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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

#261

Living in Shenzhen, it’s shocking how easy it is to go out and repair stuff. Living in Palo Alto, it’s frustrating how hard it is. I’m thinking maybe, just maybe, introducing repairability laws won’t solve the problem. I am perfectly happy upgrading the memory on my MacBook Air with a reflow air station rather than swapping out some dims if it means my laptop is half as thick and twice as rugged. I’m also just as hap…

The reason it can be done in China is because those shops illegally obtain the parts (whether counterfeit or stolen, since Apple won't intentionally sell them to anyone) and resources (schematics, software, etc) to be able to do so. This situation is both good and bad. Stolen parts are good, in the sense that this grey market at least allows consumers to repair devices cost-effectively. It's also bad, because besides…

By volume, the chips on the open market aren’t stolen and most aren’t counterfeit. Most are legitimate and a fair amount of the suspiciously cheap parts are binned or older revisions. The scale of the chip marketplace is more akin to sum of the agricultural output of California’s Central Valley - not your weekend farmers market. No one is messing around with stolen parts in these kind of quantities.

The reason companies are kicking and screaming about right to repair is because reverse logistics (how you deal broken/returned goods) is already a huge cost center and the legislation as proposed would make it more so. No one is making massive profit off repair parts - they’re offsetting massive losses.

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

#262

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Give us your best-of list then lad!

Steve Mould: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEIwxahdLz7bap-VDs9h35A Technology Connections: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q Verge Science: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxJFU9DgUhfr2J2bveCHkQ Mathologer: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1_uAIS3r8Vu6JjXWvastJg Sebastian Lague: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmtyQOKKmrMVaKuRXz02jbQ Captain Disillusion: https://www.youtube.com/channel/U…

Eva Bianka Zubek: https://www.youtube.com/c/EvazuBeckOfficial/

Grind Reel: https://www.youtube.com/c/JoshuaFluke1/

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

#263
post #130

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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 l…

Bob says "2 plus 2 is 4" > Look, I think Bob is a smart person and knows a lot about math, but personally I don't like him. He's balding, he collects plastic folding chairs in his garage, and he has a Youtube channel with clickbaity titles. Why does that matter? He's right, `2 + 2 == 4`. Why are you posting personal attacks instead of debating his argument? It's impossible to have a productive discussion like that, a…

Even in this situation, a lot of people don't like Bob, and want to express that. The main post doesn't dismiss right to repair because of rossman's character, they simply state " I can get a deeper understanding of repairing tech without the hyperbolic commentary". They're upset that this guy is who's pushing right to repair instead of someone more grounded and polite.

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

#264
post #178
post #170

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You replaced a capacitor. Is that supposed to render what I said invalid?

> Neither "right to repair" nor my original comment advocate for being able to repair your own devices at home. Did you read that part?

It's honestly hard to understand what our discussion is about at this point. I stated initially Rossman is fighting about his ability to buy working parts and doing repair. Now turns out you agree with that. So, I guess that's all.

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

#265
post #257

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Also, Rossmann clearly views himself as a Right to Repair leader. Fair enough. But if you are going to be a leader of a broad movement, you have to be willing to speak about issues that plague broader computing, not laser-focus on one company when others are doing similar or even worse faux pas.

Have you been actually paying attention to the actual right to repair content? It is still relatively Apple heavy, because that's his business, but he's had medical device repair people on, and he's talked about the much broader scope of the issue basically every single time. I'm very confused by this criticism tbh.

Yes, he talks about John Deere, or medical devices, but he never talks about HP, Lenovo, Dell, Surface, Acer, or any PC manufacturer flaws, many of which have flaws worse than Apple's. This is what makes him look dishonest because laptop repair is his specialty - he should be awesome at detecting or pointing out how they have problems too, but he caters to the PC crowd and says nothing.

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

#266
post #69

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I’ve learned more about commercial real estate from Louis than I would have from other sources. There are disincentives for commercial real estate owners to lower their leasing rates, as it can drive a re-evaluation of loan criteria by the banks, forcing the owner to immediately increase equity. Banks don’t want this to happen, as it makes their books look bad. Watching his business struggle through Covid fills me wi…

I've had three 12" Macbook main boards, two screens, and two keyboards replaced free under Australian Consumer Law because of broken components. Connectors that should have been replaceable onsite in seconds instead requiring depot maintenance and hundreds of dollars in couriers and staff interactions. 10c LVDS cables soldered on instead of replaceable, unrepairable even to Apple, have sent two high quality display p…

This is the number one thing that fails for me I hate these ribbon cables. Don't blame him for soldering though the connectors can be 5 to $6 a piece ugh hirose...

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

#267

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Apple tracking what apps you launch, when you launch them and using a plain text protocol is fucking disgusting, anyone has the right to feel this disgust and share it , many non technical people will nit have the chance to hear the truth about Apple (how many iOS users know about the malware issue , about the CPU down-clocking behind your back or other true facts about Apple)...

"or other true facts about Apple)" Except everything you just listed is mostly _not_ true or unique to Apple. The apps that you launch? That was the developer certificate, not the app, over the same protocol for verifying certificates that is used in Windows SmartScreen and other systems. The malware issue? Every statistic shows iOS has less malware than Android, so why exactly is that a complaint? CPU down clocking?…

Sure dude, it was not the app name sent in plain text but the app certificate, what is the difference ? Either Apple does not care about your privacy or they really care but are incompetent, chose one or other or both OR impress me with some mental gymnastics that makes Apple look good.

>(malware...)so why exactly is that a complaint?

Because some good people at Apple prepared emails to sent tot he victims but Tim decided that is bad for PR so fuck the victims. Aka people need to know that if Apple has to chose between PR or the customer PR is on top.

>CPU down clocking? iOS warns you your battery is old, warns you this may cause slowness,

You are the problem, Apple only does this after a class action lawsuit, you either are very misinformed or you are intentionally misinforming people. It is not an isolated incident where Apple is doing something fair for the user only when forced(similar cases with bad GPUs, keyboards,batteries)

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

#268

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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…

I have sub his channel years before the R2R stuff. One thing that can be said about him is that he supports R2R fro a selfish reason of being able to keep his business afloat. > 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. (...)…

I think most people are against supporting bad people just because they do something good. You can like Right to repair and can support it even financially (assuming the gofundme funds will be dedicated to the direct ballot and not other endeavors), but I and many others don't like that Rossman is the one who is harboring this when he has moved from well-done repair videos to rants about anything that can be ranted about.

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

#269
post #119

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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.

My point is that some people try to and want right to repair to force companies to make their computers more modular in order to make them repairable, when that might stifle innovation.

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

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP seemed quite open that he sees his right to repair work as important and is simply commenting on the direction his YouTube channel is taking. Not sure what goal posts are being shifted exactly and I can't see what "personal characteristics" are being attacked in any way in what reads as a simple personal opinion.

The line "it has undermined his credibility" changes it from just a comment on personal opinion to an attack.

That's a pretty low bar.
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