Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

columbianewsservice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 562 posts

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

#331

Post by Nextgrid »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #329
Nextgrid wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well the worry is that you spend more money on a part that turns out to be unusable, so you end up with no device and less money.

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

#332

Post by josephcsible »

______- wrote: post #136

For me I have boiled down my computing to a set of easily repeatable steps to get going again if anything ever happens to my device. All my most important data is in the cloud, so if a device is stolen, I can log back into everything and continue my computing. I just buy a new device and log back into everything, which takes 30 mins tops. This actually works out cheaper than getting it repaired!

And it's terrible for the environment.

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

#333

Post by that_guy_iain »

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…

No other company, as far as I am aware, has 2nd hand parts seized as counterfeits. Until another company does that, Apple is undeniably the worst

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

#334

Post by aasasd »

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…

Wasn't the Aegis system designed with this very kind of modularity, though at a higher level? Want different missiles on your ship, no need to build a different ship: just lift the module out and put a new one in.

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

#335

Post by robocat »

einpoklum wrote: post #322
Nextgrid wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I presume he is talking about phones stolen from consumers that have been parted out.

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

#336

Post by Nextgrid »

robocat wrote: post #335
einpoklum wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

I presume he is talking about phones stolen from consumers that have been parted out.

Nope I mean theft from the official factory. Given the working conditions, I wouldn't be surprised if the workers were smuggling out parts or were doing a whole "night run" for the secondary market (at higher prices than what Apple pays) in addition to the normal run.

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

#337

Post by cgearhart »

userbinator wrote: post #314
A_non_e-moose wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I think batteries are easily replaceable in most military equipment.

The _actual_ irony here is that batteries are often not easily replaceable in lots of military equipment, and especially not always in weapons. It may require a very extensive tear down and replacement of entire sub assemblies to replace something as mundane as a coin cell battery. And don’t even start with thermal batteries…

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

#338

Post by webmobdev »

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…

    My problem is I can only get the chips and schematics I need to effect the repair on the Chinese Internet
Exactly. And we need legislation to make it happen. In India, I remember someone started a multi-brand service centre for cars. The automobile industry ganged up on him and refused to supply original parts to him. He had to go to the courts, and the courts ruled for him and in favour of consumer rights and made it very clear that the automobile industry had to supply parts to any mechanic shop that asked for it.

We now need a similar legislation for every other industry too.

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

#339

Post by wmf »

Nextgrid wrote: post #331
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Well the worry is that you spend more money on a part that turns out to be unusable, so you end up with no device and less money.

That seems like a basic consumer protection issue that's mostly already solved in the developed world. When I get my car serviced, it's understood that I will hold the mechanic responsible for everything so they don't even bother trying to put sketchy parts in my car.

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

#340

Post by chrisseaton »

Nextgrid wrote: post #289
paulgerhardt wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compan…

I don't mean chips per-se, I mean complete assemblies like iPhone displays. As far as I know, there's no "legitimate" source for those, it's all either outright stolen, counterfeit or bad/rejected parts. > 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 How would right to repair affect that? And if it wasn't profit-moti…

> I mean complete assemblies like iPhone displays. As far as I know, there's no "legitimate" source for those

So how are legitimate high street shops in the west doing it? You can’t convince me every town in the UK has a criminal operation working in the open doing screen replacements?

Post reply on HN