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

371–380 of 562 posts

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

#371

Post by mokus »

Zak wrote: post #105
judge2020 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since he does circuit board repair for Apple devices. And thus, the insight comes from someone who only repairs the components, not someone who knows about designing them. I wouldn't trust my mechanic to tell me that my car's engine was designed badly because chances are that opinion is solely based on how easy/cheap it is to repair.

A mechanic is well-positioned to notice that a particular car engine has an unusually high rate of a certain type of failure, and very often to identify the root cause of said failure. If Subaru head gaskets fail because they're bathed in fluids when the engine isn't running, and Ford Tritons spit out spark plugs because they only used 3.5 threads in an aluminum head, mechanics who work on them will notice. Rossmann…

A mechanic is in a good position to notice that when a car fails, it tends to fail in certain ways. Far too often, though, they then generalize to claims that the car is likely to fail in that way, but that is not necessarily the case. It may be that they fail 1% as often as competitors and due to a relatively fewer number of causes. Without being in a position to see the absolute failure rate, a mechanic may incorrectly conclude that those parts they see failing are especially badly designed even if they are more reliable than the industry average.

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

#372

Post by lotsofpulp »

_dps wrote: post #245
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 worry that believing the jobs are not coming back is a self-fulfilling prophecy – one with dangerous consequences of locking its believers into perpetual dependence on supply from places that act essentially as sin externalization depots. If $2/hr vs $10/hr is indeed the thing preventing repair being economical , that seems like it can be fixed with a mixture of incentives, apprenticeship contracts, and elevating t…

> If $2/hr vs $10/hr is indeed the thing preventing repair being economical , that seems like it can be fixed with a mixture of incentives, apprenticeship contracts, and elevating the social status of "vocational education" (the name exists IMO only to serve as status-lowering).

That incentive is the $x per hour. And the low $x per hour relative to quality of life is what causes the status lowering. Status is not lowered by a couple words. A doctor spends a ton of time in “vocational education”.

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

#373

Post by foldr »

eganist wrote: post #235
defaultname wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every comment on HN is "unsolicited". I certainly didn't ask for your observation on this. Further, "rant"? Give me a break. Humorously the top comment to this submission is that Rossmann is a "national treasure", along with some commentary about some other guy and how they should do a podcast together. Nothing whatsoever to do with the submission. Just slathering praise and adulation. Whatever floats someone's boat…

> Declaring my comment flamebait is telling. It's a completely banal observation about a conflict in someone's position. The many angry personal attacks (such as yours) are not my doing, and reflect on your own rather bizarre motivations. Hm... I applied the label to the original comment I replied to, not yours. But defaultname, I do see you're pretty new. Try not to take things personally; even me labeling their com…

Defaultname’s original comment isn’t flamebait. It just expresses a fairly mild opinion about the direction that Rossman’s channel has taken. It’s especially ironic that you should be so concerned about assuming the best intentions. When has Rossman ever done that in the case of Apple?!

Like defaultname, I also think that Rossman has done a lot of good, but that doesn’t mean that everyone has to love his YouTube channel or refrain from saying anything critical about it.

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

#374

Post by Nullabillity »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #180
gambiting wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also, something that put me off about him is that he always assumes that Apple is doing this because they are nefarious, so he sometimes fails to see the bigger picture. If I was a big company for example, protecting the chip I may have helped design from being used in other products is boilerplate legal agreement. I don't have an evil motive or want to stop repair and screw Louis, it's just one of the default things…

> If I was a big company for example, protecting the chip I may have helped design from being used in other products is boilerplate legal agreement. I don't have an evil motive or want to stop repair and screw Louis, it's just one of the default things I throw in my legal agreements so Huawei doesn't make their Matebooks or whatever with the same chip I helped improve.

That just means that you wrote evil into your default contract.

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

#375

Post by rowanG077 »

dataflow wrote: post #370
rowanG077 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not theft. But still it's most likely a contract violation of the contract between the production company and Apple. Apple would never in a million years allow any of their suppliers to sell Apple specific parts to the aftermarket.

> It's not theft. But still it's most likely a contract violation of the contract between the production company and Apple. Apple would never in a million years allow any of their suppliers to sell Apple specific parts to the aftermarket. Then it only concerns those parties and it's literally not our business to worry about.

It is our business to worry about. Such gross violation would be stamped out hard in the US and EU. This is one of the reasons it's hard/expensive to finds parts if you are not in Shenzhen. There should be laws that disallow exclusivity of parts.

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

#376

Post by gjsman-1000 »

dataflow wrote: post #315
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 discu…

Yes, Apple has bad behavior. Sorry, the conversation is sometimes unclear from my Hacker News reader app and so my changing the conversation is probably unintentional as I didn't realize I was doing it, I apologize.

Yes, there is long history of behavior, but I think that there could be more discussion about why Apple does things than just assuming bad behavior. I was trying to give alternative explanations than just "apple is being bad as usual."

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

#377

Post by dataflow »

rowanG077 wrote: post #375
dataflow wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not theft. But still it's most likely a contract violation of the contract between the production company and Apple. Apple would never in a million years allow any of their suppliers to sell Apple specific parts to the aftermarket. Then it only concerns those parties and it's literally not our business to worry about.

It is our business to worry about. Such gross violation would be stamped out hard in the US and EU. This is one of the reasons it's hard/expensive to finds parts if you are not in Shenzhen. There should be laws that disallow exclusivity of parts.

I think you missed my point. I was saying the violation isn't our business and by its nature it is in no way comparable to theft or other crimes. i.e. private parties have a dispute that they need to settle privately. It's not on us to police whether they stick to their contracts.

Whether that type of contract is allowed by the government/law in the first place is an entirely different discussion about commerce and regulation; I wasn't opining on that.

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

#378

Post by gjsman-1000 »

542458 wrote: post #188
bogwog wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right to repair isn't "obligation to repair devices yourself", or "force manufacturers to redesign hardware so repair shops jobs are easier". It's about preventing certain business practices that hinder the repair industry. Like when Apple forces their suppliers to not sell components to anyone but them. "Component level repair" is a thing that's done today. It involves replacing individual components on a motherboar…

I don’t think your first sentence is accurate - there is no single standard definition for right to repair, and I have absolutely seen people saying that right to repair includes an obligation for manufacturers to redesign hardware so repairs are easier. I’ve also seen people say it’s only about allowing schematic access and nothing else. I’ve seen people say it includes unlocking bootloaders. IMO this is one of the…

Louis Rossmann made a video giving his definition, which is that parts are available. However, that is only his definition, there is still broader community lack of focus on what it means.

Some people think it means that Apple must make their products easy to repair. Others think it means Apple must every single chip available for independent purchase. Others think it means Apple must only make available the parts that they would provide their AASPs with (only finished boards and displays, not individual chips).

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

#379

Post by jeffbee »

Greek0 wrote: post #73
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…

The repairability Rossmann is talking about is not user-replaceable components. His repairs usually require soldering to replace components. One of his main critique points is that Apple makes it hard to repair their products, even for electronics professionals. In the past, Apple has also altered designs so that small electrical problems suddenly fry the most expensive component on the board, the CPU. Either this is…

Maybe it's neither of those things. Maybe the design of the board saved a few dollars, maybe it was required by some other design constraint the vlogger doesn't perceive.

I don't personally have the time to watch a 20-minute video to see what the hell he's talking about, but his overall shtick of acting like one random vlogger can readily pinpoint what thousands of professional EEs didn't notice in the design phase is frankly silly, as is your false dichotomy.

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

#380

Post by zabzonk »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #368
WalterBright wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. When there's massive non-compliance with the law, there's something wrong with the law. For example, Prohibition, the war on drugs, gambling prohibitions, etc.

I can think of societies with massive tax evasion, from all economic classes of people and where bribes are normal. Is there something wrong with laws requiring tax payments and banning bribes?

Yes, because the law (and the systems supporting the law) can easily be evaded - there is something massively wrong.
Post reply on HN