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.
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.