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

#381

Post by Foxfox12 » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #364

walrus01 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's all either outright stolen, counterfeit or bad/rejected parts The other very common possibility is that it's what's called a "ghost shift" where the factory runs a whole production run on a possibly overnight work shift, creates a batch of product for sale to third parties, and then resumes their legit-for-transfer-to-apple production run the next morning. Happens with all sorts of electronics manufacturing in…

"ghost shift" production with the trademarks is counterfeit, but isn't without the trademarks. Regardless of marking it's still likely unauthorized use of intellectual property.

There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, it should be a legal requirement that all OEMs allow 3rd parties to manufacture these parts to provide as replacements.

Saving the planet is far more important than protecting the profits for replacement parts. Of course they shouldn’t be allowed to sell complete phones but selling screens is good.

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

#382

Post by Nextgrid » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #369

Nextgrid wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By the time you were to pay for the repair service and the parts it might not be economical. Louis Rossmann proves that such a business does work and is profitable while remaining significantly cheaper for customers (otherwise he wouldn't get any business).

I think this works by volume of customers in the NYC metro, but might not be viable for a repair shop in a smaller city. I would be very interested to see if a similar specialist could financially support the salaries of a few full time techs in a much smaller metro on the scale of, for example, Spokane WA.

But in this case the market would balance itself; this isn't an argument against the right to repair. If there's indeed no market for this then nothing will change, but it doesn't mean parts/schematics shouldn't be available in case people do want to repair devices.

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

#383

Post by Foxfox12 » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

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.

The only bad part is some of these parts are stolen from users. Because the main board on an iPhone is account locked, crime groups will strip the phone down for parts and sell these on eBay to people looking to fix their phones.

This is why I think Apple should account lock all parts on the iPhone and tell the user this but if the original owner unlinks the phone, the parts will work again.

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

#384

Post by loceng » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

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?

Sure, when people aren't getting reasonable ROI from that tax money - e.g. it's invested poorly and not invested in a way that's improving enough of their own community.

Imagine if paying tax was voluntary - how relatively quickly communities of people who valued and understood the value of that pooling and who voted in competent politicians to manage their community would thrive/grow vs. the free-for-all and deterioration of infrastructure in areas where people opted not to pay; mind you private businesses may provide better services and people using them is them voting for their existence (voluntary payment) - though arguably initially before enough wealth was generated it would have been impossible to borrow the $100s of billions needed to start massive infrastructure projects; from my understanding there's a bit of this, along with more or less corrupting, in Democratic vs. Republican leaning states.

Re: bribes - I'd argue that amount of people wouldn't fit within the definition of following the spirit of the mechanism - you need a foundation with integrity to start for it to be an honest signal; or it's the reverse, the anti, bribery a sign of a lack of integrity and accountability in the system.

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

#385

Post by White_Wolf » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:54 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #313

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.

I don't know what to say about that. HP wanted to charge me the price of a new laptop motherboard for a forgotten BIOS password(around £650). A guy, in the phone repair shop on the high street replaced the BIOS chips for £112 and my laptop runs like a champ. It's a pretty big difference for a laptop worth around £1500.

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

#386

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:54 PM UTC

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?

[deleted]

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

#387

Post by dataflow » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #376

dataflow wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The history is absolutely crucial here because the lack of people's interests in "alternative explanations" at this point in time is literally the history. There was room for it in the past, people gave the benefit of the doubt, and then year after year Apple kept debunking it through more and more consistent bad behavior. The ship has sailed already. At some point you gotta realize the doubt that you're so generously trying to give them the benefit of has been vanishing.

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

#388

Post by kragen » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

worik wrote: post #311

nrp wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're not the customer, you're the product.

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

#389

Post by nwallin » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #352

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…

> 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 I really doubt that many of those genuine repair parts for iphones and macbooks are stolen , in the sense that somebody loaded up a pallet and took it from its manufacturer…

What kind of theft, and from whom?

My understanding is that a person with decision making power at these factories are negotiating with third party repair shops, agreeing on a price, and selling authentic Apple badged components or Apple schematics to them. In that sense, it is not theft.

My understanding is that this is in absolute violation of Apple's license agreements and contracts with these factories. Those factories do not have a de jure legal right to sell those parts. In that sense, it is intellectual property theft.

If and when these factories put those components on a palette, put that palette into a container, and put that container onto a ship, and that ship sails to a Western country with intellectual property protections, Apple has reported the shipments to customs authorities and gotten them seized as counterfeit parts, despite the fact that they were manufactured as part of the same batches as parts that became devices that were sold in Apple stores. Apple's problem is that China doesn't give a shit about any objections Apple might have to two CCP sanctioned Chinese businesses doing (illegal) business with each other.

It shouldn't be intellectual property theft- Apple ought to be obliged to make these components and schematics available at fair prices to shops like Rossman's. But that's the way it ought to be- in the mean time, it is theft, and those parts are stolen. Hopefully we'll be able to get the laws fixed someday.

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

#390

Post by eigen » Sun, May 23, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #339

Nextgrid wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yet Prius catalytic convertors are apparently a big market, so much so that it is a regularly stolen item. so someone is buying these parts to install when a car is serviced.

[1] https://www.inquirer.com/business/toyota-prius-catalytic-con...

[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/thieves-target-toyota-p...!

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/feb/01/catalytic-conv...

> The thieves make about £300 to £500 from every converter stolen, fenced through scrap metal dealers, with car manufacturers warning that a gap in the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013 enables dodgy dealers to buy them without checks required on where they came from.