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This is a very cynical take. People and organizations can be neutral with ulterior motives
> People and organizations can be neutral with ulterior motives Doesn't this mean exactly what the person you're replying to said?
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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.
I'm sensing some contradiction in that.
Pricing and packaging parts in a way that ensures its cheaper to buy a different phone is the opposite of a free market. Breaking your screen or wearing out your battery shouldn't mean you have to replace both, but it does if you own a Samsung and want genuine Samsung parts.
Did this approach get disclosed when consumers bought the phones, or only when something happened?
I 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…
Hideous, unreadable number of ads on the desktop.
> Wiens sips a Diet Coke and settles in as I start explaining the framework of our conversation. He interrupts me politely to get a big caveat out of the way related to confidentiality terms iFixit still has with Samsung. I really struggle to read these types of interviews. If I wanted to read the novel I would buy the book… but if I’m reading an article I don’t want the fluff…
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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.
> sole supplier > free market I'm sensing some contradiction in that. Pricing and packaging parts in a way that ensures its cheaper to buy a different phone is the opposite of a free market. Breaking your screen or wearing out your battery shouldn't mean you have to replace both, but it does if you own a Samsung and want genuine Samsung parts. Did this approach get disclosed when consumers bought the phones, or only…
Is there some regulation forcing them to act in this manner?
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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…
I imagine that a single modern desktop GPU could encode more video than a room full of old androids.
I'm not saying it was the best idea ever, and I haven't pursued it in like 8 years.
There 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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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,…
That's what it means to say "what they can get away with." That's the meaning of that phrase. If Samsung were just mailing anthrax to every third customer, they could not get away with that and they'd go out of business very quickly. If they treat a small subset of customers with extreme contempt, they can get away with it.
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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…
I imagine that a single modern desktop GPU could encode more video than a room full of old androids.
Same for those phones - that one CPU can replace a box of phones.