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New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

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Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#131

Post by ninalanyon »

shevy-java wrote: post #97

> People now have the right to request that manufacturers repair products that are technically repairable under EU law. This kind of misses the point though. Don't get me wrong, the above is nice to have as a law, but it does not really understand the underlying problem domain. Louis Rossmann explained it several times already; the problem was not that primarily that upstream companies refuse to repair something, but…

No one is claiming that what the EU has done is perfect but you have to start somewhere. After that you move on and improve.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#132

Post by dwaite »

seemaze wrote: post #5
vv_ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Updating old products is expensive, especially as their hardware falls further behind. Unless manufacturers adopt some kind of subscription model to justify the cost of continued updates, which would likely be very unpopular, I don’t see how they can realistically keep older devices supported indefinitely.

unlock old hardware and let the community support

It is a nice thought, but there may not be a ton of effort in starting reverse engineering projects on a full custom silicon stack 7+ years after release (when Apple typically stops supporting hardware)

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#133

Post by mrguyorama »

fhn wrote: post #123
m000 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially vaping devices. Cigarette butts were at least easier to dispose of than these plastic encased tips and single use vapes.

it's insane to me they designed it to be higher cost(li-ion + usb charging + oled screens!) than just using disposable AA batteries.

It should be helping you to understand just how absurdly cheap per unit a commodity consumer product is.

Vs how much you pay for it.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#134

Post by maxerickson »

fanatic2pope wrote: post #110
maxerickson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty likely that manufacturers would charge handsomely for these requirements. At least at first. You'd probably also get things like TVs with very basic software at import, with much better software available for people willing to obtain it outside the EU.

A TV without software sounds like a dream. Just give me a working HDMI-in port and I'll take care of the rest, thanks!

Yeah that's misunderstanding my point. The compliance software might, for example, only play an old format from USB. Probably at low resolution.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#135

Post by xxs »

j16sdiz wrote: post #67
tpxl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The manufacturer/seller already employs people who deal with this, and it's not expensive. Getting my washing machine fixed for 10€ parts + labor instead of 300€ parts + labor sounds mighty nice to me. > Manufacturers must also provide [...] access to spare parts at a reasonable price. This is the important part. Stupid shit like 0.3€ soldering buttons to 200€ motherboards so the repair is expensive has got to go.

> Stupid shit like 0.3€ soldering buttons to 200€ motherboards I won't call soldering anything on a 20-layers pcb "stupid shit".

I don't know of any PC motherboard to be 20-layers. "Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Dark Hero" is like 650 euro and it's "merely" 8 layers. Edit: "MSI MEG X870E Godlike" is 1200 euro or so and 10 layers.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#136

Post by euroderf »

shiandow wrote: post #39
expedition32 wrote: post #36

I live in a rich European country. This is not Shenzhen. The, very scarce, technically inclined people who know how to repair a vacuum cleaner or electronic toothbrush can get a real job with an hourly rate that makes repairs economically unfeasible. Repair cafes are nice hobby projects for pensionados but it is not going to move the needle.

You underestimate my willingness to 'under sell' my free time by spending it to fix something I own.

For "fix" substitute "assemble": there's the Ikea model.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#137

Post by apatheticonion »

amelius wrote: post #112
apatheticonion wrote: post #95

I would like this to be extended to software. If I buy an Android phone, I should be able to maintain/update the operating system. If I buy a MacBook, I should be able to maintain or change the operating system. If I buy a TV, smart watch, microwave - I should be able to maintain their software. The only thing prohibiting this is the fact that drivers are obfuscated and/or hardware schematics sufficient to produce dr…

You forgot iPhone.

FR the iPhone is such a great missed opportunity.

Imagine if someone developed a Linux based mobile OS that could run on it.

Imagine if someone figured out that the USB-C port could do displayport out.

Then imagine plugging that Linux iPhone into a usbc dock or lapdock (laptop with only a screen, keyboard and usbc input) and having a Linux desktop pop up.

The MacBook Neo already proved that iPhone hardware is fast enough for general purpose desktop computing - why aren't we allowed to do that?

Oh right, because the bootloader is locked and (practically) no one outside of Apple can produce hardware drivers without documentation.

It isn't a lack of skill or lack of demand - it's hardware gatekeeping by vendors.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#138

Post by vv_ »

ethbr1 wrote: post #125
vv_ wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is to say, increasing repairability shouldn't just be measured by how likely the first world is to use it, but also to how useful it would be to downstream consumers. Cars are a good example of this. Historically, people in Western Europe would sell their used vehicles into what was essentially a second-hand market in Eastern Europe. This worked and continues to work to this day. While a car is a good example…

> And I'm not talking about the difficulty of replacing a glued-in battery, but rather the cost and expertise required for component-level repairs on the motherboard, something no regulation is going to magically make disappear Fair, on the hardware side, but why shouldn't we try to improve things on the firmware/software side, if it can be regulated at negligible cost? (the vendor releasing things instead of simply…

> if it can be regulated at negligible cost?

> If regulation existed that forced, then third parties that want to sell into the mobile market would license / assign IP under the terms they have to.

> The unreleasable stack due to third party IP is a contract/market problem, not a fundamental universal truth.

That was my point. The regulation would not come at negligible cost. It is also entirely unreasonable to demand that manufacturers provide the source code for their firmware when all a user may actually want to do is install a different operating system. Some kind of SDK or developer kit with closed-source binaries should be sufficient for this, with the understanding that users would lose access to certain features, such as Apple Pay or Google Pay, as well as some security features relying on the chain of trust.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#139

Post by Telaneo »

maxerickson wrote: post #134
fanatic2pope wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A TV without software sounds like a dream. Just give me a working HDMI-in port and I'll take care of the rest, thanks!

Yeah that's misunderstanding my point. The compliance software might, for example, only play an old format from USB. Probably at low resolution.

If it's a TV, I don't want that either. If it's something where that type of functionality will be useful, it'll surely be listed in the specs, and nobody's going to buy it if it only lists 480p. If it lists better capabilities (on EU listings and whatnot), but it can only actually do that with the non-EU firmware, then that sounds like false advertising to me. Not to mention that if people can actually reprogram it, someone will reimplement the relevant features.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#140

Post by tzs »

troupo wrote: post #2

> including a repair obligation for manufacturers of certain products Unfortunately regulations often don't go far enough. I have a ~10 year old iPad Pro in perfect working condition. I can basically do nothing with it, and increasingly it can no longer even browse the internet because Safari is so outdated on it. So it will be waste. See similar story about Amazon bricking old Kindles: https://www.techradar.com/tabl…

Is bricking accurate there? From what I've read the old Kindles can no longer download from the Amazon store, which is the only reasonable way to get new Kindle books onto a Kindle.

However, any Kindle books they have already downloaded to that Kindle will continue to work, and can be backed up and restored to a desktop computer over USB.

Also any Kindle books they bought for that Kindle when Amazon allowed downloading to desktop for later USB loading can still be loaded that way.

Finally, it still works for non-DRM books from other sources. It is essentially now like a non-Kindle ebook reader that also happens to be able to read the set of Kindle books you already have.

Oh, and you also have to avoid doing a factory reset or deregistering the Kindle. It will then lose the ability to read Kindle books, making it even more like a non-Kindle ebook reader.

You might not be totally screwed out of your Kindle books even then. We are talking about devices that were introduced in 2012 or earlier and last sold new in September 2014.

Amazon only succeeded in hardening their DRM to the point that DRM removal tools don't work for most people in the last couple of years or so. That means there is a good chance that the Kindle books of most of the affected users have reasonably breakable DRM.

There are some things that might have happened since they bought the books that updated the DRM on their copies, but if you just downloaded the books, and only later moved them off and on via USB (manually or with something like Calibre) to manage space on the device, and did not also read them in the Amazon desktop Kindle app then they are almost certainly still using the original DRM and that can easily be stripped.

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