This article moves the goalposts on what "right to repair" is several times. It generally means that manufacturers should not hide schematics from device users or disallow third party manufacturing of first party parts. However, the author states:
> The law doesn't yet cover smartphones and tablets that she says are getting harder to fix. One problem is keeping older devices updated with new software.
Now "right to repair" includes not only designing devices to be easier to repair but also includes legacy software support? Where do we draw this line? If your M1 dies, you can't fab one yourself or run older software on it indefinitely.
Further down, the author writes:
> But markets have now become flooded with products that are less repairable.
> "It requires laws in place that prevent manufacturers from stopping [supporting] a product too early, or making it pretty much impossible to repair it by design."
Now the author has shifted "right to repair" to mean mandatory first-party device support and design requirements around repair-ability.
We must very carefully define our terms here, because requiring someone else to provide on one's behalf presumes a right to the product of their labor.
Electronics used to come with full schematics as part of the documentation.
As an example, this (1) is how the manual looks for a ~1970-1974 stereo record player I have. You have diagrams of the boards and lists of parts as in individual caps, etc.
We should strive to move in that direction, not away from it. Permanently locked bootloaders, DRM for componets, etc. are a move in the oposite direction.
To move the overton window even a little bit towards where it was before, the demands have to be disproportionate. I say those demands are still reasonable. We should demand that any device and any component in any device be second source-able (just like AMD was a second source for early x86 chips). And for that matter since I am from Europe, any component should be second source-able from Europe. If IP transfers worked for China, they should work elsewhere.
> We should demand that any device and any component in any device be second source-able
Devices aren't built around discrete components anymore. That ship has sailed, we waved goodbye, partied on the dock, and took an Uber home. Now we're nursing the hangover. But hey, our phones are now marginally thinner than last year's phones, so that might be worth something.
I don't see how we get back, considering the market just isn't there: it'd rather treat devices as things that we lease for a low cost from a vertically-integrated company.
"Devices aren't built around discrete components anymore."
Your right about most electrical products. That is not the point though. (I know you were just commenting on this article, but I feel strongly over right to repair laws.)
I just want access to parts if they are available. I want access to repair information. I don't care how complicated a devise is--I want to see the factory repair diagrams. There is someone out there who can fab together a computer board if there's a demand for it.
If the company doesn't want to sell parts to consumers so be it, but release the information. Yes--trade secrets make it more difficult, but not impossible.
I would be content (now) with a huge sticker on every product that didn't want to give out information, or sell parts.
Something like, "If you buy this product, the minute the warrany ends, you are on your own. We don't provide any repair information (because you're too stupid to repair, or we are greedy), and never supply parts to anyone. We will never release repair information. So the minute the warranty ends, you will 99.99% of the time gave to buy a New product from us!".
I have a feeling after a few years, companies might put screws back in, and use a bit less epoxy? And poof--repair parts will be shipped overnight, and free?
O.K. right to repair movement is covering more than just electronics.
Like your watch you have on your wrist?
Rolex, and The Swatch Company (own mist watch brands)have pulled all third party parts accounts. Watch companies realized they could use Vertical integration, and "Quality assurance" to bring that watches back to the factory for repair, at factory prices.
I don't want to be in a perpetual lease when I buy a product.
This article is a great example of how the market niche exists and there are plenty of other markets (motor vehicles, industrial equipment, the maker scene) where right to repair is the norm. I'd argue the maker scene is bigger than it's even been and still growing, hence the increased increase in right to repair.
Exact discrete components aren't important becuase your usb IC isn't any more special than another usb IC that follows the specification. Your laptop display isn't special versus the others that use the same internal displayport ribbon cable.
Market aside this is effectively corporations attempting to take a right/freedom away from the people. The market can treat devices however it likes but if it crosses a threshold then applying rules and regulations that restrict it's freedom isn't a new magical concept.
You can choose to forgo owning stuff personally, sure. But that is not everybody's preference. And please don't pretend that "devices aren't built around discrete components anymore".
There are plenty of discrete components in a modern phone/laptop/roomba/whatever, that could be replaceable/upgradable by advanced user or entry-level technician, but are not:
A big reason that stuff isn't replaceable anymore is because consumers wants some of the benefits that come w/ non-replaceable parts.
For example, it's nice that I can drop my iPhone in water w/o worrying (too much) about destroying it. I spent ~$1500 on an iPhone 12 Pro in November & dropped it in a lake in December. Part of the reason it's (more) waterproof if because it's not covered w/ ports/hatches/openings that would allow me swap out the battery/RAM/SSD/something. If I had to choose between having a fully customizable phone & one that doesn't die when it gets wet, I think I'd rather have one that resists water.
Manufacturers want planned obsolesce more than anyone. The problem in my view is that we take limited resources and combine it with slave labor to create landfill. Those few years of usage are not even that relevant. Recycling should be the first goal then repair ability. I think we can do this without the manufacturers drawing the proverbial short straw. Maybe we should get a partial refund when returning expired devices. Maybe we should rent them rather than buy them.
> The problem in my view is that we take limited resources and combine it with slave labor to create landfill. Those few years of usage are not even that relevant.
That's an important insight.
I only recently realized this too, and conceptualized it as a pipeline:
RAW > PRODUCT > FINISHED > A BIT > WASTE
MATERIALS > COMPONENTS > GOODS > OF USE > MATTER
Now when we say that our economy grows exponentially, it means that the amount of matter traveling through this pipeline is growing exponentially too! The economy, as it is today, is essentially a rapidly growing system for turning usable resources into useless waste.
Here's the bad part though: adding recycling to any stage of this pipeline doesn't alter the overall behavior. It only recirculates some of the matter - recycling is never perfect. But as we know, if you recycle less than 100%, and then re-recycle that, and then re-recycle again, it still converges to zero. With an exponentially growing pipeline, recycling is only delaying the crisis a little bit.
Ultimately, we need to remove the exponent (or at least couple it to population growth, in the scenario where humanity expands into space). For now, we need to reduce it. And one of the best ways of doing that is... reducing use. Buying less. The less matter flows through the pipeline, the longer we have before it runs out.
While I agree that minimizing waste is important, I do have an objection to part of your description of economic growth.
>Now when we say that our economy grows exponentially, it means that the amount of matter traveling through this pipeline is growing exponentially too!
The relationship between economic growth and environmental damage is more complicated than this. Something like transitioning from fossil fuels to cheap renewables is both a case of economic growth, and a reduction waste matter. Similar principles might apply to everyone having an iPod instead of buying new CDs, miniaturization in computing, productive uses of what used to be considered waste, building mass transit infrastructure over cars, etc.
If you want to slow damage to the natural environment, I'm all for it, but if you aim to do that by slowing economic growth, rather than accepting slowed economic growth as a potential side-effect, you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Economic growth often means more people can have better lives using fewer resources.
Bear in mind matter isn't the only component. Energy is another huge input to the system. E.g. blockchain and its derivatives use tiny amounts of matter to use enormous amounts of energy.
We can and must develop more environmentally responsible sources of matter and energy. Trying to change human behavior with our current regulatory controls have been demonstrably inadequate. There are sources of matter and energy that do not run out, I believe them to be in space.
>Now when we say that our economy grows exponentially, it means that the amount of matter traveling through this pipeline is growing exponentially too!
If there are people out there who buy phones by weight it is to buy phones that are thin and light, and therefore contains fewer materials.
I remember the phones of the early aughts. They were bigger and could only do phone things (and snake), which meant that you needed a computer, maybe a calculator, a form of MP3 player, a camera, maybe some DVDs to watch in the back of the car along with a DVD player to watch them on.
But you replace them every two years. And the market for them is still growing. And there's now a resurgence of a market for single-purpose appliances that happens on top of the smartphone market - not replacing it.
(It's also possible more matter goes into making a modern smartphone than a bunch of devices it replaced, because of the demand for more exotic and more pure materials in the processes along the way. But maybe it doesn't, maybe an individual smartphone is a net matter and energy saver. I can totally buy that, we've made a lot of efficiency improvements in manufacturing in the past decades. But there are limits to such improvements, and in the meantime, manufacturing as a whole keeps growing.)
Perhaps I've simplified my diagram too much - I should've drawn an additional "bypass" into "WASTE MATTER" from every other node, because every step in the pipeline loses some of its input as waste.
I was merely making the observation that the growth of the value of something is not necessary a linear function of the amount of materials used. I am not convinced, as an example, that the first iPhone caused drastically more waste to produce (or drastically less) than the last one. Yet the last one is clearly much better.
I'm not saying it's a linear function either. I think it varies. But I also don't think the value added per unit of resources used is growing exponentially. So the problem still remains, because anything short of exponential function isn't going to impact the overall trend long-term.
>value added per unit of resources used is growing exponentially
I would love to see the amount of resources that are used to produced each iPhone, because I don't have a big issue assuming that each phone brings, say 3 or 4 percent more utility to its user than the previous model would have.
So, assuming the battery is the most dirty part of the phone, I found the battery size for all the iphone models[0] and even if we exclude the the large ones, the iPhone 11 has a 54 percent larger battery.
The phones were released in 2007 and 2019, 12 years and 3 months apart[1]. That works out to a growth of approximately 3.3%.
So my original assumption was wrong, there has been an exponential growth in materials that nearly matches GDP growth.
Apple maintains devices for more than five years, the devices themselves keep on working for far longer than that.
It’s got nothing to do with planned obsolescence, new devices get new features because technology makes those features possible.
You get non-serviceable devices because users want smaller, faster, better hardware. Any latches, connectors, or sockets are purely subtracting from battery life as that’s the only part of a phone that can be resized, and even that is subject to constraints.
Repairable/serviceable means by definition more expensive and worse feature set.
I understand this thread is about "repairability" of different product designs, and there are definitely arguments on both sides of that issue that are valid...
I just want to make sure you're not confusing "repairability" with Right to Repair... R2R is not asking for changes to product design - only that replacement parts and documentation are made available in a compulsory way.
How long should a company like apple that designs its own SoCs have to continue manufacturing replacement ones? That's not cheap - remember phones are only at the prices they are because they're manufactured in millions - how big do you think the market would be?
How long should production lines be kept producing out of date products?
Lots of open ended questions here that I'm not sure how to interpret the motivation for...
How long should a company like GM that designs its own engines have to continue manufacturing replacement ones? That's not cheap... (etc.)
Thinking about a mature market where we do have right to repair is a good test of these questions and helps reveal the hidden complexities. GM makes replacement parts for a while. A thriving non-OEM market persists long after the manufacturer ceases making more.
This is distinctly different from the status quo in Apple-land, where they prohibit partners like Texas Instruments from manufacturing or selling units to anyone but Apple.
Note also that there is no legislation in front of us with explicit terms set in stone here, so while your questions are good ones to consider when drafting such legislation, they should preclude a right to repair bill passing into law.
Automobile service uses non-OEM parts and recycled (junkyard) parts.
I have a 1965 and 1966 Mustangs. Original body panels are difficult to find, but I’ve not found any mechanical part that was the least bit difficult (aided by high-volume production and a lot of parts crossover up through the early 90s Fox body Mustangs).
> A big reason that stuff isn't replaceable anymore is because consumers wants some of the benefits that come w/ non-replaceable parts.
This may be true, but we shouldn't confuse 'a decision made by a product manager' with 'the customers want this'.
Some design decisions succeed because of the other strengths of a product (and the competition cargo-cult copies them), not because they are good design decisions. Some design decisions are made because they are more convenient for the vendor, not better for the customer. Some design decisions are made because of inertia. Pointing to any particular design trade-off in a successful product, and saying that 'Well, this is obviously what the market wants' is not always a correct conclusion to draw.
USB is unarguably the most successful mechanism for two hardware devices to communicate with each-other in history, and yet you need to flip the cable over three times before you can plug it in. Should we conclude that customers want to play the cable fandango every time they plug one device into another?
>yet you need to flip the cable over three times before you can plug it in
I used to know one of the folks involved with the USB standard pretty well professionally. At one point, he told me that this aspect of USB is one thing he wished they could have dealt with differently.
(That said, the fact that the mini and micro versions are more explicitly keyed doesn't make that much of a different and I assume that a USB-C or Lightning-type design just wasn't possible at the time without undesirable tradeoffs.)
I think it's just that nobody thought of it when the plug was designed, because this wasn't a problem that serial cables etc before USB-A had (and even USB-B is keyed!)
If Apple would publish schematic, diagnostic software and allow refurbishing and selling of parts to third party - it will keep your iPhone water proof still.
The reality is this, when your device gets old or your screen cracks , Apple will offer to fix it for 70% of a new device price, so you are pushed to buy a new device. I hope this is not controversial and has nothing to do with the water proof preference you have.
You can already buy some replacement parts, like screens and backs. It doesn't seem like you can replace the motherboard, so that would be a fair point. I wouldn't objecting to coding this into law, but I'm not sure why your comment is implying this is not currently possible.
Apple has explicitly made replacement parts non-user-servicable at this point. It's called "serialization" and prevents even OEM parts (like a screen from a different iPhone) from being recognized by the phone. [1] This is the type of consumer un-friendly behavior that R2R seeks to defend against.
Maybe things changed a bit but you could not buy screens or use refurbished ones. But all parts should be available for phones and laptops, including screens,batteries, chips, ports. Also there should be a way where parts from broken phones could be reused (I know the argument about stolen phones but competent Apple people can find a way to make it possible so we can reuse components from borken devices and not send them some far away to be "recycled" instead of reuse.
Except for the battery I don’t think those things have ever really been user swappable though. The issue with water protection on phones I have worked on is that its hard to maintain when removing the screen because it tends to stick. I guess you could always buy a new gasket which is probably what the Apple store does.
But their parent wasn't (in fact, they mentioned x86 and AMD, which are integrated circuits).
Look at a random PC (or, until recently, a random laptop): it's made from a lot of individual components that can be swapped out or upgraded independently. Storage, RAM, CPU, GPU, cooling, motherboard, WiFi chip, Bluetooth chip, speakers, microphone, screen, all the peripherals - they're all designed to work together as a category, and to be easily replaceable. I can source each one from a different vendor, and they'll still work. Hell, in many cases, you can even fix individual components, with a hot air station and a steady hand. And if I upgrade a component, my old one can often get a second life inside another computer, possibly someone else's.
It's a good thing to have, and there's nothing stopping modern laptops, tablets and phones to have the same level of upgradeability and swapability. Nothing - except that the vendors don't want to[0]. These things run on the same set of hardware standards as larger computers, and on literally the same software stacks. I[1] should be entirely able to open up my phone, desolder its battery and memory, swap them out for newer and better ones, apply sealant, close the case and have the whole thing work. There's no technical obstacle here - the only problem are the business strategies of the vendors.
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[0] - I have another long rant for the usual "it's customers who chose integrated over repairable" argument, and I'll post it elsewhere in this thread. For now, I'll just say: it's not like anybody is asking customers to choose. These options are not being made available in the first place.
[1] - Or my friend who spent half his life tinkering with electronics. Or the repair shop down the street. A point commonly missed in discussions about Right to Repair (and Free Software) is that it isn't about expecting consumers to do hardware/software work themselves - it's about making it possible for local markets for software and hardware maintenance and repair to exist.
>These options are not being made available in the first place.
Could it be because it's not financially feasible? If you present the idea of a repairable alternative to an iPad, are any investors going to take you up on it?
I think a big aspect of this whole debate is that manufacturing efficiencies have gone up so much, that it's simply not economically worth it to sacrifice the resiliency and cost effectiveness of making it completely integrated. The cost to launch a new product and manufacturing line is also very high, so that you have to be really sure a sufficient number of consumers will want it.
On top of that, as a seller, you get to keep costs low when you have to spend less on dealing with people tinkering with it and then sending it in for warranty.
Unfortunately, I don't think a "tinkerable" option can compete on price to value ratio such that sufficient people would buy it to make it a feasible investment.
>it's about making it possible for local markets for software and hardware maintenance and repair to exist.
Efficiency is frequently a trade off for a word that I can't think of, but maybe can be described as "security" or "local security". It's similar to not needing a butcher, produce market, shoe store once a Walmart Supercenter rolls into town. I struggle to come up with a legal requirement that would restrict efficiency such that it does not give others (globally) a competitive advantage, but still retains "local security".
We don't need a tinkerers option we just need unobstructed access to the docs and access to purchase proprietary parts to replace failures and those parts should be available at a fair price.
I vote yes for right to repair, both with my dollar and my desire to favor the rights of the citizens of this country.
These devices can still be fixed, if only using specialized tools. However, it's another issue when manufacturers deliberately make these devices more difficult to fix such as using security screws.
Many of the modern smartphones can still be fixed as are laptops.
However, these repair shops only exist if they have the schematic and parts available.
it's not an efficiency issue. It's planned obsolescence.
> Could it be because it's not financially feasible? If you present the idea of a repairable alternative to an iPad, are any investors going to take you up on it? (...) it's simply not economically worth it to sacrifice the resiliency and cost effectiveness of making it completely integrated (...) The cost to launch a new product and manufacturing line is also very high (...)
I believe all of that is true.
Which is why this needs to be corrected by regulation. If making a more user-respecting and environmentally-friendly products isn't economical enough for the market to do it on its own, the economical landscape needs to be altered so that it is.
> as a seller, you get to keep costs low when you have to spend less on dealing with people tinkering with it and then sending it in for warranty
This must be solvable, because somehow it isn't a problem on the PC market, or on the car market.
> Efficiency is frequently a trade off for a word that I can't think of, but maybe can be described as "security" or "local security".
"Distribution" and "decentralization" are the words you're thinking of. Despite the common propaganda to the contrary, centralization is usually increasing efficiency. That's why the market loves it so much (and why every country ends up with laws to limit it). The cost to that efficiency is usually resilience (failure of any single actor becomes a large-scale issue) and slower innovation (bigger actors take less risks, smaller actors tend to cover more of the possibility space, by virtue of numbers).
> It's similar to not needing a butcher, produce market, shoe store once a Walmart Supercenter rolls into town.
And it is a contentious issue. On the one hand, the food gets cheaper. On the other, the jobs get worse, the local community suffers, and money gets siphoned off the local economy. On an international scale, the same thing is called "globalization", which is both widely praised and criticized. In particular, the current pandemic has revealed the resilience problem of our globalized economy, which is why so many countries are now making moves towards reversing it a bit.
I find this type of rant rather unhelpful in this debate. It is not the case that there is no reason for soldered parts. This decision was not made out of spite or laziness. It was done because there was a belief that the product would be better. In particular, it seems that leaving sockets off enables you to make a thinner laptop, and that some of the products use a type of RAM that is not sold to be put into a socket [0]. I would guess that market research also showed that very very few consumers were replacing the Bluetooth chips in their Macbooks. I have a great PC next to me, but it also weighs 20-30 lbs, occupies a huge amount of space, and took me several days of work to make sure all the components would actually optimally work together.
I would find it a lot more compelling to talk about trade-offs than to just throw out uninformed ranting. We used to have laptops like what you're describing, and they no longer sell very well, or are no longer available because they are thicker and heavier than the models that replaced them.
RAM and storage is usually integrated on phones. The battery is usually not something you can pull out anymore because people like me prefer phones that I can use to find my way in the rain without risk damaging the phone, but even so they are pretty easy to replace, the same with the screen.
On laptops you have a choice: buy a Thinkpad that is not an ultrabook, but even then you see people prefer thinner and lighter models than ones that are servicable.
How do you use your phone in the rain? Whenever I try, I find it's pretty much impossible, because the screen gets all wet and slippery, I can hardly see anything on it because of distortion through individual drops of rain, and I get spurious clicks from raindrops falling onto it. So I have to shield it under an umbrella or something...
And if I have to do that anyway, the phone being less than 100% watertight because the battery is swappable won't be a problem in the first place.
I only use it in the rain to look up maps and see directions or to quickly see a message and you are right that the distortions from the rain can make it hard to see, though I haven't had the issue of a slippery phone.
Maybe I am just paranoid, but I would like to know my phone doesn't die on me when it is exposed to rain.
> Your approach will always be a valid choice, for those who want it
This isn't "my approach" – it's the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer. And pining for the good ol' days of technical datasheets doesn't help everybody who can't start their cars without the successful interaction of nearly a hundred proprietary microcontrollers running proprietary code speaking over a high-speed data bus.
And here's the annoying thing: I want a car that doesn't have a hundred microcontrollers speaking over a high-speed data bus. I want a car like my old '88 Camry, that I could take apart with my dad and fix almost all of the problems I ran into with the help of a Haynes manual and a trip (or two!) to the junkyard. But the market clearly does not agree with my desires.
All I'm saying is that R2R in no way changes the products that are available to you if you want product-as-a-service. You can still take your phone to the Genius Bar or lease it from a carrier. It just guarantees that there are also options for those who want to fix their own devices.
Do you have a source to cite for "the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer"?
That seems pretty speculative.
The market can be manipulated or directed by more than simply consumer choice, e.g. by business incentives of product manufacturers.
> Do you have a source to cite for "the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer"?
I mean, gestures at every consumer-targeted product made since at least the early 'oughts.
People want things that are some combination of more capable, more convenient, more reliable, and less expensive. Different consumers obviously make different decisions, but there's a reason you can't go to a car lot and easily find a car with a stick shift. There's a reason you probably don't know anyone who has a Speed Queen top loader (pre-redesign model of course ;)) in their house, even though it is infinitely more reliable and repairable than the competition.
Those offerings are less capable, less convenient, and more expensive than the alternatives, so customers don't want them.
Given a choice customers would very likely prefer a toaster that costs ten dollars less and has a 1 in 10,000 chance of burning down their house instead of 1 in 1,00,000 even though saving 10 bucks and accepting a in in 10k chance of burning up your kids, cats, and stuff is an insane choice.
The free market is in short pretty garbage on its own.
Customers are incredibly short sighted when it comes to purchasing new things - shaving 10% off a price while cutting the expected lifetime of the product down from ten years to three is likely to capture most of the market.
I think this is a case where actors are acting in an irrational manner (i.e. not adhering to the perfectly rational actor assumption that's required for free-markets to function) and that necessitates government or other intervention to ensure that consumers are protected.
It's depressing because I absolutely agree with you that users aren't purchasing devices with an emphasis on being able to repair them. It is a pain point but not one that comes up at the register and so manufacturers are free to exploit the situation to provide marginally cheaper goods that require full replacement more frequently to ensure consistent sales.
Nobody wants to be like Hoover in the 90's that offered free plane tickets with vacuum purchases[1] and caused such an oversupply in the market that first party vacuum sales dwindled to nearly nothing over the next decade and that's fair. But we need to have a balance where we aren't rewarding manufacturers who build products that frequently break and for the consumer to make another purchase.
No it's not, it's looking to enshrine that standard by law for everyone. Nothing is stopping consumers from demanding phones that are self-serviceable, they just simply aren't willing to accept the tradeoffs involved (larger size, worse thermals, higher price, etc). If you disagree, there's an unserved market segment wide open for you!
> No it's not, it's looking to enshrine that standard by law for everyone.
That's what's necessary IMO - since if it isn't required for all consumers than there is no motivation to make it available for any customers, we'll continue to be dragged down by the LCD as devices get less and less serviceable. Manufacturers don't like options - options cost money and each additional model you offer drives up how much you spend in storage and production line configuration, so they'll target the majority which probably does want to be able to repair devices but either doesn't realize it's still an option or doesn't have the financial freedom to invest in a higher quality device that has a higher upfront price tag but a lifespan that outlives that difference by leaps and bounds.
Let's set aside software RTR, which at first glance I believe has no increased costs associated (besides a decreased profit margin from lack of shortened support windows and a locked-down ecosystem).
Could you expand on the specifics of what changes RTR would necessitate the hardware to have? Let's say beyond the fact that a non-reversible bond/connector would otherwise be the cheapest option (saving perhaps fractions of pennies on the BOM).
Mandated right repair would raise weight for battery containers and latches, higher failure as connections would not be soldered in place and hinges and latches may fail, less water resistance as seals may get bumped loose, easier access for hardware hacks for bad actors, more potential consumer injury device damage during repair attempts, and more likely fire scenarios in planes and public areas from incorrectly installed parts. It is attempting to deny consumers those benefits.
Sounds like exaggeration or either overblown concerns. It's also ignoring the fact that manufacturers going out of their way to make a device deliberately more difficult to repair rather than just implementing tradeoffs.
It's one thing to have a waterproof phone that you need specialty tools to fix it, it's another thing when manufacturers try to make repairing deliberately more difficult than it should be, such as limiting the sale of OEM components or using security screws.
Either way, your thought what Right to Repair is only one version/proposal of what RtR.
The right to repair doesn't mandate any of that - you could have a product that has glued internal batteries and internal seals yet still release the schematics and allow your suppliers to sell the components to consumers.
Just look at motor vehicles - people have the right to change their own brake pads yet or even engines! This is arguably way more dangerous than a badly repaired small electronic device!
Important distinction here! Right to repair does not prescribe design considerations! You can glue/solder/integrate all you want! Just need to make sure replacement parts are available and documentation is clear!
History is full of things that people did not want to mandate via their purchases, but we as a society decided was important... so we made it legally mandatory.
> Nothing is stopping consumers from demanding phones that are self-serviceable
It's not like anyone asked the consumers. Nor were the options put on the market, for the buyers to vote on them with their wallets. The conclusions are assumed in advance by the companies. Meanwhile, consumers choose from what's actually available on the market - not from the space of all possible products.
> they just simply aren't willing to accept the tradeoffs involved (larger size, worse thermals, higher price, etc).
No customer can truly evaluate the tradeoffs involved. For starters, necessary information isn't publicly available. Companies don't publish reports from their product teams that describe the trade-off space they're working on. Would a user-replaceable battery make the phone thicker? How much? Does the glue actually helps with thermals? What's the price difference? Nobody knows, outside the people involved in these decisions.
Secondly, marketers run interference. Maybe a Joe would pay $100 extra for a fully repairable phone, so that Jane could fix it for him when he unavoidably breaks it in six months. Maybe an environmentally conscious Carol would go for one with user-replaceable battery, because she can only afford a cheaper, mostly integrated device. But they won't, because those issues aren't even on a typical person's radar. Instead, the marketing focuses on vague appeal to emotions, misrepresented specs, outright lies, and bait-and-switch "value-add" services. Most people who know better than to fall for such nonsense will just look at the one clear indicator - price.
The point is: when you have a system connected to a bunch of input signals, you can't say that a particular signal doesn't affect the system, if half of the other inputs are flooded with noise that's 20dB higher than any legit signal would be. You first need to shut off the noise!
> If you disagree, there's an unserved market segment wide open for you!
Not for me. There are too many capital barriers to entry around designing and manufacturing high-end electronics. You can't just start a business in this space and hope to offer a comparable price to established magnitudes.
Now if an established company like Samsung or Apple dared to try this, then we'd know. Maybe it would turn out there's no market for repairable smartphones. But I haven't seen anybody giving it a shot in a meaningful way.
>We used to be allowed to record tv shows on VHS legally. Look how far we've slid down the path of non-ownership.
What's changed that prevents you from doing that today? I'm guessing the answer is: "But that's a crappy alternative to what people watching Netflix or even renting DVDs are doing." And I would agree with that. (Though in the case of music, owning versus renting is still very much a legitimate choice at least for me.)
> What's changed that prevents you from doing that today?
What's changed is that technologies involved in modern video streaming are designed up front to prevent end-users from recording the stream, and are backed by regulations making some of the workarounds illegal.
MAFIAA may not be able to close the "analog hole" completely, but it doesn't stop them from achieving the next best thing - making it so hard to exploit that almost nobody bothers. This is a positive feedback loop, because the market in general doesn't like to serve small niches unless it has nothing more interesting to do. Thus: no VCRs for Netflix.
> Devices aren't built around discrete components anymore.
Huh. Thats news to me. A 0603 resistor is pretty much a discrete component to me. And if it is some other part of the assembly that breaks, the assembly it self is a discrete part (e.g. the microphone of your smartphone might be on a seperate flexboard that costs like 15 euros, which is a lot cheaper than buying a new one).
Yeah things got small. But that doesn't make things unfixable. Missing documentation, proprietary parts you cannot get, gluing in things in without reason, etc. are problems. The size is for the most part managable — and if it isn't, right to repair is also about you being able to go to some repair guy and having your stuff fixed instead of having some Apple employee tell you how you can only buy a new device, and loose all data because they won't even look at it properly. So in short this is about repairability in general.
And if you like to do it yourself, this is totally possible. Even my father managed to swap out that home button for his completely glued Samsung Galaxy S7 edge.
I teach (among other things) soldering at University. Most people can actually SMD solder if you show them how. A student who never soldered before swapped a usb port for an E-reader within an hour of me showing her.
So, devices are built less around discrete components than they used to be, but there are still tons of discrete components in any given product, and these discrete components fail more often than you might realize. One common failure is failure of jacks/connectors--sometimes the solder joints get ripped out due to stress.
However, I think that you're basically right anyway... because when you pay Apple for a laptop repair, I think there's a good chance that they do a logic board replacement or something similar. The logic board itself is made of components and can be repaired, but it often isn't repaired, just replaced.
Hardware is one thing. My sister has an iPhone 6 which will soon lose support from Apple and apps running on it. Why can't we install Linux on it and save us the e-waste as a bonus?
They make a worthwhile distinction for ICT devices, which definitely have all those characteristics for miniaturisation. But that’s not the end of the right-to-repair story - glib example, but plenty of toasters end up in landfill, and there’s nothing complex or miniaturised about them. The market that delivers a new replacement for these things for a cost that is the same order of magnitude as a repair would be basically ensures that this will happen.
Electronics used to come with full schematics as part of the documentation
For a short time in college I worked fixing stereos at a big-name electronics company's east coast repair facility. You could always tell the gear that people had tried to fix themselves before sending it back to us as a last resort. We didn't begrudge them trying on their own. In fact, it was encouraged because home repairs kept the cost of maintaining the repair facility down.
These days, since everything gets chucked in the garbage when it breaks, I guess that logic doesn't work anymore.
As an aside, the Commodore 64 didn't come with the schematics, but they were part of the Programmer's Reference Guide, which many people had, and could be bought in most bookstores.
This was in a very different era, when manufacturing was difficult and expensive. Having the schematic didn't necessarily get you anywhere. That's no longer the case - now the design is expensive but the manufacturing is cheap.
Component level schematics should be freely available for all products. It's not like there are no schematics available for e.g. Macbooks. Third party repair shops use them all the time. It's just that they are not legally available.
I might entertain the argument that you don't want to show all internal details of your 6 layer PCB but those are also not necessary for repair. Just hand out the component level schematics.
a lot of consumer electronics are a bunch of strung together reference implementations. the schematic isn't really the secret sauce, especially since with a soldering iron, a multimeter (and maybe an lcr meter) and time, you could completely recreate it without difficulty. not practical for a repair shop's level of income/device, but if you wanted to steal a design, you could easily do this
For one thing, I think it's an important point to make when someone else makes the, "look how repairability has regressed since the golden era of getting the Apple II schematics in the box with the computer!". At the time, design was cheap. Why not give it to your customers? It's not like they're going to go out and make one themselves.
The fact that manufacturing is cheap now and schematics are not only the key to repairability but also counterfeit Chinese knock-offs is a problem worth understanding.
I don't think this argument is related whether or not people should be able to source and repair the devices they own. R2R doesn't require redesign of products - only that parts and documentation should be made available so indie shops and DIYers can have the option.
This is as opposed to the status quo, where manufacturers like Apple and Samsung currently cause their phones to malfunction when replacing parts without proprietary software switches - even when those parts are OEM. [1]
>The fact that manufacturing is cheap now and schematics are not only the key to repairability but also counterfeit Chinese knock-offs is a problem worth understanding.
I think you have a BIG misunderstanding here. The schematics do not include any Apple secrets, it is the repair schematic that is only high level stuff AND this schematics are already on the internet so China has it already (so honestly stop bringing the China argument here).
Is the same with diagnostic software, many companies only show you a error LED and you have to send the device to a repair person for that person to use the software and tell your the error message. Making the software(or the Google doc) available that translates and error code numbers into error messages will not make iPhones insecure or allow China to copy them (btw isn't iPhone already made in China> wtf is this About China FUD?, China's Apple factory must have much more info then only repair schematics )
I think Americans are still largely clueless about how extensively the PRC has infiltrated the governments and companies of the world, and how much IP they have stolen. If they want it; they have it. Heck, my company is doing everything they can to prevent users from messing with our firmware, but we have to give all the keys to China to sell our products there. All they had to do was ask. There’s no need to make it hard for owners to get to.
While going through my father’s things after he passed away, I found there instructions for an old television that included the full schematic for the device. If something was malfunctioning, and you were willing, you could fix it.
For a 15 year old e-reader I found the repair manual online, which contained a full schematic. For a more recently released e-reader from the same company, the repair manual simply has a disassembly step-by-step. I can only imagine the company found it not worth the effort for technicians to actually repair anything.
That would amount to saying that we in Europe can't use any technology that is less than what 20 years old?
You can't even replace an Intel CPU with an AMD one unless your motherboard supports both. Good luck finding a modern laptop with a socketed CPU.
I get where you are coming from, and it would be nice not to be locked down to one vendor, but the cost to enable that is so high as to be not worth it.
I would rather the manufactures have to state their support up front and then you know what you buy when you buy it.
I see a good intention behind it, but it only works only if only honest people and companies exist. It’s not the case in real world.
What would prevent a competitor simply copying the whole product and offering a cheaper price because they didn’t have to invest in R&D, and those engineers who spent many years working on a finished schematics will be out of job because the company won’t be able to make a living selling more expensive products?
there is a big big difference between a schematic that will aid people in repairs and ones that are used to manufacture the boards...and no one fighting for right to repair is asking for that anyways
Nor is anybody asking for mask files for ICs, just that they be available for purchase at a reasonable price. Stuff like Apple getting proprietary charging ICs from Intersil that nobody else can buy to replace a defective one is unethical at best.
You're basically arguing for IP protection via obscurity/complexity, but I assure you that anyone who wants to clone tech products at industrial scale can already do so today. This just gives repair documentation and parts availability to independent repair shops and DIYers...
This isn't a totally unreasonable position to take, but in some cases "whatever it was that kept this from happening before" really is nothing more than "nobody had thought of it yet".
Look up board view files. Those are the kinds of schematics people are talking about. Louis Rossman uses them on his Youtube channel to do board level repairs of Macs and iOS devices.
They are not all you need copy a device outright, contrary to what some people in the comments think. But they are sufficient for you to track down faulty components and de-solder them.
Maybe not that big, unfortunately a lot of the connections will end up going to that SoC that does most of the work and is probably obsolete by the time you want to repair it.
That implies intent to deceive, which crosses into personal attack. Can you please not do that on HN? If you feel that someone else is wrong, it's enough to provide correct information in a neutral way.
That would pretty much require standardization of cpu socket between vendors to allow one to drop a compatible generation of intel or amd processor into a slot. This sounds onerous but I doubt it would require increasing the unit cost by 20 times.
I'm not talking about replacing a memory module. I'm talking about replacing a defective 4Kb memory chip on a $1000+, 384Kb ISA card.
When I built PCs in the late 90s, the BOM included motherboard, cpu, graphics card, sound card, nic, sometimes a parallel port board, memory, hard disk, etc. At this point, it was only really feasible to repair modules that failed, few humans with the skill to replace a component would do so due to the economies of scale and cheap price.
Now, it's motherboard, cpu, memory, disk. The cost is much less, but most repairs are replacements of the mainboard or disk.
For most laptops, there's a tiny motherboard with most of the functionality integrated into a few modules. The only things that get repaired are memory and battery.
For the M1 Macbook, you have one of the highest performance devices on the market selling for $899 at 40-50% margin. I just bought similar Dell and HP units in quantities over 50,000 last fall for $100-150 less (probably 6-8% margin to the OEM), with inferior battery life, disk and cpu.
You seem to believe this specific example where you are literally making up the non public profit margin proves that for the entire class of consumer laptops making non serviceable parts greatly decreases the cost. First it was an hyperbolic 10x and now it decreases costs by half. All examples are not only fictional misuse of both real and hypothetical numbers they say nothing much about the entire class of things.
The M1 is a fresh design on a new iteration of an arch by very smart people and its likely that there are far more factors at play than presence or absence of sockets in terms of determining profitability.
What we are trying to do is determine all things being equal how much cheaper can the same machine be with and without replaceable parts. I don't have any numbers either but I strong doubt its 2-10x cheaper.
Yes it did. Computers became cheaper because more and more functionality can simply be combined on single chips. You can not replace parts of broken chips at home.
Average spend on a computer hasn't gone down recently. In the era when it actually did go down it was because volume and reliability went up, and cost of manufacturing went down as process improved.
Phones have been system on a chip since the dawn of the era of the smartphone and few computers are. The difference between repairable and not is the difference between glue and screws and sockets vs solder. You have basically misunderstood everything.
Average spend has of course gone down - you can get the same computer you would have gotten 10 years ago for a lot cheaper now.
Computers have gotten a lot faster, that is why "spend" has kept up.
And you seem to suggest that early smartphones were already as fast as an M1, because they were "systems on a chip". That is not the case. Not all SoCs are the same, more and more things have been integrated over time.
And sockets take up space, making for thicker smartphones. People don't actually want that.
You said computers not phones. More power for less money is massively overwhelmingly driven by being able to fit more transistors in the same size wafer due to modern processes not integration as you suggest.
>And you seem to suggest that early smartphones were already as fast as an M1, because they were "systems on a chip"
I never suggested anything of the sort. My point is that smartphones have always been integrated and computers have usually been more discrete. You said the drop in price or increase in value for money has to do with integration. This doesn't appear to be correct because computers have been party to this without largely being integrated in the fashion you suggest.
>Electronics used to come with full schematics as part of the documentation.
Nearly every electronic device I bought in the 1970s did not have included schematics. TI-55, Pong console, digital watches, Speak'n'Spell, transistor radios, Mattell football and baseball handhelds, Simon... and on and on.
Nearly everything then was also not easily repairable, and certainly not by an average consumer.
> Nearly everything then was also not easily repairable, and certainly not by an average consumer.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think anyone's saying that "an average consumer" in the terms of "I can't tell the difference between a hammer and a soldering iron" should be able to repair their devices.
But I think that if the consumer can demonstrate some minimum level of interest (education, certification, or at least competence) then they absolutely should be able to repair devices they own.
And, further, that owning devices and software should be the default and normal thing. The trend today of renting/leasing things is clearly anti-consumer.
Nope :) As a kid taking everything apart, and as an adult collecting some old gadgets I had as kid, there is generally no such thing. I just listed quite a few gadgets that definitely do not have schematics glued inside.
It is goalpost moving, but I also agree with the author. If a device is no longer supported by a company, or that company goes under, there should be some mechanism to make any software needed to modify software on the device available.
Take the essential ph-1 as an example. Now that the company is gone, if a device bricks during an update, that's it. Having the firehose file would make it possible to unblock it, but without it, a bricked phone is just spare parts (less the main board).
"a bricked phone is just spare parts (less the main board)."
The main board should be just as repairable as any other device. If that requires changes to copyright law, the DMCA and or even WIPO treaties then that will eventually happen.
It's not that many years ago—certainly well within my lifetime—that 'deep' repairs of this kind were not only commonplace but actually encouraged by manufacturers. (If you want examples then I'll provide some).
By such action, we would only be returning to the status quo as it was some 40 or more years ago.
(To detractors of this comment, I accept and understand that you never lived through that time to see it in action, if you had then very likely you'd have a changed point of view.)
"If lower repairability is a way to pay for that, that’s great.'
You are implying the two concepts are incompatible. There is no reason why they should be other than a manufacturer's planned obsolescence strategy, which is what the Right to Repair movement is all about and fighting to fix.
Assuming there's planned obsolescence, it will make the manufacturer money. This money lets them build better products, stay in business longer, et.c.
If Apple made a repairable iPhone with the same profit margins and specs, I'm guessing it would have to be more expensive. I would have to pay for this, even though I don't want to repair my stuff (I just buy new stuff when it breaks).
It's gone beyond that. Apple matches parts in their phones so that only Apple can replace certain things, which I believe increases the cost of their products a little.
Man that would be amazing. I don't see that ever happening, but it would be great to not be stuck with hardware that is unusable or near unusable because the manufacturer abandoned it or went under. Though it would be important that all functionality be able to remain intact if they hand over the tools. In the most technical sense the hardware is still usable even if you have to write new firmware from scratch, but practically it's useless without having something to work from and enhance/bugfix.
I'm not very happy with the quality of the article, overall. It seems useful for a consumer, but obvious, and old-hat, to HN denizens.
HN submissions are supposed to be "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity", but we've seen dozens of right-to-repair articles by now, and this doesn't bring anything substantially new to the table (unlike the top previous submissions https://hn.algolia.com/?q=right+to+repair).
I think anything publicizing "right to repair" in mainstream media is a good thing. Agreed that for HN denizens, it's nothing new, but most people are just unaware of this topic.
Maybe, but it’s all over the place and thus might cause confusion for readers who will later see 'right to repair' and think it means that Apple should be forced to send iOS 14 to their iPhone 4S.
Maybe they should have to open iOS signing to all versions a device ever received when it becomes EOL? That also has implications with regards to preservation - if you can never install a given version of the OS again, then how can you trust it is properly preserved?
You can always install the old version, Apple just doesn't think they can optimize new iOS versions to make old phones work well with the new software (and the bloat/feature creep within).
No you can't, and you haven't been able to in some time. Apple devices that need restoring post-EOL are generally restricted to the last-released version. I think you have to go back to the original couple of iPhone models to be able to ignore SHSH and APTicket.
There are ways around this with some models, but it's been a long time since it was even "save SHSH blobs and replay them" easy.
Without circumventing protections you cannot install old versions of iOS. Many phone models have flaws in the protections that allow you to circumvent the protections, but officially installing old iOS versions ends when Apple decides.
For this type of legislation push it is very important to keep the narrative focused on what’s morally and technologically reasonable.
Very few people agree that a manufacturer should be forced to spend time and money on supportting a product for life, many (I hope) agree that we should force manufacturers to give us the ability to repair all functions ourselves (or at least not stand in our way), but almost everyone can agree that you should be able to replace something as trivial as a button, a cable, or a screen.
"I think anything publicizing "right to repair" in mainstream media is a good thing."
Absolutely, the more the merrier. Also, I believe that lay people are now becoming aware of the fact, as I've seen many articles both in the daily press and on the television news about it (where I live the Government's current inquiry into the matter seeking public comment has been reasonably well covered).
I agree, the increasing awareness of this topic is itself interesting and worth note.
Additionally, the fact that this submission has 350+ comments at the time I write this is all the evidence I need that this was worthy of submission. Many times, the comments, even if it's a tangential discussion, are much more interesting than the article submitted.
The general aim of "right to repair" is to extend lifetime of devices. All the things the author mentioned are means to achieve this, and all are necessary: Schematics, repair manuals, deliverable parts for a sufficiently long period and software support ("repair" also includes software defects of course). Sometimes also software extensibility and replaceability, i.e. no signature lockdowns and other DRM measures.
There are weak versions of the right to repair that are only suited to enable third-party repair shops, e.g. by making schematics and parts available to "licensed professionals". But that is not what is generally desirable.
I agree that the article fails to make this clear.
Regarding software, I think that pushing updates that essentially kill devices should fall under right to repair. I generally delay my ios updates out of concern whether space and ram will get eaten up. There probably won’t be an os update that enables a new app or feature I’m looking for. I’m not one to run unknown software and with the walled garden can’t really download any executables anyways.
Also had win 10 updates kill a laptop in this manner that was then extended another 7 years by switching to Ubuntu.
Updates that kill devices are at best a defect that is the manufacturer's responsibility to fix or pay for. At worst computer sabotage, which is a crime.
Unfortunately courts have yet to get "bitey" on this issue. I guess it needs to hit a few more judges until the hammer comes down hard.
Are there cases now where an update bricks devices that are still supported and the manufacturer doesn't fix it? Genuinely asking as I don't know of any such cases.
I haven't had a device brick, but every time Windows 10 runs an update on my old macbook I usually have to revert it. Well, Windows reverts it itself; but it involves multiple reboots and I have to handhold it by holding down "alt" all the time so it goes into the right OS. Very annoying. Especially when I just need the OS for a quick thing and Microsoft has decided that I need to wait 30 minutes to use an OS I touch every couple months or so.
I know the argument here would be "well keep your os up to date", but the point is that the updates themselves no longer work on this laptop for whatever reason; yet microsoft insists on breaking my laptop every tuesday for these "critical" fixes that I never really need.
The expected use time of a dishwasher is 10 years. Which is a machine with mechanical parts and a lot of wear and tear, corrosive chemicals, decaying seals, etc. A computer with fewer movable parts and a higher price should last longer. That software manufacturers don't support that notion is a problem that needs to be dealt with.
I agree, but I don't think windows falls into that category. For what it is worth, win10 is in my experience pretty great (in this regard). And windows by and large have also been that way.
My 8 year old sony laptop had kludges to be supported by windows 8 (which it came with...). Sony quit the laptop game before win 10 and I figured it would be a nightmare to ever get off win8.
Turns out Windows 10 was way easier to install than what was ever officially supported (especially if you wanted a clean install) and there are no issues keeping it up to date.
If you read again, the claim is that after a failed Windows 10 update that device ran another 7 years on Ubuntu. As Windows 10 was launched less than 7 years ago, that is a lie.
With a sufficiently generous interpretation it might have been a preview build. But then he wouldn't be entitled to complain, because of course a preview might break.
I don’t have an exact timeframe in my head and wrote things on the fly. The point is that Ubuntu is going perfectly fine and will continue to do so whereas windows bricked the system. I also think it’s common practice with year estimation to round up to the next year.
> Now "right to repair" includes not only designing devices to be easier to repair but also includes legacy software support?
Well, I would say it includes publishing the software interface of your hardware, and not making it impossible to replace the software. Those are the main roadblock on updating old tablets and phones.
I do really read those lines as fighting closed boot loaders, DRM on real goods, dependencies on the manufacturer's servers, and all kinds of purposeful hindrances that are so popular between the large industries nowadays.
I would really not include the "design for repairability" and software upgrades into the idea. But one does not need to include those to agree with the article.
>Well, I would say it includes publishing the software interface of your hardware, and not making it impossible to replace the software.
100% this. Case in point: I have two 'old' apple devices: a 2009 mac mini and an ipad c.2011. Apple doesn't provide updates for either any more. For the mini, that's not a problem: it's running Debian just fine, and kept up to date.
The ipad is a different story. Physically it's still in perfectly good nick: it's a well-built device. Software, though, is a different matter. Progressively fewer websites render properly with the outdated version of safari; the number of installable apps is down to a faint trickle. It's broken. Doesn't matter that it's broken because the software is outdated rather than a hardware component has given up. It doesn't do what it was intended for, and there's no way to repair it.
I've no issue with apple - or any other manufacturer - deciding there's a lifetime beyond which they're not willing to support the device. But they shouldn't be allowed to brick it. At the point it goes out of manufacturer support, there should be the option to 'unlock' and install 3rd party software.
Of course it'll impact Apple's revenues. At least to some extent; plenty people will still want "shiny new". And it'll need 3rd party software to be available. But that's a whole new market opportunity.
More fundamentally, it's simply unconscionable to consign devices to the scrap heap because the manufacturer built a time bomb into the software.
Perhaps the author kept moving the goalpost since we have lost so much over the years.
Take that legacy software. For many technologies the software is not distinguishable from the hardware to the end user, yet faulty software could present a security risk or even pose physical danger. At the same time, vendors are dropping support for software at an accelerated rate while making it impossible to use third party fixes or replacements. This is not about having the latest features or being able to run the latest apps. It is about having the device being an asset rather than a liability.
Are they also going to force "the right to sell" instead of rent? Nothing is stopping companies from renting instead of selling their products. We already see that with software, no one is trying to sell software these days, it's all subscriptions. It could happen with hardware, in which case you don't have the right to repair since it never belonged to you.
No, because the key difference between renting and buying is that if you rent something, the provider will be forced to repair it for you. The issue is that they try to have it both ways, the strict control of renting something (users can't resell it, repair it, modify it) and the reduced responsibility of selling it.
I've been wondering if we're going to need to do something like that some day.
With the way tech is increasingly getting locked down, what if we end up in a future where all the major computer vendors won't sell you anything, only lease it to you under strict terms, which include the right for them to brick it for any reason. Sure, you can still buy parts and build your own computer, but you can't use it for any bank or credit card transaction or government website because it's not SECURE. If fact, even wanting to own your own computer makes you a suspicious person to law enforcement because why do you need it? Are you trying to distribute child porn? In fact, child porn is the reason Comcast stated to justify a new policy that will go into effect soon, which will only allow devices running on trusted hardware/OS to connect to the internet at all...
> "With the way tech is increasingly getting locked down, what if we end up in a future where all the major computer vendors won't sell you anything, only lease it to you under strict terms, which include the right for them to brick it for any reason. Sure, you can still buy parts and build your own computer, but you can't use it for any bank or credit card transaction or government website because it's not SECURE."
It is already like this for mobile phones. If I install LineageOS on my Android phone, I will be unable to use various banking and payment apps. My bank's app won't run, their wallet app won't run, the mobile payment app used by nearly everyone won't run. I haven't tested it, but I'm pretty sure I would also be unable to use the official 2-factor authentication app that is used for just about every interaction with any public service and for 3D Secure authentication of card payments.
At least for the 2-factor part, accessibility requirements mean there are other options, including SMS one-time codes and physical cardboard code sheets, but I think it's a matter of time before those are phased out.
If you're not running an iPhone or Android phone with an officially sanctioned OS, you are a second-tier digital citizen at best.
Depending upon what you mean by "sell", I can assure you that software sales are still happening. (Though it's probably better to describe it as selling a license for an indeterminate period. I also suspect the "indeterminate period" part will result in an increasing number of legal actions.)
Fundamentally, the repairs and sales are different things. A consumer knows whether they are making a purchase or renting when paying for a product. A consumer is much less likely to know what the extended support (i.e. out of warranty) options are, and they are subject to change as time goes on anyhow. This means that the market is less likely to accept a scenario where everything is rented and more likely to end up in a scenario where nothing is repairable.
That being said, I suspect the right to buy would become an issue if every vendor switched to rentals or subscriptions only.
The populace is under no particular obligation to allow the company to continue to go about doing business in the US. The populace of the EU and Canada and so forth likewise.
An act of such naked greed could trivially backfire.
That is only untrue because owning the phone would be disadvantageous to them. It's vastly more advantageous for them if you own it and are obliged to pay them for it because you own both pieces if it breaks.
You are conflating Right to Repair efforts in Europe with those in the US. Naturally, the US laws are more deferential to capital interests and is less consumer-friendly, and simply ask that companies don't ban the sale of components to independent repair shops, firmware lockouts of replacement parts that only the manufacturer can provide, etc.
Not exactly the answer to your question but France recently adopted a repairability score that has to be shown, just like the energy efficency class or nutrition labels.
The criteria are:
1- Documentation
2- Ease of disassembly, with a subsection on the necessary tools and a focus on the parts that are most likely to be serviced (for smartphones: battery, screen, ...)
3- Availability of spare parts
4- Price of spare parts relative to the finished product price
5- Extra criteria which depend on the type of item, for a smartphone, software updates are in this category
The idea is good, the implementation needs improvement.
Germany hasn't adopted the French approach, but awaits a Europe-wide initiative. Let's hope the lobbyists can't pull its teeth.
The article gives some examples, but I think more broadly the European Right to Repair efforts seem to align the repairability of consumer electronics with what we've come to expect from automobiles.
That industry can also use some "right to repair". I can't type www.peugeot.fr and find schematics, propriety diagnostic codes and repair instructions.
Granted, these are available from 3rd parties for a rather modest fee.
I'd argue that when a security vulnerability is made public, patching the operating system with an update is a form of repair. The device is as broken as my Gen-1 iPad that can no longer browse the web safely. If the manufacturer stops releasing such updates, AND actively prevents the user from developing and applying their own updates, then they are preventing repair.
There is an EU law that mandates selling supplies (e.g. vaccum cleaner bags) a certain number of years after the device is released. I would argue that "security updates" should be treated like "supplies".
I have a First Gen iPad with a dozen or so contemporary applications the still work because they do not touch the net at all. I also have hundreds of books that were legally downloaded. (humble bundles and creative common). It is my Replacement for an alarm clock beside my bed. I do have a list of sites that are lean enough to be read on it. Text mostly. I serves its purpose.
I really do not want this machine to fail because use it often. It would be lots of work recreate the convenience and familiarity of use if all the failed was a 50 cent button.
(PS it is on the net on my IOT "don't trust the IP stack" "vlan" of my home network [3 dumb router style DD-wrt units] in case it does get hit by a site attacking 10 year old iPads. I have my TVs, DVD players with apps and Guest access on it. May I will get another dumb router for the guests)
I don't think that it is correct to say that anyone is telling you anything. Apple has decided that they will drop support for devices after a certain period of time because the development effort of maintaining support is too costly given the number of users with the old hardware.
If I could be emperor for a day I would just mandate that when they drop support an old device, they have to provide a way for users still owning that device to have unlimited ability to load and run any software on it. That way if you really want to keep using your first-gen iPad then you can support it yourself. But it doesn't seem right to mandate that someone else continue to spend effort supporting idiosyncratic choices of all users.
While I agree with your "emperor for a day" solution, I'd like to point out that wanting to use a device I paid for longer than two years after I bought it is not an idiosyncratic choice. Apple's last OS update for the device (iOS 5.1.1) was a mere 2 years after the device's initial release. This is IMO totally unreasonable. I have a PC next to me that's 20 years old which still functions and runs a very recent Linux distribution.
Did the device stop working or did they just stop updating it? If it actually stopped working then I agree it is really shitty of them and even if they stopped providing security updates it is kind of shitty of them. But I think the solution is to take your business elsewhere. It's not as if Apple has a monopoly on the smartphone market and you don't have other options.
It happens gradually. A vulnerability here, a service turned down there, an app no longer available on the app store. It adds up to a device that does not do what it was advertised to do when it was new.
Everything else I buy for my home (except for things with obvious wear items that physically wear out), I expect to function forever exactly as the day I purchased it, or be repairable. I have hand tools that were made 100 years ago, inherited from my grandpa, which work exactly as they are supposed to. Yet, we're expected to accept that software "wears out" after a few years.
This is a subtle point about older devices that doesn't get enough attention imo.
In order to have an app I purchased with the features I purchased on an older device that I purchased, I must:
- Jailbreak the device
- Extract the iOS app and externally save it
- Turn off automatic updates for apps
- Be signed in to the Apple account that purchased that app
- Have that account be valid and not revoked
At some point, Apple may:
- Remove the app from the App store entirely
- Allow an update to the app that changes or removes the features that I specifically wanted
- Insist that the app does not support that older version of iOS (even if the version you purchased was fine, and only a later version removed support for older iOS versions)
In order to restore access to the app in that case I must:
- Jailbreak the device
- Sign in to that Apple account
- Copy the backed-up version of the app to the device
- Risk losing any data in that app, especially if it was updated and I'm now downgrading to a version that might not support the newer data format
Source: I purchased the first iPad when it came out, and I've gone through all of these.
The first let-down was Orphion: when I purchased the app it was amazing, but they used the finger touch API in a way that Apple did not agree with. They were forced to remove that API call in an update, and the app has not been the same since. Unfortunately I did not get a copy of the original version, and so I lost access to that specific experience that I paid for.
What I mean about we (society) is that it’s public opinion that supports or limits legislation. If a small group of people decide to use devices after they are unsupported, they also need support from society in general to be able to get the right to exercise that choice.
If we (society) don’t make the choice to actively support those rights, we are making the choice to let them die on the vine.
Fair enough. I would just draw the line at mandating continued software support and updates. I was actually thinking earlier and would amend my "emperor for a day" plan. I think we should mandate an analog to Matt Levines Certificate for Dumb Investment (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-09-24/earnin...). Vendors like Apple should be required to provide a mechanism to "jailbreak" any device they make so a user can run any firmware/software they choose, but to get access to that tool they need to go to apple.com and sign a form that says in big, bold red letters:
"THIS IS A REALLY BAD IDEA AND DOING THIS VOIDS ANY WARRANTY OR GUARANTEE WE MAKE FOR THIS DEVICE. AND IF YOU INSIST ON DOING THIS YOU WILL PROBABLY EITHER GET HACKED OR LOSE ALL YOUR DATA. SO PLEASE DON'T DO THIS UNLESS YOU ARE 100% SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. AND IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING YOU ARE PROBABLY WRONG."
And if you sign that you can download a tool to jailbreak your iPhone.
my interpretation is that there should be no artificial barriers.
Don't hide schematics, don't lock bootloaders, don't use NDAs to prevent sharing driver code, don't prevent component manufacturers from selling to third parties.
I think requiring schematic disclosure and non exclusivity for venders of custom parts is entirely unreasonable with catastrophic first and second order effects. Particularly the latter. We want more contract manufacturing, not less of it. If you take away the ability of companies to negotiate reasonable deals with their venders, they'll just buy them out and vertically integrate.
"If you take away the ability of companies to negotiate reasonable deals with their venders, they'll just buy them out and vertically integrate."
Why was that argument irrelevant in the past when the 'right to repair' was was accepted as completely normal† and manufacturers actually encourage it? (See my point to that effect above.)
† That is, to the extent that back then no one would have understood what the phrase meant. Had you mentioned it, it would have been considered either an oxymoron or a non sequitur and you would have received a blank and perplexing stare.
It's not coincidence that we make more devices that are more complex, and do it faster today than we did in the olden days and they are simultaneously more difficult to repair with tougher to source components in low volumes. Everything from the design process to the assembly and repair is completely different today than it was 50 years ago.
At the same time, consumers stopped caring about repairs. Why buy something you can repair if it will be obsolete in two years, and you can afford the replacement?
"Everything from the design process to the assembly and repair is completely different today than it was 50 years ago."
1. Yes, and that needs to change—and very soon at that. A short while ago I counted over one hundred x86 motherboards that were current and readily available from just one single manufacturer. I spent many hours trying to differentiate the minor—almost insignificant—differences between many of these boards (in fact, most of the differences were essentially trivial).
This nonsense is a deliberate marketing ploy and there ought to be definite penalties against it. It wastes considerable time and human effort that ought to put to better endeavors; confuses buyers as well as those who have to get the equipment working (let alone repair it); and it also screws up the development of software drivers—as no one is ever quite sure what all those minor changes are all about—and manufacturers haven't the time, wit or inclination to resolve such matters let alone spending time on providing upgrades for a PWA/board that has such a fleeting lifespan. No wonder the world is awash in e-junk! [That's just the beginning of that narrative but I'll spare you the rest.]
2. Then there are the thousands upon thousands of bugs that slip through software development and that are never fixed due mainly to the fact that the compilation process obfuscates them all and that there is no law or obligation to compel the developer to provide the source code that would reveal the underlying spaghetti code (this is the modern equivalent of a doctor burying his mistakes). ...Now, how many hundreds of examples would you like me to cite?
3. "At the same time, consumers stopped caring about repairs." That's true but fortunately they've now changed their minds—mostly because disingenuous manufactures have made either substandard equipment or equipment that has been deliberately designed to conform to the manufacturer's planned obsolescence strategy (I suggest you read my comments of several days ago on the Phoebus Light Bulb Cartel (BTW, it's still effectively alive and well)).
The sooner goods that cannot be easily repaired—or that are found to be deliberately designed to aid a manufacturer's planned obsolescence strategy—are taxed the sooner they'd fall into line. The classic example of this caper is the notorious—diabolical—example of smartphone batteries that are deliberately designed not to be changed. No wonder the Right to Repair movement has gathered apace and that new laws to regulate such wayward behaviour are now pending. Smartphone design would change overnight if every smartphone whose battery was not removable was levied with a hefty e-waste disposal tax! The same goes for smartphones whose manufactures deliberately disable the FM radio circuitry (a tax or levy on this can easily be justified from an emergency stance: if cell towers go down in floods, bushfires, earthquakes etc. and the FM radio works then phones would have at least some basic connection to the outside world). Right, that one's a no-brainer that everyone ought to understand!
4. With respect to your comment about JIT, it was alive and well when I was working in a manufacturing plant in Japan around the time that I was referring to.
Incidentally, I have worked in manufacturing and specifically in an electronics prototyping laboratory where much of my time was involved in liaising with production. I know the arguments you are putting very well, and whilst there is validity to some of them, many are just opportunistic and have been done more to benefit a manufacturer's coffers than to benefit users/consumers.
> A short while ago I counted over one hundred x86 motherboards that were current and readily available from just one single manufacturer.... This nonsense is a deliberate marketing ploy and there ought to be definite penalties against it...
There is no reason they can't have 100 slightly different motherboards they just need to maintain and provide proper docs on the lot and follow other reasonable standards.
The only comment I'd offer is that on the political compass you are in a diametrically opposite corner to me (and I'd add to many others in the Right to Repair movement).
Thus we'd never agree and I'd never expect it. So be it.
When I was born all electric and electronic appliances came with a complete diagram in the box. I don't understand how disclosing the schematic has any negative impact of any sort. Also the vendor contracts in these cases are based on volume discounts which are not affected by non-restricted sale to other parties.
- Repair schematics and diagrams are not necessarily complete schematics and may be abridged or missing some details
- Modern electronics are significantly more complex than when you were a child, unless you were born yesterday. Schematics for designs are barely useful for assembly today, let alone repair. They are primarily design documentation.
I've seen the macbook air schematic/vector art for the board (I had to replace that BGA backlight driver on my sister's laptop.) It's certainly big but at the end of the day it's networks of chips and L/R/C like any other circuit, you just walk through it like any other maze/graph and get to where you need to be.
How about forcing disclosure only for products that are no longer supported by the manufacturer? Not ideal from a repair standpoint, but removes (imo) the argument about the first and second order effects.
Instead of arguing on the exact definition of right to repair, we should all fight for the right to truly OWN our devices, where OWN := we have the legal right to do anything we want with the hardware AND with the software (because you can't really distinguish the two, now that all CPUs come with embedded TPMs running parallel closed OSes with ring -inf permissions).
Isn’t the underlying issue planned obsolescence as a business model? It’s anti-consumer and anti-environment, and maybe we shouldn’t incentivize it as a planet.
The problem is that planned obsolescence is not in fact everyone’s business model.
Apple’s penetration into the US market is not because the iPhone matches Android in terms of sales, it’s because iPhones last longer and get handed down or resold. Apple literally continues to sell years old devices.
That isn’t planned obsolescence.
A really simple step in the right direction would be mandated labeling showing how many years of software updates the device will get and statistical expected lifetime.
Yes, it is. Even though Apple devices last longer, after the support is ended, I cannot do anything with them. I cannot update, install anything. They effectively become bricks. If this is not planned obsolescence, then what is?
Except they don’t become bricks. They still work just fine. In fact, on some more recent unsupported devices, you can still redownload apps (but only up to the latest version supporting your device). Did the Apple II become a brick when Apple stopped supporting them? The IBM PC? Why is an older iDevice a “brick”, but not BlackBerrys or Nokias?
Security issues are found in browsers every day. You get no updates anymore and you are not allowed to update yourself. If you care about (not) leaking any of your data, this is effectively a brick.
Not really - I don’t expect a 7 year old device to be a good browser - that technology is a moving target, but I do expect it to still work as a notepad, music player, etc.
> 1. So why did you mention laptops? Seems like a false comparison.
Linux laptops have a proven track record of being supported for >10 years. Since the GNU/Linux phones also run mainline Linux, they are effectively the same kind of devices. There is no reason to expect that GNU/Linux phones will stop being supported.
> 2. What 11 year old GNU/Linux phone is supported today let alone ‘forever’?
> 1. So why did you mention laptops? Seems like a false comparison.
Linux laptops have a proven track record of being supported for >10 years. Since the GNU/Linux phones also run mainline Linux, they are effectively the same kind of devices.
1. No they aren’t. The hardware is different. Laptops are not the same as phones. It’s a false comparison.
They may run the mainline kernel, but they certainly don’t run mainline distributions usefully.
PinePhone isn’t even considered supported for consumer use today.
It’s sold for developers and most users say it doesn’t even work as a daily driver
2. Is the Nokia 900 supported? It’s not obvious. What makes you think it is? Even you used a ‘?’.
3. Why is this relevant?
Anyone who wants one can buy a PinePhone or Librem.
Why would someone who wants a GNU/Linux phone buy an iPhone?
An iPhone 4 with the “last supported OS” is significantly slower than when it had the OS it launched with.
This is true across the board, which leads to this very convenient “they can buy used iPhones, but we don’t want them to use them, so we’ll gently guide them to new devices by making it inconvenient and annoying”
And before someone argues: Yes, much of the slowdown is because of new features, BUT Apple could simply allow users to disable most of them (such as ML-processing photos in the background, or deep-indexing file contents for spotlight. Those are not required for the phone to function as a phone).
If someone wanted to use the iPhone 3GS with the original iOS, not sync to the cloud, replace the battery every couple years, and install a firewall to prevent intrusion via known attack vectors, they could realistically have a perfectly snappy and solid experience in any future decade. Doubly so if they kept a 2.4Ghz AP when the industry is on some unknown future frequency.
However: Apple has taken many steps to prevent exactly that sort of thing, and they will continue to make as many as they can get away with.
> An iPhone 4 with the “last supported OS” is significantly slower than when it had the OS it launched with.
This ignores the fact that later iPhones with the newest OS are significantly faster than what they launched with, which contradicts the conclusion that this is intentional.
Ah, so no evidence at all was presented to support your claim that it was international, and your suggestion that the court found it so turns out to be bullshit since the court didn’t even rule.
Unfortunately we can no longer look at court decisions as arguments either way.
Large companies simply settle out of court in order to silence the facts.
- If they are wrong and are successful in getting out of it, they might walk away with a judge "confirming" that they did no wrong.
- If they are wrong and the evidence is overwhelmingly conclusive, they might write a cheque and walk away.
In either case the public does not have any convincing argument based on evidence. Therefore we have to go by subtext.
Apple was accused of slowing down the devices intentionally. They admitted the bare minimum (low power mode), then wrote a cheque that made the rest of the accusations go away.
To me, that's as convincing as a verdict by a judge.
Large companies and small companies settle out of court when the cost of fighting the battle isn’t worth it - nothing more and nothing less.
We can deduce that there as no evidence of intent, since if the plaintiffs had such evidence they wouldn’t have settled for so little. Remember that this was a class action with a huge class, so the settlement amount is diminimis for the plaintiffs but a decent payout for the attorneys. I.e. they had no case, and Apple paid to end the inconvenience.
This is obviously nothing like a verdict by a judge and provides us no information about the facts whatsoever, because no facts were presented.
The presence of a court case does not provide evidence for the michaelmrose’s subtext.
If it did, you would be able to reference some.
Also, this further confirms that the original claim by michaelmrose that they lost a court case and that the court found intent, was complete bullshit.
I am impressed concerning how much you defend Apple. I suggest that you look at my favorites list about them. Maybe it will tell you that they aren't as good as would like to think.
Precisely, the iPhone does not work like an Apple ][ or an IBM PC. After "support" is ended you cannot install software on your device. How insane is it, I'll repeat: you cannot install software on “your own” device.
I personally don’t care about installing my own stuff on my iPhone. I bought it knowing full well I couldn’t do it. But you’re right: when support ends, it is pretty crazy how the only way to install unapproved apps is through jailbreaks. If a manufacturer isn’t going to support a mass produced device anymore, they shouldn’t be able to just fold their arms and say, “we have a newer model!”
You can redownload supporting apps, but the problem is that the official App Store doesn't have them once a new version of OS comes out.
I remember when in 2014 I decided to give away my unused iPad 1st gen, just as a e-reader. So I've erased it but no apps were supporting this device already. Even the official Apple Books app.
Yes, techicaly it wasn't bricked, it worked, you still can turn it on and off. But without software it's useless.
First gen is the operative word. That device is not representative.
4 years was an eternity in device capability at the time the first gen of the iPad was released.
I’m writing this on a 6 year old iPad Pro that I use every day. Everything runs on it, and it shows no sign of being too slow or even needing a battery replacement.
It wasn't a problem with the device. It was Apple decision that one day disallowed to download existing working software. They had the software, and I don't think it was too expensive to keep it downloadable for a few more years.
Or you mean that there was a problem with Apple servers and now it's fixed?
I would say it is artificially shortened by design choices. It is a perfectly capable device, the harware is still fast and secure. However, I am just not allowed to fix the software, even if I have enough resources for that. This is exactly why we need free software.
> I would say it is artificially shortened by design choices.
The design choices have to be made to artificially shorten the life, not for any other purpose. For example, I can make a device cheaper and use cheaper materials that wear out faster - that's not planned obsolescence. However if I include a little plastic tab that I know will break before everything else for no good reason other than making it break faster - that is.
I suspect you'll have a hard time arguing compellingly that the purpose of apples closed update system was to shorten the useful life, rather than as a side effect of other product and design goals.
Phones are sort of a bad example, because for a long time the replacement cycle was driven by actual technical obsolescence, arguably only relatively recently has this ceased to be the case.
I fully support allowing the device itself to have alternative OS installations after the end of official support.
The reason 1st gen iPads don’t have this is fairly obvious though - the unlocking feature is itself a likely vector for attacks e.g. by law enforcement unlocking tools, etc.
I’m not sure what it would take to enable it to be done securely without destroying the overall security model but it’s clearly not trivial, and would take some investment that certainly wasn’t possible at the time the 1st gen device was released.
I cannot replace a battery on a perfectly working iPad otherwise, and Apple is charging almost a price of a new device to replace it for me, i.e. they are basially forcing me to buy a new one.
Wondering, can that be called a planned obsolescence or not?
If we're talking about an unsupported devices, aren't the downsides of third party repairs basically moot? There are any number of above-board companies that you can ship your device to and will do a battery swap for you so long as batteries are available.
Yeah, that's what I did. Found an unofficial repair and replaced the battery for less that $100. Anyway, I don't think it should be so hard to replace a battery. And I still remember times when I was able to replace battery manually at home.
Because the design choices are pretty easily argued to have been made for reasons other than reducing user access, but have the side effect of reducing user access. Both size/weight constraints and case integrity drive you to the same sort of thing.
To be clear, I think it's fine to call out a company for planned obsolescence, and I think it's fine to call them out for emphasizing size, etc. over user serviceability. I just don't think it's useful to pretend they are the same thing.
For many devices the devices themselves are glued making the process of just opening the case interesting and then require near complete disassembly to remove the battery.
At minimum when a device opens up and swapping the battery takes 10 seconds near everyone does it themselves. As difficulty increases the propensity of users able to afford to do so trends towards zero. Imagine if a battery costs $200 and requires $100 in labor. If the cost at purchase is 400 and the value at end of warranty is $200 zero people will ever make use of this service and every device becomes trash after the battery wears out.
Artificially inflating cost of parts can trivially be used to enforce planned obsolescence.
> Artificially inflating cost of parts can trivially be used to enforce planned obsolescence.
It could, but nobody has presented any evidence that Apple is doing this, and their business strategy is openly stated to involve increasing the lifetime of their devices, so that they can deliver services to more users, so this is just innuendo.
I'm going a little bit on a tangent here, and this may not apply so much to recent Apple phones, but Apple phones had planned obsolescence in terms of the design of their physical appearance such that you can tell almost instantly which generation it is. This allows broadcasting of status, that this person can afford the latest while that person can only afford to use a 2-year-old phone, thus artificially driving the upgrade cycle.
That isn’t planned obsolescence, because the people who upgrade for status reasons don’t destroy their phones - they either pass them on or trade them in.
Arguably it’s the opposite of planned obsolescence - even used phones are not obsolete and are still in circulation.
It’s also worth pointing out that this is Apple’s stated policy - they want phones to last longer so that more people have them and they can continue to sell services to them.
> Reread the thread. In this thread, the OP is speaking about design obsolescence.
I don’t need to reread it. My response applies to design obsolescence.
Relatively few people upgrade every year these days. The fact that the old devices are still desirable negates the idea that people don’t want them because they look outdated. I.e. changes in design are not causing people to stop using the devices.
For design obsolescence to apply to Apple, workable devices would need to be retired from service early because they were no longer seen as desirable.
I don't think what you are stating is the definition for planned obsolescence. For example, even though there is a used car market, the fact that someone upgrades their car due to fashion means it's planned obsolescence. In fact, that's where the term was born.
We know for a fact that Apple was artificially lowering their battery capacity, and that's most likely just the beginning. The PR speak about it being done to protect batteries is BS and we all know it. It incentivizes more purchasing. Much like how the GTA5 loading bug was never solved because it led to more advertisements for digital currency being forced upon one's eyes...
Every update I get on my mac, or Iphone slows it down. Bloat and "protecting the users battery" are the root causes, and ultimately Apple is one of the best examples of a company "artificially shortening" things via design choices.
Firstly, thanks for confirming that that the parent poster was posting a false statement.
Secondly, as you must be aware, the reason Apple decreased the performance
was to extend the useful lifetime of the battery.
The fine was because they didn’t explain this properly in advance, not because they did it.
They still in fact do alter the device performance to accommodate aging batteries and make them last longer.
This is a really silly issue to raise if the argument is about Apple shortening lifetimes of devices or batteries, since it makes the device usable for longer.
To imagine it requires understanding how technology works.
Batteries are chemical processes - they degrade slowly over time. An older battery produces less power, and so can’t support the same peak performance.
You can therefore extend the useful life of the battery by throttling the CPU performance to within the power envelope provided by the battery.
Apple should simply allow easy replacing the battery and not deceive their customers with "helpful updates", which make devices slow. This is anti-consumer, as proven by the lawsuit.
Apple does allow easy replacing of the battery. Just go into an Apple store and ask for a replacement.
Nothing was proven by the lawsuit, since it never went to trial, you know this so it’s unclear why you’d repeat this falsehood.
As for not your suggestion that Apple not slow the devices down to extend the battery life and have users just replace the battery, that seems misguided.
Why would you want users to be forced to buy unnecessary battery replacements and further damage the environment by wasting working batteries?
It’s much better for the devices to be able to continue to use the batteries for longer, don’t you think?
> A really simple step in the right direction would be mandated labeling showing how many years of software updates the device will get and statistical expected lifetime.
This isn't that simple because it depends on _which_ software. This gets glossed over a lot in these discussions.
An iPhone gets ~5 years of iOS updates. Importantly, these updates are the only place where the only permitted web viewer on the platform gets updated.
An android phone gets 2-3 years, if it's very lucky, of android updates. However, the _browser_ you use on that device is updated entirely independently of the OS, and while it isn't obvious how far back Chrome supports, android Firefox runs on android 5.0 devices (i.e. at least 7 years, probably more?)
These are two different security scenarios - an iOS device is fully patched against OS-level exploits for longer. True. But an android device will have a safer browser for a lot longer. In my threat model the latter is a lot more important - I don't think I'm unusual in that my web browser is by far my largest attack surface.
(disclaimer: i work at google, but i work on iOS stuff and like iOS a lot. more than android for sure. but i'm very salty that i can't have a browser updated independently from the OS)
That’s a fair point, but easily addressed. The base OS and Browser are arguably the two platforms on which software runs, and for which security updates are important. There could be 2 numbers.
I realize there are other runtimes, but for a general indication for cross comparison this would do.
It is planned obsolescence, because at some point I am artificially prevented from installing and running software and/or security updates. This is done by Apple only providing updates up to a certain point, and then keeping the platform locked down, while no longer providing updates.
Any closed platform that becomes unsupported and stays locked down is made artificially obsolete.
I can buy an original IBM PC, write my own software and run it with no limitations, despite it being an unsupported platform for several decades. See the famous 8088 MPH demo for an example of how much can still be done on an ancient platform, way beyond what was considered possible in its heyday. I can even write my own OS and run that. Remember that Linux was originally written by Linus Torvalds because there was no freely available Unix-like on x86, so he decided to write his own.
I can't do that with an original iPhone. You can jailbreak it, but that's not a risk-free process and it still doesn't let you install your own OS or give you direct access to the hardware.
Once a device no longer receives updates or official support, it should be opened for hobbyists to experiment with.
Apple completely cutting support for first-gen iPads is certainly planned/deliberate obsolescence.
The hardware is fine, well-built and solid, probably still has 50% battery life left at this point. It's not the fastest device, but plenty fast for text and 2D graphics, plus some mild 3D.
But Apple has cut off support, very few apps can run on the old version of iOS it is locked to, and there is no real way of installing a different OS or adding a third-party app store or sideloading apps. Even with a paid developer account, you're severely limited.
That is actively killing off a device that could still be viable and usable to a lot of people, thus planned/deliberate obsolescence.
It’s complete bullshit to say it was planned or deliberate. If you have some internal documents showing the plan, that would be different. It’s just a device from a time when technology was evolving rapidly.
If this problem hadn’t been solved, there would be more of an issue, but my 6 year old iPad Pro runs everything and is still fully supported.
Having said that I actually do agree that unsupported hardware in general should be opened to new OS installs at the end of official support.
Opening up the original iPad to other operating systems and/or DIY software does not mean handing over the signing keys for currently supported platforms. In case of a running iPad, an Apple-authorized update could be pushed to the OS to unlock it and allow it to run binaries directly.
Apple could also document any hardware features that would allow someone to put an iPad into "free-for-all" mode. Presumably this would require opening up the device to attach a serial cable to a JTAG connection or something similar.
There are many options for Apple to open up unsupported devices for hobbyists to tinker on, and it would completely in line in the original hacker-friendly Apple spirit.
Instead Apple refuses to do so, and insist that opening up an 11 year old, long unsupported device, by claiming that it would somehow compromise their current security model.
What you have described completely destroys the security model.
> In case of a running iPad, an Apple-authorized update could be pushed to the OS to unlock it and allow it to run binaries directly.
Which of course an attacker would be able to do too.
> Apple could also document any hardware features that would allow someone to put an iPad into "free-for-all" mode. Presumably this would require opening up the device to attach a serial cable to a JTAG connection or something similar.
Which of course a police department, the FBI, or the agents of an oppressive regime or anyone who bought a JTAG device off ebay would be able to do too.
These are exactly the reasons they don’t do these things - if they did, they would be opening attack vectors.
Security is hard. I’m not saying it’s impossible to achieve this, but it’s not simple.
We're talking about a device that is completely unsupported by its manufacturer. You already have no expectation of security or integrity when the last available OS and security update is over 5 years old by now.
Opening up access to install your own software would have great potential to increase the security of the device, not least because you can actually run current and patched versions of any software.
If you have physical access to a device, you can already tap the memory bus or countless other places. Relying on a device itself to be secure when it is in your adversaries' hands is futile.
Open the hardware, use secure software and keep your storage encrypted, preferably on removable storage.
If you think that is the only way into an Apple device, and that police or even nation states are now helpless against the mighty "hack resistant" iPhone, then you may be interested in this bridge I happen to have for sale.
Planned obsolescence != suboptimal life expectancy
On the left hand, you make design choices with the goal of limiting the life expectancy of the product, and on the right hand, you just don't prioritise life expectancy over other considerations when making said choices.
Of course the line is thin and the complexity of design trade-offs in all directions makes it pretty hard to pinpoint where evil actually happened... which is why the "right to repair" is so complicated in terms of hardware.
Software though is another matter: no-one can claim it's "too difficult" or "too costly" to provide users with the information that will allow them to use their device with the software they want.
That’s usually because these people don’t have the slightest clue how industrial mass-production for consumer goods work.
They constantly think it’s always about the customer, it isn’t. The products are almost always optimized for costs, nothing else.
If a manufacturer uses glue instead screws, they don’t do that to make it harder to repair. They prefer glue because it’s cheaper. The same applies for cheap components over high quality ones.
Want to increase the possibility of getting a durable and repairable product? Well, prepare to spend ten times as much.
It's done for security because the screens are primary input devices and linked to the biometric sensors. Without protections for genuine components anyone could replace your screen with one that had a hardware key logger and compromised biometric sensors. The security of the system is as weak as the weakest component.
Your phone has access to tons of personal data, for some people just about all of their personal data. It's in every user's best interest to have secure hardware since it's inherently mobile and easily lost or stolen, easier than a desktop locked in a house.
But no I'm sure it's just some conspiracy to make iPhones disposable. That makes way more sense.
not just electronics, John Deer tractors and farming machines... all the parts have encrypted links that only John Deer repair shops can sync new parts... soon your car won't let you change your tire without it not turning on, unless you buy their "tire"
I don’t know why we shouldn’t let the market handle this. If people want everything to be repairable then why isn’t there a phone which solve that issue?
i not sure what your talking about... people get their phones fixed all the time, its just the companies make it very difficult or not possible at all when you can't get access to parts, or you have companies like Apple who prevent you importing parts even if the parts are ripped out of broken devices.
Then you have Apple who lie they say you can't recover your data or repair your device, yet you go to a repair shop and you get your data back and phone fixed...
But that’s my point. Why do buy a phone from company like that? Just stop buying from them and buy from another manufacturer instead and the problem will be solved.
okay true, but you think its fine for Apple to prevent you from taking out say your broken camera and replace it with a working one? or a LCD... or any part? You think its fine for say John Deer to prevent you from repairing your own tractor? if any part is replaces with exactly the same part but your tractor won't turn on because the "encryption link" is not correct?
would you be fine with your car preventing you from changing your tire? unless you get them to do it and only install their "tires"?
You're not making a convincing argument when the person you're arguing with is coming from the "free market" angle.
Someone arguing in favor of allowing market forces to solve the problem truly do think it's fine for Apple and John Deere to do those things. The solution for lack of repairability isn't to enact legislation to force them to make their products more repairable, it's to stop buying Apple and John Deere.
To a point, they're right, but relying on market solutions assumes rational consumers, which we have anything but. I think back about 7 years when I bought a Motorola Droid Turbo. Back then, consumers were asking for phones with longer-lasting batteries and screens that wouldn't shatter because you sneezed. This phone was exactly what consumers were asking for, with it's monstrous 3950 mAh battery, and a screen that could survive a 100-foot drop onto pavement (Saw a video of it!), but most people had never even heard of it, and still bought their iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones which couldn't even survive a waist-high drop onto the sidewalk without cracking the screen.
Consumers are not rational, and so the market will never be rational, and relying on market solutions does not always work.
Sorry, I’m not sure if I follow. Consumers are not rational, ok fair. But should we then listen to their demands to have things their way? Like devices, which can be repaired? Seems like a rational want? I don’t get it
Yes, we on HN are far more likely to demand repairabiliy, but most consumers don't care about the ability to repair their devices. Or at the very least, don't care so much that they'll choose not to buy the latest phone because the battery is not easily replaced.
And it boils down to what are consumers actually buying? If consumers are demanding something and the corporations are not providing it, but they buy the products anyways, the corporation has no incentive to provide it.
There was a lot of uproar when Apple removed the headphone jack when they made the iPhone 7, but that didn't stop consumers from making it the best selling smartphone in the world at the time, with ~40 million units sold. And now guess what? Other phone manufacturers followed suit. I guess headphone jacks aren't that important after all.
The market can demand whatever the hell it wants, but rarely follows through.
>Now "right to repair" includes not only designing devices to be easier to repair but also includes legacy software support? Where do we draw this line? If your M1 dies, you can't fab one yourself or run older software on it indefinitely.
You're argument is with the author, and his interpretation, not with "right to repair". What "right to repair" is or isn't , is not decided by the author of this article. There are various organizations that are loosely related with a few shared ideals.
>We must very carefully define our terms here, because requiring someone else to provide on one's behalf presumes a right to the product of their labor.
Not really. Anyone can propose anything in an article, and they must be free to do so. Its upto us as a collective to think over ideas and proposals and then push for policy proposals that align.
Ultimately the terms will be defined in legislation, not on bbc.com
> Now "right to repair" includes not only designing devices to be easier to repair but also includes legacy software support?
Any right to repair law that doesn't also include provisions to ensure you can run your own code on the device is hobbled. How "repairable" is a device that is cloud based but they disabled the cloud service?
I don't care that manufacturers support the software beyond what they've contractually signed up for, but I do care that I'm not left holding a brick afterwards by design. As long as the capability exists to put other firmware that exists on the device, or write my own, I'm protected from that, at least in the general case. If nobody has provided that firmware and I can't do it myself, that's still a situation I think it many times better than the alternative.
> Now "right to repair" includes not only designing devices to be easier to repair but also includes legacy software support?
This is really the same thing, i.e. comprehensive hardware documentation. If the hardware is well-documented then third parties can use the documentation to create hardware drivers and continue to support e.g. Android/Linux on that hardware even after the OEM stops providing supported software.
This is true even of iPhones; there is no technical reason you shouldn't be able to port Android or any other OS to iPhone hardware given adequate hardware documentation. People are attempting to port Linux to M1 Macbooks even without adequate hardware documentation, though of course the lack of documentation is a severe impediment and the efforts consequently have yet to produce a usable port.
>Now "right to repair" includes not only designing devices to be easier to repair but also includes legacy software support? Where do we draw this line? If your M1 dies, you can't fab one yourself.
Or maybe unlocking the bootloader?
>Now the author has shifted "right to repair" to mean mandatory device support and design requirements around repair-ability.
It's part of the conversation on planned obsolescence but you're right that's not strictly part of right to repair.
But these companies have been crowing about sustainability for a while now for PR purposes - now they may be legislated to actually provide sustainability in terms of product support and repairability.
Perhaps compulsory software updates at least as far as security issues for a reasonable time frame after selling a particular device as new to stores. I'd say 5 years to go with the 5 year warranty against defects in manufacture. This would discourage waste and improve the second hand market.
So moto, samsung, et all would be obligated to provided fixes for 5 years after they sold the last unit. If an oem can't meet that obligation just forbid their import.
We presume a right to the product of other people's labor for the privilege of doing business here all the time. See every product in existence.
Now "right to repair" includes not only designing devices to be easier to repair but also includes legacy software support? Where do we draw this line? If your M1 dies, you can't fab one yourself or run older software on it indefinitely.
If your IBM PC dies, you can definitely create a functionally exact clone based on publicly available information, and in fact many have done so, either virtually or physically.
IMHO if the manufacturer ceases to provide support, then it must open up the documentation and design, or allow all reverse-engineering of it.
More importantly, you can buy a new Intel chip to replace the one that failed, swap them out, and go about your day. Thinking about the gap between the lifecycle experience on the PC side vs. the Mac side is a good way to understand the difference between an ecosystem open to repair and one closed to it.
> Now the author has shifted "right to repair" to mean mandatory first-party device support and design requirements around repair-ability.
I'm sure mandatory first-party device support is better for the manufacturer than giving people the idea they should be able to control what software runs on their device. I wonder if that stance is a lack of imagination on the author's part or something more deliberate.
If we are going to allow software patents on the basis that software is a device, then laws affecting physical devices should apply to software as well.
I was thinking about right to repair laws. What's the analog for schematics when you are talking about a software device? It's going to be something like source code or API documentation.
I don't think Apple or Google have to open source every part of their software. They just have to make it possible for us to install alternative operating systems on their computing platforms. That would allow giving older devices new life by putting Linux on them, for example. A fully unlocked iPhone 6 with Linux on it could be very useful.
Companies like Tesla are trying to change things, but for most of a century it was the norm that the manufacturer would make parts available for purchase, and even if they had stopped doing so, there is a huge aftermarket industry around repair and customisation.
The aftermarket has become so big, that you can probably build an entire car of the 50s to early 70s entirely out of aftermarket parts. Even body panels and frame rails are available.
It's clearly written by an author who isn't very technically or legally savvy, however it gets the point across to the general public about the importance. We can let the pros determine the goalposts but clearly what we're doing now and letting manufacturers get away with is insufficient.
Asking the manufacturers to not pull dirty tricks with the bootloader (AKA Tivoization) does not sound to me like asking much of them and could cut quite a bit of ewaste as old devices are reused with new software.
Of course many would try to block that as it cuts into their planned obsolescence roadmaps...
with all due respects, this article is neither extremely rich or information nor exhaustively researched. Its more like the kind of stuff you hear on BBC radio. Just a few interviews with people whose experiences you might not hear from otherwise.
Why are you surprised? This is the common pattern of tech activism: start with a kernel of a legitimate grievance, grow it into a whole crop of outrage, and harvest that outrage to make new rules that actually make everything a bit worse.
Designing for repairability has costs both monetary and functional. Why should everyone have to pay these costs on the say-so of a few people whose main claim to legitimate authority is their social media follower count?
I believe this push for repairability is bad and that it will lead to bad outcomes for consumers. The market ought to be what tells us what product features are really important.
I tend to agree with this position. This all feels a bit like "I want everyone else to finance my niche desire to hack on my device." It seems like if this were really a thing that a lot of consumers wanted then someone would be filling that market demand. But I suspect that the overwhelming majority of consumers don't in fact want this. They want a secure device that just works and they upgrade regularly before their old device is EOL.
You are right, but then let's make it mandatory for the end user to safely recycle all the components from their devices; they should not be allowed to sale or donate old devices, but have to recycle every piece of it. The purpose? Safe disposal. If you don't want to extend the life of the devices, keep it forever or safely dispose it.
As a user, the only "moving of goalposts" I see with regard to "software updates" is that as a consumer if I buy the device with software installed (including whatever latent defects that software may contain) the manufacturer believes it has the right to continually install updates. I did not buy the updates (new software). That was not part of the deal. I did not sign up for a subscription. I purchased a piece of hardware. And yet, there is an expectation, for lack of a better word, that I will "update", long after purchase, after the buyer's relationship with the manufacturer ends (no warranty in effect). Of course, these updates are always to benefit the manufacturer, by retaining an ability to track buyers after purchase. Surveillance capitalism.
I have no desire for any developer to have to do more work after the date of purchase to "fix" or "support" software. What I want is all the work to be done before selling the device. Quality control. Is this really too much to ask. I am not interested in purchasing what are effectively "works-in-progress".
Louis explains its a david vs goliath situation, tech companies pay lobbyists to argue against right to repair. Small working repair shops cant afford to travel to these meetings, and not get paid.
This is why the fund raiser, the public needs lobbyists to represent them against the corporate lobbyists.
Its also bad that these companies are funding/donating to politicians to go against the publics interest.
At one point a senator asks why someone should be restricted from replacing a fan on a broken Xbox, the lobbyist said (paraphrasing) "I hear what you're saying and am not listening, but let's do the real talking in private"
I'd highly reccomended his video "What is right to repair? An introduction for curious people." as it clears up many misconceptions about right to repair: https://youtu.be/Npd_xDuNi9k
PCs and even most laptops have been very repairable for decades. You can still run Windows or Linux on a 10+ (20+?) year old laptop without an issue. The idea that a 5 year old laptop would be unusable or not get the latest version of Windows is unacceptable.
Yet phones cost similar amounts and have nowhere near the repairability. A decade ago you could argue that it wasn't that important - specs were changing so quickly that new phones became obsolete too quickly. But now it's a maturing technology, older devices are perfectly good and we still don't have an ecosystem which encourages longevity and re-use.
This is eminently doable - phones are essentially integrated computers. The only reason phones are locked and PCs aren't is historical. If phone manufacturers aren't willing to do it themselves, we should legislate before even more e-waste is generated.
Repairable is not limited to just OS support, but fair and equal access to replacement components. For example, apple can ask Texas Instruments to not sell a particular chip that is used on their logic boards to anyone else but them, rendering odds of third party repair slimmer [1].
Apple went as far as to prevent genuine, that is, salvaged parts, from legitimately bought phones, from being used to replace camera units [2,3,4], or lock phones with replaced batteries.
Yes, it is often impossible to source things like Intel CPUs or chipsets. They sell them to device manufacturers only in millions. Even if you have IR rework station and can solder BGA chips you have no reliable source of these chips. It is even worse with Apple devices where they often use parts not publicly available at all (custom-made for them) and sometimes if they use a common STM32 micro, there is no firmware available to program it and it won't work without the firmware.
5 year old laptops are repairable, but fewer and fewer new ones are not. I've been in the market recently and it's extremely frustrating trying to find a laptop that doesn't have the RAM soldered in place. Sure, it can technically be desoldered, but that's not how it used to be.
And I 100% blame Apple for this. IMO, Apple is not a tech company, but a fashion company. Or more accurately, they produce technology that's optimized to be fashionable. Thin laptops are more sleek, but to make them thinner will require parts to be soldered to the motherboard, since an actual slot will add 3mm or whatever.
Other companies feel like they have to match Apple, and so they follow suit.
The thing is, AFAIK, nobody is asking for laptops to be only 0.63 inches (16.1 mm) thick, but that's what people are buying. Apple advertises how thin the MacBook Air is, and the masses go wild over it.
I'm with you on this - the marketing spiel of thinness at the expense of all else drivers me nuts!
I do want a thin laptop, and as someone who travelled a lot for work while living with a physically disabling medical condition, lightness is important to me too. But I don't care half a shit if it's 16mm thick instead of 16.1mm, if you've disabled the device to do it!
Apart from costs and size there's could be good reasons to do this - power, inteferance, placement and cooling.
Hardware specialisation (doesn't always but) can reduce energy by allowing for more efficient designs. Just think of the power circuitry required to support all the SODIMM variants.
Since soldered ram is smaller it allows greater flexibility in board design - they can be placed to avoid inteferance or to benifit thermals.
The trend for lack of reparability in smartphones is because of consumer preferences. Consumers are consistently choosing devices that are smaller, lighter, higher durability, waterproof, cheaper etc. vs. devices that are more repairable that do not have those features.
Where does this crazy idea come from that you have to glue shut a device to make it waterproof? A rubber gasket and a few screws work just as well without compromising repairability. Wristwatches have been constructed like this for centuries, while being a lot smaller and lighter than any smartphone. Maybe it would slightly increase the BOM and assembly cost, but considering that it fits in the budget of a 30€ Casio, probably not by much. I guess the real problem is that manufacturers really don't want you to repair your phones and customer's don't care enough for it to make a difference in the market.
Look at this comparison. Fairphone has a smaller screen but is larger, heavier, lower quality screen, and is not dust/waterpoof, and costs double compared with the Galaxy S8. Fairphone only matches or loses on all other specs.
Weight isn't an important metric unless it's greater than the threshold of uncomfortableness. The majority of the weight difference comes from the extra battery which is a tradeoff.
Similarly for volume, in which the case dimensions is the important metric. Once again the volume is a battery tradeoff.
As for water resistance yes, the buds+ are IP2X versus IP4X. Under normal use this isn't important, but if argued this is the better point than bulkiness.
> Where does this crazy idea come from that you have to glue shut a device to make it waterproof?
Glue helps with heat dissipation, physical shocks, vibration knocking plugs loose, provides electrical insulation, chemical resistance, and makes the components less able to vibrate over time and knock things loose, makes sensor positioning more stable, and even makes things easier to assemble since less individual fasteners are needed.
None of this makes any sense. In modern smartphones, the PCBs (i.e. the parts that get hot and contain the sensors and other components) are usually screwed into the frame without any glue. Only the battery, display, and back covers are glued in. This makes repairs of the most commonly damaged parts much more difficult without providing any functional benetfits.
The demand for smartphones is hundreds of millions per year. Manufacturing a hundred million of a complex thing is orders of magnitude more difficult than manufacturing ones of millions of a complex thing. A small complex thing with tight tolerances is harder yet.
Setting a part in a jig, brushing a dab of glue, and setting a second part on top is much faster than the same process but fastening a couple screws to the appropriate tightness. It's also less error prone and creates a better bond between the parts.
Apple and Samsung pump out tens of millions of phones a quarter. The more effort required for each stage of assembly ends up the difference of millions of phones manufactured in the same period of time.
> Setting a part in a jig, brushing a dab of glue, and setting a second part on top is much faster than the same process but fastening a couple screws to the appropriate tightness. It's also less error prone and creates a better bond between the parts.
In my imagining of this, a robot is doing it. Which makes me think the opposite is true: the tightness can be controlled and errors can be managed better with a screw, than with glue.
Robots do not in fact do most assembly on smartphones. There's a reason Foxconn's factories are the size of towns. It's thousands of meat robots doing a majority of the work.
Assuming you've already researched the time and material costs - Why does it matter if more effort is required?
We should put the environment and our own interests as a society ahead of the profits of these already obscenely profitable companies.
We don't allow industries to pollute the planet, we require expensive filters and waste-treatment for chemical plant effluents and catalytic converters for cars, and what not.
> We should put the environment and our own interests as a society ahead of the profits of these already obscenely profitable companies.
It's not necessarily about overall profit. Apple profits on iPhones because they sell them for many times their cost. A marginal cost increase in manufacturing wouldn't impact them much.
The problem for Apple (and other large manufacturers) is production volume. It is a massive (and expensive) undertaking to mass produce something like an iPhone in the volumes Apple does. There's a lot of orchestration between component suppliers, component transport, assembly, packaging, and channel distribution. Contracts covering all of those things are signed years in advance to reserve capacity.
If final product assembly volume drops because a worker has to spend five seconds screwing parts rather than two seconds gluing that back pressure affects everything. Supply chains are such that there's literally no warehouse space available to store backed up components or finished products.
That doesn't affect profitability but just economic feasibility of whole lines of products. There's massive demand for smartphones and there's only so many ways to get the production volume to meet that demand.
Consider PC shipments in terms of production. The global demand is tens of millions of units a year vs hundreds of millions of phones per quarter. Like I said, there's challenges to making a hundred million complex widgets that simply don't exist at smaller scales. Screws might be fine in laptops but they're a volume killer for phones.
I don't agree with your assessment, so we have a disagreement, no biggie :)
Car assembly lines were changed to include adding the seat-belt and the catalytic converter, etc, etc due to regulatory mandates. Heck they had to redesign their entire car to include crumple zones for safety! I don't think a screw is all that much.
And so, electronics companies will figure out how to optimize their assembly lines to comply with the regulations and they will figure out how to manage the supply chain and everything else. Apple employs tons of smart people, and there are many smart people in the world who can help as well.
Worldwide car sales are tens of millions per year. Smartphone sales are hundreds of millions per quarter.
So not only are phones orders of magnitude smaller than cars there's two orders of magnitude more manufactured every year.
You can disagree with me all you want but it doesn't change the fact of those scales. Phones don't just pop out of a mold or an extruder. Manufacturing billions of them is a big deal and anything making them more difficult to manufacture affects volumes.
>Manufacturing billions of them is a big deal and anything making them more difficult to manufacture affects volumes.
Sorry, but the environment comes first. They'll will just have to deal with it. This problem is imminently solvable, and tractable. We put a man on the moon, we can figure out how to automate putting on a few screws and a gasket as is done with watches and other commonplace items. Or they can come up with another modular design that is still repairable. We shouldn't put an artificial limit or human creativity and ingenuity.
You're saying "glue helps" but you seem to mean "glue is required". Those are not identical concepts. Yes glue may help, just like using bolts screws and gaskets may help. The entire point is that glue is not _required_ to achieve those goals.
It doesn't though. It fails when it comes to repairability, re-use and reduction of e-waste. This is the topic of the primary article, and therefore the context for this thread.
You can also weld an entire car together to make it cheaper, but this is not something we should celebrate or promote if it impacts the environment in terms of repair.
But yes, I value your opinion so don't want to shut you out of the discussion, I'm just saying there are more important things than making sure an executive at Apple or Google pockets a few more $100 bills.
>It fails when it comes to repairability, re-use and reduction of e-waste
Around 1.5 billion phones are sold a year. What percent of phones are thrown out due to breaking versus people want an upgrade? Then compare to the costs and waste of using inefficient assembly techniques.
It's also not hard or terribly expensive to get most broken phones fixed at plenty of repair shops.
I think you vastly overestimate the number of phones that become waste due to using glue on parts.
> I'm just saying there are more important things than making sure an executive at Apple or Google pockets a few more $100 bills
I think this type of simplistic framing makes the discussion end, not pointing out that there are good engineering merits for using glue.
I've worked on enough hardware design that needs MIL-SPEC ratings that I know it is highly non-trivial to make things rugged. And that things like glue go a long way towards making it so.
How much increased waste would there be if phones were significantly easier to break?
>I think you vastly overestimate the number of phones that become waste due to using glue on parts.
Okay, this is your view, and we have a disagreement. We'll just have to agree to disagree :)
Also, its not just about glue vs nuts/bolts - Please consider the larger picture here about repair.
>It's also not hard or terribly expensive to get most broken phones fixed at plenty of repair shops.
That is not accurate, Apple for instance, chokes the supply chain by banning sale of components to repair shops. They prevent replaced parts from working by employing DRM. In any case, you're missing the general point. Right to repair isn't just about phones. We're talking about a common movement across multiple industries - Agriculture, Appliances, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, etc, etc. You can find more information here - https://www.repair.org
People don't make their decisions in a vacuum. They know they can repair their laptop, their PC, their car, etc. They know this based on their experience and experience around them. We need to promote the same mindset for other consumer electronics.
In any case, any added change will force the companies to innovate their assembly technique to reduce costs - just like every industry does when there is a new environmental regulation. The reality is we are seeing piles and piles of electronics fill up the landfills, and we need to do more to address re-use, repair and extending the lifetime of devices - This is the just one component of an overall plan to reduce e-waste.
>Okay, this is your view, and we have a disagreement. We'll just have to agree to disagree :)
The number of phones wasted a year due to non-reparability is a fact, not an opinion like vanilla tasting better than chocolate.
US for example, spends around 80B annually for new phones, 3B annually for repairs, with 300M smartphone users. From this you can dig further or make reasonable estimates of a lot of behavior.
> That is not accurate, Apple for instance, chokes the supply chain by banning sale of components to repair shops.
I have family that both works at phone repair shops and that have iPhones, and they both repair them and get them repaired quite regularly. There is literally over a dozen iPhone repair shops in town, town size ~200k.
People generally don't throw out a phone because it's not repairable. They throw it out because there is a better, nicer, more featured one. And of those people I know that do get rid of them, they almost all sell to one of those places that pays you for scrap and then recycles the usable parts.
Most of the the newest devices are perfectly repairable if the manufacturer would release the schematics and not block their suppliers from third parties buying the parts (and as newest trend lock the parts together on hardware level). Maybe not all problems but a lot of the most common ones for sure.
Repair shops have managed to source new screens and cameras for the latest iPhones for example. Apple just firmware locks them to the device that stops them from working even though it is a identical part (except for the serial number burned into the chip).
Basically it is not about making designs that just happen to be hard to repair but instead the manufacturers are making them intentionally hard or impossible to repair for third parties to protect their own repair line and/or force you to buy a new one especially now that phones have started to last 3+ years just fine as progress on cpu speeds have slowed done.
Smartphones are an interesting market. They've only been around 14 years and their rate of growth and improvements have been staggering. Just a few years ago every new generation brought a leap in performance, battery, features or design.
Increasingly consumers are not buying phones every year but every two or even three years. As a result manufacturers have been designing planned obsolescence and fighting against the right to repair.
We can see from the results of direct ballot initiatives that consumers want right to repair. They want the choice if they accidentally dropped and cracked the screen to buy a new one, get a repair from the manufacturer, an independent third party or even learn to do it themselves if they're feeling up to it!
So yes, consumers can want features over repairability but they can also be against barriers for their right to repair at the same time.
For independent repair shops newer devices aren't inhenrantly more ddifcult to repair. It's just more difficult to source the parts or get around the "security features".
Not sure about this one: the continued support for older versions - yes, but the latest? Nobody can give you such promise (unless they explicitly do, for one reason or another).
I can easily install the latest version of windows 10 on even a 10 year old computer. But more importantly, I can still install Windows 7 on a 10-year-old computer if I want to. And it will still work, and most programs will still run on it. Or I can install an alternate operating system like Linux.
Whereas with my iPhone, I literally can’t install an old version of the operating system or an alternate os, no matter how old or new the device. And if I do happen to have a device that still has an old operating system, most apps refuse to run because the API surface area changes constantly. And if you have old versions of apps, they mostly all phone home to check versions now and won’t run until you update them. It’s a never ending cycle and you have no control over it.
A bit of a tangent, but I'm really surprised one of the android vendors hasn't focused on the niche of easy to repair phones. Maybe even making them four or five times the thickness of the latest i-sung devices. extra hot swappable batteries and the like.
I know the ostensible reasons waterproofing, planned obsolescence, looking cool, and being light weight. Though I suspect the real reason is they're just chasing the big players and are afraid to be different. It just doesn't make sense to me from a business perspective, if you know you can't compete in the general market, why not carve out a smaller market and serve that one well. An example of this is the Jitterbug phone.
Fairphone[0] is a European manufacturer which does this (modular replaceable components, 10/10 on iFixit and usable by non-techies).
In my experience it's the annual release cycle of Android coupled with the lack of OS updates by manufacturers which contributes to e-waste, closely followed by the lack of battery replaceability. My first smartphone (OnePlus One - 2014) still has the specs to be a perfectly usable phone, at least until 5G is widespread and 4G networks are decommissioned.
Can anyone enlighten me about 5G? To me it seems to be absolutely nothing more than a marketing tool meant to sell a new generation of phones and phone plans. The fact that it is pushed so fervently just sets of red flags galore for me.
4G is plenty fast and works well for me. I see nothing gained for my phone by going from 100Mbps to 1Gbps(?). Nothing. But its pushed like the second coming of Christ.
I'm excited. Not for a specific use-case, but because it removes constraints and that lets developers push the boundaries of what's possible.
As a European, I predict it'll be a catalyst for American companies to rethink data caps and data pricing, as you can blow through a data cap 10x as fast. That'll be massive and measurable progress.
Paraphrasing Liebig's law of the minimum[0]: progress is hindered by the most scarce resource. I'm sure that bandwidth will have been that resource for some ideas. These ideas will have been 'before their time' a few years ago, and are now viable.
Take spellcheckers[1], and electron-based apps: they've moved very quickly from "impossible" to "an everyday occurrence", I hope 5G enable this for another class of problem, and I hope it's unpredictable.
I don't have a 5G phone, I don't plan to get one any time soon, I'll have one in 10 years time, and I'm excited to see what comes of it.
Generally there is said to be 3 parts to 5G.
The first is eMBB: Enhanced Mobile Broadband. In other words faster mobile internet. This is where most operators start.
The second is URLLC: Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications. This is mainly aimed at using 5G for things like self-driving cars. But also things like long distance remote control. This is where people see potential for innovation without being clear what the exact innovation will be.
The third is mMTC: Massive Machine Type Communications. This is meant for IOT but also for factory control. The IOT thing is mostly allowing extra low battery useage, low speed, cheap connnectivity. The factory control thing is about getting the advantages of 5G (and e.g. URLLC) and allowing a factory to quickly set up their own private 5G network.
This is on the consumer facing side. On the operator facing side, infrastructure is moving more towards virtualization and decoupling. Trying to make it easier to use multiple vendors, and stop requiring custom made hardware. And in general, moving towards commodity hardware and something closer to 'infrastructure as code'.
This also helps roaming and virtual operators (for e.g. the factory control). It also helps a bit with the ultra low latency part by decentralizing the routing part and moving it closer to the devices.
So "what is 5G gonna do for me" is mostly the 'faster internet'. But the idea is that it will enable widespread innovation that you can later use. With some luck (governments are thinking) being ahead in deploying 5G might also help boost your economy by boosting innovation.
Having a new technology to bring to the market is good for the industry. Service providers, hardware providers, salespeople, etc. Most consumers love the hype!
I needed a new test phone the other day so I bought a new iPhone 11 at a Verizon store. The salespeople could not wrap their head around my choice because it doesn't support 5g. I gave them some great reasons and they relunctantly took my money.
The problem with Fairphone is that it relies on binary blobs which are not supported after a short time. Planned obsolescence is there, even though it is not the company's fault.
Android was explicitly designed to make it easy for component manufacturers to keep their drivers closed. Now that Qualcomm essentially has a monopoly on Android SoCs you can't really build a modern phone that will have up to date software in 3 years.
This is why projects like the Pinephone and lebrem5 use such weird SoCs. Open source drivers are absolutely the only way to know that the phone manufacturer will even have the ability to maintain up to date software.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the only reason you need a SoC is if you're trying to make the phone small. If you don't care about size you can have discreet components. There are millions of people with big enough pockets (literally and metaphorically) , who wouldn't notice the extra weight of their phone.
edit: discreet might be the wrong word because they would all be ICs but not quite a SoC.
The other issue is that none of the SoCs on the market with open source drivers available are remotely competitive in performance with today's Qualcomm/Exynos/Kirin.
The Pinephone and Librem 5 are both using chips that are competitive with low end Snapdragons from 5 years ago.
I think the RK3399 paired with an external modem is about as good as you can do today without needing blobs, and while it performs a whole lot better than the current Pinephone/Librem 5 it is still quite far behind today's SoCs.
In most cases the open source drivers for these mobile SoCs are reverse engineered rather than released by the vendor, which is why they typically only exist for chips that are at least a few years old.
SoC vendors like Qualcomm do not support their chipsets more than a few years. Without new drivers, no updated Android versions. Without new Android version, no security patches. How could a company support an unsecure device that might be hackable by any Play store app or script kiddie?
Software and hardware support (from the manufacturer) are tied closely together, and the industry makes it really hard to achieve this.
Have you seen the fairphone? It's exactly this. The first one let you replace all components without any tools. The latest one needs a screwdriver (which it comes with).
You can upgrade a fairphone 3 to a fairphone 3+ yourself just by buying the updated components. It's pretty cool! But it isn't cheap.
"I'm really surprised one of the android vendors hasn't focused on the niche of easy to repair phones."
With the right marketing, this could be very successful.
"A repairable phone built to last," or some other creative slogan and marketing campaign centered around how wasteful and expensive other phones built around planned obsolescence are.
Caring about the ecosystem, recycling, and reuse is mainstream now (witness the BBC right-to-repair article itself, published on a mainstream news platform), so a company showing that it's sensitive to these concerns should do well.
If a phone's hardware lasts 10 years, it's going to need 10 years of updates. This shouldn't be a big deal since Android is open source and Google is the one investing in development; hobbyists regularly port modern Android versions to ancient hardware in their spare time, so even a small team of full-time developers at a manufacturer should have no problems doing the same for a company's devices.
I wonder if the reason is really just that these manufacturers are all blindly following Apple's lead? To an outside observer, a lot of Android manufacturer's seem to be really stupid, however the reality might be different from their point of view. I don't know, but it's frustrating to see how little of a shit all Android phone manufacturers give. It's why I can't feel sorry when I hear that a company like LG or HTC are shutting down their smartphone division; it's their own damn fault.
It's basically because of drivers for the SoC (system-on-chip, the integrated chip from e.g. Qualcomm that has cpus, graphics, sound, camera, power management, etc). They're too messy/hacky/low-quality to be "upstreamed", it is mostly impossible for anyone but the SoC vendor to port to newer versions (closed-source binary blobs), and the SoC vendor is really not motivated to do so.
I think current phones are just about enough performant to withstand many years of use. I think such proposition using some older tech than current generation just wouldn't sell. People buy new phones not only because new ones look "better" but also perform better than older phones. If I think about my previous phone, the user experience was far from satisfactory. The current phone I have also isn't great, but acceptable. However, I'd love to change to get something more performant - I missed so many moments, for instance, when I wanted to quickly take a picture, but the phone just wouldn't respond for seconds.
I have a Mophie for my 2016 SE, perfectly acceptable tradeoff - when I want the extra power I compromise with a larger phone, but most of the time I don't need the extra power, and don't use it, thus have a smaller phone.
Is there a market for it? $200 Android devices with a big battery and decent performance and so on are out there, so I wonder how many people are worried enough about a swappable battery.
Jitterbug makes the phone to sell their service, so it's not directly comparable (it does demonstrate that the devices aren't that expensive to produce).
I was using a Moto G8 Power for exactly that reason, but I still think 3 days of battery life is just not enough. The phone could have easily been 4 times the size without being too big for me. Then the screen cracked and I made it worse trying to fix it because I dont have the patience to properly melt glue. Now I'm using a CAT phone which has cool features, and is supposedly stronger, but mostly the same problems.
I believe that this right to repair stuff is really a reflection of a superceding market breakdown: oligopolistic power.
Consumers want to do what they like with the things they own and some want the information needed to repair those things. Some companies don't have to offer this information or can get away with locking down their devices because they are immune from competition. This immunity is generally acquired by having the best product but then maintained by an abuse of market share.
The solution is to encourage competition somehow. If someone made a tractor that could compete with John Deere, John Deere might be forced to entice consumers with the feature of repairability.
I agree, more competition would be the ideal solution, but I'm not sure we can achieve that goal without drastic changes. In my opinion, having competition on details like "does it have a headphone jack?" or "is it repairable?" requires competing manufacturers to be able to create near-identical products that only differ in those details, with the price delta reflecting only that one difference and not other complex market conditions. However, creating such "clones" is something our copyright and patent system is designed to prevent. There's some merit to it: preventing clones will force more global diversity. But in the common situation where the user has already decided on one area of the market ("I want iOS and a great camera"), these systems force the user into one choice, not letting them choose in important details.
The way I see it, we either tear up all IP laws to allow for drastically lower costs of entry and hope that solves the problem (and other ones too), or we pass laws requiring some minimum standard of repairability. Or maybe a little bit of both (aggressive unbundling laws?).
Sadly, while that /should/ be true, I'm not sure that on any practical level it is anymore. There's about a 1000 ways the manufacturer, carrier, os developer, etc., can make your device entirely useless without you having much of any recourse, because while they can't physically take the device from you, they can stop providing you service.
This is exactly why “Right to repair” rose up to claw that ownership back.
If we don’t create laws, at some point down the road we will go from “not much recourse” to literally none.
What if Apple created a phone with no ports that was filled with epoxy as the last step in assembly? What if powering it on at all meant logging in to your apple account?
They could in every meaningful way take that device away from you at the run of a single function.
If that happens and there are no laws, it will affect more and more products.
Don’t buy a laptop? A car? A building? A slab of wood?
Yes, my examples are borderline unreasonable, but we’re already at the level of unreasonable products being licensed instead of owned (Tractors, DSLRs).
Unless your country goes full socialism and there is only the government as provider for all those things, competing companies can provide you with repairable products. If people actually want them (which I doubt), why shouldn't companies provide them?
With the tractors and DSLRs, again, if you don't like their licensing model, don't buy them. If nobody buys them, they will probably change their licensing model.
I fear this is going to turn into some ambiguous law that only big companies will be able to navigate through and you and me still won't be able to repair anything, because it will be deemed "unsafe". There also has to be many years of commissions, banquets, meetings, dinners, bonuses before all civil servants feasting on tax payer money will come up with something.
I'm cautiously optimistic, I've been following Louis Rossmann's efforts and Massachusetts recently passed their right to repair bill (https://youtu.be/8XN98T0KLGI).
On a site called Hacker News, I'm surprised to see so much criticism of a right to repair.
What is hacking, if not the act of digging into the guts of a mechanism or device?
What is open source, but providing the ability for anyone to read, modify, and rebuild their software?
I'd expect nothing less than full-throated support for the right to dig into things.
Sadly, it seems that many here are more supportive of the right to lock things. Perhaps because they are employed in the rent-seeking parts of the industry that want everything to be a subscription?
"It is very difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding it".
[edit: to be sure, I understand that surface mount technology, adhesive bonding, direct-soldered-in batteries, etc., are genuinely useful advances, and make certain component-level repairs at least impractical. I would not propose to require that these be undone. But, we should be able to have whatever level of access is physically possible, without unnecessary locks the perform no useful user function, so we can try whatever we want. Anything less is surrendering ourselves to rent-seeking. ]
This is a really good video, it lays everything out clearly and explains it well. I even threw $50 at Louis's gofundme.
It's always bizarre to me to see regular people arguing against right to repair in online discussions. Literally the only parties who benefit from planned obsolescence is device manufacturers, and it happens at the customer's expense 100% of the time. Either these people are dumb, or (most likely) they don't actually understand what "right to repair" means, or at the very least are confused about it.
What's also hard to understand is that right to repair is not a new concept.
The auto industry has it.
I don't think anyone can argue that the auto industry or its customers have suffered from the fact that we have an entire ecosystem built around 3rd party repair and services that often provide better, quicker, and more easily accessible support and services.
I’ve recently started repairing more of my own stuff, and it’s actually really fun. I’ve replaced the clickers and scroll sensor on my Razer mouse, resoldered bad connections on our failed washing machine, and removed a piece of dust that was behind a layer right in the center of my new monitor. You feel more proud of a product you’ve repaired yourself.
In these repairs i noticed that information (manuals, but also being able to discuss on forums) and parts are crucial, so i’m glad to see that those are the things encoded in law. A further measure could be forbidding forced (hardware level) linking of parts.
Depending on your product (more like manufacturer) I couldn't agree more. Plenty of failures are small, localised and with some learning easily fixable!
Replacing the frayed cable on a good pair of headphones, usb cable on a functning mouse or even broken display as part of a laptop.
I recently decided to take the more challenge task of repairing a swelling battery in a phone. I didn't have to worry about the back glass as it was already swollen such that the glass had cracked. It was surprisingly easy to take apart, remove the screws and little legos[0] get to the battery. Closing it up was extremely rewarding, as if I'd completed some hard surgery and was stitching just up the patient.
I think about this all the time. Why is it my bank's business if my device has root access? Most apps will deny you entry if root is detected, while happily I can log in to the website just fine. If a website is better sandboxed and safer, why aren't the website ever optimized for mobile and lacking feature that could be done with web technology?
> The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) says extending the life of smartphones and other electronics by just one year would be the equivalent of taking two million cars off the road, in terms of CO2 emissions.
They intentionally make it more difficult to repair devices so that users buy new ones instead, all the while doing stunts like removing charging cables to "help the environment". It's pure hypocricy.
The irony is despite all this right to repair stuff, apple makes some of the more long lasting devices in terms of usability. Their software updates keep coming, their phones are actually surprisingly waterproof (plenty of great rescue stories here). If you have parents who are older, you know how this works - they keep their devices much longer in my experience.
Yes, they glue the crap out of everything, solder stuff down instead of hacking bigger sockets and plug in chips with pins etc so do everything they are not supposed to. But the end result is darn long lasting and useful.
If someone thinks users will trade out for these right to repair devices go for it. Android has TONS of folks playing in that space. But I'd say let Apple try things there way - a phone that just maintains great resale value because it's a bit harder to get screwed buying one - it alerts you if the scammers swap out the battery for a crap one even which used to be one annoying issue buying used iphones that made me stop buying used.
Safer? I could cause a safety issue attempting my own car or bicycle repairs and both of those things are much more repairable than a modern smartphone.
You know what's bad for human "safety"? Gratuitously burning through resources and causing pollution by making phones out of all sorts of rare materials and hucking them out.
That's not always true. Take the case of a company that determines the cost of fixing a flaw is worse for profits than letting the flaw continue into production. Remington famously allowed a flawed trigger in one of their rifles for decades, even after being made aware of it and its 5 cent fix by the designer of the rifle, before it went on sale.
Agreed, but the tide is shifting there, too. It's not a problem getting an off the shelf part for your vehicle. It's the software for that part that's the problem.
We already see phone manufacturers locking 'easily' replaceable parts to the rest of the phone in a way that the phone rejects the replaced part. As our cars gets smarter, look for similar tactics to be applied there.
I think RTR is the wrong fight - things like controlling the actions of software running on your computer, and right to an API into that software are as, if not more, important. And on the mobile front, moving towards "apps" is the epitome of this (f you reddit).
Hardware is a harder problem, but meaningless if everything is locked down, or practically disadvantageous to modify, at a software level - corps can leverage software complexity by making those that go off-piste have to manage it all (e.g app-stores).
UK, Europe, Canada, Argentina, its as if the journalist went out of his way not to mention US and Louis Rossmanns direct ballot initiative fighttorepair.org
It’s worth watching much higher value products sold/serviced by dealer networks(tractors/auto/trucks/powersports) very heavily reliant on service/repair revenue compared to electronic device manufacturers that are far less reliant.
Printer manufacturers that use the razor blade loss leader business model to profit from consumables is another similar fight over genuine printer cartridge “lock in” versus aftermarket/refills.
Repairability seems like a good goal for sustainability. The challenge on electronics is determining what is a reasonable and useful life for a product. Should an iPhone SE or a knockoff Android last and be repairable for a decade? My worry is the regulation will get this wrong. Moderate rules are probably the best way to start.
We used to have this right, but it feels like somewhere between 2010-2015, companies realized they could make more money by disallowing simple replacements.
I used to make some money as a kid by buying batches of broken Iphone 3G/3GS's on ebay, replacing parts on them, and then re-selling them myself. Practically any part of that device could be replaced in less than 30 minutes with $15 worth of tools.
I have a 2012MBP and a 2014MBP that I gave to my family that are still serving their purposes after a few quick(and cheap) battery, RAM and HDD replacements over the years.
I don't expect my 2019 MBP to last more than 5 years without costing me at least several hundred dollars more when I inevitably have to bring it to the Apple store for them to fix something that very much used to be user-fixable in a matter of minutes.
I draw the line at SMDs. We should go back to through-hole components — I can desolder and resolder those.
Sorry, I'm not trying to mock you. Just saw an opportunity to be facetious, not facetious.
And, actually, to sort of make a point:
I don't buy into the idea that companies are intentionally doing this — intentionally disallowing replacement parts, although I maybe just be naive. I do in fact loathe SMDs (as a hobbyist) but I am quite sure that companies have moved to them for non-nefarious reasons as well.
This is pretty much it. Why do we use a BGA or WLCSP rather than a DIP package? Because we can’t fit a DIP package into the form factor, and manufacturing costs are higher. Why did we glue/epoxy a few components to the board? Because the device needed to pass a drop test such that components aren’t flying off. Why did we ultrasonically weld the enclosure shut? Because we needed IP68 or above rating and the price point we were trying to hit made that the most viable.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with right to repair, but a lot of people don’t understand what goes into designing these things and attribute a lack of repairability with malfeasance rather than just the reality of manufacturing, economics, and consumer demands.
Straw man. No right to repair movement is arguing for making bulkier devices using older technology. I have zero problem with underfilled BGA _as long as I can buy replacement chip from legitimate source_.
There is ample proof that Apple pays off their parts suppliers to prevent them from selling components on the open market. Louis Rossman has documented it well. Failure prone chips like USB muxers and voltage regulators that are unique to Apple devices but made by suppliers who's products are otherwise available on Digikey and Mouser somehow those aren't.
SMDs are not anticonsumer. They are harder to work with but with practice anyone can deal with them just fine. I've yet to see anyone argue for a through hole mandate.
But I have seen people argue for banning clearly anti repair design practices like gluing assemblies together. Or designing a screen in such a way that you have a high chance of breaking it when removing it.
Your argument doesnt work, because your smd is crypto locks and monopolistic "you cant sell this part to anybody else" business deals. Manufacturers are starting to use cryptographic handshakes between components.
Apple is a very well documented example of companies intentially disallowing replacement parts.
Many of their parts are linked to the motherboard in software, and even a doner replacement from another decide restricts features.
There's a line between warning the user that the repair is potentially dangerous and removing their right of ownership to repair their product unless apple had authorised it.
I took apart my old smartphone at one point. It was old enough that the battery was attached with screws and connected to the board with a cable and a connector.
It's not bigger than existing phones. It doesn't weigh more, it's not thicker. The weight of a battery connector and a couple of screws is what, a couple of grams, if that?
I don't think that repairability is better for sustainability in general, if we are speaking about electronics. Making an electronic device more repairable would make it more complex (again, not in every case, but in general). Where before a manufacturer could just solder numerous components to a single board, now will be arrays of sockets each of which is a new point of possible failure. Glue will be replaced by magnets, clips, etc. which is great for repair, but again, makes device more complex. And still most people will get rid of them after a few years of use. Consumerism is the top enemy of sustainability.
Right to repair is a complex endeavour. There will be no simple solutions.
> Making an electronic device more repairable would make it more complex (again, not in every case, but in general).
Right to repair isn't about forcing manufacturers to make devices more repairable. It's about giving you the right to repair it in the first place. Right now we have paired components that can't even be replaced by genuine parts from a donor device, board components that aren't purchasable by anyone other than the OEM and a complete lack of access to repair documentation from OEMs.
Even the most skilled repair technicians in the world with the best equipment money can buy aren't able to repair your device because they can't debug it without documentation, or they've reverse engineered it but can't buy the parts because they're not for sale, or they've taken the parts from another device but they won't function because the OEM software locked them to the device they came from.
Linus from Linus Tech Tips said it best: "The vast majority of the opposition to right to repair comes from people who either haven't had it explained to them properly or from folks that are on board with right to repair even though they don't realize it yet"
I get where you're coming from on this, but from a design and manufacturing perspective, it isn't correct. Fairphone has published a pretty extensive lifecycle analysis of their latest device that details the environmental impact of designing for repairability vs the extended life that comes from that change: https://www.fairphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Fairpho...
Finally, we've spent the last year and a half building a highly repairable notebook at Framework, and it is as robust as any other premium thin and light notebook.
I agree with you though that there is a behavioral change required to maximize the benefit. There are many audiences (like a lot of the folks on HN) who are ready to make their devices last longer, but others may need more time to get comfortable with it.
> I don't think that repairability is better for sustainability in general
Sorry, but what? Being able to repair a device means that you can (and usually will) be able to prevent demand spiking for a brand new device that uses as many or more materials than the last.
For starters, imagine a world where vehicles were not repairable. I'd argue that any mass-produced thing benefits from repairability.
I suspect that a minority of people would choose to repair their old phones even if they were more repairable. When your phone dies, it's a good opportunity to buy something new and more fun. I don't know for sure but I don't think this would stop that much consumption.
> I suspect that a minority of people would choose to repair their old phones even if they were more repairable.
Repair shops exist for this purpose. I’m not saying every individual will repair their device themself if it breaks. That would be as out of touch as saying most people will just buy a brand new phone anytime theirs has an issue.
Making things less repairable means that whether you’re willing to pay someone else or not to fix something, you will be unable to.
Remember, its reduce, reuse, and recycle in that order for a reason.
Companies like Apple and Microsoft love to claim they are green because they put money into recycling old hardware. Except their business model for hardware revolves entirely around Increasing consumption and not reducing it.
Its cheaper and better for the environment to maintain electronics than it is to replace them every few years and recycle them. Recycling is far from 100%, especially with electronics. Its not like steel or aluminum where you can just toss scrap into a crucible and get pure ingots on the other end ready to be worked into something useful.
> Moderate rules are probably the best way to start.
These changes almost never happen. Whatever change you put the first time is likely the only change that will happen. Starting off with a compromise for fear of 'getting it wrong' is the easiest way to make sure you get it wrong.
What about reliability? Battery aside, the components in a smartphone could all be built to last 10 years. Regulations on component lifetimes might have a much more beneficial effect than repairability requirements. A well engineered smartphone or laptop shouldn’t need repairs within the reasonable expected lifetime of the device. But at the moment, manufacturers aren’t incentivized or required to target 10 year lifetimes.
I see it as a bit like ETOPS. You can fly across the Atlantic on two engines as long as those engines are super reliable. Similarly, you should be allowed to build unrepairable devices if you can show, say, an expected lifetime of 10 years for 99% of units.
A 10 year old device can barely render a webpage now and has a shitty screen and is generally inferior and every way to a new one. No one wants to use a flip phone now.
I do not really understand the negativity on the comments. Seems everyone can agree on the “right to repair” (it is politically correct) but underneath there seems to be and undermining resentment.
Should you have the right to repair the CPU inside your machine? Does that mean the manufacturer must design and manufacture the CPU in a way for you to be able to repair it? Where does one draw the line as things get more and more complex? Sadly, we don't live a horse and buggy world anymore where you could just get a new horse or fix a wheel if it stopped working.
> Should you have the right to repair the CPU inside your machine?
Sure, if a component in a CPU failed there shouldn't be any deliberate effort by the manufacturer to restrict it's replacement/repair (especially by entirely artificial means).
> Does that mean the manufacturer must design and manufacture the CPU in a way for you to be able to repair it?
That's unenforceable, but it is preferable for environmental reasons that manufacturers consider the reapairability of their products where possible.
What isn't acceptable is deliberately ensuring parts aren't available or are designed explicitly not to work with compatible or identical replacements.
>Where does one draw the line as things get more and more complex?
If something is actually unrepairable it shouldn't be too much of a burden on manufacturers because there would be no interest in purchasing replacement components for something that is actually irreparable.
>Sadly, we don't live a horse and buggy world anymore where you could just get a new horse or fix a wheel if it stopped working.
Bad faith argument.
Even so, the main argument in right to repair isn't "Oh my gosh everything is so hard and modern nobody can do anything if only we were still repairing something easy like wagons".
The argument is that we should have the right for repairs to occur without unreasonable impediments.
Even if all the schematics were published, parts be more standardized and built in a way that things are easier to maintain, would it really make a difference?
People want the shiny new PS5 no matter how repairable the PS3 is. Maybe in a few decades the technology development slows to a point where this might be reasonable, but today people think on how to get their hands on the new M2 chip even before the M1 is fully rolled out.
Then there is mechanical degradation, most components degrade over time and start to cause problems. The longer you wait, the more problems (basically the same as with cars). Most people who can afford will go for a median timeline where the devices work reliably and then dump them no matter what. So unless we make them last for decades reliably (not likely in the near future) this is not a viable thing to strive for.
Then there is software support. Vendors continuously improve the software and add new hardware capabilities to stay competitive, because everyone else is doing it. So if we wanted to keep stuff working, we'd have to strangle competitive innovation and mandate a specific cap on technology for a given time.
So I think that's all not reasonable. Instead we should strive to make the stuff we produce recyclable (like really), so that the materials can become the new shiny stuff that people crave for. But stuff is not designed to be recyclable at all and if you look at the global recycling industry (or fantasy really, so little is recovered) you can picture a giant dumpster we leave for the next generations.
Given opposition to 'right to repair' from corporations, some of it on valid grounds IMO, I would be fine with the following compromise:
If company does not want to provide resources needed for consumer to repair a device- it ought to provide extended warranty to the consumer for free or a small fee.
> If company does not want to allow consumer to repair a device- it ought to provide extended warranty to the consumer for a small fee.
I would modify that:
If a company restricts a consumer from repairing a device (either explicitly in warranty policies, or implicitly by producing devices that are hard to repair, restricting part availability, or not having manuals available), then the company must (not should) provide an extended warranty for all damage scenarios at cost.
Define easy? (Modern electronics, for instance, is highly integrated, full of miniature surface-mounted components etc., and so the "repair process" might as well be simply selling you a replacement for the whole thing.)
How do you know how much it costs to provide an extended warranty? If it actually costs money, that kind of rule would make devices more expensive for everybody.
I am OK with everybody paying +3% more than few unlucky ones paying another 100% because they received faulty pieces.
In EU there is mandatory 2 year warranty for everything (with exceptions like food etc) and maybe extending to at least 3 years could be fine compromise.
2 years warranty is enough to sort out the faulty pieces. Is there no warranty in the US? In any case, obviously that kind of insurance costs money. Why not let individuals pay for it if they want it?
I've got another one : It's your device, you shouldn't be locked out of it because of some update that now requires you to authenticate to whatever online service they have the fantastic idea of coming up with.
"Right to repair" also means you can take it to an expert of your choosing. I don't know how to fix many problems my Honda and I could certainly take it to a Honda dealer if/when I encounter such problems, but I'm also happy to take it to someone else who has the knowledge and tools to fix it for me.
I’m 20 years into my career and my perspective on this topic has changed from being a supporter of RTR to being generally tepid.
Most IoT is shit because they compete on very thin margins. This presents a problem for folks who consider both security and customer ownership rights- what is the more important priority? Right to repair, or Authenticity of software?
1.)
I currently index on authenticity of software. It should not be easy for someone to augment your firmware with spying ability.
2) there is a plentiful ecosystem of inexpensive suppliers for homebrew types that want to build their own purpose built devices. This wasn’t the case historically. In the past, I felt like you didn’t have an economical alternative path. Now you do, so why is it so important to demand the ability to Jerry rig someone else’s appliance?
3) I don’t think RTR is compatible with secure boot, antirollback, etc.
I do believe in RTR for laptops, John deer tractors and cars. But I find it a waste of time for inexpensive iot gear. Am I alone? Would appreciate others perspective.
As far as there exist unjust laws that prevent people from repairing their devices, by all means, get rid of them (IP laws especially). But by all means, do not add more regulation.
“All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what has regulation ever done for us?”
A persistent question in my mind is why do customers buy unrepairable products, from smart phones and high-tech tractors. Why is the market failing? Or is it working perfectly?
It's simple, really: Newer devices are faster and have nicer features (e.g. better camera) and it's not really that inconvenient to pay an extra $20-30/month to get a new phone every two years.
You can pay $150 to get a new battery put into your old phone but that doesn't seem worth it when you can get an entirely new phone that's "better" than your old one for $500.
If it were cheaper and easier to replace old batteries I'm guessing that people would keep their old phones much longer. That's my #1 reason for buying new phones: The battery in the old one just doesn't last as long as it used to and replacement batteries can be hard to come by and/or they're a serious pain to install (high risk too!).
Within the next two to three years though (assuming the global chip shortage lets up) we should start seeing phones with carbon cathode technology. Then again, car manufacturers might hog all the dual carbon and carbon cathode batteries so it might take a bit longer.
People don't think about repairs before their stuff is broken, and by then it's too late. That's why things like seat belts and fire alarms have to be forced upon people.
I think it would help to ask: repairable by whom? And at what cost?
Apple will replace an iPhone screen for ~$100. I’m fine with that. But my washing machine which is repairable and has parts and schematics available from the manufacturer will cost me > $400 in labor to replace a $20 part. Plus it’s > 10 years old so I know more parts will fail. I’m just going to buy a new one.
I agree. However, the logistics of repairing a 200 lb machine that sits in a cramped closet is very different. Phones are measured in ounces/grams and are easy to transport.
Yes it is more efficient for you to buy a new washer. Delivery and haul-away are great upcharges (and worth it IMO). They will then repair and resell your old one at a much higher rate than phones are being reserviced.
Also, imo the platform walled gardens considerably hamper your ability to move away from a given vendor just because they made the current model less repairable. Plus, as other vendors see Apple's snowballing profit, they also adopt similar construction and thus you are left with pretty much no choice when you go out to buy a product. The only counterpoint I have in this regard is Microsoft Surface: their earlier models were terribly unrepairable but the newer ones seem to have considerably improved in this regard.
Because as "tech people" we live in an echo chamber. where we conflate our specialized knowledge as "easy with just a quick google". But in reality my Aunt that can barely troubleshoot her computer(avg person) probably shouldn't be risking an $800 device to save $80 on a repair. So when she buys a phone why would she care about the repairability of a product, she's just going to take it to a professional anyways.
The whole point behind right to repair is allowing 3rd party professionals to repair products.
Apple doesn't do board repair. They make you buy new, whole components. So when your laptop breaks, instead of spending $120 to fix it they say you need to buy a new $1,000 component and with labor that's more than the price of a new laptop.
I actually have repaired iPhones myself in the past, including screens and batteries.
That turned out to be a waste of time because the replacement parts failed in a much shorter time than the originals
The reason I continue to buy iPhones is that more recent models don’t typically need to be repaired. I would much rather have a phone that doesn’t fail easily than one that can be easily repaired.
The market is working as expected. Consumers are choosing devices that are less reparable because they come with other benefits such as being smaller, lighter, and are waterproof. Reparable devices come with tradeoffs that most consumers do not want.
Despite being a big fan of right to repair, I really didn't like this article. It gave me the impression that the only way to fix things is to impose regulations on manufacturers in the form of design restrictions and support requirements. IMO, that's not at all what right to repair should be focusing on.
I disagree with any regulation which would force a manufacturer to compromise on the design of a device just for the sake of ease-of-repair or to provide parts or repair services. However, there are some practices which I do think should be illegal as part of right to repair law. Here are some examples:
1) Manufacturers should not be allowed to use serialization to prevent a device from working with replacement parts. It's okay for a device to user serialization to detect if the part has been replace and if the replacement is known to be compatible, but it's not okay for the device to refuse to work with a replacement part outright simply because the part ID is different.
2) Manufacturers should not be allowed to make exclusivity deals for parts with third party vendors. Apple should not be allowed to make a deal with Intersil that gives them exclusive rights to purchase the ISL9120 chip used in their Mac Books. This restriction should not extend to parts designed by the manufacturer whose production is merely contracted out to a third party.
3) Manufacturers should not be allowed to restrict sharing of schematics, specifications, or other legally acquired product information. If someone takes the time to map out the traces and identify the components on a circuit board, then they should be allowed to share that information without fear of legal threats.
4) Genuine used good should not be seized by customs under the pretext of them being "counterfeit".
5) Manufacturers shouldn't be allowed to restrict the purchase of replacement parts using "authorized repair" programs. If they're going to offer parts for repair, they should be available for purchase with no strings attached.
Others have already pointed it out, but Louis Rossmann's YouTube channel and Fight to Repair website have some great information on the problems faced by independent repair.
While calling things 'right to repair' is a nice easy wording for the lifecycle problem, it doesn't really show the complexity of the problem at hand.
There are plenty of things you can do as a manufacturer to make things repairable, but there are just as many things that you can't do without creating major issues in other areas.
Say you are a company that has a brand identity strongly linked to a certain aesthetic and a law now bans that because you are no longer allowed to glue on textiles on your product as a neat design choice. (yes, this has obvious/glaring problems on its own) What's the solution here? Ban a certain taste or preference for the certain many in the name of making it better for an uncertain few? This might also impact production processes in this example when you have a 'compromise'; i.e. you are required to sell spare parts because in the mind of policy makers "if they can mount that part in the factory, why couldn't they sell it separately".
Say you have a design that is now optimised for production and the method with which a fabric or textile part is added is by preparing a bunch of glue on the spot where the textile goes, then laying a sheet of textile on top of that, and then using a specifically shaped melting device to melt it into the glue, and another cutting device to neatly cut all the excess off, and all of this while under a specific amount of pressure, maybe some inert gas etc. This is how industrial production works, and one of the few ways it works at all (at scale). But that would not be possible since it isn't repairable enough according to some people in certain echo chambers. So now we would have to ban an entire class of production and design methods... and that's just one example.
The goal is relatively simple, and there will definitely be an impact that is worth attaining. But it's unlikely to be as simple as "provide us all the specs, datasheets and parts".
Just as unlikely that it could be "provide us with the private key to your PKI so we can sign our own firmware". (which ironically is practically banned by the FCC on all devices with wireless communication modules - technically it's just an implementation you can restrict to a data table in a driver for a PHY, but practically this is much cheaper as a manufacturer to just blanket-sign and be done with it, which isn't fun for us hackers, but isn't surprising at all.) And not signing or encrypting things is a whole class of problems on its own. We're basically screwed, and since we're often on shared systems (like telecommunication networks, or physical roads and buildings, or we share the fuels and oils across many consumers) it's not as simple as 'do whatever you want' either.
>There are plenty of things you can do as a manufacturer to make things repairable, but there are just as many things that you can't do without making creating major issues in other areas.
Absolutely.
Also consider the movement up the foodchain of product development. How do you 'repair' something that's a SoC with a few wires to the outside world. Mechanical items, car parts for example, tend to move towards more complex unserviceable items...there was a time when mechanical fuel pumps were taken apart and rebuilt, headlights were a standardized $5 part rather than a major part of front-end styling.
I see the concerns of people although it usually all involves some particular product family that they have a special kink for.
I would guess that the endgame consists of items that cannot be serviced in any way (in order to push down manufacturing cost usually) combined with a figleaf of published information in order to satisfy the text of a 'right to repair' law.
Yes, you may repair it if you want, that's never been the issue. But then don't come back asking for free service or free replacement parts when you can't fix it or when it breaks next time.
The manufacturer has no moral or other obligation to provide help, info or assistance beyond conditions under which I've sold the device or equipment. If you don't like a deal, find yourself a better one.
> Yes, you may repair it if you want, that's never been the issue.
The problem is precisely that you can't repair it even with all the skill in the world, because the schematics aren't documented, the components aren't for sale and the components are software locked to the device. That's what right to repair is. Just like you can repair your own car by buying the components and doing the work yourself you should be allowed to do this for everything you buy. No one is asking manufacturers to repair your device for free or give you components for free.
Won't repairable phones be bulkier? I would think its hard to be able to have as compact / integrated / low-toleranced of a design if you make more exposed screws, clips and replaceable seals etc.
Also, "right to repair" doesn't mean manufacturers have to change their product designs in any way. iPhones today aren't hard to repair because they're thin, they're hard to repair because Apple ships DRM that checks the serial numbers of all the parts, so that it will refuse to work if you try to replace something.
I wonder how the right to repair intersects with security. On one extreme, full right to repair is full access to all source code, schematics and documents related to the phone and all of its hardware and software. It would necessarily also give you the ability to arbitrarily flash firmware and install software without limitation. Clearly this can't be good for security.
However the other extreme, no access to anything is tantamount to no access at all, which is clearly secure, but isn't useful nor practical.
Is the government really capable of properly defining the line?
> On one extreme, full right to repair is full access to all source code, schematics and documents related to the phone and all of its hardware and software. It would necessarily also give you the ability to arbitrarily flash firmware and install software without limitation. Clearly this can't be good for security.
Open source code and device schematics shouldn't be a significant security threat. If device security is reliant on obscurity, you have improper security controls. Frankly, that should be on the device manufacturer, and not the consumer.
As for the second point, I should be able to install whatever software I want on my device...as its mine.
> Open source code and device schematics shouldn't be a significant security threat.
You don't see how a completely open device could be insecure?
> As for the second point, I should be able to install whatever software I want on my device...as its mine.
This is a valid opinion, but the whole point of contention is whether you can do anything with a device simply because you've purchased it, as opposed to what has been exposed for you to do.
No an open device does not automatically mean insecure.
Proper security controls should work even if the schematics are open. If they don’t, that is a security defect whose ownership falls under the manufacturer.
Quote:
Security through obscurity (or security by obscurity) is the reliance in security engineering on design or implementation secrecy as the main method of providing security to a system or component. Security experts have rejected this view as far back as 1851, and advise that obscurity should never be the only security mechanism.
No, my point was that the most secure device is a device that cannot do anything - I'm familiar with security by obscurity. The point of the example was to give extremes, everything v. nothing.
> The law doesn't yet cover smartphones and tablets that she says are getting harder to fix. One problem is keeping older devices updated with new software.
Now "right to repair" includes not only designing devices to be easier to repair but also includes legacy software support? Where do we draw this line? If your M1 dies, you can't fab one yourself or run older software on it indefinitely.
Further down, the author writes:
> But markets have now become flooded with products that are less repairable.
> "It requires laws in place that prevent manufacturers from stopping [supporting] a product too early, or making it pretty much impossible to repair it by design."
Now the author has shifted "right to repair" to mean mandatory first-party device support and design requirements around repair-ability.
We must very carefully define our terms here, because requiring someone else to provide on one's behalf presumes a right to the product of their labor.