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One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

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Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#51

Post by simion314 »

judge2020 wrote: post #34
arbirk wrote: post #26

Apple silicon repair: do you want an new device or just a new mobo. Costs the same

my opinion is that device makers should be allowed to make things unrepairable in design, but not in post-sale scarcity. The new macbook airs probably could have been just a tad thicker if they included modular ram and a m.2 ssd, but some consumers (and reviewers) really do like to chase thinness and will chastise Apple to continue to try to make their products as thin as a sheet of paper.

>but some consumers (and reviewers) really do like to chase thinness

Honestly Apple started the thinness fetish, so IMO the reality is like this

Apple pushes thinness fetish -> Reviewers and fanboys are now corrupted and will flaunt the size of their camera and thinness of the device.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#52

Post by Applejinx »

foldr wrote: post #7
henriquez wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “The horrible truth about Apple’s repeated engineering failures” This is totally in his wheelhouse and expertise since he does circuit board repair for Apple devices. You can thank YouTube’s algorithm for the inflammatory title.

It’s not really. There’s a big gap between knowing how to repair circuit boards (which is mostly about part sourcing and being good with a hot air station) and understanding the design of a modern motherboard, which is highly complex. He has loud opinions about laptop design, but it’s worth bearing in mind that he’s never designed even a simple piece of electronics in his life.

I've seen very little of him, and didn't know he was 'The Right To Repair Guy', but I saw him freak out over an Apple laptop because he took the back off and the fan was not directly over the chip like in gamer PCs.

This, in a machine that's been designed for generations to have a fan pull air aggressively THROUGH a channel, the only path the air can go, that goes directly across the CPU heatsink. This is not a 'circulating the air' situation: a laptop can't do that. It's an overall system with many considerations (turbulence, air handling noise) that is no longer a system at all if you take the top of the duct off. You cannot run that sort of machine with the case taken apart, it's part of the ducting.

Either he's dishonest for effect (and clicks), or he's considerably dumber than a drummer and college dropout (yours truly! derp!) about cooling airflow in a constrained duct inside a laptop. At face value, he's dumber. For his sake I hope he's dishonest.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#53

Post by tcoff91 »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #2

Rossmann is seriously a national treasure. Along with Lex Fridman the two Youtube personalities irrefutably prove fair mindedness, humility & sincerity is valued. My fears that content online would eventually consist of nothing but selfies, food pics & competitive victimhood are somewhat reduced. I'd like to see Rossmann on Fridman's podcast.

Lex Fridman misrepresents his role at MIT to make himself sound more accomplished than he really is, and the way he went about putting out his self driving car research directly to the press instead of going through peer review is shady. The guy is a cringeworthy grifter. He’s trying to be viewed as some AI expert but he’s totally full of shit.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#54

Post by slver »

bogwog wrote: post #47
slver wrote: post #41

More accurate title, just in interest of facts: > One Mac repair shop's fight to repair Macs. Apple can do a lot to make their hardware more repairable. But also I've seen Rossman outright demand their hardware changes just so it's easier to repair, without regard to things like weight, water resistance, and overall UX.

> Apple can do a lot to make their hardware more repairable. But also I've seen Rossman outright demand their hardware changes just so it's easier to repair, without regard to things like weight, water resistance, and overall UX. Source? He released a video recently where he basically said that it doesn’t matter if they’re easy to repair. As technology gets more advanced, so do repair shops. It’ll be harder for the a…

> He released a video recently where he basically said that it doesn’t matter if they’re easy to repair. As technology gets more advanced, so do repair shops.

> It’ll be harder for the average Joe at home, but that’s precisely why independent repair shops that can offer competitive prices are so important.

So you'd really recommend that Joe at home should repair their own Windows laptop or Android phone? Sorry but "gullible" is the word that comes to mind.

Rossman is fighting for his right to do his own job. He has that right, but he also wants to be viral. To be viral, he needs to reframe his fight as the fight for the little guy to resolder a Wi-Fi modem at home on their MacBook. Which is frankly ridiculous.

Technology, especially mobile, is at a stage where repairing at home is impossible due to integration and miniaturization.

Maybe you could install your own RAM on a laptop. Well now that RAM is in the CPU, because it has to be there. So what do we do? Complain until technology goes back a decade or a few?

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#55

Post by bogwog »

bstar77 wrote: post #24
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #2

Rossmann is seriously a national treasure. Along with Lex Fridman the two Youtube personalities irrefutably prove fair mindedness, humility & sincerity is valued. My fears that content online would eventually consist of nothing but selfies, food pics & competitive victimhood are somewhat reduced. I'd like to see Rossmann on Fridman's podcast.

I find Rossman insufferable due to his hyperbolic approach to shaming Apple and having a bone to pick with just about everyone- he's the definition of a narcissist. I agree in principle to "right to repair", but Rossman's motives are purely financial and self promoting. I've watched over 100 hours of his content and realized that his audience is primarily made up of anti-apple PC Master Race fanatics that just want t…

When you can’t attack their arguments, resort to personal attacks.

The amount of childish personal attacks about Rossman in this thread I think is a good indicator of how right he is. Makes me feel good about that money I donated to his Gofundme.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#56

Post by gonehome »

tcoff91 wrote: post #53
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #2

Rossmann is seriously a national treasure. Along with Lex Fridman the two Youtube personalities irrefutably prove fair mindedness, humility & sincerity is valued. My fears that content online would eventually consist of nothing but selfies, food pics & competitive victimhood are somewhat reduced. I'd like to see Rossmann on Fridman's podcast.

Lex Fridman misrepresents his role at MIT to make himself sound more accomplished than he really is, and the way he went about putting out his self driving car research directly to the press instead of going through peer review is shady. The guy is a cringeworthy grifter. He’s trying to be viewed as some AI expert but he’s totally full of shit.

I’ve also had a really hard time understanding why people praise him so much, I’ve tried multiple times to listen to his stuff and it’s just super disappointing. Worse than most lay people in depth. For people interested in AGI there are many better sources (MIRI, Yudkowsky), for people interested in self-driving: Andrej Karpathy. Max Tegmark also has some great public facing physics writing.

There’s so much great stuff out there, Friedman seems to get disproportionate attention. Personal attacks aside, I find him tedious to listen to and he often comes across as if he hasn’t done even cursory reading of his guest’s work. It often feels like a sophomore in college waxing about “big ideas” with little substance to back them up. Even at 2x speed I found the talks low signal.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#57

Post by Causality1 »

judge2020 wrote: post #11
henriquez wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “The horrible truth about Apple’s repeated engineering failures” This is totally in his wheelhouse and expertise since he does circuit board repair for Apple devices. You can thank YouTube’s algorithm for the inflammatory title.

> since he does circuit board repair for Apple devices. And thus, the insight comes from someone who only repairs the components, not someone who knows about designing them. I wouldn't trust my mechanic to tell me that my car's engine was designed badly because chances are that opinion is solely based on how easy/cheap it is to repair.

If your mechanic tells you not to buy a model of car because he keeps seeing them come in with engine failure at low mileage you'd be a fool not to listen to him.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#58

Post by jjoonathan »

bombcar wrote: post #30
jrsj wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mechanics are generally pretty knowledgeable about reliability of various vehicles and their components generally; many are genuinely interested in these things and not just repairability as it relates to their job. I would imagine something similar is true here

Mechanics can get a slightly biased view on things - for example, they’re more likely to like less reliable vehicle that’s dead simple to work on compared to a more reliable vehicle that’s harder to repair (or they rarely see).

Right, this is absolutely the case with Rossman. He makes no attempt to control for the base rate.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#59

Post by fredgrott »

defaultname wrote: post #3

Rossmann is an important voice in the right to repair, however I do feel like he leaned into a certain audience, pandering to them a bit as a reliable target for ad impressions, and it has undermined his credibility. I hear about Rossmann most now when some vicious Apple detractor uses him as an authority on things having nothing to do with repair. For instance Rossmann did a video titled "Apple watching & logging EV…

ahem, get real info jAck.. his main income is not monetizing youtube vids.

its...wat for it!

repairing macs!

The way he monetizes vids is via his item store. Which you would know if you video just one single vid

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#60

Post by Terretta »

I genuinely do not want repairability anywhere near the top of the list of performance and design trade offs.

Ruggedness, longevity, sure. Avoiding need to repair, definitely. Repairability? Other concerns, things that change the day-to-day use of the device, should weigh more.

Spent too many years as a full service PC network support small business to ever again want to deal with parts that aren’t actually attached to each other. Connection issues (especially on heating and cooling, so intermittent) were essentially all the problems except a vanishingly small proportion that were components.

The thing is, the repair shops get what’s left after the design is iterated until other problems are gone. So maybe only these component failures are left. Reverting to the old methods of replaceable components would likely re-introduce a massive class of problems that have by and large been eliminated.

Only the remaining problems have a voice, who is advocating on behalf of all the problems that the last 20 years of more solid design eliminated?

// Apologies for the HN trope, but see also Chesterson’s Fence, a tech version of “get off my lawn”.

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