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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

#401

Post by spamizbad »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #261
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…

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…

Right to repair would actually ease this burden: Apple manufactures very few components on its devices. Apple prevents its suppliers from selling to third parties (which wouldn’t necessarily be a repair shop but someone like digikey or mouser) of some pretty basic components that do not contain any real secret sauce (we are talking about things like voltage regulators here)

The auto industry has widespread part available for decades with no ill effects.

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

#402

Post by emsy »

Nodraak wrote: post #253
emsy wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, the niche channels are pretty good, but we don’t have personalities like Sam Harris, Joe Rogan etc. the closest that comes to mind is maiLab but she’s not exactly polarizing or unconventional.

Hey! Jumping in, because I'm learning German: do you have other suggestions appart from MaiLab?

Maybe the German version of kurzgesagt or Technikfaultier for some tech reviews , other than that I don’t really sorry. The other German youtubers I occasionally watch all speak English in their videos (Sabine hossenfelder for example).

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

#403

Post by CivBase »

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 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

The right to repair laws Louis Rossmann advocates for do not require manufacturers to change their designs to make repairs easier. Apple would still be allowed to solder memory on their devices without any repercussions.

> I’m also just as happy dropping my phone off at a corner shop to replace the glass (while preserving the same electronics) using an industrial laminating machine.

Louis Rossmann owns and operates the kind of "corner shop" you're referring to. He certainly isn't demanding everyone repairs their own devices. He's just advocating for the ability for owners and third parties to repair devices without interference from manufacturers.

> When I go to a corner store in the US the “solution” to swap the whole sub-assembly (glass+electronics) not just glass in case of a screen repair for $100+

That's because US shops cannot legally acquire parts and schematics necessary to perform component-level repair. Technicians in Chinese street markets aren't worried about legal retaliation from US-based companies. Right to repair would ensure owners and third parties could legally acquire the parts and schematics for repairs. They don't even need the manufacturer to provide the parts and schematics; they just need to be protected from legal retaliation.

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

#404

Post by GuB-42 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #183
GuB-42 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he just understood how YouTube and social media works. New content is more rant and less repair. Anyone can enjoy a good rant troubleshooting motherboards and soldering components is less accessible. Makes me think of Thunderf00t. This guy is a massive troll with, from time to time, great scientific content. He has a lot of followers just here to enjoy the trolling, as evidenced by the fact he is never questi…

I do not understand how or why people prefer spending time listening or watching people talk to each other. Is it not much quicker to read transcripts? And why would I want all the noise that happens in the conversation? Reading a summary of the meat and pickles is far more efficient. “YouTube culture” puzzles me. I love it for instructional videos though.

Intonation, body language, etc... Generally transcripts don't make good reads. Well written articles/stories are a different thing.

As for summaries, long form / short form is an endless debate. Some people say summaries are worthless because you don't get the context and nuances. Others say long form articles (and videos) are a waste of time. Most people are somewhere between these two extremes.

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

#405

Post by _dps »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #372
_dps wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 low…

I think you've misunderstood what I meant; I mean incentives for businesses to pay their people more (or to offer something like apprenticeships).

As for status not being lowered by words, we'll have to agree to disagree. No one in practice (in the US) calls medical school "vocational school" precisely because it is a phrase associated with lower status work in the trades.

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

#406

Post by pembrook »

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 "…

It's because they can see the bigger picture, beyond these 2010s-era complaints of 'user-upgradable RAM.' This is totally irrelevant in a SOC world.

Apple is indeed reducing the carbon footprint of computer manufacturing, by consolidating more and more components on a single chip (SOC) with M1, and creating smaller and smaller hardware.

There's a ridiculous amount of carbon footprint saved by not having to source, ship, and assemble separate RAM, GPUs, Processors, etc from separate suppliers located all across the world.

10 years from now when your entire motherboard and all its components sit inside a chip small enough to fit inside a single AirPod...and 20 years from now when the need for physical LCD/OLED panels disappears...does it really matter how repairable it is? Even 100 million of them won't fill a single average-sized landfill.

Hell, we've already broke 1nm [1]. This means hardware will continue to get smaller and smaller for years to come.

Hardware consolidation and physical size reduction is the bigger gain, and the goal we all should be focused on if we actually care about sustainability.

The fact is, only a tiny minority of consumers would even entertain the idea of replacing computer components in the first place. This has been true for the 4 decades PCs have been around with easily replaceable hardware, so I don't think Apple changing to Philips head screws is going to change that.

[1] https://technosports.co.in/2021/05/20/tsmc-mit-and-ntu-annou...

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

#407

Post by chrisseaton »

someguydave wrote: post #400
chrisseaton wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

apple authorized stores and retailers can buy modules or send them to apple

They clearly aren't sending them to Apple, because they do it while you wait.

And they don't claim to be authorised in any way. I would have thought if they were they'd make a big deal of that.

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

#409

Post by hnick »

schoolornot wrote: post #397
webmobdev wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Would hope such legislation articulates exactly what parts of a "phone" would need to be made available. There are hundreds of parts in an iPhone. It's unreasonable to expect that Apple or any vendor have the resources to make sure every single part, large and small, is available to 3rd party repair shops.

It is not about making them available. It is about not not making them available. Right now if you email a factory that has the parts they will say they are not allowed to sell them to you for any price even if they have them because Apple/etc said so. It is about removing that gag.

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

#410

Post by 8bitsrule »

jeffbee wrote: post #379
Greek0 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I had the time to watch the video. He demonstrates (schematics and images) that a common anti-boneheaded design consideration Apple had adhered to in the past - spacing high-voltage traces away from very-low-voltage traces - disappeared in a more recent model (making it easy for 40+ volts to reach the CPU).

One professional EE would absolutely notice this. So there's no 'maybe' here.

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