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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

#151

Post by webmobdev »

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.

The "thinness" fad was started by a Motorola phone. Apple studies such fads before launching a device and latched on it. And it makes sense for phones, to a certain extent, because nobody likes a bulky phone in their pocket. For a laptop you'd actually be more concerned about the weight than its thickness.

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

#152

Post by bloggie »

gambiting wrote: post #146
bloggie wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Except they don't make this chip - it's made by an external 3rd party. And that third party sells all revisions of this chip, except for the one used in MacBooks now. Rossman asserts that it's because Apple bound them contractually to do so - why would they sell every other revision openly to anyone with money, except for the one used in MacBooks?

This happens a lot, I have done it myself. When you buy enough volume you can buy custom packaging, or custom chips from these vendors. The license can be exclusive, for example if Apple asked for some development that cost them some NRE fees, or it can be non-exclusive, and the vendor can decide not to sell the custom version due to insufficient demand or some other non-technical reason.

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

#153

Post by camehere3saydis »

CPUstring wrote: post #74
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.

A character assassination would be something like "He does something morally reprehensible (cheating, selling ads to three year olds, etc". The above post is more like "He harps on multiple things he maybe shouldn't, and has an outraged user-base he keeps stoked, so that should be taken into account." If I said, "I find his voice really grating and his outrage mostly makes me dislike him" that isn't a character assas…

A sizable portion of the audience here considers selling ads morally reprehensible in itself.

This, on the other hand:

>The guy is monetizing a certain base. Probably doing pretty well out of it.

OP does say it as if there's something wrong with it.

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

#154

Post by stephenr »

Nextgrid wrote: post #125
stephenr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By the way, I sent my Macbook to Louis for repair last year. His team did a great job! Easy to communicate with too. I got it back in the mail really fast once the repair was complete. Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of what you’re claiming to want? Or is the guy you’re talking about more interested in this for his own reasons: wanting the repair money, not wanting to have to actually get certified to do authorised…

> not wanting to have to actually get certified to do authorised repairs There is no such thing as "authorized repair" when it comes to Apple. It's authorized "overpriced parts-changing" at best. Their "independent repair programme" is a bullshit PR tactic that thankfully seems to have failed. Apple's IRP is absolutely not viable for a repair shop. You can't even stock parts in advance (so the minimum turnaround time…

> There is no such thing as "authorized repair" when it comes to Apple.

I guess the authorised service centers I've taken Macs to since the late 90s were figments of my imagination then?

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

#155

Post by hhh »

______- wrote: post #140
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…

> Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand Eh it doesn't work like that. Youtube is actually very good at reliably determining it's you who's in that private window and Youtube is even known to track you with WebGL fingerprinting tactics to determine it's the same device. Doing things like spoofing your IP and useragent and using private mode browsing doesn't work. (I still get recommendations…

In incognito, I get nothing similar to what I would actually watch. Nothing is even remotely similar. It's scarily different, and none of it interests me.

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

#156

Post by sodapopcan »

judge2020 wrote: post #29
jarenmf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised when people don't even know more mainstream science YouTubers like vsauce or veritasium. I've asked a class of ~20 college students whether they know vsauce and I was surprised no one knows him.

I think a factor is overestimating just how many people 'get into' YouTube culture. Only roughly 74% of American Adults use YouTube[0], and the average daily watch time is only 42 minutes[1], not much time to explore and watch videos outside of your own interests. Vsauce's videos are great (including the recent ones), but they're mostly a remnant of YouTube culture past, and 10-20 million views a video[2] is not a lo…

Ya, I’m a heavy YouTube watcher (a couple of hours a day maybe?). I’m aware of vsauce and clearly I retested in tech but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a full video. I mostly watch conference talks when it comes to tech videos.

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

#157

Post by foldr »

m55au wrote: post #150
foldr wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Would not call myself an experienced electronics engineer (have only gotten into RF lately, but yes I know about signal integrity and EMI problems), but getting GHz circuits to work on a modern motherboard is not as big of a deal as you might think mainly because it is a "solved problem" with best practices and design tools, and there are just not really that many things to connect together. I am not saying it is tri…

It seems that we agree then. Rossman is operating well outside his knowledge and expertise when critiquing the design of a motherboard. As far as I know the guy has never so much as blinked an LED with an Arduino, or designed a simple two-sided low frequency PCB. A motherboard is way more complex than anything a hobbyist electronics enthusiast will ever work on.

If you haven’t actually been involved in designing a motherboard yourself, I’m also inclined to believe that there might well be complexities that you’re unaware of. Power management is complex. Routing hundreds of length-matched high frequency traces is complex. Low power circuits are complex. Safely charging LiPo batteries is complex. If you can show me something similarly complex that you’ve done yourself, then I’ll be willing to believe your claim that all of this is not really very difficult.

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

#158

Post by gambiting »

bloggie wrote: post #152
gambiting wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they don't make this chip - it's made by an external 3rd party. And that third party sells all revisions of this chip, except for the one used in MacBooks now. Rossman asserts that it's because Apple bound them contractually to do so - why would they sell every other revision openly to anyone with money, except for the one used in MacBooks?

This happens a lot, I have done it myself. When you buy enough volume you can buy custom packaging, or custom chips from these vendors. The license can be exclusive, for example if Apple asked for some development that cost them some NRE fees, or it can be non-exclusive, and the vendor can decide not to sell the custom version due to insufficient demand or some other non-technical reason.

Fair enough, but the final result of that change is that what used to be a 50c + labour repair is now a full motherboard replacement because you can't buy the chip separately.

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

#159

Post by macintux »

teatree wrote: post #147
josephg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one aspect of Friedman I really enjoy is the quality of his guests. I don’t know how he does it, but he seems to attract a lot of guests who I’ve never heard of, and yet are super interesting to listen to. For example, I loved his interviews with Joshua Bach and Jim Keller. I’d never heard of either of those guys before they went on Lex Friedman’s podcast and they’re both brilliant.

A HN reader not knowing Jim Keller is a bit surprising. He is a well known name in tech communities.

It’s a big world.

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

#160

Post by COGlory »

dijit wrote: post #36
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…

It’s a shame to see this downvoted because even if it’s against what many people believe (we all have “hero’s” and “villains” I suppose, and our hero’s do no wrong) it’s something I also see. I used to watch a lot of Rossman and glossed over his Apple hate because ultimately Apple are putting him and people like him out of a job, so it’s fair to be salty. But a large portion of his content (a few years ago at least)…

It's funny to see this analysis, because in my mind Rossman is simply being a New Yorker and doing things exactly as I'd expect a New Yorker to do them. The mentality that city forces on people to survive produces a narrow personality outcome and Rossman's personality is one of those.
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