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There is now a European standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff

de.ifixit.com

111–120 of 201 posts

Re: There is now a European standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff

#111
post #72
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it will get especially worse with the switch to their own silicon. It is not as if you could exchange the CPU in your current Mac either, with the possible exception of the Mac Pro. Same with the software. The pure fact that they demonstrated a Linux VM in the keynote shows, that they understand at least the requirements of the Mac users.

I'm really not bothered by this. While I appreciate the right to repair, I don't think a lot of stuff is repairable with any reasonably easy to obtain equipment these days. It's limiting all repairs to FRU replacement. I can rework everything down to 0402's and MSOP packages but BGAs and things like that, forget it. We really should be fighting for better consumer rights legislation in our respective countries where…

>but BGAs and things like that, forget it.

Sure. But things like batteries should be replacable in all devices. It's a consumable item, and it shouldn't even be counted as a repair at all.

The fact that modern electronics, and especially phones, is designed to be disposable is infuriating. And Apple says they care so ooh much about the environment, but wants you to throw your headphones in a landfill when the battey dies. Disgusting.

Re: There is now a European standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff

#112
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't surprise me. The crowd of people who are aware of the fairphone are most likely techies. And I would wager techies are much more likely to replace a Phone then the Generic Apple user.

No one I’d call a techie bought it, it was the artsy environmental types. The reasons for replacing it ranges from the OS not being updated to run modern Apps to the phone breaking. We’re pretty digitised in Denmark, so if you can’t download apps from the iOS or play stores you’ll have a harder time transferring payments to friends, using public transportation, ordering food online, interacting with the public sector…

Android is fine. It's the sub-par hardware that isn't, poor flash memory gets unbearably slow at some point and that bogs down pretty much everything.

Second and related problem is developers that abuse storage, no, you don't need to fsync your logs or DB to the storage after each row. It really fucks with devices that have lost a bit of IOPS.

Re: There is now a European standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff

#113
post #72
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it will get especially worse with the switch to their own silicon. It is not as if you could exchange the CPU in your current Mac either, with the possible exception of the Mac Pro. Same with the software. The pure fact that they demonstrated a Linux VM in the keynote shows, that they understand at least the requirements of the Mac users.

I'm really not bothered by this. While I appreciate the right to repair, I don't think a lot of stuff is repairable with any reasonably easy to obtain equipment these days. It's limiting all repairs to FRU replacement. I can rework everything down to 0402's and MSOP packages but BGAs and things like that, forget it. We really should be fighting for better consumer rights legislation in our respective countries where…

"Recycling" in the context of electronics means that a few rare minerals (gold) get extracted, and the rest (ie. almost everything) ends up in landfills or as filler for roads at best. It's a very energy intensive process with often murky environmental effects, and defintely not just "used to make nee iPhones". Unfortunately!

That's why the phrase is "reduce, reuse, and if all else fails, recycle" and why Apple (and others) are indeed in the wrong when they don't design their products for repairability and long life.

Re: There is now a European standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff

#114
post #4

I hope it will finally force Apple to become more climate-friendly. Their scores in phone repairability are disappointigly low: https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability .

I don't think you understand how much easier it is to repair an iPhone compared to any other phone on the market (apart of niche products like the Fairphone which does a great job!). If you open an iPhone, you will see a very well ordered and packaged arrangement of components. Most Android phones are a hot mess compared with it. If you need a component for an iPhone, you can get it easily. What I'm saying is not tha…

>If you need a component for an iPhone, you can get it easily.

Really? From where? You call Apple asking for spare parts, they'll tell you to pound sand.

Re: There is now a European standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff

#115
post #24

Whenever repairability of modern electronic devices is discussed, I have to look at my mechanical wristwatch. Yes, there is an enormeous amount of technology integrated into a smartphone or compact laptop, but my wristwatch contains over 100 moving parts in a tiny volume. And still, every trained watchmaker can open and service it. It requires specialized tools, but those have been avialable to watchmakers for hundre…

Sorry, but isn't a wristwatch like a bazillionth of complexity of a modern smartphone? How many transistors do you need for a wristwatch?

The whole idea of servicing modern electronics is romantic nonsense. The hourly rate of an expert will make it too expensive quickly, because industrialized mass production is too effective.

(Edit: according to this link on Quora, several billion transistors are not unrealistic in a smartphone https://www.quora.com/How-many-transistors-are-there-in-the-... )

What is the hourly rate of a watchmaker?

Re: There is now a European standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff

#116
post #110
post #24

Whenever repairability of modern electronic devices is discussed, I have to look at my mechanical wristwatch. Yes, there is an enormeous amount of technology integrated into a smartphone or compact laptop, but my wristwatch contains over 100 moving parts in a tiny volume. And still, every trained watchmaker can open and service it. It requires specialized tools, but those have been avialable to watchmakers for hundre…

For consumer notebook repairability the golden standard should be something similar to HP Elitebook 2560p from 2012. No screwdriver required!(with option to have a security screw) While removing battery you can press a latch to remove the back cover. Then you have easy access to everything that a consumer could possible want replacing(HDD/SDD,DVD->HDD, RAM, WIFI). I recently upgraded a cousins 2560p to 16GB and SSD a…

They could no doubt (at a price) make the inside as spectaculrly looking as the outside.

Re: There is now a European standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff

#117
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When apple device stops being supported, it’s just not getting any more updates If effectively means it is absolutely unsafe to use anymore. Security bugs are found in browsers all the time. >Also, the general consumer does not care if you can flash a rom from xda. They care about the official updates. At least there is an option. Also this is exactly why I mentioned F-Droid, which is just an app.

> If effectively means it is absolutely unsafe to use anymore. Security bugs are found in browsers all the time. Aren't the base operating system and the browsers (installed through an app store of some kind) separate? Even if the phone's operating system is not receiving any more updates, there will still be updates to the browser for a while. For instance, a quick search tells me Firefox is still being updated for…

I am talking about Apple devices here (edited for clarity).

Re: There is now a European standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff

#118
post #113
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really not bothered by this. While I appreciate the right to repair, I don't think a lot of stuff is repairable with any reasonably easy to obtain equipment these days. It's limiting all repairs to FRU replacement. I can rework everything down to 0402's and MSOP packages but BGAs and things like that, forget it. We really should be fighting for better consumer rights legislation in our respective countries where…

"Recycling" in the context of electronics means that a few rare minerals (gold) get extracted, and the rest (ie. almost everything) ends up in landfills or as filler for roads at best. It's a very energy intensive process with often murky environmental effects, and defintely not just "used to make nee iPhones". Unfortunately! That's why the phrase is "reduce, reuse, and if all else fails, recycle" and why Apple (and…

Unfortunately modern computing trends make "reuse" pretty difficult too, what with software bloat and increasing layers of abstraction ensuring that everything becomes slower and slower over time, possibly just so that you will buy new hardware. Wastefulness in computing is a decade+ long epidemic.

Not that long ago users here were talking about 3 seconds to launch a word processor being "pretty good", which is an insane statement to make when you're taking about multicore processors that can execute multiple instructions per cycle and run at 3 billion cycles per second. Modern software is the computing equivalent of burning rainforests to roast marshmallows.

Re: There is now a European standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff

#119
post #113
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really not bothered by this. While I appreciate the right to repair, I don't think a lot of stuff is repairable with any reasonably easy to obtain equipment these days. It's limiting all repairs to FRU replacement. I can rework everything down to 0402's and MSOP packages but BGAs and things like that, forget it. We really should be fighting for better consumer rights legislation in our respective countries where…

"Recycling" in the context of electronics means that a few rare minerals (gold) get extracted, and the rest (ie. almost everything) ends up in landfills or as filler for roads at best. It's a very energy intensive process with often murky environmental effects, and defintely not just "used to make nee iPhones". Unfortunately! That's why the phrase is "reduce, reuse, and if all else fails, recycle" and why Apple (and…

Isn't that just for the boards and more awkward components though? It seems like it would be trivial to strip most of the surface mounted components off via just heating and shaking

Re: There is now a European standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff

#120
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When apple device stops being supported, it’s just not getting any more updates If effectively means it is absolutely unsafe to use anymore. Security bugs are found in browsers all the time. >Also, the general consumer does not care if you can flash a rom from xda. They care about the official updates. At least there is an option. Also this is exactly why I mentioned F-Droid, which is just an app.

> If effectively means it is absolutely unsafe to use anymore. Security bugs are found in browsers all the time. Aren't the base operating system and the browsers (installed through an app store of some kind) separate? Even if the phone's operating system is not receiving any more updates, there will still be updates to the browser for a while. For instance, a quick search tells me Firefox is still being updated for…

On iOS the browser (Safari) is tied to the operating system version. Alternative browsers still use the same rendering engine as Safari, which means they can't patch bugs in the engine, they need to wait for Apple to do it in a new operating system version.
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