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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

#321

Post by aasasd »

Fizzer wrote: post #308
aasasd wrote: post #306

Tip: if you're curious enough to watch a video of Rossmann's, do that in the incognito mode. Otherwise you'll be pestered with recommendations of the other two thousand of his videos, until the end of your days. Perhaps you'll even be able to follow the epic of his fight by the titles of new videos.

Anytime you want to mute a channel, just click the three dots to the lower right of a video and select "Don't recommend channel"

Sorta loath to do that, because I don't want YT to stop suggesting stuff related to that channel and its general topics. I just don't need more Louis Rossmann in my life, the rants don't do me any good—possibly aside from keeping my heart strong from pumping against the pressure, I guess. But the stress snacks will kill me. I'd like the algo to take a gentle hint already, it was like a year since the last watching.

I did some digging in the innards of a Macbook Pro, years earlier, and have a couple leftover screws as a result. I think I'll leave the next endeavor to people with better hands, especially since putting in an extra hard drive isn't an option anymore.

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

#322

Post by einpoklum »

Nextgrid wrote: post #213
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 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…

> It's also bad, because besides it essentially being theft

Nobody stole parts from Apple's warehouses.

So "essentially", it is not theft. Unless "essentially" means "by some outlandish, ridiculous, anti-popular and pro-corporate international legal fiction".

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

#323

Post by roywashere »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #201
addicted wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And last week he released a video titled “The myth & fallacy that one brand is the problem”. 3 days ago “ASUS becomes a meme” with the thumbnail text “ASUS ARE YOU KIDDING”. The guy runs a Mac repair store. That’s his day business. It doesn’t sound inauthentic that he would have more complaints about Apple products. Further, as far as right to repair is concerned, it’s undeniable that Apple is easily the worst of the…

"it's undeniable that Apple is easily the worst of the lot" Actually, it's quite deniable. You can't find Hardware repair manuals for many if not most new PC laptops. Most PC laptops have oversights in their design that would make Rossmann blush if he took a look at them. My parents had a $500 2018 HP that the screen broke off of, after only a year of use, even though it was always on a desk and it literally broke by…

I had that happen on my Dell Vostro laptop just after 25 months with 2 y warranty. A hinge of the lid broke. I was able to contact support and order the new lid for about 35 euros and replaced it myself. Repairing was not super easy because I had to remove so many components & the screen was partly glued but it worked. After another year and a half the new part broke in exactly the same way.

That was circa 2012. I'm not sure it would be possible with 2021 Dells. We had lots more of miniaturization. And maybe this actually made laptops also a little stronger!!

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

#324

Post by josephcsible »

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…

> How do you know that it is to spite repair?

Can you name a single advantage of pentalobe screws over pre-existing standard screw heads like Torx? If not, then Occam's razor is how I know.

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

#325

Post by [deleted] »

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 "…

[deleted]

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

#326

Post by josephcsible »

mokus wrote: post #84
gambiting wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand about the frustration of not being able to source the part, but a change in a single IC or connector’s pin mapping absolutely can be a performance improvement alone. I’m lobbying at work now for one such case. Sometimes the existing pin assignments are just bad, and that can destroy signal integrity, increase layout complexity (and thus board cost) and negatively affect EMC performance. I don’t know whet…

But don't forget this part of the post: "and they have secured exclusive production of this chip, so you can't buy this for a dollar any more". There may have been a legitimate reason to change the pinout, but there was no reason other than greed to prohibit the vendor from selling the new chip to anyone else.

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

#327

Post by technofiend »

aasasd wrote: post #321
Fizzer wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anytime you want to mute a channel, just click the three dots to the lower right of a video and select "Don't recommend channel"

Sorta loath to do that, because I don't want YT to stop suggesting stuff related to that channel and its general topics. I just don't need more Louis Rossmann in my life, the rants don't do me any good—possibly aside from keeping my heart strong from pumping against the pressure, I guess. But the stress snacks will kill me. I'd like the algo to take a gentle hint already, it was like a year since the last watching. I…

You can remove your history of viewed videos in whole or in part. I've found that the most effective way to stop YouTube's manic obsession for any topic I've viewed once.

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

#328

Post by fors »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #304
fors wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "for many if not most new PC laptops" Curious how we are going to determine most here but Lenovo and Dell make their service manuals easily available with the service tag/serial. HP has service manuals available with some Google fu (eg. http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06148960.pdf ). There are a lot of manufacturers who could do better but saying "my parents 500$ HP laptop had no repair manual available so i…

Like I said earlier, one thing that bugs me about Louis Rossmann is that he never examines possible ulterior motives for Apple's decision making other than that they are evil. For example, a MacBook. Perhaps it's because China clones everything and would happily clone a MacBook board and sell that to unsuspecting people, so Apple doesn't want to share info on where they got parts or the schematics. You might disagree…

Ah, so it's about board schematics and your parents HP was just a sidenote. Yes, it would be nice if every manufacturer would publish board schematics so performing component level repairs would be easier.

Louis runs an Apple repair shop, so he complains about the availability of Apple schematics. Seems reasonable. It's not like the schematics aren't available, it's mostly the hoops you/he has to jump through to get them and even if he/you has them he might not be legally allowed to use them.

And this all ignores the aspect of you complaining about not having a service manual for a 500$ machine and Louis complaining about not being able to service a 1700$ logic board (which, if he can't repair it, might mean you have to pay full price to replace a 3000$ laptop).

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

#329

Post by whywhywhywhy »

Nextgrid wrote: post #213
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 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…

>the grey market opens the door to bad actors who pass off used/defective/rejected/counterfeit parts as the real thing.

The real thing is already broken if you're at the point of buying these parts. The entire object is already e-waste until you add new parts.

E-waste turned into functional object is a good thing even if it's achieved with used/rejected/counterfeit parts.

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

#330

Post by ksec »

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…

I agree I dont care about reparability by third party as long as the devices is literally made indestructible. But If it cant be made that way, why the trade offs?

Why should I loss all my Data on MacBook when its CPU, GPU, or logic board has a problem?

Why does repairing a keyboard require replacing the half of the laptop.

And why are these repair so expensive.

It is all about balance. And a lot of these balance in Apple seems to be disintegrating since Steve Jobs passed away.

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