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Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

arstechnica.com

41–50 of 165 posts

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#41
post #19
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The individual components are coded to the device/can't hot swap identical parts and have it just work. Hugh Jeffreys demoed it with a laptop and phone

Apple's self repair program lets you link the parts to your device with a phone call, so that's moot

I wonder how long it takes to reach the representative. So so soooo many companies hide behind excruciating customer service hell holes to get out of being responsible for fixing mistakes.

"You can right to repair, you just have to wait 3 hours on the phone on the world's least stable customer service line."

I shouldn't have to drag my balls through apple's pile of glass to use the product I purchased. This is nearly every giant corporation these days, so I guess i have to just stop purchasing anything but necessities.

I should note I do not blame the customer service representatives for this. Most businesses are obviously running a skeleton crew and most of the people you talk go have zero authority to fix an issue.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#44
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would also make its parts, tools, and repair documentation available to both non-affiliated repair shops and individual customers, "at fair and reasonable prices“. not sure if this is related, but it looks like a step in the right direction.

Who would decide what "fair and reasonable prices" are? The only reasonable price for documentation that already exists is quite frankly zero.

The other question here is how granular these parts are going to be, a board level repair technician might need just one proprietary chip that ought to cost $5, but if their only option to get it is to buy an entire replacement motherboard...

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#45
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope there is some clause that exempts small manufacturers from having to comply...

Wait, what? Why should Inas a consumer have fewer rights because I bought a product from a smaller company? Should small airlines have less stringent safety regulations?

It would depend on the extent to which the consumer is a willing participant in the trade offs. It’s unreasonable for every passenger to assess the safety of different airlines in making a decision on who to fly with, but if you’re buying a niche smartphone you’re probably more aware of the trade offs.

Also running a small batch of non-RtR compliant phones is probably going to result in a more expensive device than a mass produced RtR device due to economies of scale, whereas I’d guess it’s much easier for a small airline to undercut competitors by foregoing safety checks, so there’s more adverse incentives in the airline case.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#46
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should see the amount of non repairable landfilled junk from going to a kids’ birthday party. Not only does the birthday kid get a ton of non repairable cheap toys they will only play with a couple times, but every kid that attends gets their own “party favor” bag filled with non repairable landfilled junk from Dollar Tree or Amazon. My household has tons of Apple devices, but I guarantee the amount that have end…

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>Question: before Apple invented airpods, how many lithium ion battery powered headphones were in landfills? Nearly zero, because folks used wired headphones.

Bluetooth headphones existed prior to 2016 when the AirPods were released. Wireless headsets for phones were also very disposable. Wireless buds were also poor quality and didn't last.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#47
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should see the amount of non repairable landfilled junk from going to a kids’ birthday party. Not only does the birthday kid get a ton of non repairable cheap toys they will only play with a couple times, but every kid that attends gets their own “party favor” bag filled with non repairable landfilled junk from Dollar Tree or Amazon. My household has tons of Apple devices, but I guarantee the amount that have end…

[flagged]

I live in a big house full of roommates and they think I am crazy when i ask to be given any trash that has a battery.

No I am not hoarding your "disposable" unrefillable vape pens with lithium ion batteries, I recycle everything properly.

How these vape pen businesses are still in business is beyond all rationality. They should all be shut down until every single vape pen is recovered from the dumps around the world.

I don't work in waste management, hopefully they have a process that captures these e-waste devices down stream. But I doubt it.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#48

Cynically this could be one of those laws that the big producers like Apple have a competitive advantage over smaller companies that do one-off production runs with contract manufacturers. When you are at the scale of Apple, you could have a whole team designing your right-to-repair compliant processes, and lobbyists to ensure the law as passed is most favorable to your implementation. It also fits in nicely with App…

I hope there is some clause that exempts small manufacturers from having to comply...

Why? They should be forced to release schematics, software, and firmware if they can't handle the repairs themselves. This will allow someone to repair it without assistance from the manufacturer.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#49

Please don't attach any morals to this because there aren't any. This is just another step in a long string of similar announcements and "actions" from Apple to gather ammo against lawsuits and new bills, delay or buy any good will they can get regarding this matter. It's appears they are convinced some meaningful part of the "Right to Repair" can't be stopped and of course as competent strategists they are, Apple ca…

Totally agree; I don't trust them for a minute. If they were so about right to repair we would be able to easily change our batteries in our Apple devices but we all know that that is super difficult if possible at all.

Re: Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools

#50
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's self repair program lets you link the parts to your device with a phone call, so that's moot

I wonder how long it takes to reach the representative. So so soooo many companies hide behind excruciating customer service hell holes to get out of being responsible for fixing mistakes. "You can right to repair, you just have to wait 3 hours on the phone on the world's least stable customer service line." I shouldn't have to drag my balls through apple's pile of glass to use the product I purchased. This is nearly…

You've clearly never used Apple Support because they are by far the best support I've ever used and their size makes it even more impressive. You can get a human incredibly fast.
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