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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

#441

Post by vecinu »

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 don't personally have the time to watch a 20-minute video to see what the hell he's talking about,

I personally find your reply in bad faith because both Greek0 and 8bitsrule took the time to find and share the video with you as well as explain the context around it.

That's not even considering the time that Louis Rossman went through to make that "20 minute video" because it takes much longer to film, edit and publish the damn thing.

This is like an extreme form of trolling to derail the conversation, usually it's "please provide a source", which someone did but you hand waved it away with "I don't have time to watch it". It legitimately upset me.

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

#442

Post by neurotech1 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #354
cgearhart wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> because the government didn’t have data rights to the design in order to hold down development costs Isn't this the very problem? These kinds of contracts should be illegal, not just in the military, but across the whole public sector. Not getting full designs along with a custom product makes the public agency dependent on a commercial vendor. Might as well put a neon sign above should provision that says "a looph…

Yes. They should have data rights. It very quickly becomes false economy.

On a similar topic, a lot of LRUs (Line Replaceable Unit) in aircraft such as the F-35, the front-line maintainers, or even squadron/wing level avionics shops, can't even do basic diagnostics on the LRU. They either have to get a manufacturer tech representative to do it, or send the box back to the manufacture for repair. They are routinely returned "No fault found" with a significant cost attached.

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

#443

Post by WalterBright »

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?

Take a look at economist C. Northcote Parkinson's books. He points out that when tax rates are 10%, people happily pay their taxes as their duty to live in society. People who cheat get ostracized. Various things start going awry at 20% and 30%, and at 40% tax evasion becomes the national pastime. People regard as fools people who don't evade taxes.

Think about the people who are running away from California due to their confiscatory taxes, and then California goes after them claiming they still are residents. Think about the people in government who openly want to dismantle the wealthy - like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

What do you think will happen?

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

#444

Post by [deleted] »

zabzonk wrote: post #380
lotsofpulp wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#445

Post by WalterBright »

zabzonk wrote: post #380
lotsofpulp wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd be concerned about laws so onerous that a police state is needed to get compliance.

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

#446

Post by GekkePrutser »

tzs wrote: post #427
GekkePrutser wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember in the 80s, devices would all come with the complete schematics right there in the box. I remember poring over them after buying something, I thought it was fascinating. Like my TV, computer etc. Everything. This should really be brought back, even though component-level fixing is not nearly as easy as it was back then.

In the 1960s DIY TV repair was such a big thing that there were self-service kiosks in supermarkets that sold vacuum tubes and included a tube tester. When your TV stopped working, you took the back panel off with the TV turned on and looked to see which tube was not glowing. You would then turn the TV off, pull that tube from its socket, take it down to the supermarket, stick it into the correct socket on the kiosk,…

Wow, I would so not do that without rubber gloves or something. I've always been pretty hesitant working on CRTs knowing the voltages present in there (and they could linger for a long time due to charged capacitors).

Was the failure mode of tubes always such that it would stop glowing? I'm surprised they always failed in that way. I suppose the main issue would be that the heater filament would burn out and stop emitting electrons. Just like the filament in a light bulb.

When I was young tubes were already becoming uncommon. If a device still used them it was only for some high-power stuff like an amp final. Though of course the CRT itself lingered much longer.

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

#447

Post by jolux »

jaggederest wrote: post #431
nwallin wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fac…

Theft is the wrong word here. No IP violation is a theft unless it involves "a person intentionally takes personal property of another without permission or consent and with the intent to convert it to the taker's use". It's a violation of copyright, trademark, trade secrets, counterfeiting or patent, but it is not theft. The usage of the verbiage "theft" started in the late eighties to early nineties as part of a ca…

>No IP violation is a theft unless it involves "a person intentionally takes personal property of another without permission or consent and with the intent to convert it to the taker's use".

How does selling physical parts that were manufactured for someone else in violation of a contract not fall under this definition? Is the seller paying for the manufacture of these parts, or is Apple?

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

#448

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

lmm wrote: post #420
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term counterfeit is here being used by some people to mean 'genuine parts sold off-license', which is much more like a bootleg copy [1]. That is, it's the same item sold off-license. To some extent words mean what people who use them intend to mean, but in my opinion we shouldn't be calling parts from the same production line counterfeit , because the word implies forgery .[2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo…

> To some extent words mean what people who use them intend to mean, but in my opinion we shouldn't be calling parts from the same production line counterfeit, because the word implies forgery.[2] If they had a particular QC standard marking, but had not been manufactured in accordance with that level of QC, that would be forgery, right? If they bear the trademark of a company that demands certain QC standards, but w…

I think you're intentional straining to disagree with me.

You don't have to do that.

You're probably partly right some of the time, and my perspective probably has some value perhaps maybe.

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

#449

Post by juskrey »

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…

There is of course a market of Apple devices stolen for parts, but majority of spare parts are coming from used donor devices, obtained at discount, I believe big shops may also buy new ones solely for parts

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

#450

Post by m4rtink »

rasz wrote: post #433
walrus01 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>in the sense that somebody loaded up a pallet and took it from its manufacturer without paying. Pay is involved, and its Apple authorized recyclers who are selling parts on the black market breaching Apple contract stating everything needs to go into Shredder and get pulverized into dust. Here is just one example "Apple sues GEEP for not shredding reusable iPhones" https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/0…

So not just making repairs as hard as possible but paying people to shred perfectly serviceable hardware to prevent that! Wow, that's beyond evil, for so many reasons!
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