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

491–500 of 562 posts

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

#491

Post by planb »

swiley wrote: post #419
pembrook wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, sh…

Yeah no that's bullshit. (and a change of subject) We're not asking for modular connectors (although those are nice) or larger competents. we're asking Apple (and everyone imitating them) to stop artificially preventing people from replacing parts (either via deals with suppliers that prevent people from buying them or via software lockouts.) People do surface mount rework all the time (I think the guy TFA is talking…

>We're not asking for modular connectors (although those are nice) or larger competents.

You might not, but OP did: "Why can't Apple make their products easily repairable while making them aesthetically pleasing?"

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

#492

Post by ako »

m1el wrote: post #453
jolux wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

> Is the seller paying for the manufacture of these parts, or is Apple. I don't know the actual situation, but let's say for the sake of argument; - Apple pays $1M to make 1M chips, with the contract that forbids making these parts to sell third parties. - A Shenzhen shop pays $15K to make 10K of the same parts, the manufacturer breaches the contract, violates Apple's IP and makes extra parts for the shop. None of th…

If the design of the chips is created abd owned by apple, using that same design to manufacture chips for someone else, is theft of design. Apple spend a lot of time and money creating that design.

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

#493

Post by swiley »

pembrook wrote: post #428
swiley wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah no that's bullshit. (and a change of subject) We're not asking for modular connectors (although those are nice) or larger competents. we're asking Apple (and everyone imitating them) to stop artificially preventing people from replacing parts (either via deals with suppliers that prevent people from buying them or via software lockouts.) People do surface mount rework all the time (I think the guy TFA is talking…

> “People do surface mount rework all the time” What percentage of Apple customers are doing surface mount rework, or even hiring other people to do this, in your estimation? My guess is less than .01%. And how much could that really be increased if Apple were forced to make their parts accessible and available in the aftermarket? Vs the carbon footprint of the extra manufacturing effort and having to set up distribu…

I wasn't doing it until I had to replace the backlight chip (in a computer where there was already at least one module on the mother board, so there absolutely was room to put the backlight circuit on a module but I think Apple keeps it on the motherboard to save money which means lots of dead macs.)

Also you only need 0.1%. The computer I worked on wasn't mine.

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

#494

Post by Siira »

worik wrote: post #476
kragen wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not in this case mate. I paid them. I am the creative cutting edge!

Paying doesn’t magically make them not want to extract all of your value. Apple could sell iPhones at a loss just because of the AppStore theft, and still survive.

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

#495

Post by swiley »

planb wrote: post #491
swiley wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah no that's bullshit. (and a change of subject) We're not asking for modular connectors (although those are nice) or larger competents. we're asking Apple (and everyone imitating them) to stop artificially preventing people from replacing parts (either via deals with suppliers that prevent people from buying them or via software lockouts.) People do surface mount rework all the time (I think the guy TFA is talking…

>We're not asking for modular connectors (although those are nice) or larger competents. You might not, but OP did: "Why can't Apple make their products easily repairable while making them aesthetically pleasing?"

That's not incompatible with what I said.

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

#496

Post by jve »

34679 wrote: post #203

I just did my first surface mount repair this morning and it 100% happened because of Rossmann's channel. It was so easy that I feel like I should have been doing it much sooner. The things I've thrown away over the years..

Louis has helped a bit, but I'm encouraged by NorthridgeFix

https://youtube.com/c/NorthridgeFix

Great channel. Sometimes lacks deep dive into troubleshooting, but certainly encourages to do microscopic work.

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

#497

Post by chevill »

asddubs wrote: post #485
chevill wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but you also have to take into account that he's internet famous. Probably the most well known person in the computer repair industry says his shop with 16 people is taking in between 1 and 2 million a year. So that's somewhere between 62.5k and 125k per employee annually in revenue. He's doing well enough but its not exactly a money printing machine and you would assume a person at the top of his industry is doi…

I don't think he's really at the top of his industry, financially/size-wise speaking, he's just more prominent on the internet. There's huge repair companies, he's still "just" a small business owner

That's a good point there are probably corporate electronics repair companies out there that have a much larger operation. Perhaps the guys that PC manufacturers contract warranty repair work to. However, I still think its fair to assume that when you take small businesses into account a guy that's as well known and liked as much as Louis is going to be getting way more business than he would if he wasn't famous.

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

#498

Post by swiley »

aasasd wrote: post #306

Tip: if you're curious enough to watch a video of Rossmann's, do that in the incognito mode. Otherwise you'll be pestered with recommendations of the other two thousand of his videos, until the end of your days. Perhaps you'll even be able to follow the epic of his fight by the titles of new videos.

I always watch YouTube in incognito mode, otherwise it pigeonholes you and you don't get to experience all of the breadth of the site. (If you're going to put up with Google you might as well make the most of it.)

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

#499

Post by pembrook »

gravypod wrote: post #475
pembrook wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “People do surface mount rework all the time” What percentage of Apple customers are doing surface mount rework, or even hiring other people to do this, in your estimation? My guess is less than .01%. And how much could that really be increased if Apple were forced to make their parts accessible and available in the aftermarket? Vs the carbon footprint of the extra manufacturing effort and having to set up distribu…

> My guess is less than .01% In the beginning it is theorized that humans were a hunter gatherer species. We dedicated 100% of our time to collecting food. At some point we learned about farming and cultivating livestock. People could now generate more food then they would need. This enabled something magical: one person could generate the food required for a group of people and that group of people could do other th…

Your Mac user numbers are off by a factor of 10X.

The vast majority of those 5 billion internet users are exclusively accessing the internet through smartphones (cheap android ones), and do not even own a desktop PC/laptop. Android and iOS account for most internet traffic. Android alone is 40% of all internet users. [1]

If the 0.01% number I threw out is correct, then that's not 100,000 Mac users. That would mean there's over a billion people with Macbooks, which is off by a factor of 10. Apple only sells 20 million of them a year. 0.01% would mean more like 5-10,000.

There's not enough demand for MacBook repair for Rossman-types to make a living setting up repair shops anywhere outside of NYC/SF.

And again, this would have no affect on the upgrade cycle. Most people do not throw away their computers because they are broken, they throw them away because they are old tech.

I too am nostalgic for the days of building PC towers for my family, however, when I think about it, all of those towers I built ended up in a landfill.

They were all super easy to repair and upgrade, and yet, nobody did.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...

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

#500

Post by swiley »

pembrook wrote: post #499
gravypod wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My guess is less than .01% In the beginning it is theorized that humans were a hunter gatherer species. We dedicated 100% of our time to collecting food. At some point we learned about farming and cultivating livestock. People could now generate more food then they would need. This enabled something magical: one person could generate the food required for a group of people and that group of people could do other th…

Your Mac user numbers are off by a factor of 10X. The vast majority of those 5 billion internet users are exclusively accessing the internet through smartphones (cheap android ones), and do not even own a desktop PC/laptop. Android and iOS account for most internet traffic. Android alone is 40% of all internet users. [1] If the 0.01% number I threw out is correct, then that's not 100,000 Mac users. That would mean th…

>There's not enough demand for MacBook repair for Rossman-types to make a living setting up repair shops anywhere outside of NYC/SF and MAYBE Seattle.

That's an odd thing to say considering the I've seen half a dozen of those kinds of repair shops in the small city near my home town (I never went out of my way to find them.)

The grocery store near where I live now has one inside it. If someone's backlight/screen/camera suddenly stopped working and they could either pay $100 to fix it or $1000 they're probably going to pick the cheaper option. There absolutely is demand for it. Even if there wasn't taking away people's options for no good reason is kind of terrible anyway.

Post reply on HN