If I loosely quote Louis Rossmann, one of the issue of right to repair is that more and more companies (Apple leading the trend) are using slightly modified chips from manufacturers, and them make then sign contracts that prevent any part selling to anyone.
So technically even you can replace those chips, you can't buy them.
And next Apple if putting serial numbers to prevent that even if you get the part, you will have a non-functional device.
This bill does not appear to address that.
Besides, the "information they need to repair" is also where the devil will be. Companies like Apple provide instructions on how to unscrew the laptop cover with a screwdriver (literally), but won't provide any data sheets.
> So technically even you can replace those chips, you can't buy them.
They don't even need to resort to this. If the chip requires programming, they keep the chip protected from read and the code locked and bingo: you can buy an identical one but it won't work without the original code. Pretty much any digital product in existence works like that today. One could have the entire BOM of an iPhone available, but without their iron level firmware, all programmable chips would just sit there doing nothing thus making the device unusable.
That is largely Apple-specific, as most other OEMs use off the shelf chips. Even in that case though, the distribution doesn’t exist for many components to be available to individuals or repair shops, since the component makers only want to deal with their couple dozen big customers directly.
On that note, Rossmann is a curious character. He openly and variously despises Apple’s hardware choices and policies, yet to my memory, that’s his shop works on. Are the economics of repairing Apple products that strong or is the man is a true masochist?
Watch some of his videos. He has a lot of insight about the subpar quality of Apple devices, about the outrageous lies of Apple Genius Bar quoting people thousands of dollars for repairs that take him 5-10 minutes, for apple’s efforts to make the devices non serviceable, withholding schematics, controlling access to replacement parts etc.
In my mind, it makes sense that Apple won't repair a device that has signs of water damage without replacing all potentially affected parts (the bit about humidity is a discussion all on its own). Water damage can surface in a myriad of ways, and the last thing they want to do is charge a customer for a fix, only for them to come back demanding a refund because their device is broken again.
Rossmann has a small enough operation that he can handle this on a case by case basis. Apple operates at scale, so the fact that they have blanket policies like this makes sense.
Of course the debate changes when Apple makes it so that you can only use them for repairs.
An additional perspective is that Rossman’s 5-min free repair cost Apple $1000+ in revenue.
Apple can totally scale repair but it won’t be as cheap and profitable.
So what they scale instead is lying to their customers.
The Genius Bar employee presented a lie as a certain fact. They didn’t say that there’s more to be found out, that humidity indicators are sometimes unreliable etc.
They went with the highest grossing lie.
That’s a policy.
Having such policies calls for legislation protecting the customer and giving independent repair some chance.
He runs a shop that supports many employees and himself, so, yes, the economics obviously work in his favor. One doesn’t need to like the choices of a company to offer to service their products.
And given that each repair could, in theory, eat into the profit margins that Apple enjoys (either via 1st patty repairs or through a customer not buying a replacement device) it would make logical sense to do so if he dislikes Apple that much
If my memory is correct, he explained that this was where most of the market was (especially on the neighborhood of NYC he lives in), and it was easier to fix a bunch of Apple models, rather than thousands of different Android brands/models.
“First world problems” is also a related concept. Our priorities and judgements are very much borne from the larger context of our individual and group experiences.
Even the very definition of “greatest stuff in the world” is highly dependent on one’s particular circumstance and priorities.
Apple had to cut the time to buy AppleCare+ in China down to 7 days simply due to the fact people were swapping parts in iPhone and return for exchanges.
And I am not entirely sure if it is a good idea Apple sell these parts for repairing. Which Apple will definitely do so with their hardware margin. i.e They will sell you the Display Screen with Glass for $300+. At this point you might as well go to Apple and fix it.
I had always wish the Services Strategy of Apple was to raise the price of iPhone and Mac by $100, move those to Services Revenue and included AppleCare+ by default. Also lowering any replacement and fixing price rather than try and gouge their customer at their Genius Bar. Which is increasingly a thing since 2015.
Getting third party fixing also have risk when your Data aren't fully backed up. Which is something likes to push for their iCloud Services.
Doesn't matter. Serials numbers can be spoofed, chips can be found in already discarded electronics of the same model by other reasons. Have 2 or 3 broken phones, make one good from them. The bill is a big step in preventing Apple suing the local shop that was doing just that.
Amend the bill to include all consumer electronics manufacturers must provide replacement parts for all their new products for twenty years. The churn of slightly different pieces in next years models should fall off a cliff when warehouses need to get built to hold everything.
What is needed is much less, a simple requirement not to stop other from providing the part is enough.
In the vast majority of cases it is not apple the one producing the chips so it would not really make sense to buy it from apple.
There is even the more severe case where the manifacturer disappeared and no factory with similar technology exists. How is Apple or whatever company supposed to produce that chip?
The essential of right of repair is "do not make second hand markets and resellers illegal".
I have a couple of audio devices that are ~14 years old and working perfectly fine. If either of them broke then I'd want to repair them (unless of course the fault was fabulously catastrophic). Once upon a time even affordably priced equipment lasted way more than 5-10 years. Maybe it's a generational thing, due to my being on the wrong side of 50 :), but stuff used to be built to last for affordable money. Hell I'm still wearing the Seiko mechanical auto-wind watch I was given for my birthday in 1983, and it still (mostly) tells the right time and day.
I worked in the defence industry for a few years where they did this. I also have equipment that is nearly 50 years old in service now (electronic test gear).
BUT the cost was astronomical as were the storage requirements for parts and the cost of the replacement parts. The oscilloscope I have (tek 7904) was released in 1972 and would cost about $100k now with the plugins I have in it. And that's because it was designed for repair. Versus a modern unit which costs around $5k, lasts 5 years and is disposable. Yeah that's not gonna wash. Also it actually requires some quite extreme skills looking after 40+ year old kit.
What you end up with is a $7000 iPhone and a repair industry where min charge is $500 for some obscure part because the universe has moved on.
Recycling and reuse is better and that's where we're heading. Even cars are going in that direction.
Depends on which phase of the moon it is. Best to look at the total cost of ownership over the warranty period and see if you’re happy with the monthly total. Anything outside that is a bonus! Same applies to Apple.
Keysight’s semi legendary reputation for reliability comes from the second hand market which has had all the lemons removed from the table. Their production reputation is “average” and their in warranty fees “surprising” (I’m still getting over having to pay for a new OLED display for a DMM that was 2 years old)
Better buy Chinese these days and plan to throw it away.
The manufacture, storage, and ultimate disposal of all those spare parts also has an environmental cost, unless you assume that the measures end up driving some industry wide shifts, such as toward many more common parts, on-demand manufacture of certain elements, etc. It's a lot easier to warehouse a bunch of STL files than the actual bits, and maybe if your dishwasher's controller unit is just a 3v3 Linux computer with a standard GPIO connector, then a "spare part" in ten years is a totally different unit that happens to plug in and run the same interpreted software, and everything on the other end of that connector is just standard discrete parts like drivers, signal conditioning, etc, that can be replaced a la carte.
In any case, there certainly have been some proposals for how to bring some of these costs into the economic picture, most obviously pricing carbon and charging upfront disposal taxes for things like automobile tires. More aggressive measures might specifically punish the extraction of anything non-renewable— John Michael Greer talks a bunch about this [1] in a framework where the "primary economy" is in fact the natural processes like rain, pollination by insects, fertilization by animal waste, etc. Anything humans do on top of that which disrupts it is "secondary economy" and should have to pay the appropriate compensations for stewardship.
It sounds reasonable, but obviously it's a political nonstarter in any place in the world (like Canada) whose economy is mostly still built on conventional primary industries like oil, logging, fishing, mining.
I think past a certain point it's reasonable to expect that your repair operation may also involve some scrounging for the parts— for example, the classic frankenstein procedure where a laptop with a dead motherboard is married to another of the same model where the screen is cracked. I think for most electronics, past 5-10 years is pretty reasonable for this kind of thing. I mean, the GameCube came out in 2001-2002, and many circles now consider that to be a vintage/retro machine at this point. Would we really expect Nintendo to still be supplying repair shops with the full BOM of whatever's in there?
Anyway, the real trick with this of course is forbidding the serial number based lockouts.
I mean, they position it the same way— "we're protecting customers from those unscrupulous overseas ebay vendors who will sell them a half-capacity battery that they install and then forget about, later blaming the device and OEM for poor performance."
But obviously that's super suspect when the end result is still granting themselves a razors-and-blades monopoly over key replacement parts.
For a washing machine or refrigerator, I’d say twenty years is the minimum. For a phone or computer? I’d say at the very least five, but preferably ten years from the last sale of a new, used, or refurbished device sold by them or their authorized resellers. Require security updates for at least twice as long, or when the manufacturer can prove all devices are out of use.
There should be a standard for replaceable boards for major appliances. Compressors in fridges and motors in washers ultimately do not change. The front interface changes but that's ultimately just programming the on/off cycle for that motor.
Normally the next step would be a vote on an identical bill in the state’s Assembly.
But Thursday is the last day of session for the NY legislature, and the bill has not yet escaped committee, making a vote by the full Assembly unlikely.
The battle for fair repair in New York will continue into next year’s session, with a strong record of success.
We aren't even at the half way point of the year and this is already the end of the years session? In a large state like NY? How does anything get done? This isn't some small town in the middle of nowhere.
> We aren't even at the half way point of the year and this is already the end of the years session?
We have a part-time legislature. The other half of the year lets our politicians earn a living outside politics (as well as politick--it's an election year.)
Our Governor is powerful. If an emergency arises, I believe the Assembly and Senate can be called back into session. But that's rarely required.
The majority of US states only meet a few months a year. Many have two year sessions that start in odd-years, so things that don't get completed in 2021 can get picked up again where they left off in 2022.
You'd be surprised both how much they're expected to get done in a few months, and also how little some state legislatures actually pass. State and Federal agencies serve a huge role in the US, partially for this reason.
There’s actually a problem here in washington state, and I’d guess in other states as well, that most of the legislators are real estate agents. They’re one of the few common professions that can afford to take off months at a time and still make significant income the rest of the year.
From someone living in NY and having watched bills like this... Last time this came up it silently died without a vote. This vote is probably symbolic and it will languish in the Assembly forever. It is nice they voted for this overwhelmingly but it has not been "passed" as a law. It just passed step 1/3
I'm tired of my closet of broken devices, too. But I'm also tired of my closet of perfectly working devices, which the manufacturer just up and decided to no longer ship software updates for. Hardware that's totally functional as the first day I bought it, except 1. with software that no longer does what it's supposed to because backends have been turned off, and 2. the device will be 0wned instantly if I ever connect to the Internet.
We need mandatory bootloader unlocking for products that the manufacture finds unprofitable to ship software updates for.
My work want to force me to update my PERSONAL phone because apple do not support very old Iphone anymore. ( they gave me another phone for work stuff, 2FA and what not... )
this old phone works really well still. I do not conduct any work related activities on it. But they see it as a attack vector I guess?
If you don't do any work-related activities on it and you have a work phone, how/why are they requiring you to get a new personal phone?
If one does do work things on their phone and, especially if you have MDM installed, it is of course reasonable to require you to be on a current OS. And Apple is pretty good about length of support but it's not forever.
It makes everything disposable. I’ve seen a few 200 dollar health devices that fail quickly because they use cheap cr 2032 batteries that can’t be accessed.
I miss the days of clip in batteries. I still have a 2013 laptop like that.
Agree. Non removable batteries is an aesthetic approach to consumer devices. It has no place in industrial applications. An analogy would be a decorated plastic bag selling seeds at hardware store, Or a brown ugly burlap selling seeds to landscape contractors. One is for consumers. The other is for the expert.
You joke, but LG makes a <3lb (1.36kg) 17” laptop. That’s impressive. (I can’t vouch for its quality, I don’t have one).
Samsung makes a 15.6” laptop that weighs 2.6lbs, which is extremely practical. I’m planning on getting one. I wouldn’t be if it had the bulk and weight of a removable battery.
I literally just don't believe that this is a real problem. Old school laptop batteries were large, but how much of that is really needed? In theory you could add a connector and be 90% of the way there. Put a panel on attached with a simple screw and you're golden.
Maybe we could build laptop cases out of carbon fiber and get the best of both worlds? Or at least make laptop cases easier to open for servicing, with standard screws and no plastic clamps.
Why would a removable battery be more heavy? More bulky, probably and with more plastic also a bit more heavy. But not much, as the heavy part is not the plastic.
Standardized would be nice too. I have at least 3 laptops that could be put to good use but the batteries are no longer available, 2 of them don't even work with the plug unless there's a battery in there for some god awful reason.
That’s the risk you take on with promoting right to repair.
It’s be better if we had stronger consumer legislation globally that forces manufacturer responsibility rather than demand we can do the job ourselves.
Imagine if you bought a laptop and the battery died after 2 years and the state mandated option was for the manufacturer to buy it back at 60% of the original value because it didn’t last the prescribed 6 year life span. Removable batteries would appear overnight in everything.
Imagine that at the end of the useful life the manufacturer had to buy it back for 20% of the value to recycle it. Global trash heaps would disappear overnight.
I like the idea of mature, self-responsible people.
Who can be trusted to make decisions by themself.
And the right to repair aims not, that everyone should fix their devices by themself, but that everyone who is capable, has the possibility to do so. Like repair shops. Or skilled individuals. And those who think they are more competent, than they actually are ... find always ways of shooting themself in the foot. I would not want to punish everyone else because of it.
I think if you look at the actual current state of the repair industry it’d scare you off the idea fairly quickly. There are very few competent people and even fewer business where competence is promoted.
I’m going to slap Rossman here as well who does some pretty scary hack jobbery and passes it off as a fit for purpose repair rather than a data recovery last resort.
Non-removable batteries are annoying, but they allow you to make devices which are much more compact, or which have a larger battery at the same size.
The battery in e.g. an iPhone 6S takes some work to replace, but it's still quite easy for a repair shop to do, so that seems like a very reasonable trade-off to me.
> There is the valid argument, of sealing it in, for water protection.
There is an argument, perhaps, I don't know about a "valid" one.
The difference between "the battery can be swapped with a screw driver" and "the battery can be swapped by a repair shop in 15 minutes" isn't really that large, so if it can make devices more compact, sure, why not?
Batteries that outright can't be replaced are something else entirely. Maybe some consumers are willing to make the trade, but it's environmentally irresponsible. The Airpods in particular really piss me off given all of Apple's environmental messaging.
That is incorrect. The Samsung Galaxy S5 had a removable battery and headphone jack and was still waterproof. It was a $550 phone and was a flagship with the latest hardware/performance stuff, so clearly this was practical from a cost/manufacturing standpoint. Waterproofing is not a valid reason against having removable batteries or ports.
Not really related but ifixit really is fantastic. I’ve fixed so many things I had no business being able to fix on my own thanks to their guides and videos. I wish more people would turn to their site before throwing stuff away.
Take their guides with a bit of a grain of salt. Having gone through Apple ACMT training back in 2015, many of the iFixit guides have recommendations or procedures that do not follow official Apple guidelines. In most cases it doesn't matter, but it can come back to bite.
For example there are torque specifications for some of the screws in the trashcan Mac Pro. I doubt getting the torque wrong would cause any issue, and Apple is probably being a bit pedantic. However, iFixit's thermal paste application article specifically recommends spreading thermal paste with your finger[1], which is a TERRIBLE idea and goes directly against Apple repair procedures.
So use common sense when working with iFixit guides, they should not be considered replacements for official Apple repair guides, though they are far better than nothing, which is what Apple provides to the general public :).
I don't give a shit what Apple thinks, and wouldn't bother seeking their opinion. I've replaced probably every part in an old MacBook Air I have and the non-Apple online documentation has been really good.
All that being said, thermal paste is pretty poisonous, I'd never even considered someone would just splodge it on with their finger.
I've had great success with iFixit guids too. 2 iPhones and a iPad. But I've been a bit weary of doing that since last time I got a screen where the connection wires that came with it weren't quite right and caused the iPad to get hot enough to burn skin and cause heat warnings from the OS. In that case, it was possible to reuse the original connector to fix the issue, but my trust in third-party parts diminished quite a bit.
I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, but I do wonder about the idea that by making the power source impossible to remove, the phone can be a surveillance device even when the user thinks it's powered off.
I wonder what the minds of HN think about this scenario. Is the move towards non-removable batteries perhaps related to this?
I also wonder about the movement away from physical headphone jacks....I imagine bluetooth is easier to hack then a physical cable.
Edit: thanks for engaging on this. You helped me discount this theory.
The first thing to ask if we think that the non removable batteries is related to surveillance is how a non removable battery would help surveillance. And it’s hard to see how it would. The vast majority of people would leave their removable batteries in the phone with it on anyways, since they don’t expect the surveillance. The next level of paranoid people would switch off the phone, in which case it wouldn’t matter if the battery was removable or not. The only crowd it would affect is the people who are paranoid enough that they would additionally also remove the battery. But if they are so careful, if they do have a phone with a non removable battery, then they have a simple alternate solution of simply locking up the phone in a lockbox and not taking it into the room you’re having the discussion (or taking it around with you if you’re worried about tracking).
Insisting on non removable batteries will give you an extremely minor benefit (people who are careful enough to want to remove their batteries for privacy, but not dedicated enough that given a non removable battery, they will still keep their phone around and won’t find an alternate solution).
So really, it doesn’t make sense at all.
Further, there’s a completely explainable, and frankly predictable, trajectory and goal that led to non removable batteries. The same goal that led to other changes such as the removing of the headphone jack, etc.
"a completely explainable, and frankly oredictable, trajectory and goal that ked to... changes such as the removing of the headphone jack, etc." Bad taste? Narcissistic corporate executives... with impractically bad taste?
:-) Yeah, no need to go to a conspiracy theory with no rational basis or factual evidence when stupidity,greed, incompetence or a combination thereof will explain the result. It seems to me that these kinds of theories only build up the power and influence of those petty industrial tyrants to the detriment of all.
Still, cold comfort to those of us who have lost the replaceable battery option and dread the day headphone jacks disappear forever.
You have to undersize parts for a watertight fit, which can result in undesirable characteristics when deformation or dropping of a device does happen. There's also an increasing tendency to use the outer shell of a device as a heat-sink/radiator. Adhesives enable this type of design but make it darn near impossible to maintain.
I'm not going to say there isn't a mustache twirler somewhere with surveillance plans of grandeur... but unfortunately the truth may be closer to it's cheaper to buy a tube of glue than to get a tub of small, self-tapping screws.
That's just my 2 cents from having torn things apart and put them back together to varying degrees of success.
Cars and tractor PCB's as far as I'm aware tap into the vehicle's electrical subsystem, therefore living off the battery. This is why if you don't drive a vehicle or use a tractor regularly, you should be keeping the battery on a maintainer. Most control units have parasitic load to retain ECU state between engine on states, and to keep vehicle security systems doing their thing. They don't usually have dedicated batteries beyond maybe a button for cmos, but again, I haven't seen that in an automotive context. That'll flatline a lead acid battery if you don't drive it or run it for a couple weeks. Guess how I know?
Now, a lot of cars increasingly DO have dedicated antennas for OTA updates, phoning home telemetry and things like that. There might be some wireless CANBUS(It's either that or CAN, I don't have it on the top of my head at the moment).
The real culprit for me is bloody tablets and laptops. No excuses. The ultra-thin form factors are nothing but regressions in maintainability to me. Smartphones I don't even grudgingly accept anymore. The material selection and designs have biased only achieving realistic resilience through off loading that facet of design to accessory manufacturers. Anybody with a "naked" handset should know that current marketing/consumer quality metrics are not aligned on durability in normal chaotic human usage at all.
That's unlikely because people would notice the devices working while off. Your power draw comes from two sources unless you run games and heavy apps: display and radios - and there's enough interest and measurement happening there that people would notice radios activating when they shouldn't.
There's also lots of interest in tracking device communication and I really expect someone to notice a randomly appearing device where there shouldn't be one.
The attack scenario is, that the mobile just listens to you via the microphone and saves it - and later when normaly turned on, sends away all the data.
All of this on a very low hardware layer, so no need for complex cpu operations or engage with the OS(in case of turned "off"). So very low power demand.
And it would also not show up, in anyone doing radiotraffic/wlan analysis.
So it would be indeed very hard to spot.
(don't have the sources, but I think on some defcon was a talk with proof of concept about this)
So if anyone thinks, he is a specific target of some powerful intelligence agency, (like someone strongly engaged with the opposition in Hong Kong) - I think they definitely should consider this scenario as a possible one (but I don't know how likely it actually is, probably not high, if your are not considered a leader).
But that this change for non-removable batteries in general was made, so that even the paranoid part of the population can be tracked non-stop by the global Illuminati ... is indeed very much tinfoil area.
But the part about your phone maybe spying on you, when you think it is off:
I think right to repair bills could be important, but I think they should also cover cases where the physical device is fine, but the company is no longer running a service, or sending security updates. In these cases, "repair" should include the ability to run different firmware etc.
Can someone please explain exactly what regulations are being proposed and what manufactures will be required to do? Are manufacturer going to be, for example, required to manufacture electronic parts for every old model and keep them available for 10 years as was suggested in one comment? I'm sympathetic but there is no way this is going to work. There are literally thousands of different models of phones, for example, made every year. Ask yourself if it is it really practical to require manufacturers to keep generating parts for every old model? And then multiply that problem countlessly for every other electronic product out there.I don't think this is an area for regulation This is a recipe for shutting down the tech hardware industry. This is an area for customer pressure not regulations. This will be a hugely burdensome on manufacturers and will greatly reduce the amount of innovation and new products. And shut many new products out of the marketplace.
Can anyone comment on this please? (from the nysenate.gov link in the article)
"This bill require original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to make diag-
nostic and repair information for digital electronic parts and equipment
available to independent repair providers and consumers if such parts
and repair information are also available to OEM authorized repair
providers."
This seems to imply that if something is being sold as non repairable, it will continue to be, since there would be no authorized repair providers.
Your take sounds right. Like if Apple replaces phone screens at an Apple facility, they must also make the screens (and supporting equipment) available to other parties. If they don't replace screens, then they don't have to make them available.
Exactly. Which would make sense in case of spare parts, "we don't make spare parts for us, so we can't distribute them for others", but that would apply also to firmware and technical information, which they have and doesn't require distribution in physical form.
I'm afraid that for some time we'll continue to see old phones discarded in landfills because there will be no technical information available allowing developers to port open operating systems, drivers and apps to them.
I appreciate the immediate problem and I guess policy like this is better than nothing. But to me the cause of this is less of a lack of "rights" as it is a lack of competition in the market. I would much rather choose products that have a more open and repairable architecture rather than have additional regulation.
You won't hear any here. HN, while libertarian-leaning on many issues, is overwhelmingly in favor of government regulation on this topic.
I'll be downvoted, but here's a few real potential downsides (which exist anytime a small group of people with good intentions THINK they understand a complex issue enough to fix it). All regulation has unintended consequences:
Ineffective at stopping E-waste - The main reason people throw electronics away is not because they break, but because they become obsolete. In electronics, the next generation of products is almost always faster, smaller, and more energy efficient. Hence why we have landfills full of old beige computer towers that are fully functional and user-repairable, yet nobody wants.
Dampened innovation - When you tell companies they have to build things a certain way, you remove the option for something better to evolve. Once you pass a law, it's almost impossible to get it removed, and who knows what the future will bring (eg. biodegradable electronics, miniaturization on a microscopic scale, etc)
Increased costs for consumers - baring the extra engineering/documentation costs (which aren't trivial), any requirements to supply spare parts for X years would be insanely expensive. Forcing companies to create small quantity B2C supply chains and retail channels for consumers to purchase individual parts on obsolete models would be an absolute nightmare.
Disincentivized R&D - if you're forced to create manuals that tell your competitors how to clone your products and also let them easily buy all your parts, why invest in creating something unique? You'll just be cloned by an army of chinese competitors even faster. Just sell commodity crap hardware and focus on branding.
Entrenching incumbents - incumbent big companies may simply use this regulation as an opportunity to entrench their position in the marketplace. If they can make it harder for upstarts to get off the ground, that's good for them! Anytime a company is coming out in favor of legislation and "restrictions" on their business, beware.
Whatever folks' objections to these reasons may be, this does seem like a great accounting of logical and well-reasoned objections to this legislation, which is what I was looking for. Sounds to me like it'd be important to properly consider this issue to at least do some mental gymnastics as to what the possible objections could be.
This is an issue I myself have had to consider. Personally I'm no fan of government interference in this matter even if I'm not a big fan of Apple's practices as a whole. While I'm on board with the ideas behind R2R, I can't in anyway support an imposition of producing spare parts or manuals by legislative writ.
In the long run, it would probably be ineffective as well. Most of the big companies would probably ignore the law and/or sue the state. I'm sure there'll be first amendment issues citing compelled speech with regards to being forced to produce manuals.
1. It complains about downvotes, which is one of many reasons your post is grey.
2. The main reason people throw electronics away is not because they break, but because they become obsolete: Big [citation needed] on shorter time scales. For longer time scales it's intuitively true but irrelevant. With Moore's law being toast, most hardware upgrades are extremely incremental. I don't get any more battery life on my iPhone XS Max than I do on the 6+ it replaced, it's not any more responsive, etc. Beige boxes haven't been a thing for decades. But, people holding onto their devices longer would absolutely result in less ewaste.
3. When you tell companies they have to build things a certain way, you remove the option for something better to evolve: That depends entirely on the nature of the requirements. Nobody's talking about the government dictating the whole BOM. No innovation is being stifled by requiring, say, user-replaceable batteries, unless we're talking about innovative ways to pad the company's bottom line. Let's not lose sight of the fact that repair-hostile design absolutely benefits the company and only the company at the end of the day.
4. baring the extra engineering/documentation costs: which are already done internally, so those costs are irrelevant. Every company that does repairs has documented repair procedures for their own people already. They can put PDFs on a freaking website. No idea what you mean by "extra engineering costs".
5. forcing companies to create small quantity B2C supply chains and retail channels for consumers to purchase individual parts on obsolete models would be an absolute nightmare: That's somewhat fair, but there's no reason it needs to be any more of a retail channel than their ship/replace stuff already is. The infra is already in place, they're just shipping out parts instead of full devices. I think the word "obsolete" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.. a 2 years old phone is only "obsolete" by manufacturer fiat, because they can make more money by marketing tiny, incremental upgrades and simply refusing to support the still-useful device.
6. You'll just be cloned by an army of chinese competitors even faster: Not fast enough for this to be an actual concern. Shitty chinese clones happen with a quickness even today, yet for some reason people still spend billions on name brand devices. I do not foresee this meaningfully changing. Trademark/import law is still a thing, after all.
7. incumbent big companies may simply use this regulation as an opportunity to entrench their position in the marketplace: This is a weak meta-situational argument used by all big businesses against any and all business regulations. I do not see why this case is special.
>No innovation is being stifled by requiring, say, user-replaceable batteries
This is exactly my point. You have good intentions and are trying to solve the problem.
But by doing so you've just made a dangerous authoritarian decision for the future of all computing. Who knows what form batteries will take in the future, especially as power needs are reduced. Look at how much less power the M1 SOC takes vs. Intel chips and multiply that by 10. Now think of all the new form factors that would be enabled by this, and where your law might be a hinderance in 20+ years (yet impossible politically to repeal).
New tech is fragile. All it takes is one guy in legal to say "too risky, violates X law" and said experimental product is set back a decade or two.
> Shitty chinese clones happen with a quickness even today, yet for some reason people still spend billions on name brand devices. I do not foresee this meaningfully changing.
I don't have the same crystal ball to predict the future, I guess. How can you be so sure? Because America is the best at everything and will always be the best? History is filled with predictions of a future that never came to be.
Overall, I'm sympathetic to the cause, but I think the RTR movement is a little too dogmatic and authoritarian for my tastes. If the market wanted the same things as RTR, companies would already be creating their products this way and minting profits. The market isn't perfectly efficient, but it mostly is.
...and if Apple is wrong, and people actually do care about user-replaceable batteries, you should run out and start a RTR-friendly hardware company tomorrow and win the market!
The "safety!" argument against RTR is disingenuous. Just as the "landfills!" argument in favor of RTR is also disingenuous.
Nobody on either side actually believes those things (regardless of how passionately they claim to). They are both fallacious appeals to get disinterested people emotionally wrapped up in the topic.
RE: safety, people getting hurt trying to repair stuff happens already and will still happen post-regulation. Right to repair will not result in more injuries.
RE: landfills, most people don't throw stuff away because it breaks. They throw things away because newer models are more powerful, faster, smaller, more efficient, or aesthetically "cool." Right to repair will not result in less landfills.
1. This law is extremely broad and covers any "digital electronic equipment". Since everything has a computer in it nowadays, it's hard for a person to even understand what industries this covers.
This is unnecessarily much broader than the original intent. Right to repair was mostly pushed for by computer repair shops, who mostly work with consumer electronics. The New York lawmakers acknowledged there was some problem with this, that's why they excluded everything medical or automotive. But every other industry is still effected and it will have unintended consequences. They excluded only cars and medical devices, but did they still intend for this to apply to boats, planes, construction equipment, missiles, building access management, even pipelines?
The Colonial Pipeline must have some "digital electronic equipment" that controls it. How likely is it that if all the maintenance manuals for that stuff are released, people will find some security-by-obscurity there? Computer repair shops are not going to repair oil and gas pipelines, so is there any reason these manuals need to be made publically available?
2. Everything this law requires is going to be made public, it won't just be for independent repair shops, and that may not be in the public interest. The law acknowledges that for security-related information, there may be a reason not to make it publically available. It says that "such documentation, tools, and parts may be made available through appropriate secure release systems." But they can't actually enforce that. The law says that manufacturers have to provide these maintenance manuals for free to any "independent repair provider", which could be a 1-person company, and the right to repair folks already stated they want to dump everything online. So all this confidental information will get leaked immediately and there's nothing the manufacturers will be able to do about it.
3. Security. For electronics, security-by-obscurity is all over the place, you can find it everywhere. Devices always need some privileged mode for things like testing, administration, or maintenance, and it's hard to do that securely on processors that are as cheap as possible for business reasons.
Consider e.g. building access control, like the keypads on apartment buildings. These have a need for someone to be able to unlock the door in unusual situations, e.g. for maintenance, building administration, or for firefighting. Instead of a TLS stack, they probably have some obscurity-by-security keycode, like pressing #12345 to enable the maintenance mode. This would be documented in a maintenance manual and not provided to most end users. When the right to repair folks dump this manual on the internet, it's going to help criminals a lot more than repair shops. Repairs to apartment keypads are rare, but thefts from apartment buildings are very common.
This same thing will happen with a million other devices that no one has thought about yet. If the manufacturer created some features that the user is not supposed to access, there's probably a reason for that. But all this stuff will be recorded in maintenance manuals, and making it public won't really benefit users as much as it will harm security.
You have to first fight the battle that you do not own the software, but that you only have a license to use the software. If you win that, then you can fight for repair.
4. Excludes motor vehicle manufacturers, manufacturer of motor vehicle
equipment, or motor vehicle dealers and medical devices or a digital
electronic product or embedded software found in medical settings.
For all the bravado about standing up to powerful interests, this shows you who the most powerful interests are in that space.
We excluded autos because the Massachusetts auto right to repair bill (most recently updated in November) covers this, and there's a nationwide MOU. Tesla is the only manufacturer that has not signed this MOU.
There's no comma after that phrase indicating that it's a separate item in the list.
I believe that is intended to be read as "digital
electronic product or embedded software found in medical settings."
After all, the description of what the bill does apply to is "digital electronic equipment". Interpreting it to apply to "equipment" but not "products" doesn't really make sense.
Instead of fighting the auto industry giants over this bill, they left them out - that way they can focus on fighting the info industry giants.
The auto industry giants are still being fought - just not over this bill.
I think that if the laws overlap it will be opposed by multiple industry giants and will be harder to pass. At least that’s what it seems from the post above.
Am I being a bit naive to think that this has more to do with public safety? In theory, there is some increased level of regulation/review of the car and medical device manufacturers that limits the risk these repairs aren’t done to an appropriate standard? You can make a trade-off between standard of repair and price for your iPhone that only impacts the device, but cars and medical devices not properly repaired could impact a life.
You’ve used a grey argument. Apple themselves have argued that one of the reasons they have to limit repair is for public safety (someone could have a battery explode if they pierce it, for example), whereas we could also argue the other side: that if someone modifies their own medical device and gets hurt because of it that they legally only hurt themselves because they had the right to make that choice.
IMO it comes down to this: do we advocate for laws that give companies the ability to decide what is right/safe for the public, or do we advocate for laws that reflect trust in the individual?
> IMO it comes down to this: do we advocate for laws that give companies the ability to decide what is right/safe for the public, or do we advocate for laws that reflect trust in the individual?
This is a really great way to put it, and it applies broadly to so many fundamental disagreements in the tech world.
I firmly believe it’s better to trust the individual—so I think users should be able to sideload iOS apps (only if they want to) and install their own root certificates. Others think individuals can’t be trusted, and so we should let tech companies dictate what is safe for everyone else.
I agree that individuals should control their own devices.
I also agree with Apple's implicit claim that if iOS users could sideload apps, millions of idiot iOS users would get their devices owned after they followed some "follow these seven steps to get free $POPULAR_MOBILE_GAME tokens!" guide they found on the web, making the platform less trustworthy overall.
Apple makes a good argument that buying an iPhone is also buying, in a sense, a remote managed security service for the device at the same time. The net effect of this is that millions of people now have devices mostly free of the most egregious malware (and it's limited to just spyware, delivered via the App Store). For most users, this is a better state of affairs (at least in peacetime, or outside of China/Vietnam/Russia/etc).
and yet, despite occasional problems, the same hasn't happened in the Android sphere with sideloading. Problems? Sure... but not "ZOMG MILLIONS!"
"Apple makes a good argument" Their argument doesn't give near enough excuses for their mafia level racket to shake down businesses of protection money. "Pay us or Joey will break your kneecaps. Its for your own protection."
> and yet, despite occasional problems, the same hasn't happened in the Android sphere with sideloading. Problems? Sure... but not "ZOMG MILLIONS!"
Millions of Android devices have malware problems, yes. I might even agree with a claim that it is ZOMG millions.
Estimates claim that as far back as 2016, a million new Android devices were being infected with malware per month. The current figures are estimated by AV vendors at 4-7 million infections per month.
It's only a good argument if you assume that Apple is fundamentally interested in consumer security. It isn't. Apple is fundamentally interested in control. Security, however Apple defines it, is a chosen means to the extent that is fulfills the company's primary goal.
That's not to say that Apple should behave like a charitable force. A company's goals and decisions are its own prerogative. But as we've seen with the revelations of the Epic trial, the Darth Vader-style rule changes, updates that interfere with the basic operation of the device, etc., you're not just buying into a remotely managed system like a remote desktop at a colocation center. You're buying into the blackbox of Apple's present and future business decisions whether that suits your needs or not.
Should security no longer justify the cost to Apple, they'll contort the meaning of the word to suit their ends just like Tim Cook has done to the word "equal" during his congressional hearing.
You can't downgrade/upgrade the OS to a specific version of an update after a fortnight or thereabouts. That's an artificial constraint applied by Apple. It's not even possible to do so offline with iTunes even if one has the IPSWs. If you check the /r/jailbreak subreddit, talented coders have to hack the SEP and build complicated, low-level-interacting software like futurestore in order to perform a semi-successful downgrade/upgrade.
However, if you install an update to try it out, or because you didn't realize that it would e.g. break 32bit support, you can never downgrade again (unless you happen to be within a two-week-ish period.)
Your first paragraph contradicts the second and third paragraphs! If you believe that individuals should control their own devices, why are you in favor of Apple retaining control of every iPhone it sells? Pick one!
I didn't claim to be in favor of Apple retaining control of every iPhone they sell. Please re-read my comment.
My claim is that for most users of iPhones, the situation of Apple being in control of their device, rather than themselves, results in a better outcome for that user (and is oftentimes explicitly preferred by that user as a result, and is reflected in their purchase of an iPhone).
In fact, Apple delegates control of an iPhone's userspace execution environment to any iPhone owner who wants it: they will give you a signing cert for use in xcode to run any app you want on your own device (no developer subscription necessary). This is how AltStore works, and allows AltStore users to run emulator apps on the iPhones they own.
> My claim is that for most users of iPhones, the situation of Apple being in control of their device, rather than themselves, results in a better outcome for that user (and is oftentimes explicitly preferred by that user as a result, and is reflected in their purchase of an iPhone).
Okay, but that comes out to the same thing, since I can't buy an iPhone which isn't Apple managed. If Apple offered a choice, that would be one thing—but they don't.
> In fact, Apple delegates control of an iPhone's execution environment to any iPhone owner who wants it: they will give you a signing cert for use in xcode to run any app you want on your own device.
What they give you is the ability to sign up to three apps at a time, all of which expire after seven days. It's not useful for anything but testing.
Plus, you're stuck in the App Store sandbox. You can't downgrade to an earlier operating system, you can't inspect the HTTPS traffic being sent out of your phone, and you can't even run anything that uses a JIT.
> What they give you is the ability to sign up to three apps at a time, all of which expire after seven days. It's not useful for anything but testing.
And if they decide to they can flip a switch on their server to disable your account and stop “your” apps from launching.
> Okay, but that comes out to the same thing, since I can't buy an iPhone which isn't Apple managed. If Apple offered a choice, that would be one thing—but they don't.
Well, you know this state of affairs well now, so when you buy an iPhone you willingly opt in to these remote management restrictions. There are lots of smartphones you can buy without such cryptographic boot restrictions.
Many people willingly choose iPhones (even given these constraints), and would prefer a remote party manage their device's security.
Apple's argument is a legitimate one, and you should be able to operate in the market in this fashion. Nobody's forced to buy an iPhone if they don't like how the bootloader is configured or the App Store is run.
> Many people willingly choose iPhones (even given these constraints), and would prefer a remote party manage their device's security.
I mean, but you're making a big assumption there! I buy iPhones in spite of those restrictions, because the only other options have worse processors and cameras, and because most of the people I know use iMessage.
I'd pay double the cost of a normal iPhone for a Security Research Device, if they were available to the general public.
Absolutely when it comes to tech. It's fairly inconsequential sideloading something to your phone.
Medical devices I think should need a someone well versed to work on it.
With cars, the current model most states in the US have is a good middle ground. You can do whatever you want to your car, but it needs to pass a safety inspection every 2 years to drive it legally.
The inspections in my state are fairly comprehensive. Airbags, seat belts, headlight brightness, and structural stability of the frame to name a few.
It also helps the US has a strong car culture with tons of experienced DIY-ers, which I imagine helps.
I think we should just have some pretty clear literature that if you modify a device, the manufacturer is not responsible for any injuries it might cause you.
Modify a dishwasher and now it fills your kitchen with soap bubbles? Modify a CPAP machine and get killed by it? Not the manufacturer's fault.
By passing a right to repair on medical devices you also open up the aftermarket for repairs. Would you like to be handed a medical device by your insurance company that has been repaired by an untrained person that considers himself to be a handyman? Or be put in a scanner that was repaired by a service engineer from a broker that is cutting corners to win in the competing market.
Without clear quality and regulatory control there must be an objective method to discern between personal repairs and non-personal ones.
Disclaimer: didn't read the actual right to repair being passed in detail. Not sure if it does discern already.
But if the insurance company doesn't want to be liable for it it would require a certified and/or bonded tech. In the US cars don't even require this to be stringent.
You don't need any schooling to become ASC Certified mechanic, just take a test, no limiting factors for how often you need to recertify, or if you fail it so many times you need to school/train. At least in Canada you need to go to school, and then be a journeyman for a number of years before you can actually be a mechanic.
To really fix it we need a non-profit group to be in charge of the certification, preferably one who can be held accountable for failure due to their certification. My removing the incentive for profit we make it so the Medical industry won't try to control it, the insurance industry to mitigate their requirements, and government from trying to have political agendas pushed.
I have more that I would love to put in here but my employer has opinions that might differ from mine, and can be directly involved with some things that the law can impact.
> In the US cars don't even require this to be stringent. You don't need any schooling to become ASC Certified mechanic, just take a test, no limiting factors for how often you need to recertify, or if you fail it so many times you need to school/train.
There's no legal requirement in the US federally, or in any state I'm aware of, to have any certifications for general automotive repair. The EPA does require it for working on air conditioning systems, though. [0] However, many employers do require certification and/or will assist in getting the certifications. Some of the smaller shops are more likely to have mechanics without certifications or with expired certifications (I believe ASE certs are five years). ASE does require hands on experience for their certifications in addition to the test, though. [1]
The BLS also describes this, probably better than I do. [2]
IANAL or even a law-enthusiast, but surely we already have case law on this if nothing else? You can't sue the car company if you remove the breaks in your car... right?
> I think we should just have some pretty clear literature that if you modify a device, the manufacturer is not responsible for any injuries it might cause you.
That's not nearly nuanced enough. Manufacturers should still be responsible unless they can prove you caused the failure. We currently require this standard for something as simple warranty coverage, we ought to require it for something as severe as death.
For reference, see “It’s clear you caused water damage because the water damage sticker changed colour. Warranty claim denied” from not too long ago. Spoiler: It was regular moisture from being in the pants pocket during a warm day.
> With cars, the current model most states in the US have is a good middle ground. You can do whatever you want to your car, but it needs to pass a safety inspection every 2 years to drive it legally.
Only 4 US states have biannual safety inspections. Another 11 have annual inspections. The other 35 states + DC do not have safety inspections.
If one thinks that self driving cars are scary. Imagine having Look ma! I improved the autopilot in my Tesla!! driving on public roads or being sold 2nd hand.
Car SW that can control the vehicle motion goes through very rigorous ISO processes, it's not something you just casually tinker with as an individual. Given its hard to visually inspect, one needs a way to understand if a car has been modified or not. This article also on the front page here yesterday explains the complexity and cost of integration verification https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/adv...
Enabling serious third party aftermarket companies that have gone through same level of certification, nothing against that, but individuals, not so sure.
There's an additional wrinkle for cars that make them unlike other devices, which is that they drive on public roads. I can't drive on a public road without a license, and neither should software.
But if little Johnny wants to drive his Tesla around a private racetrack with homespun Autopilot software, by all means! It's hardly the weirdest hobby, and who knows—maybe he'll grow up and form a startup that uses modified Tesla's to transport products in large warehouses. That's how innovation happens.
I see where you are coming from but right now, if autopilot kills someone, then Tesla are on the hook for it (ok, there may be grey areas but ultimately, they made it so that has to point back to them in a big way when it comes to court cases). However, if I jailbreak my autopilot and kill someone, it's me that has to face the music!
I don't see the harm in scaling the jailbreak hoops you need to jump through.
For example, if I wanted to safely jailbreak my iPhone, there is nothing stopping Apple having an official app that you need to get a special key from Apple for. Maybe a phone call or something, or an email to support. It would come with a caveat that says your jailbroken phone forfeits any warranty claims. Fair enough.
When you are talking about jailbreaking a Tesla, there could be other layers. Like, for example, you have to go to a Tesla dealer where they explain the legal and support ramifications and whatnot. Then you sign a bit of paper with witnesses. Then they send you out a usb dongle in the post after a few days etc. Maybe, though with the Tesla, there would be limits. Like, you can't get the source code, or you are only able to to X things with it.
You get the idea... there could potentially be a scale for stuff like this.
I'm just chucking stuff out there, this isn't a realistic example so please put your pitch forks away :)
> IMO it comes down to this: do we advocate for laws that give companies the ability to decide what is right/safe for the public, or do we advocate for laws that reflect trust in the individual?
In the US, I think, some companies sell weapons and nobody seems to care if people can hurt themselves with them.
The comparison is more appropriate than you maybe even intended. Cars are considered weapons (e.g. driving at someone is assault with a deadly weapon), and cars are very dangerous in general and kill lots of people (and not just the drivers!). Yet, we still want right-to-repair on cars.
we HAVE right to repair on cars, and we've had it for decades. it's why the OBD-II port is standardized and mandated. it's why you can buy tools built only by the auto manufacturers for working on their own cars. it's why auto manufacturers are required to sell every part and every tool to end customers for at least 10 years after a model year is no longer manufactured. it's why third-party replacement parts are available AT ALL.
people forget all this. this is the same thing people want for farm vehicles and personal electronics.
we got it done for cars and trucks in the late 1980s. I don't understand why it's so hard to get lawmakers on the side of the customer --their constituents-- today.
> that if someone modifies their own medical device and gets hurt because of it that they legally only hurt themselves because they had the right to make that choice.
Well, while this applies to medical devices, worth noting this doesn't apply to cars, for which safety inspections have existed in many states for quite a while.
While Apple has made that argument, their devices are not primarily intended to support life, and the vast majority of failures due to bad repairs don't kill people.
And often with medical devices, they may often be supporting the life of someone other than the original purchaser and sole maintainer.
These laws obligate the manufacturer to release maintenance and repair manuals, like the ones they provide to the authorized service centers; and ban all litigation related to someone providing unauthorized services, etc...
Depending on the law, it may also require more documentation, ban on total lockdown of devices and obligation to sell spare parts(but you often can buy genuine spare parts through service centers)
Right to fix also doesn't cover warranties, as you will loose your warranty when doing it yourself.
For cars or medical equipment - that's clearly political influence, masquerading as "public safety".
There's nothing stopping me from modifying my car to be very dangerous right now, without even affecting my warranty. The difference - I cannot install a third party keyfob, because the protocol is locked down.
The kind of medical equipment that hospitals require, already comes with multi-decade support. And your CPAP device can be serviced by someone without manufacturer specific training(that costs a fortune, for little practical value).
> Right to fix also doesn't cover warranties, as you will loose your warranty when doing it yourself.
The Magnussen-Moss warranty act of 1975 states (IANAL) that a repair cannot void the warranty unless the manufacturer can prove that your repair caused the damage in question.
This is correct. Those "warranty void if broken" stickers are only worth as much as they mislead people into not bothering to push for warranty claims. (and if it's on something that's not a "consumer good")
Louis Rossman gave an example which I believe really happened. A surgery chair that cost tens of thousands of dollars needed a new riser motor. Just an electric motor to move the chair up and down. But the company that makes the electric motor had an agreement with the chair manufacturer not to sell replacement parts. So the only recourse instead of replacing a $500 motor is to replace an entire surgery chair for tens of thousands of dollars.
Given the cost of medical care in this country I think it would be a very good thing if that agreement not to sell parts was against the law. Surely an electric motor to raise a chair up and down could be replaced with the correct part without compromising anyone’s safety.
although in this specific case in example, if the country you're talking about are the US, having access to the $500 motor only means wider profit margins for the hostpital, not necessarily lower bills for hospitalized people.
Perhaps, but it’s clear we must both lower costs (fix repair laws) and provide free medical care for everyone. So fixing repair is one important step towards an end goal of health care for everyone.
Regulating the quality of repair is a separate issue from sourcing parts. The hospital and their insurance company will be well inclined to make sure that repairs are done properly, but we should let the people who own the chair (and some oversight board) decide policy for those repairs, not equipment manufacturers who have a vested interest in selling new equipment.
This assumes that the first party seller is competent, motivated and capable of using their first party documents to good effect performing repairs. Consider the Apple Genius bar for an easy counter example.
edit: may have misinterpreted what you wrote. Nobody should have to have amateurs perform repairs, whether they are first party or not.
Nobody should be forced to use an amateur, certainly. I'm saying that if you can't afford a professional repair, you want the amateur to have access to the best information available, whether that person is you or someone else.
This is the wrong place to regulate that. If buildings need to adhere to certain fire safety requirements, you have a law that says people modifying the property need to follow those requirements. You don't make a law that says only the original builder of the house is allowed to repair the house.
Public Safety is never a reason to oppose Right to Repair, to the extent there are safety concerns they can be elevated with out needing to curb independent or self repair
That said, Safety is red herring that the industries use to justify their anti-consumer actions with zero actual data to back their position.
The Record are cars is clear and estiblished people self repair and use independant repair all the time to fix mechnical safety systems like breaks with no systemic issues or damage to public safety
For medical devices I have yet to see any data the independent repair causes any harm, in fact I believe the the US Government has a study that states Independent Repair of Medical Equipment is critical to maintaining the US Health System, so in the case of Health Care prohibitions on independent repair may CAUSE public health issues by taking critical equipment out of service waiting on "authorized" repair or parts
Let's interpret this the right way: this doesn't mean "we're not going to handle motor vehicles or medical", it means "motor vehicles and medical are out of scope for
this measure." They can be handled separately, and that's reasonable given the greater safety concerns of those industries.
If that metric is true doesn't that already give google, lg, samsung, ... an out ? "manufacturer of motor vehicle equipment" is sufficiently large to include everyone we want that law for.
Restrictions on medical devices are very reasonable though. They aren't something people can freely hack on. Errors can cause decisions to be made based on incorrect information, expose people to radioactivity...
Even the GPLv3 makes an exception for this class of device.
> Even the GPLv3 makes an exception for this class of device.
Citation very fucking needed, because exceptions for specific fields of work directly contradict the underlying principles of the GPL, and indeed [0] contains no occurence of the word "medical".
> A "User Product" is either (1) a "consumer product", which means any tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes, or (2) anything designed or sold for incorporation into a dwelling.
The anti-tivoization text in the license applies to these User Products. Medical devices are not included in the definition.
If it's "normally used for personal, family, or household purposes" or "designed or sold for incorporation into a dwelling", then anti-tivoization applies regardless of whether it's medical in nature. Conversely, if it's not either of those, then it's not a "consumer product", also regardless of whether it's medical. There are problems with that section, but "GPLv3 makes an exception for medical devices" is not one of them.
This makes no sense, GPL is a big aid, but not a prerequisite to enabling custom repairs. And vice versa, having access to the source code of an x-ray machine doesn't increase risk of modification. Device can still block FW updates based on signatures.
These are also two classes of consumer facing product that are most regulated and likely to contain electronics
(I'm excluding cribs...because my partner laughed at me when I suggested building our crib and told me that was fine as long as I followed all the rules)
So how many nurses need an iPhone to exempt Apple? Or would something like a COVID tracking app make it a digital electronic product found in a medical setting?
The sole "and" combined with the bill's use of "digital electronic product" outside of section four makes it fairly clear that it's only discussing medical devices. "You have the right to repair digital electronic product's except digital electronic products" doesn't make much sense.
Did you know that if you buy a 2021 BMW M5 and paid $120k for it in cash (no financing), then let the warranty expire (or hypothetically signed an opt-in waiver forgoing your powertrain warranty), you still can't flash your own calibration map to increase power into the engine control units?
I'm sure there's a ton of good reasons why liability wise. Just seems crazy to me.
I guess it's the same when you buy a $1k iPhone and can't run your own unsigned software.
Surely some of that kind of thing would come down to regulatory compliance like emissions? It would be no good if right beside the BMW dealer was a shack with a dude who "unlocks" your new car's performance by turning it into a soot-spewing disaster (yes I know about coal rolling, but at least right now that's mostly done for jackass reasons not performance reasons).
Anyway, it's basically the same thing that's at stake with router radio firmware and RF compliance— yes, you own the device, but the device's hardware has inherent capabilities that if fully unlocked, you would really need additional permits/licensing/oversight to operate in a way that doesn't interfere with other people's devices and wellbeing. Having your device locked down in this regard is a compromise that lets you have it and use it within those parameters while not needing to become a domain expert.
A badly flashed ECU can trivially wreck your engine. It can make it wear out faster. It can increase emissions.
I have no objection with voiding warranty repairs if you reflash an ECU. The important thing is that you should still be able to do it, and still be able to fix the car yourself and get replacement parts.
So technically even you can replace those chips, you can't buy them.
And next Apple if putting serial numbers to prevent that even if you get the part, you will have a non-functional device.
This bill does not appear to address that.
Besides, the "information they need to repair" is also where the devil will be. Companies like Apple provide instructions on how to unscrew the laptop cover with a screwdriver (literally), but won't provide any data sheets.