatever information they have is not a trade secret.

Furthermore, any other company could pretty easily reverse engineer or at least approximate the schematics (the kind we’re talking about here) making it not a trade secret.

Re: Microsoft and Apple wage war on gadget right-to-repair laws

#114

Post by upbeat_general »

enaaem wrote: post #46
LegitShady wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> am, however, against the idea of companies being forced to design products around being easily repairable. If a company wants to make a super thin device with basically no easy way to take it apart, that's their prerogative. If a company wants to solder on components to the device like RAM or the storage or the cpu or gpu, that's their prerogative. Totally agree. But they should be publicly labeled as extreme pollu…

You get a strange situation where a custom gaming pc will be labeled greener than a thin laptop with integrated components. Although the GPU alone uses more material and electricity than the whole laptops logic board.

1) repairable != “green”

2) You could incorporate total material usage + average power consumption

Re: Microsoft and Apple wage war on gadget right-to-repair laws

#115

Post by [deleted] »

least wrote: post #23

My main complaint against right-to-repair laws is mostly to the extent that some people push for. I am not against manufacturers being forced to provide things like schematics or parts to third party repair shops. I don't think that companies like Apple should be able to decide who is allowed to or not allowed to access parts to repair their devices. I also don't think that Apple should place DRM on its parts to chec…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft and Apple wage war on gadget right-to-repair laws

#118

Post by Too »

Google234 wrote: post #85
bogwog wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My iPhone XS Max screen cracked a few weeks ago and I've been debating sending it in for repair. Apple charges $300 friggin dollars to "fix" the display (I think they just send you a new phone). Looking online, displays only cost around $50-$90. So I've considered doing that instead, but if I go down that route, my phone will no longer support the "True Tone" feature. This is because Apple burned the serial number of…

Note that Those cheaper displays are probably worse in visual quality than what apple uses. They are probably the rejects.

Not just worse in visual quality, I've heard many stories of friends replacing cracked screens with knockoffs who got their battery life decimated after the repair.

Many such cases probably don't connect the dots and instead just think iphone battery life sucks which is bad press for Apple.

Re: Microsoft and Apple wage war on gadget right-to-repair laws

#119

Post by dehrmann »

saurik wrote: post #48
hervature wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different because they are recognizing that the issue isn't binary. It' not "bad for the environment" vs "good for the environment". It's recognizing there is a gradient of solutions ranging from "slowly increasing car efficiencies over time to allow for change" and "outright banning fossil fuels starting tomorrow". It's recognizing that "repairability" isn't the only thing to be optimized for.

...but the other thing being optimized for is "thinness"? As a society, you are saying sometimes we should just accept that things will be bad for the environment, maybe even horribly so and at a massive scale... because, otherwise, they can't be thin enough?

Apple has claimed that it can install higher capacity batteries because they're not consumer-replaceable, giving devices a longer life before the battery has to be replaced. You can buy that explanation or assume it was solely to make more money, but design tradeoffs are a thing.

Re: Microsoft and Apple wage war on gadget right-to-repair laws

#120

Post by Too »

Trust is a thing that is becoming more and more important these days with more and more of users secrets going through our devices. Wouldn't want all your email or banking details to be sucked up by a cheap wifi-chip which could have backdoors either by design or by accident. This is also why one should stay away from cheap IoT-gimmicks.

Another interesting aspect is reputation of quality in case repair shops don't restore the device to original performance, while customers still think they are running genuine parts, because it's very hard to visually inspect and understand what happens inside, as opposed to a toaster.

Not saying i'm for all these locks but pointing out it's a lot more multi-faceted than the article presents it.

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