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iFixit's Kyle Wiens On the War On DIY Electronics
pigrabbitbear writes with an excerpt from an article at Motherboard: "Anyone planning on buying a new iPad should know what they're getting themselves into by now. In recent years, Apple and other hardware manufacturers have made it liquid-crystal clear that they're not fond of the idea that customers can tear open and fix products without the help of licensed repair specialists. Even if it's as easy as ordering a part online and following a few instructions gleaned from a Google search, hardware companies generally seem to prefer we keep the hood closed. It should not be surprising, then, that the latest version of Apple's much-desired tablet has one 'killer' feature that's finally getting the attention it deserves: A design that stops you from getting inside of it."
Same rules these days - it's the consumers bucks. If Apple (or anyone) wants to say "you had someone open this who wasn't us - goodbye" that's up to them. And that person can then take it down the road to the guy who's not so fussy.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
I think the problem is that even if you're careful and know what you're doing, there's still a decent change of randomly breaking the glass. According to the video in the story, iFixit originally gave the iPad 2 a score of 4 out of 10 for repairability. However they downgraded it to a 2 out of 10, which is the score they also gave the new iPad, because of the number of failed repairs over the last year.
Better known as 318230.
I understand the appeal of fixing your own stuff, being able to take things apart and figure out how they work, and making them work better, but there's some things that are just not suitable for that kind of thing. Like, you don't hear people bitching that the transistors aren't replaceable on their CPU. As other components miniaturize, it's just too difficult to effect field repairs. They become too small and too delicate and tolerances are too tight.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
You can always make anecdotes about hardware durability. My 4-year-old Macbook Pro runs hot because of clogged fans that would require lengthy disassembly to clean, and is falling apart at seams that were presumably glued together.
Unless you're compiling statistics on these things on a large scale, anecdotes aren't useful.
The next step (already in the R&D phase at various places in Silly Valley from what I read a year or so ago) is to print the whole thing on a web press, from the back to the front like a big electronic newspaper. All of the individual components have been successfully done this way - even most of the 'chips'. Once we get to that point, the cost of manufacturing may be so low that it's pointless to fix even if it were possible - it would be one solid unit like pages of newsprint glued together. Just grind it up, separate the materials, reconstitute and reprint a new one.
I wouldn't be surprised if this were already possible for a lower performance device.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Mod parent the fuck up. People like sleek, "sexy" designs. This comes at a price. Swapping hard drives on a MacBook Air is going to be far more difficult than on a Mac Pro.
That said, ease of service comes and goes with Apple products. Ever try to get at the hard drive of an iBook? I gave up after about forty screws. Try it on a "classic" MacBook. Three captive screws and a pull tab. Easy as pie. I just replaced the top case on said MacBook when the keyboard died. I'm not happy that the keyboard/trackpad/case are all one piece (plastic welded together), but it was actually a pretty easy repair (and the iFixit guide got a number of key details wrong).
On the plus side I now have fifteen extra upper cases...
The revolution will be mocked
Given the time period (1980s), I'm guessing the GP was talking about the early Macintosh, not the Apple II series. Many of the classic Macs could only be opened up with a super-long-stemmed torx wrench and a special case cracker tool, and once you got inside, there was still no way to expand their RAM without a soldering iron (if at all).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
][ Forever motherfuckers! Still sore about the total lack of an upgrade path.... and with it the complete abandonment of that early geeky coolness. You could bring those up with no disk at all, start writting basic, drop into the built in assembler. Maybe it wasn't that useful like that, but boy did it ever get my curiosity going as a kid.
Loved Apple of the 80s.
Actually, IIRC, Woz's Integer BASIC and mini-assembler (along with his Sweet 16 (the 6502 Dream Machine) and the Apple Floating-Point Routines) disappeared as early as the Apple ][+. . That's why I used to call the ][+ the "][ minus"...
Actually, I was quite the Apple 1/][/6502 geek in those days. Wrote (among many other things) for the Apple ][, a "program switcher", a virtual-memory "overlay" system for Applesoft BASIC programs (that let you seamlessly and easily write Applesoft programs that were WAY too big to fit in 48K (it actually leveraged the ONERRORGOTO, along with the magical "Ampersand" vector to evaluate what the "error" was (what "missing" BASIC code line was attempting to be referenced) and then used direct disk-sector reads to "swap in" a section of BASIC from disk, while preserving the variable "heap". As long as you didn't do something stupid like break "segments" in the middle of a FOR-NEXT loop, it worked a TREAT!), and an in-situ 13 to 16-sector DOS 3.2 -> 3.3 floppy reformatter. I also produced several variants of Randy Wiggington's most-excellent TED II Editor/Assembler (speaking of Sweet 16. TED II's Editor was written in Sweet 16) that not only assembled to and from disk (it was the only way to assemble DOS 3.3 from source!), but also cross-assembled to 6801, 6809 and even 8048 and 8085 targets.
Good times. Good times...
Want to know what I hate most about Samsung phones? Especially after buying a Gnex? The damn battery cover! Such a flimsy piece of plastic holding the battery in and threatening to break if you pop it on or off a bit too often. Sorry, but for a premium smartphone I demand something more than a flimsy piece of plastic cheaply clicked in.
I hear this complaint about the battery cover feeling like it's going to break in the Galaxy Nexus all the time, but I've never actually heard anyone say theirs broke. It seems like a perfectly durable, flexible piece of plastic to me, I swap my battery all the time and it's a piece of cake once you figure out how to do it.
Like you say, it's the only way to get a nice thin phone and still be able to swap the battery. Once the cover is on, it's a very solid and durable phone - I've lost count of the times I've dropped my Nexus and no damage whatsoever.
I only mention this because it is impossible, but: The original Motorola Droid/Milestone uses a battery cover consisting of a very thin piece of neatly stamped aluminum, and the latch is both minimal and elegant.
And before you write another novella about how flimsy it must be, please also allow me opine that I used the battery cover on this phone (with a bit of steel adhered to it) as a magnetic dash mount for years in my work truck. Accordingly, the battery cover has about 30,000 miles worth of holding the whole rest of the phone to the dashboard.
It doesn't seem to have suffered from this use in any way that I can observe.
Just sayin'.
Kid-proof tablet..