Offtopic: on mobile I get a really awful ad that puts borders on the whole screen, and cuts off the article's words on the far left and right. I'd say I will never go to this site again, but then again, I may as well never read news on mobile again, right? (As this ad might just pop up on another site anyway) Still, it's a shameful practice.
The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
101–110 of 128 posts
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would people boycott a company with a strong market position that is operating within the bounds of what it can get away with? This reads like suggesting people should boycott their favorite restaurants because reasons.
Because what they get away with is abusive and shows no regard for consumers. Your comment reads like you ignored all of the context of my comment. It's like if your favorite restaurant served really good burgers for $1000, but if the pickles and lettuce fell out and you tried to put them back in, the waiter would come over and slap the burger out of your hand and make you spend another $1000 to get a whole new burge…
It's not like that at all, because a restaurant which did that would rapidly go out of business, and these companies are quite profitable, because people like what they're getting.
Repairability is treated like a terminal good around HN, and that's understandable, but it doesn't reflect the values of the general public. Most civilians who crack their screen are going to put up with it until they can buy a new phone, because they were going to get a new phone anyway.
The fact that a repair is expensive is in a feedback loop with this sort of behavior. If consumers wanted to keep phones for five years and have an affordable battery or screen swap during that time, they'd demand it, and they'd get it. There are a lot of Android phone vendors.
That isn't to say that the status quo is ideal, and I do expect it to change as Moore's Law starts to level out, with smartphone design following the same curve. I would even say we're starting to see that happen.
But if consumers thought Samsung was abusive and showed no regard for them, they wouldn't buy phones from Samsung. But they do buy phones from Samsung, so they don't think that.
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#103Offtopic: on mobile I get a really awful ad that puts borders on the whole screen, and cuts off the article's words on the far left and right. I'd say I will never go to this site again, but then again, I may as well never read news on mobile again, right? (As this ad might just pop up on another site anyway) Still, it's a shameful practice.
Firefox on android supports installing uBlock Origin.
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed that for-profit relationships are inappropriate, and I also think iFixit’s business selling repair tools and parts is inappropriate. The whole thing comes across as self-promotion for their tools/parts business. Add in their dabbling in lobbying for regulations to force manufacturers to make devices that you can buy ifixit (and other) kits for… and it starts to feel as disingenuous as Epic’s “pro-consumer” int…
> iFixit’s business selling repair tools and parts is inappropriate. But isn't that why they exist? I have always seen the teardowns and repairability scores as advertising. If they didn't sell repair tools then what would they make money on?
The same way Wikipedia makes money. I would donate to a crowd sourced repair wiki.
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#105Offtopic: on mobile I get a really awful ad that puts borders on the whole screen, and cuts off the article's words on the far left and right. I'd say I will never go to this site again, but then again, I may as well never read news on mobile again, right? (As this ad might just pop up on another site anyway) Still, it's a shameful practice.
This site turned my phone into a radiator (and knocked off four percent of battery), so it’s just stuffed to the gills with this stuff.
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems much simpler than that to me: iFixit isn’t an advocacy group, they’re in the business of selling parts directly to consumers, and they’re calling out what looks to be an outrageous markup from the sole supplier. Any advocacy they do is in support of their business. They’re a free market solution demanding a freer market.
The sole supplier is using the free market to set its pricing, limit its warehousing overhead, and drive sales of new products. Don't like it, buy something else.
It sounds like you're saying "buy something else, and that's all you should do", but loudly discussing these things is part of making "buy something else" have a chance of being effective.
Also, I like repairability laws here too even if some people don't.
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#107I really liked the plans Samsung employees had to give old phones a new life. I have a box of mostly working phones from different companies and I often wish there was an easy way to use them for different automation tasks around the house. Anyway, I'm not surprised it didn't work. Engineers see possibilities while lawyers only think about how something goes very wrong and the company ends up in court.
I had an idea and even basic prototype a million years ago where I was going to get a bunch of used cheap Android phones for free or very cheap, and make a transcoding cluster out of it and make a ton of money. I figured that no one wants old phones, and Android phones are relatively powerful and utilize a relatively small amount of power, so I'd be able to undercut competitors, and I thought it would be a good idea to get more life out of these computers and reduce e-waste.
I got ahold of most of my friends and family's "old phones living in a drawer", and I did more or less get the prototype working with a message queue, but I never really figured out a good way to utilize the built in h264 encoding chips, so it was always extremely slow software encoding, slow enough to where I don't think anyone would have actually paid me for it, and I lost interest in it.
I don't think it was a dumb idea, and it's not something I've completely given up on doing eventually, but I don't think it was as clever as 23 year old me thought it was either. If anyone here disagrees feel free to take it and run with it.
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#108There are many companies that just do whatever they can get away with and because of their market position, this is a lot. Maybe someday there will be a movement to boycott these abusive companies or something. Check out https://futo.org
Why would people boycott a company with a strong market position that is operating within the bounds of what it can get away with? This reads like suggesting people should boycott their favorite restaurants because reasons.
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Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
If people find "what they can get away with" to be objectionable, what's wrong with avoiding doing business with them? Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's acceptable.
Absolutely. My reaction was to the idea that throngs of current customers who are happy enough with the deal to keep buying "should" not just stop buying but organize a boycott. Feels like a classic "those sheeple think they're happy but they aren't" take.
> Feels like a classic "those sheeple think they're happy but they aren't" take.
It's not that at all. It's "those people could negotiate a better deal if they acted together".
> not just stop buying but organize a boycott.
The goal isn't to not buy, the goal is to get a better deal and then keep buying.
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Xcover is more of an enterprise product. It's not really interesting for consumers because the bang for the buck is low, due to the price being aimed high so that they can offer bigger discount to the enterprises buying 10k of these in one go. They aim these at front line workers, eg warehouses, public service etc. For consumers they had the galaxy S Active line which sadly has been discontinued..
In the sense that most enterprise products are company-issued, the likelihood of self-repair is probably pretty low.
Well funnily enough these phones are quite easy to repair, they even have removable batteries :) That's one really easy thing that often comes up (especially with the amount of work these devices do every day on the manufacturing line and warehouse) that can definitely easily be "repaired" in-house.