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

#311

Post by worik » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:40 PM UTC

nrp wrote: post #90

xyst wrote: post #82

Apple's fight against right to repair while pushing materials to the public that state they are trying to reduce their carbon footprint is the absolute peak of hypocrisy. I understand the closed off design of their products is a result of the Steve Jobs era, but why can't the current leadership make a change? Why can't Apple make their products easily repairable while making them aesthetically pleasing? The typical "…

Apple’s business and design philosophies revolve around control. In exchange for locking down everything, they promise you a seamless, high-performance, safe experience. That extends to designing products in a way that end-user repair is not a consideration, to locking down access to the App Store (see the Epic trial), and more. I personally think it’s a bad direction to go in, especially with the outsized power Appl…

As a Apple developer it is not a "seamless, high-performance, safe experience". Anything but.

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

#312

Post by GekkePrutser » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

paulgerhardt wrote: post #208

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…

I remember in the 80s, devices would all come with the complete schematics right there in the box. I remember poring over them after buying something, I thought it was fascinating. Like my TV, computer etc. Everything.

This should really be brought back, even though component-level fixing is not nearly as easy as it was back then.

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

#313

Post by ksec » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

paulgerhardt wrote: post #208

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 repair cost isn't dominated by the cost of parts, but operation cost such as labour and rent.

If your concern are the $100+ for repair, then it will be the same regardless Apple provide the parts or not. Not to mention knowing Apple, they will definitely sell you an iPhone battery for $20+. Earning the same Gross Margin as their product.

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

#314

Post by userbinator » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

A_non_e-moose wrote: post #277

cgearhart wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work as a civil service engineer for the Navy in technology development for future weapons. The brass would often complain about how expensive fully-integrated solutions were. We investigated and found that the main cause was vendor lock-in to buy the all up rounds. We couldn’t compete for lowest cost on the power cards, or signal processing cards, rocket motors, etc., because the government didn’t have dat…

That might apply to very complex, high reliability systems like those in the military. But a battery is very basic and it's a consumable more than a modularize-able component like an engine or turbo. I think batteries are easily replaceable in most military equipment. Consumables in the very least should be replaceable for consumer products, or the price for its replacement capped, otherwise we're throwing away elect…

I think batteries are easily replaceable in most military equipment.

The irony is that a lot of military equipment is designed to destroy and be destroyed, yet is probably designed with serviceability in mind more than consumer electronics.

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

#315

Post by dataflow » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #297

dataflow wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, it's quite deniable. You can't find Hardware repair manuals for many if not most new PC laptops. Others are now going in this direction following Apple's lead. Did you forget Apple literally goes so far as to make the screws nonstandard just deliberately out of spite for repair? Did you forget about Error 53? And mind you, Apple charges a premium. If Apple was charging $500 he would be taking that into ac…

"Others are now going in this direction following Apple's lead. Did you forget Apple literally goes so far as to make the screws nonstandard just deliberately out of spite for repair?" How do you know that it is to spite repair? Apple certainly knows that you can buy those screwdrivers for less than $10 from iFixit for the last 6 years. If it was to purely spite us, you'd think they'd make them more complicated or ch…

> Instead, a more likely scenario is that it is to prevent people who have no idea what they are doing from opening a machine, doing more damage, and then having a more expensive repair.

Oh no! So Apple is trying to save people money through all this? We've been so blind to their goodwill...

I like how you change the discussion topic so easily. We went from discussing whether Apple is the worst R2R offender to discussing the quality of their products and now the discussion is about my assessment of precisely what percentage of what Apple does is out of spite instead of other lame excuses to prevent people repairing their products.

The entire discussion is about bad patterns of behavior that have emerged over the years from a particular company called Apple. The history of Apple's behavior is long and people are not going to waste time rehashing it all over again here, especially not when you're already aware of past events and yet only begrudgingly acknowledge their existence as isolated events when others force you to. That makes having a genuine conversation about the topic pretty infeasible.

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

#316

Post by worik » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

cgearhart wrote: post #231

xyst wrote: post #82

Apple's fight against right to repair while pushing materials to the public that state they are trying to reduce their carbon footprint is the absolute peak of hypocrisy. I understand the closed off design of their products is a result of the Steve Jobs era, but why can't the current leadership make a change? Why can't Apple make their products easily repairable while making them aesthetically pleasing? The typical "…

I used to work as a civil service engineer for the Navy in technology development for future weapons. The brass would often complain about how expensive fully-integrated solutions were. We investigated and found that the main cause was vendor lock-in to buy the all up rounds. We couldn’t compete for lowest cost on the power cards, or signal processing cards, rocket motors, etc., because the government didn’t have dat…

Interesting.

The Israeli Iron Dome project did it differently. From the references in the Wikipedia article I found this gem:

"As scientists we dream to sit in our offices without limitations of time and budget and to develop perfect products. But the reality is different, and these constraints forced us to think hard. There are parts in the system forty times cheaper than the parts we buy normally. I can give you even a scoop—it contains the world's only missile components from Toys R Us... One day I brought to work my sons toy car. We Passed it among us, and we saw that there were actually components suitable for us. More than that I can not tell.".

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

#317

Post by josephcsible » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:51 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #60

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…

Nobody's saying that companies should have to make design tradeoffs to make things easier to repair (e.g., making devices bigger to fit sockets so components can be replaced without soldering). We're just saying they should stop going out of their way to make things harder to repair (e.g., withholding schematics and service manuals that they already did the work to write, and forcing suppliers to not sell their parts to independent repair shops).

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

#318

Post by kccqzy » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #312

paulgerhardt wrote: post #208

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…

I remember in the 80s, devices would all come with the complete schematics right there in the box. I remember poring over them after buying something, I thought it was fascinating. Like my TV, computer etc. Everything. This should really be brought back, even though component-level fixing is not nearly as easy as it was back then.

I recently bought a cheap Chinese electric cooker just for fun. The instruction "manual" was a flimsy piece of paper. Yet it still contained schematics, as simple as it was.

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

#319

Post by userbinator » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

BombNullIsland wrote: post #68

dijit wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the little it’s worth: cars are mostly computer now. I come from a family of mechanics, my grandfather lamented new cars and their electronics because it’s harder to repair, he doesn’t try to understand the reason why, just that it’s harder now because the manufacturers “did it to him” to prevent third party repairs. You can argue that the electronics are to prevent cheaper repairs, but there is another truth the…

Perhaps. But it was a deliberate design decision to place certain sensors and actuators that may need repair in inaccessible locations. Pumps, spark plugs and chains need to be removable without major disassembly of the engine. Shift solenoids are a nasty problem that I've run into. They don't need to be hidden inside the transmission. And the transmission doesn't require the entire engine to be dropped to remove it.…

Shift solenoids do need to be inside the transmission, although I'm not sure what you mean by "hidden" -- does dropping the pan and possibly removing the valve body count as "hidden"? I don't think so.

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

#320

Post by simion314 » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #283

simion314 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every OS on the planet will verify developer certificates ... In plain text? I know how this shit works, I digitally signed things before, and for this verification there is no need for internet. So copy pasted a lot of tech stuff there but it is complexly wrong. I could explain it how it works and why intenet is not needed but you could use google and figure it out, then find out what exactly Apple was checking(it…

"In plain text? I know how this shit works, I digitally signed things before, and for this verification there is no need for internet. So copy pasted a lot of tech stuff there but it is complexly wrong. I could explain it how it works and why intenet is not needed but you could use google and figure it out, then find out what exactly Apple was checking(it was not the developer signiture)." Actually, you do need the i…

Even if you don't like it Apple already admitted it was a bad implementation and they are fixing it. (maybe next time they put more competent people and give them what they need to implement things right especially when it is about privacy, the thing Apple is screening this days)

>What BS are you spouting?

Big companies downgrading your hardware capabilities behind your back, then denying it until a judge forces them to admit and pay the users. If Apple would not have been caught with the CPu downclockingm, storage would be next for sure.