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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

#111

Post by bloggie »

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.

As someone who was a mechanic, and later became an engineer, this is the main reason why I find Rossman's videos insufferable. He is constantly making assumptions about how electronics are designed based on his views as a repair man. As a mechanic I made the same assumptions, but I was later able to learn that every decision an engineer makes is one of compromise, based on hundreds of variables that the mechanic does not know about because of the narrow view that any technician has concerning the product that they are servicing: observing the hard shell of an egg and assuming that the contents must be equally hard.

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

#112

Post by defaultname »

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

Personal attack, character assassination, apparently it's astroturfing (something something rape), another guy saying it's "NSA tactics". Amazing.

Pretty rabid fanbase. Anything other than adulation must have nefarious origins. It certainly can't be organic.

I think it was upvoted (after a lot of downvotes) because a lot of people have experienced the same thing. Rossmann started as a Mac/Apple repair guy elbowing to try to keep his business going, which no one can contest and was admirable and sympathetic. He had a credible argument about right to repair.

Somewhere along the way -- maybe after Apple had customs block some of his imports, or maybe after he started getting those fat YouTube checks -- he turned from an Apple repair guy to an anti-Apple advocate in virtually every dimension. He has a whole plethora of anti-Apple opinions, and he seems to be a cult of personality not for repair people, but rather for people who still harbor a grudge that their Lumia prophecies didn't come true.

So I just said what I thought, and clearly a lot of people have the same impression, which was that once I'd see his name and think credible repair arguments, and now I see his name and just click past because it's going to be some new anti-Apple screed appealing to a base. Eh.

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

#113

Post by dahart »

defaultname wrote: post #85
fredgrott wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

His YouTube channel is estimated to net him $500K+ per year with negligible expenses. His business has an estimated revenue , per the linked article, of 1-2 million per year, with 15 employees or so. In all probability the YT channel is much more lucrative than the business is.

Where are you getting your speculative estimates? I just googled it and see numbers about a tenth of what you’re suggesting for 1.5M subscribers. It doesn’t seem probable at all that his channel is more lucrative. I also don’t understand why you emphasized “revenue” for the repair business, when the YT income is also revenue, or how you know what his YT channel expenses are. Care to elaborate?

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

#114

Post by defaultname »

eganist wrote: post #110
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…

This tact has been plied by a dozen different replies in a dozen different but similar ways (some talking about prose, while others claim it's incomprehensible).

Groan.

A large number of the replies I have gotten would normally be deleted by mods, for good reason. If you're rewording to conjure up flamebait or attacking by conspiracy because you don't like a position, better to not post it.

"you're saying his primary motivation isn't right to repair; it's to extract cash from his viewers."

Don't add your own pejorative narrative and then strike it down. It adds nothing to HN and is flamebait.

Rossmann took his right to repair advocacy and branched out into a personality engagement. For YouTube viewers who are into that, or people who sympathize with his other positions, good for you and good for him, but for the rest of us it's just noise. I no longer pay attention to what he says because his motives have been perverted.

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

#115

Post by foldr »

m55au wrote: post #106
foldr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What knowledge and experience do you have of designing motherboards or other similarly complex PCBs?

Getting GHz frequency circuits to work requires much more than just understanding the digital interfaces.

If you think designing and laying out a modern motherboard is “easy”, then there’s a 1% chance that you’re a highly experienced and capable electronic engineer, and a 99% chance that you just have no idea about the existence of entire classes of problems that need to be solved to make a motherboard work.

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

#116

Post by bloggie »

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…

> There is no hidden design reason here - it was clearly changed to stop people like him from repairing macbooks, because their specific chip revision is not available on the open market.

This is an assumption. It's an assumption based on the assumption that designers would put time and effort into making a simple replacement operation somewhat more difficult. I can make an assumption too: that the designers wanted a new chip revision to fix some small errata, to have a custom pinout to ease routing, or to break out an additional pin or two to allow more reliable testing. This assumption is based on the assumption that Apple wants to make good quality products and puts time and money into DFT/DFM.

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

#117

Post by CivBase »

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…

Apple critics like to watch content produced by someone who regularly critisizes Apple. So what? No surprises there.

Yeah, he often talks about things outside his wheelhouse. He has an entire series about real estate in NYC. That doesn't make his actions and commentary regarding right to repair any less legitimate.

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

#118

Post by mardifoufs »

bogwog wrote: post #55
bstar77 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure why you would say that. Some critics on this thread have given pretty good reasons for why they "dislike" Rossman. while it may seem like some (not most) of those points are attacking Rossmans character, I don't see how some of his character doesn't have a direct impact on his arguments. If he always goes for clickbait titles, has a tendency to exaggerate, prefers to perpetually rant/glorify himself or likes to talk about things that he clearly does not know a lot about that can obviously taint the core of his message to some.

FWIW, personally I've watched Louis since the very beginning and he knows a lot about repairing electronics. But I also think the way he kept getting more and more attention as he ranted about Apple really changed the channel and his character at least on video.

Also, I honestly think it's more childish to use the "if x is getting criticized it means it's probably right" trope here than it is to criticize the personality of a public figure.

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

#119

Post by bogwog »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #96
protomyth wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with your comment/sentiment, but to be a little more nuanced: I can tell you that butterfly keyboards suck but I am not qualified to say how they should have been designed.

> but I am not qualified to say how they should have been designed.

Right to repair isn't about telling companies how they should design their products.

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

#120

Post by bogwog »

dahart wrote: post #113
defaultname wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His YouTube channel is estimated to net him $500K+ per year with negligible expenses. His business has an estimated revenue , per the linked article, of 1-2 million per year, with 15 employees or so. In all probability the YT channel is much more lucrative than the business is.

Where are you getting your speculative estimates? I just googled it and see numbers about a tenth of what you’re suggesting for 1.5M subscribers. It doesn’t seem probable at all that his channel is more lucrative. I also don’t understand why you emphasized “revenue” for the repair business, when the YT income is also revenue, or how you know what his YT channel expenses are. Care to elaborate?

Regardless, why would it even matter? "Louis makes 500k per year from Youtube ads" is not a valid response to "Apple is harming consumers and destroying the environment"
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