One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by dkdk8283 » Sun, May 23, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

defaultname wrote: post #9

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.

I referred to the operating system commentary as having nothing to do with his wheelhouse. The other videos just give a context to his...theme. Further, blaming YouTube for someone's pandering to the basest audience seems dubious.

It isn’t dubious. He posts for engagement and money. You can absolutely blame youtube for incentivizing bad behavior.

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

#102

Post by kiba » Sun, May 23, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

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.

Right to repair is not about countering the thinness fetish but countering anti-consumer business practices such as using security screw instead of normal screws, making deals with vendors to hinder ability of shops to buy components for repair and so forth.

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

#103

Post by relix » Sun, May 23, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #32

judge2020 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I get your point, but even your car mechanic would be able to tell if a component they worked with previously has changed only to make it more difficult to replace. You might argue "how do you know that was the only reason" - well, Rossman has a video on a USB-C charging controller embedded into the macbooks, previously if that burnt out(and they do burn out) he could just buy the chip itself online for a dollar. But…

Do you have a link to that video?

What I've noticed from "right of repair" types of complaints is that they're often missing any search for ulterior motives regarding those decisions beyond "well obviously the only reason they did this was because they wanted to make it hard to repair". I need to reserve judgment until I see what Rossman has to say about the specific instance you mention - but is it possible the chip is actually not identical, and Apple has made customisations that change how it works beyond merely making it hard to repair? And Apple would not want competitors to be able to purchase these chips because they're somehow superior to the standard ones, at least for the use case Apple has custom-ordered them for?

In these kind of scenarios I really don't see how a trillion dollar company would be worried about squeezing a few extra dollars by putting an extra dependency in their logistical pipeline by ordering a very specific chip whose sole purpose is to put a relatively insignificant hurdle for repair shops to repair a device. I say relatively insignificant, because I'm guessing the impact shouldn't be that much - not many repair shops would order all possible chips, find defective ones, and solder the chip in/out as a service or do it cost-effectively, and of those that do, most will probably just salvage those chips from other broken devices, meaning the decrease in repaired devices is very small in terms of value for Apple, but the extra work it generates for them would be immense and, I believe, disproportional.

I'm watching this video[0] here where he's complaining about 4 charging chips, and if one of them breaks none of them work. Rossman mentions it's "completely asinine engineering design". He completely fails to think about whether there'd be any reason for this behaviour. Maybe Apple engineers aren't as dumb as he portrays them to be, and actually have made that decision for a very good reason. Maybe the failure modes of those chips actually involves a possibility of damaging the battery on the output side, and the output side is not separated - e.g. the output lines of those chips all come together on the same bus towards the battery, and thus if one chip is broken it could easily put the wrong kind of energy on those lines, causing damage to the battery and possibly it exploding. For this reason, Apple decided to keep things safe and as soon as one part of that system is malfunctioning, not to try and work through it in order to avoid a 1 in a million "battery explodes" kind of situation.

I'm not an electrical engineer and know next to nothing about how these systems work internally, but I believe there's too little nuance in Rossman's opinions and that impacts his credibility to me.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7RWdVWv7oU

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

#104

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 23, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #15

judge2020 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You have a low opinion of your mechanic. Operational knowledge is very important and designs that look good at design time sometimes deal poorly with the world. The iPhone 6 and the butterfly keyboard show designs that were not good in actual operation. Mechanics worth their salt know great engine design beyond easy/cheap to repair. Please don't take this attitude as a developer towards your operations / support staf…

[deleted]

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

#105

Post by Zak » Sun, May 23, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

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.

A mechanic is well-positioned to notice that a particular car engine has an unusually high rate of a certain type of failure, and very often to identify the root cause of said failure. If Subaru head gaskets fail because they're bathed in fluids when the engine isn't running, and Ford Tritons spit out spark plugs because they only used 3.5 threads in an aluminum head, mechanics who work on them will notice. Rossmann is in an equivalent position.

Of course there may be good explanations for design decisions that negatively impact reliability, but it's reasonable for owners to be grumpy about it. It also wouldn't completely shock me if there's a former Ford engineer out there somewhere collecting a paycheck from Helicoil, a manufacturer of threaded inserts used to repair stripped spark plug holes, with no current job duties.

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

#106

Post by m55au » Sun, May 23, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

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.

> the design of a modern motherboard, which is highly complex

The design of a modern motherboard is far from complex since all the complexity has pretty much been hidden inside the black boxes of highly integrated circuits. You as a designer do not in general need to concern yourself with the implementation details and just need to understand the interfaces, similar to, for example, using python's numpy as opposed to writing BLAS or LAPACK from scratch.

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

#107

Post by judge2020 » Sun, May 23, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

bogwog wrote: post #92

me_me_me wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a character assassination post? It really feels like it. Rossmann opensourced his repair manuals and has detailed videos of how to repair equipment, you can literally start your own repair business of that. If that is not being for right to repair I don't know what is. Reading your post again it is a character assassination post. Shifting goalpost and attacking personal characteristics instead of the point.

Strange how it's still the top comment in this thread, even though it's a personal attack that has nothing to do with the actual topic, or make any attempt to discuss his arguments. Seems like the type of tactic you'd see from those lobbyist groups that pay money to release commercials claiming right to repair will lead to rape: https://youtu.be/EozPi1qmH44?t=59

The article is “One Man’s Fight for the Right to Repair”, so it indeed is focusing squarely on Rossman and his involvement in R2R. If it were just an article about R2R that briefly mentioned Rossman, your comment would be true.

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

#108

Post by webmobdev » Sun, May 23, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #87

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…

Interesting. I only stumbled upon one of his repair videos a few years back — was frankly blown away by his meticulous identification and cross referencing of specific chips, his ability to replace surface-mount components. It left me with an appreciation for someone who can dedicate themselves to this depth of esoterica and make something I thought impossible look ... doable by an enthusiast? But from your comment I…

    I'm talking about the day to day things in our lives, has gone completely beyond any normal person's ability to repair, diagnose, or, really, understand at all.

A "normal" person's inability to understand or repair is limited by the lack of the literature, tools and parts - not because technology has "advanced". (To a lay person, any technology that they doesn't understand is akin to magic to them). And this is ignoring the glaring obvious - things are today being deliberately designed to be unrepairable because that's more profitable for company's like Apple that even lobby against any Right to Repair legislation. Remember, if they want these companies can design things to be easily repairable - e.g. concept https://frame.work/blog/introducing-the-framework-laptop

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

#109

Post by wintermutestwin » Sun, May 23, 2021, 3:48 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #8

Sadly, you and I watch a different YouTube than probably 95% of people. Almost nobody I've talked to has heard of Lex or Louis, or Bret Weinstein, or Sean Carroll, and so forth. Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand. Even if the average person watched some of Louis Rossmann's videos on the right to repair, I just don't think the importance of the issue would compute with them. Almost nobody…

The problem is that discovery is broken. This random post on HN led me to more subscribe worthy channels than months of looking at Youtube recommendations has.

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

#110

Post by eganist » Sun, May 23, 2021, 3:48 PM UTC

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…

Yikes.

Distilled into its abstract, you're saying his primary motivation isn't right to repair; it's to extract cash from his viewers.

I'm not a fan of hit jobs especially when presented as extensive prose to veil the attack. Please reconsider and assume the best intentions in people. Unfortunately, I can't assume the same of your comment because there was no reason for you to author it except a personal distaste for the human subject.