Slashdot Mirror
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."
everyone knows what apple is all about by now.
A design that stops you from getting inside of it
Is this the same new iPad where there was a photo story of some guys who make tools for geeks demonstrating their gear by systematically taking one apart, all on-line within about ten seconds of the product launch?
There even seem to be references to this in TFA...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Even when I was 14 years old, back in the 80's, I knew that Apple's closed system was no good. Yes, at the time, they had better hardware, software, and such, but it wasn't easily upgradeable, not without spending twice more for a part than what you could put in an IBM compatible. And, look what happened, Wintel machines won. More and better innovation came from the hardware manufacturers that had to compete with each other for user's dollars.
Only software suffered because Microsoft had that locked up. Here Apple won the day for a long time because they did have the more creative designers. Now that we have competition in the OS field, we are starting to see better ideas flourish and rise to the top. We are starting to see better designed software interfaces that allow the user to feel at ease with their computing device.
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
Don't buy anything with a locked bootloader (that can't be unlocked)
Don't buy anything that requires a non-standard data cable, such as micro USB.
Don't buy anything you can't change your own battery in using much more than a screw driver.
My EVO passes the test, so does my netbook and all the Bluetooth (not Logitech proprietary wireless USB) peripherals.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Thing is, 95% of consumers don't really care about repairing their own electronics, if not more. The remaining handful of people that choose not to buy an iPad because of its inaccessibility re:DIY repairs aren't going to make enough of a difference to make any manufacturer change their ways, even assuming ALL of them refuse to buy iPads.
If you look at it objectively, Apple, or anyone else, is pretty much just giving people what they want. It doesn't seem like this 'killer' feature is designed to keep people from accessing the insides of the iPad; after all, what percentage of iPad 1 owners were tinkering around with the insides of it? An insignificant amount, from the perspective of the company selling millions of the thing.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
Rather then complaining about how difficult it is to strip one down and reassemble it.
Even Apple can't tear down and reassemble an iPad 2 or iPad 3. There is no magical service manual for doing so. If a device is found to be defective, it gets replaced. Internally, they get torn down and a lot of parts are recycled- but this procedure is ONE WAY ONLY. These devices were built with the assumption that they would NEVER be opened up.
The reason for this, contrary to iFixit's belief- is not to screw the user over.
The truth is that the tolerances inside these devices is so astoundingly tight, that there simply isn't room for clamps, latches, and screws (which require threaded posts on the other side- this always takes up more space then the screwhead does). In order to produce a device as sturdy as the iPad 2 and iPad 3, they *had* to use industrial adhesive over a large surface area to literally fuse the thing together. Screws wouldn't cut it. Clamps make for a rickety squeaky device when you torque it between two hands. And the iPad 2/iPad 3 chassis isn't like the iPad 1, which was thick and sturdy enough to survive that sort of mechanical abuse by itself (in other words, the iPad 2 & 3 design depend on everything being fused together- otherwise, the pieces by themselves lack the structural integrity required to withstand daily use).
Apple makes money by selling slim, sleek, and sexy hardware. iFixit is blaming them for not producing thick, heavy, and over-engineered equipment instead that is easily serviceable and modular. The only time frame I'm aware of where iFixit's views were societally acceptable was around 1995-1998, where we saw pieces of equipment like the IBM Thinkpad 760XD (still own one of those- it's an awesome laptop). Chunky as hell, weighs as much as a tank (and is otherwise built like one), totally modular, everything is user serviceable. Compare that to a modern day Apple laptop though, and it looks like it was manufactured on a different planet.
TLDR; iFixit is stuck in the past because their business model depends on it. Boo hoo.
-AC (because I work for the aforementioned company as a tech during the day)
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!
...is that Apple just knows its market. The average consumer is perfectly happy to purchase and use devices they cannot service themselves. This is true of their cars, their phones, their televisions, their refrigerators and their washers (just to name a few) - why would they argue over a tablet they cannot service themselves?
Personally, I have no desire to own any Apple product of any kind, precisely because of this kind of crap. However, I frequently recommend their products to my less technologically-inclined friends. Not because there's anything particularly wonderful about the products, but because they are simple to use.
You know, if your dad catches you using his computer to type this kind of racist trash, he's probably going to kick you out and then you'll finally have to get a job. I know, you're almost at 40 and figured if you could just keep cruising you could go straight from your parents' basement into a retirement home.
Ah well, there's always the underpass, and that strange homeless guy that keeps calling you "Shirley" and going at it to something in his pocket whenever you come back from the 7-11 with a Slurpee. It may seem strange now, but he's as close to security as you're ever going to get again.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
There will probably be two biggish regrets in my life when I'm 80 years old : All the women I should've tried harder to fuck. Maybe not having kids sooner. And that I spend a decade using Apple laptops. I should've stuck with Linux for laptop machines!
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
If you're one of the 1 in 100,000 who ever gets beyond these two concepts? You already know where to go and what to do.
Damn right. If you're going to build circuits that go into handheld devices, you'll have to design chips for a semiconductor manufacturer.
Been there. Done that. Took the retirement package.
Red Herring.
You can have difficult to repair due to space constraints, and that's justifiable. Active denial systems and booby traps are a whole separate issue.
The later model Mac Books that are sealed actually have very easy to replace cells, there's nothing about them that would make a cordless phone style cell replacement (yes land line cordless), out of the question. It's protectionism 100%
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
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/
Interesting to mention this while the Mac Mini went the opposite direction. You needed a "special tool" (spatula) for the previous models (and literally "crack" them open - if you heard the sound you know), and since they got all aluminum you don't even need a screwdriver to upgrade memory.
And to all the commenters complaining about how big of a pain it is to upgrade an Apple product: you are comparing desktop PCs to compact machines and laptops. My Macbook pro was easy to take apart, my macbook (older white) was a little harder. I had to change a cooling fan on the latter and unlike my Toshiba, it survived the procedure, and without a scratch... still my media player...
Funny how people complain about "closed systems" too recently. These are the people who do not understand, that you can develop whatever the hell you want for your devices... the distribution is Apple's..... most of my smaller problems can be solved by "web apps" - controlling my appliances, cameras, lights alarms etc .... jqtouch or icefaces take you far-far without writing native code ... unless you need a real app...
Just my 2c. I really have a feeling the people criticizing haven't owned a recent-day mac or iWhatever.
The real reason that consumer electronics are so difficult to repair has nothing to do with corporate conspiracy. Electronic design has shifted over the past generation from using large and discrete components to being almost exclusively dependent on integrated circuits and highly miniaturized surface mount devices. Twenty years ago perhaps, a hobbyist could get out a volmeter and soldering iron to trace a circuit problem to an individual transistor within, say, a pre-amp or filter assembly, and then easily replace the defective part within minutes. Now the entire assembly, formerly involving dozens of components, has been replaced by a single and often very tiny IC chip. In addition, any resistors or capacitors in modern circuits, once large enough for anyone to easily manipulate, have now been reduced to the size of grains of salt and are nearly impossible to extract and replace. In fact, the rule is that it is now much cheaper to simply dispose of defective circuitry than it is to attempt any kind or repair.
Replacing a battery, touch pad, or screen may still be within the realm of possibility, but broken electronics are better just destroyed and replaced with new.
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
You were modded insightful, but you're wrong. One example in the smartphone realm is the HTC Sensation. It is slightly larger than the iPhone because it houses a 4.3in screen making it far more useable for my imperfect eyesight. However it is as thin, and if you drop it on concrete from ear height, nothing happens. I tested it. It has user replaceable battery, screen, and anything else you could reasonably want to replace without a soldering iron. HTC was very ingenious in the Sensation design, because unlike many manufacturers that either glue shut the entire device or use a flimsy backplate for the battery, the Sensation's entire casing comes off in one piece at the press of a tab. Solid, functional, slim.
Another smartphone example is the Nokia N9, and its cousin the Nokia Lumia 800. The casing is a single polycarbonate piece that wraps around the internals. On the surface it only has two flaps that cover the SIM and microUSB. Yet you take out two screws under the flaps and everything slides out, making it accessible. And it's as small as the iPhone.
In terms of laptops, the Sony Vaio SZ, the Acer Aspire 3820TG, and a whole bunch of others were MUCH faster than equivalent MacBooks, while still being fully user serviceable. I've taken dozens of laptops apart, replaced components inside including the motherboard, and NONE were as difficult to access as Apple products.
I can't comment on tablets from personal experience, but I have looked at a Samsung a friend has. Intel Core i5, 4Gb RAM, microSSD, plenty of ports, 5+h battery life running Windows 7 and it's marginally thicker but about the same size as the iPad. Again, user accessible as far as I could tell.
Face it, Apple CHOOSES to make their products the way they are. They even went as far as to invent a completely new screw type just to prevent people fro accessing their Macbooks. Sony used to be as bad, but a declining market share smartened them up a bit. Watching the iFixit video you can see the screen is glued all around, which may make sense. But why not put a few screws on the back so the back plate can detach, making battery replacement easy? Not swappable on a daily basis, just once every couple of years.
Stop making excuses for a company that is worth more than half a trillion dollars. They DO think different(ly), as they've gotten screwing their customers down to an art form. And their customers love it.
For a car analogy: I used to like working on cars. They were simple. Shoot I could physically climb in next to an engine. There was so much room in there. We used to complain about some compact cars because the spark plugs were virtually inaccessible. Now you look at the engine compartment and the engine is almost one solid chunk. There is little empty space, it is filled with hoses and wires and other devices. Not to mention the electronics and computers involved.
I'm not saying it isn't fun anymore. It just isn't as easy and simple, and requires too many specialized tools.
It's a great time to build electronics. Digi-Key and Mouser will sell you a huge range of parts and get them to you overnight. Lots of places will make your PC boards for $50-$75 for a small board. Oscilloscopes are cheaper than they used to be. DVMs are really cheap.There are whole ecosystems like the Arduno, with free, user-friendly tools. Even most of the micro controller vendors now offer free compilers. There are useful web sites, IRC channels, and hacker spaces. You can afford to dedicate a PC or a phone to controlling or displaying out from whatever you're building.
None of that existed 20 years ago. I had to struggle to convince Hamilton-Avnet to let me buy from them, and they required a credit check. Having a PC board made meant drawing it in AutoCAD, having litho films made by one shop, and getting them to another shop to make the board. It wasn't cheap. A C compiler for the 68HC11 microcontroller cost thousands of dollars. Getting an RF link to a mobile device was a huge headache.
So quit whining that you're having trouble opening the box on portable devices built to be extremely thin, and actually learn how to build your own stuff.
http://ifixit.org/1843/new-ipad-teardown/
Vid : http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad-3-4G-Teardown/8277/1
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I got my room mate a Generation 1 Ipod for Christmas what seems like an eternity ago. A considerable time later its screen stopped working. So I gnawed on it a bit until I got it open, and reseated the ribbon cable that went to the LCD. That fixed for quite a while.
I don't mind using an angle grinder, to prove a point. Though in that case I just had to move some stickers around until I found a screw. People might ask you why your ipad has duct tape all around the edges, but by God I'll get that fucker apart.
I'm sure they just don't want you voiding your warranty though, poking your stubby fingers around in there and getting dorito dust all over its vital circuits. Then duct taping it up and trying to pass it off to a genius as "No it's always been like that."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Everyone writes a bad sentence now and then. When it happens, it's best to say "oops", fix it and try to avoid doing it again. Getting defensive about it is not the way forward.
I am 33. My first computer at 8 was a Sinclair ZX-81. Then an Atari model (800XL, the silvery one, which BTW survived being run over by the back tire of a Pontiac 2000STE) then the better model (130XE, the ventilated off-white plastic one, which came along with pen printers, multiple 5.25 floppy drives, tape drive [I couldn't get Zaxxon in any other format], and 600 'baud' [remember 'baud'] modem), then some kind of 6mhz super-proprietary system where the power came through the monitor into the desk unit and had an OS called Gem or something, then a roaring fast 80286 that was my first real "hot-rod". The last two were used, all of those earlier ones were bought brand-new, and there are of course many days when I'd happily go back to Atari if they made laptops or were still in the business of amazing.
Unlike all the other machines mentioned, the 286 (besides running at my choice of ultra-fast 10mhz or 12mhz, in 1991) was the first machine I had that you could open up and really customize. Granted, you could pick open the Atari and from what I hear you could cram some more RAM into it but it was never necessary because it's not like LOGO is going to give you 8 turtles instead of 4, or Escape from Epsilon is going to turn into Jumpman or Gauntletak is going to go 3D or something. When you're mostly playing shareware it's not a huge deal to operate with 64k, in fact, 64K SHOULD BE ABOUT ALL YOU EVER NEED. WHAT. [Okay, so some programs used the full 128k but to do that those budding 'programmers' needed to utilize the other memory bank, you know! Tricky tricky stuff! Atari BASIC!]
Anyways, so the 286 was like heaven. I outfitted it with a 20 mb expansion-slot hard drive so I could keep running my 2400 Baud BBS (in 1991) which up until then was operating primarily off of a floppy and was serving files and message boards from a 12 mb IDE. I was really upset when I found that the expansion slot drives I had access to didn't like to be in the same computer with one another, and soon after I got Taipei virus which basically ruined a lot of crap including the floppy. I had an ATI all-in-wonder EGA/VGA card. The EGA was, like, above and beyond normal EGA in some way I can't even remember. I remember when I finally afforded a VGA monitor and swept into the world of VGA.
All of this love life was the result of being able to open up and modify my computer. So of course I snickered and guffawed at the Dell, Compaq, Gateway, and other computers of the world that were insisting that their users had to use their hardware. I thought it was especially crude that some of these companies had worked out ways to ensure that you not only used their parts but also made sure you had software on hand to re-acquaint the hardware with the motherboard or else you were screwed. At the time, these companies were selling their computers as the cheapest on the market, so there was this illusion of "you don't want to spend money on a computer you can work with? You're not going to be able to work with your computer." Which I admit lulled all us geeks into complacency.
It was easy to say that it's alright to manufacture and mass market these devices that can't be worked on, because they were going cheap. We noticed that most of the users of these devices weren't very computer-literate so much as they were glad they had their internet poker, their mahjongg, their Sierra and their Myst (though Sierra games were on their way out by the time Compaq started to corner the market).
Eventually, though, these losers won out. People in the Compaq demographic didn't learn-up and throw their useless piles of steaming turd to the corner and go to the OEM store and hand-pick their hot-rods for just $50-100 more. They kept using them, and upgrading, and Compaq became this giant. Dell managed to beat them but they were both playing the same game: proprietary hardware, and I as well as many others never, ever thought that this was going to be the business model that would dominate the PC market and survive through the ages.
So of cour
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Instead Apple keeps things simple for those that need it, but allows expansive access for those that really want it.
You can't be serious. The entire Apple philosophy these days is one size fits all.
Isn't this the same bunch of clowns that declared the End Of the World As We Know It because Apple started using tri-wing screws? (Ones for which they just happened to sell overpriced drivers?) Even though at the time you could buy tri-wing drivers from any number of other tool outfits for a buck or two?