On iFixit and the Right To Repair (vice.com)

Jason Koebler writes: Motherboard sent a reporter to the Electronics Reuse Convention in New Orleans to investigate the important but threatened world of smartphone and electronics repair. As manufacturers start using proprietary screws, offer phone lease programs and use copyright law to threaten repair professionals, the right-to-repair is under more threat than ever. "That Apple and other electronics manufacturers don't sell repair parts to consumers or write service manuals for them isn't just annoying, it's an environmental disaster, [iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens] says. Recent shifts to proprietary screws, the ever-present threat of legal action under a trainwreck of a copyright law, and an antagonistic relationship with third-party repair shops shows that the anti-repair culture at major manufacturers isn't based on negligence or naiveté, it's malicious."

Comments

Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

If my Samsung falls out of my pocket and breaks and it cannot be fixed, the one thing I'm not going to do is buy another Samsung. Market forces will solve this problem if we let them.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

If my Samsung falls out of my pocket and breaks and it cannot be fixed, the one thing I'm not going to do is buy another Samsung. Market forces will solve this problem if we let them.

Dumbass Americans only care about eating more food, getting more fat, going to doctors for their fatass lifestyle diseases, complaining about the cost of food, driving their SUVs while never driving off-road or hauling cargo or carrying lots of passengers and complaining about the price of gas, voting for one party that wants to fuck up the nation or the other party that wants to fuck up the nation when they could write-in sane candidates, drowing themselves in shallow moronic soul-less meaningless popular culture and pretending like it's deep and profound, buying shit they don't need with borrowed money they don't have (America has a NEGATIVE average savings index, not that most Americans know what a savings index is), and believing every lying word of propaganda and manipulation that comes from their bought-and-paid-for government and their bought-and-paid-for mass media and following stupid moronic trends while operating general-purpose machines they don't even try to understand or secure so they can post trivial minutia about their pathetic little lives to be read by fellow jackass Americans who don't care.

The "market forces" only work when you have rational actors acting in their own best interests. Maybe *you* wouldn't buy another (example) Samsung in that case, but I assure you, the 350-pound assholes driving their big-ass SUVs they bought with five or six year car loans so they owe more than it's worth so they can tailgate in the slow lane, so they can work a job they hate, and vote for lying sociopathic sacks of shit while complaining that nothing ever changes, while being careful never to know anything about other people in other nations or other cultures because they're provincial douchebags, let alone ever thinking of other people ever as their lard asses congregate around narrow doorways and other shares public spaces because no one else matters, well ... these are not rational actors.

They can't even manage their own waistline. You think they can understand a market? No way in hell. They've been fattened up and dumbed down and somehow they're proud of it. That's the amazing part.

Re:Fail.

[fustakrakich]

No matter who you buy your phone from, chances are it has Samsung parts in it. There is no escape..

Market forces will solve this problem...

Oops, never mind...

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

This, this this, and this. I'm an American, too, and I have to agree with this. I have a co-worker who regularly goes to the doctor for his weight, yet drinks 5 cokes every day, eats nothing but burgers and other greasy food, and wonders why he has trouble walking.

It's not the fact that Americans consume, consume, consume-it's the mentality. We stuff our faces and wonder why we have so many health problems. We buy, buy, buy and wonder why we don't have money. We push "da babble" and wonder why the rest of the world believes in evolution.

We take pride in willful ignorance.

Re:Fail.

[Z00L00K]

And it's the same with every manufacturer these days with the possible exception for some odd specialized phones for seniors that lacks all the functionality we expect of them today.

Re:Fail.

[MichaelGivan]

If my Samsung falls out of my pocket and breaks and it cannot be fixed, the one thing I'm not going to do is buy another Samsung. Market forces will solve this problem if we let them.

Dumbass Americans only care about eating more food, getting more fat, going to doctors for their fatass lifestyle diseases, complaining about the cost of food, driving their SUVs while never driving off-road or hauling cargo or carrying lots of passengers and complaining about the price of gas, voting for one party that wants to fuck up the nation or the other party that wants to fuck up the nation when they could write-in sane candidates, drowing themselves in shallow moronic soul-less meaningless popular culture and pretending like it's deep and profound, buying shit they don't need with borrowed money they don't have (America has a NEGATIVE average savings index, not that most Americans know what a savings index is), and believing every lying word of propaganda and manipulation that comes from their bought-and-paid-for government and their bought-and-paid-for mass media and following stupid moronic trends while operating general-purpose machines they don't even try to understand or secure so they can post trivial minutia about their pathetic little lives to be read by fellow jackass Americans who don't care. The "market forces" only work when you have rational actors acting in their own best interests. Maybe *you* wouldn't buy another (example) Samsung in that case, but I assure you, the 350-pound assholes driving their big-ass SUVs they bought with five or six year car loans so they owe more than it's worth so they can tailgate in the slow lane, so they can work a job they hate, and vote for lying sociopathic sacks of shit while complaining that nothing ever changes, while being careful never to know anything about other people in other nations or other cultures because they're provincial douchebags, let alone ever thinking of other people ever as their lard asses congregate around narrow doorways and other shares public spaces because no one else matters, well ... these are not rational actors. They can't even manage their own waistline. You think they can understand a market? No way in hell. They've been fattened up and dumbed down and somehow they're proud of it. That's the amazing part.

Vitriolic hyperbole which does little but generalize and marginalize serious issues while painting with an amazingly broad and ignorant brush. /golfclap

Re: Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad to see someone outside of America generalize about others as of they actually have any valuable information to back up their neuroses. It makes the hypocrisy in my own country sting less when I see the same idiots in other countries.

Re:Fail.

[Falos]

Market forces caused it.

Expected obsolescence, first-party vendors, privatized repair, they were born of boon, they were born of bounty. The system deepens the black - why else would it conceive, grow, and circulate, Mr/Mrs Rational Economist? I'm not just being cute; market forces caused it. You're a dumbfuck or a shill for some agenda you won't understand anyway.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

What you describe is not market forces, but greedy companies that try to fuck the consumers.
Because smartphones are not purchased every day or even every year you can not clearly see the market forces.
With smartphones they work so slowly that you would think they don't work at all, but they do.

Re:Fail.

[bhcompy]

Patent bullshit is not a market force. The same manufacturers make everything under and over the hood because we don't allow anyone else to enter the arena, thus you get what we have now.

Re:Fail.

[khelms]

Why-why, what's the point of going abroad, if your just going to be treated like a sheep? Carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry. Their blothed backs and their bardigans and their transistor radios, complaining about the tea or they don't make it properly, do they? And stopping at endless Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamaris and two veg. And sitting in their cotton sunfrocks, squirting Timothy White Suncream all over their puffy, raw, swollen, purulent flesh, 'cos they overdid it on the first day. Being herded into countless Hotel Miramars and Bellevues, Bontinentals with their international luxury modern roomettes and swimming pools full of draft Red Barrel and fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats and forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into the queues. And if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss your bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, the first item in the menu of International Cuisine. Every Thursday night there's a bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny emaciated dego with nine-inch hips and some fat bloated tart with her hair Bryll-creamed down and big arse presenting flamenco for foreigners. And an adenoidal typist from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhea trying to pick up hairy, bandy legged, whop degos called Manuel. And once a week there's an excursion to local Roman remains, where you can buy Cherry Aid and melted ice cream and bleedin' Watney's Red Barrel. And one night they take you to a typical restaurant with local atmosphere and color and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing "I love the Costa Brava!", "I love the Costa Brava!" And you get cornered by some drunken green grocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and last Tuesday's 'Daily Express' and he's on and on and on about how it is running the country and how many languages Margaret Powell can speak and she throws up all over the cuba libres. And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton Airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dry British Airways sandwiches. And you can't even get a glass of Watney's Red Barrel because you're still in England with the bloody bar closes every time you're thirsty. And the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ashtrays. They keep telling you won't be another hour, but you know damn well your plane is still in Iceland, because it had to turn back, trying to take a party of Swedes to to take a party of Swedes to Yugoslavia. Of course it loads you up there at 3 a.m. in the morning. And then you sit on the tarmac for four hours because of unforeseen difficulties, i.e. the permanent strike of airtraffic control over Paris. When you finally get to Malaga airport, everybody's queueing for the bloody toilet, and queueing for the bloody half-customs officers, and queueing for the bloody bus that isn't there, waiting to take you to the hotel that hasn't yet been built. When you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel Limassol, while paying half the holiday money to a license Spaniard in a taxi, there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the bath, there's no water in the tap, there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet, and half the rooms are doublebooked, and you can't sleep anyway, 'cause the permanent are in the jungles in the hotel next door. Meanwhile, the Spanish National Tourist Board promises that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a mild outbreak of the Spanish Conleigh, rather like the previous outbreak in 1616, even the bloody rats are dying from it!

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they all do it, so you have no-one better to switch to. You'll need a manufacturer to release a phone that's both good enough for you to want and repairable before that approach'll work. The good news though is that does mean there's a niche that a new manufacturer could fill, if you could prove the demand is there.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just patents that's led to that situation though. It's also cost of development and economies of scale. No-one else is able to afford to design the chips and produce them in large enough volumes to attract the large orders that someone like Apple will hand out since all the parts have to be the same across hundreds of thousands of devices. That's why half a dozen companies make pretty much all the complex parts.

Re: Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks you smoke too much, Mr Smoketoomuch. You even developed a speech impediment that doesn't allow you to pronounce the letter C.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

So fucking true...

Re:Fail.

[drinkypoo]

driving their SUVs while never driving off-road or hauling cargo or carrying lots of passengers and complaining about the price of gas

What Americans lack is foresight, or even fucking hindsight. That's why they buy the SUVs, and do everything else too. When gas prices are low, we buy SUVs. Then when they go up, we complain about gas prices, and forget that it's our fault. It's also why we never seem to learn from our lessons.

Re: Fail.

[Threni]

Generalise? It captures what's going on frequently enough that it's causing problems for everyone. Nothing wrong with generalising when observing trends.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

"What you describe is not market forces, but greedy companies that try to fuck the consumers."

And until you invent a new human race, that's precisely what market forces are.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't find fatass people who look like mountainous blobfish driving in special motorized vehicles for fat people to compensate for the inability to move by themselves, in marts in Europe, nor in most of the living world.
Only in USA is this seen.
Maybe generalization is exactly what is needed because such idiocy is the product of your culture, and the product of people like you ignoring the problem by whining about generalization and acting like it's none of your business, when it in fact is, because it's YOUR culture that it comes from, and it's YOUR responsibility to fix your own culture just like it's the responsibility of a family to fix its own stupid children.
But alas, in USA "responsibility" is a politically incorrect term. It's analogous to strangling babies. Why take action to fix your crappy culture when you can instead act like the culture doesn't have a problem and whine about how criticizing the culture is "racist", "sexist", "generalization", and such evasive crap.

Here's the catch though, if you argue that it is indeed none of your business and you are an individualist, then you wouldn't be taking offense about generalization, because a person who completely detaches themselves from something automatically shouldn't register generalization as anything relevant to them personally.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jealous of the American life style.I see you have bought into the lot with us; you stopped writing proper English, and now write proper American. I too enjoy a good run on sentence.

Re:Fail.

[mi]

these are not rational actors

That's an argument against representative government too, you know. Which alternative do you prefer?

They can't even manage their own waistline.

No one can. The problem is the sudden abundance of food in the Western World — our bodies have evolved in a completely different environment. These days we can afford to eat everyday, what would've qualified as a feast only a few generations ago.

You think they can understand a market?

One does not need to understand the market to be annoyed with a particular manufacturer. And if not enough people get annoyed over unfixable electronics, then it must not be a big enough problem. Case closed.

Re: Fail.

[mi]

It captures what's going on frequently enough that it's causing problems for everyone

One's generalization is another's stereotyping. Fuck you and your White tears!

Lrnu, V'z gebyyvat.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbass Americans only care about eating more food, getting more fat, going to doctors for their fatass lifestyle diseases, complaining about the cost of food, driving their SUVs while never driving off-road or hauling cargo or carrying lots of passengers and complaining about the price of gas, voting for one party that wants to fuck up the nation or the other party that wants to fuck up the nation when they could write-in sane candidates, drowing themselves in shallow moronic soul-less meaningless popular culture and pretending like it's deep and profound, buying shit they don't need with borrowed money they don't have (America has a NEGATIVE average savings index, not that most Americans know what a savings index is), and believing every lying word of propaganda and manipulation that comes from their bought-and-paid-for government and their bought-and-paid-for mass media and following stupid moronic trends while operating general-purpose machines they don't even try to understand or secure so they can post trivial minutia about their pathetic little lives to be read by fellow jackass Americans who don't care.

I've seen this behavior in many countries. It's just that there is more opportunities to acquire wealth in the US therefore you see it more there.

You sound angry and full of yourself.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Market forces don't care about a small portion of the market. The majority of smart phone users can't even reset a phone by holding down a couple of buttons, so what do they care if their phone can't be fixed? They might opt for insurance instead. What does it matter when Samsung or Apple sell 100 000 less phones to people who want to be able to repair phones, when they can sell 1 000 000 more phones because the phones can't be repaired? I'm for free markets, but please don't oversimplify the free market effects...

Re:Fail.

[Bill_the_Engineer]

driving their SUVs while never driving off-road or hauling cargo or carrying lots of passengers and complaining about the price of gas

Jealous? It's their money and they can spend it anyway they see fit.

You don't like it? Tough. Spend your own money how you see fit.

Do I think the world is full of assholes? Yea. Just don't become one yourself.

Re:Fail.

[dave420]

He doesn't have to suggest an alternative - he was just making an observation. You are right, though - democracy is screwed, but it's the best option we currently have. Yes, the western world has a problem with obesity, but the #1 leader is the US.

If one doesn't understand the market they might assume all phones are built to the same standards and therefore switching manufacturers would cause them hassle.

The case is far from closed.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are saying Canada, United States, Mexico and lest add all the countries in Central America and South America. Cause they are also Americans. Are all fat and lazy. Yes you are right everyone that is an American is this way.

Re:Fail.

[mi]

He doesn't have to suggest an alternative - he was just making an observation.

His argument — or the "observation" — implied a need for some force to come in and fix the "problem". Because his "observation" applies equally to our entire political system, the same argument would advocate the overthrow of our representative government. Therefore, inquiring, what he would like to replace it with is perfectly legitimate.

But if he is not prepared to dispense with the democracy — same way you aren't — maybe, he ought to keep his hands off the free market as well.

the western world has a problem with obesity, but the #1 leader is the US.

Because the US is the wealthiest and has the most food to both overeat and waste...

If one doesn't understand the market they might assume all phones are built to the same standards

Yeah, and he may also not know, how to put shoes on. Ridiculous. Phone-makers advertise their models all the time — outlining, the differences between them and the competition.

Either way, if the manufacturers aren't seeing much of a backlash over the practices, then it is not a big deal. A self-solving problem — mind your own business.

Re:Fail.

[The-Ixian]

Absolute truth.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

The naive belief the market will solve a problem like this has to die. If I'm a normal user and my smart phone that I've gotten used to (and decided I like) happens to fall on the ground, of COURSE I am buying a new one. It has the software I just learned how to use, and it is the new Samsung/Apple/Motorola that looks cool and has the features I specifically chose it for. It isn't like the phone stopped working because it was too buggy and now I need to make a new choice.
 
If I can't afford a new phone, then I'll soldier on with the broken one. Or I will temporarily buy a much cheaper phone, then go back to the "good" phone.
 
But if you think for one second "the market" will solve this, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, you god damn idiot.
 
Want to solve this for real? REGULATE THE INDUSTRY.

Re:Fail.

[sribe]

...not that most Americans know what a savings index is...

And I'l bet that you don't know that the definition used is extremely out of date, and does not count stocks (including mutual funds) ;-)

So the negative rate is a nice sound bite, but it's not really accurate.

Re:Fail.

[Grishnakh]

Well TFS seemed to talk a lot about Apple devices.

I have a Samsung phone (Galaxy S4) I bought used and there's a couple of small things I'd like to fix, so I did a little searching and viewing of YouTube videos and it seems these phones are ridiculously easy to disassemble and repair, and you can get repair parts for dirt-cheap prices on Amazon and Ebay. I need a new camera lens (mine's scratched) and probably a new USB jack, and both of these are easily replaceable (if you have a little patience and a small screwdriver) for less than $10 each.

Re:Fail.

[kheldan]

Dumbass Americans only care about eating more food, getting more fat, going to doctors for their fatass lifestyle diseases, complaining about the cost of food, driving their SUVs while never driving off-road or hauling cargo or carrying lots of passengers and complaining about the price of gas, voting for one party that wants to fuck up the nation or the other party BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH WORDS

Why are you bothering us with a description of yourself and your pathetic life? Mix in a salad once in a while and go get some exercise or something and stop whining, you're giving us all migraine headaches.

Re:Fail.

[Grishnakh]

We're not unique in this regard. Most people are dumb like this. The only cure is a good education, something we don't have in this country. What makes us unique is that, unlike nations like Zimbabwe and Somalia, we have lots of money.

Basically, we're like a backwards, third-world country that won the lottery. Think about things through that lens and the actions of Americans make a lot more sense.

Re:Fail.

[Grishnakh]

Except they all do it, so you have no-one better to switch to.

They do? Citation needed.

My Samsung disassembles easily with a small Philips screwdriver.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, because if my Samsung falls out of my pocket and breaks and it cannot be fixed, I might still buy another Samsung to replace it. It all depends on whether or not I would have expected it to survive the fall. If I did, then I call it a piece of cheap crap and find another brand. If I did not, then I simply strive to be more careful in the future.

Market forces will solve this problem if we let them.

Will they? I imagine the market consists more of people like me than of people like you.

Re: Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the amazing part is that we are still leaps and bounds ahead of your pissy little country. Have a nice day.

Re: Fail.

[friesofdoom]

Stereotypes are useful and exist for a reason. You think they are just completely made up from nowhere? LOL.

Re: Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

The stereotype that users with a UUID > 1,000,000 are borderline retarded, at best, appears to be valid. You do have a point.

Re:Fail.

[shmlco]

Phones are rapidly getting to the point where there's a case, screen, logic board, camera, battery and a few connectors. So what you're telling us is that you can take the big block apart into a few smaller blocks that can't be individually disassembled.

I fully expect that in the not too distant future they're going to meld the screen electronics with the logic board electronics, to the point where you have a case, screen, and battery.

Re:Fail.

[tsa]

That was brilliant.

Re:Fail.

[tsa]

If you're an American you can't see it very well because you think it's normal but to outsiders your country is very strange and much of it is exactly as the AC describes.

Re:Fail.

[tsa]

No they're Canadians, Mexicans etc. and they live in the CONTINENTS that are called America, not in the COUNTRY that's called the United Stetes of America. You see? Your education sucks because you don't even know the difference between a country and a continent. I bet you believe Europe is a country too.

Re:Fail.

[Grishnakh]

I don't see the problem here. If you're looking for a phone where you can easily replace the CPU, that doesn't exist and never has, and it's just plain idiotic to ask for that. What's important is if you can replace the screen (since they get cracked sometimes), the USB port, the battery, the camera lens, etc.: the things that actually do get broken or wear out and need to be replaced.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

the US is the wealthiest

I used to think having tons of credit was the same as wealth too. I grew up.

Re:Fail.

[glitch!]

Sorry, but your post is both insightful and redundant. I favor the insightful, but the text is over three decades old. Thanks for reposting Monty Python though.

Re: Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! I read every word you wrote and cannot find fault in what you say.

Re:Fail.

[eric_harris_76]

Warning flag: "Dumbass Americans". But maybe despite the bigotry, this person has something useful to impart. So I skipped ahead to the next paragraph.

Nope. Market forces don't rely on rational actors acting in their own best interests. They act even in the absence of universal perfect rationality.

If someone angrily says "Fuck Samsung! I'm never buying their crap again." after their phone can't be repaired, they are not "acting rationally".

They're not doing an analysis, taking into account the fact that they are dealing with a sample size of 1, and all the rest. It's an emotional response.

In terms of how it affects Samsung, though, it's the same: no sale.

Angrily taking the complaint to their friends and relatives and acquaintances in person and on social media magnifies the effect.

No rationality involved.

Re: Fail.

[RockDoctor]

Of course he does - he's posting to Slashdot.

Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[gurps_npc]

If they want to offer a lease (with the right of the customer to return the leased object to the legal owner at no cost to the leasee), that's one thing.

But if you own something, you have all legal rights to not just repair but to modify as well. The most the manufacturers should be able to do is cancel the warranty on modification.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, if manufacturer didn't do everything to prevent tampering from consumers, consumers would sue them (not that they wouldn't sue anyway).

Just like how a visit to the doctor costs an arm and a leg as an insurance policy due to all the lawsuits.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[fustakrakich]

I believe the gist of the story is that you don't *own* anything, not even your body or its parts. Riddle me this. If your arm is amputated in the hospital, will you be allowed to take it home, and have it mounted above the mantle? And what if the hospital puts you in the rubber room for even asking? I'm sorry, man, but you and everything you know belongs to... them!

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[kimvette]

> The most the manufacturers should be able to do is cancel the warranty on modification.

Wrong. Only failures as a direct result of any modification should be denied. See: Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Installation of a third-party part should not void the warranty. If Apple could get their way they would probably void the warranty if you use third-party headphones/earbuds with the iPhone.

Some PC manufacturers tried to pull this crap when users added RAM or peripheral cards with a sticker on the chassis sealing it shut, reading "warranty void if removed." Um yeah... people always chose PCs with 8 slots to not expand them.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even remotely the same thing. The hospital won't return your arm because it is a health hazard. However, there is no law that says you can't cut off your own arm, then stuff and mount it on your wall yourself. That's what we're talking about: the right to fix and modify your own things yourself.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it anymore a "health hazard" than the turkey in my freezer?

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Opportunist]

So the legal system needs fixing so we can fix our appliances. Gotcha.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Opportunist]

Warranty on what exactly.

If you purchase a pre-assembled computer, you have a right to warranty on the way these parts are assembled in on top of the warranty of each single part. You can actually go and claim damages if, e.g. the cooling isn't sufficient and the CPU gets damaged because the fan was improperly installed. This is of course out the window if you open the case because it's no longer possible to determine whether you have tampered with it and hence whose fault it is that the heat sink wasn't properly installed on the CPU.

You could not lose warranty on the parts with the removal of the sticker. Only on assembly.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Some things are just too cheap or hard to bother with repairs. You don't typically repair a brake pad or a tyre. You can, but mostly it is better to replace it.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[drinkypoo]

If you purchase a pre-assembled computer, you have a right to warranty on the way these parts are assembled in on top of the warranty of each single part. You can actually go and claim damages if, e.g. the cooling isn't sufficient and the CPU gets damaged because the fan was improperly installed. This is of course out the window if you open the case because it's no longer possible to determine whether you have tampered with it and hence whose fault it is that the heat sink wasn't properly installed on the CPU.

NOPE. At least, that's not how it works in the US of A, and if that's how it works in your country, you are getting a hard sandpaper fucking. The PC is a modular product made to be upgraded. If they don't want you tampering with stuff inside of it, they need to put a tamper seal on each thing they don't want you touching. And if I need or want to replace it, so long as the replacement item meets specifications, then I can do that without voiding my warranty. Then the issue of what claims were actually made comes into play. The system is sold for example as having PCI slots and a certain CPU socket, so if you install cards which comply with the PCI spec then they can not void your warranty for that.

Cars work the same way, everyone likes an automotive example. As long as I use fluids and parts which meet OE spec, I can interchange them freely without voiding my warranty. If I should replace an engine part (say, the intake manifold) with a part which is outside specifications (like a supercharger) then I'll void the warranty only on parts which are affected by the change, in this case the engine and maybe other powertrain components. But if a switch in the cockpit fails, that's still covered.

TL;DR: No sane warranty system voids warranties on modular products just for opening the case.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[mysidia]

Wrong. Only failures as a direct result of any modification should be denied. See: Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.

Yes, unfortunately Magnuson-Moss is not strong enough.

What we really need is a law that says if the manufacturer creates an electronic device that is not readily- accessible to repair shops for economically available fully-functional replacement of every physical component and electronic component or module, then the manufacturer is required to warrant the device against defects in the device and all non-serviceable components for no less than 5 years after sale, that transfers with change of ownership with no requirement of registration, and provide repair or replacement for equipment service for no less than 20 years after sale, at a cost no more than the cost of raw materials for replacement modules.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[mysidia]

because it's no longer possible to determine whether you have tampered with it

Sorry, NO. It is not legal to deny your customer warranty, because you can't determine they did not tamper with it.

If they claim they didn't touch it, then you actually have to be able to prove that specific device was abused by the consumer to deny warranty.

They can still claim damages against the CPU, even if they broke a sticker and opened the case.

The consumer has a legitimate right to inspect the unit, and the system not booting gives them a perfect excuse, by the way.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[gstoddart]

So the legal system needs fixing so we can fix our appliances. Gotcha.

When companies can claim copyright on screws, and use the DMCA to claim you can't refill your ink cartridges ... you're damned right the legal system needs fixing.

Companies want to undermine the right of first sale, the right to do as you please with your property, the right to repair your property ... all in the name of 'copyright' and protecting their revenue stream by saying you must buy certain things from them.

Honestly, have you not been paying attention? Because companies have been misusing the legal system to tell us what we can do with things we own for years.

They largely do this by telling us we don't actually own them. Which is odd, because they sure as hell expect us to pay full price for them.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Playing the devil's advocate... Where exactly is our "right to repair" granted? Is it in the constitution? Is it a bill signed into law?

Judging by the lobbying efforts that are taking place now, we actually don't have a right to repair. We would like one though.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[dave420]

It can house pathogens perfectly suited for screwing up people, as it's people meat.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[dave420]

If we apply those rules to, say, phone manufacturers, we'd end up with massive, phones (as modularity takes lots of space - screws, sockets, etc.) which will be obsolete 40% of the way in to their mandated warranty period. The suppliers will have to keep massive stocks of parts, driving up the cost of each phone.

You've not really thought this one through, have you?

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[gurps_npc]

It's in the definition of the word SALE.

If I buy something I OWN it. That means I get to do with it what I want, barring government restrictions. The shcmuck that sold it to me does not have the right to say "HEY! You can't DO THAT!"

They gave up that right when they sold it to me.

When I sell you a house, I can't then complain and say "Now wait a second, I may have sold you that house, but it's still mine and I don't like that new garage you are building!"

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[gurps_npc]

1) They won't lock you in a rubber room, that's s silly idea. People take home amputated body parts all the time. Usually small ones, such as teeth.

2) But they might arrest you for improper disposal of human remains. There is a difference between the government telling what you can and can not do, and a company telling you.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[fustakrakich]

There is a difference between the government telling what you can and can not do, and a company telling you.

Not when the government is serving the company, protecting its monopoly. The relationship is quite symbiotic, it defines them both.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Grishnakh]

Oh, bullshit. My Samsung phone is readily disassemble-able, there's even plenty of YouTube videos showing how. It has screws, but they're all tiny Philips screws so you don't need a special screwdriver. You can buy parts dirt cheap on Ebay.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[tlhIngan]

It's in the definition of the word SALE.
If I buy something I OWN it. That means I get to do with it what I want, barring government restrictions. The shcmuck that sold it to me does not have the right to say "HEY! You can't DO THAT!"

They gave up that right when they sold it to me.

When I sell you a house, I can't then complain and say "Now wait a second, I may have sold you that house, but it's still mine and I don't like that new garage you are building!"

Correct. The real reason we see this is twofold - first, because of manufacturing and second, because of fraud.

The use of adhesives in assembly should be obvious - adhesives make for quicker assembly, and when you're making millions of widgets, screws get in the way.

Warranty fraud is a huge issue, and it's one thing a site like iFixit conveniently ignore. What happens here is a user may get curious and want to take a peek inside their device, so they try to open it. Usually things go well and they put it back together successfully, but sometimes they break it. Then they go and try to claim "it just stopped working".

And I say iFixit ignore it because first of all, the manufacturer will then have to implement countermeasures to protect against this. But it also means if a site offers repair services, then they need to protect themselves as well - imagine selling repair services and now you have to fix someone's curiosity. There is no sane resolution - it'll be the user/customer vs. the repair shop.

Proprietary screws also help prevent this as if a user is willing to buy a screwdriver from iFixit, they're probably skilled enough to actually fix it. But the vast majority of users are not able to do this. And iFixit doesn't serve the general public - just the few people that care.

And that's the real problem.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[dgatwood]

The PC is a modular product made to be upgraded. If they don't want you tampering with stuff inside of it, they need to put a tamper seal on each thing they don't want you touching.

Well, they certainly can do so, but AFAIK, there's no legal reason they have to do so. However, if they deny the warranty, the burden of proof is on them to show that the changes you made caused the failure, at least in theory. In practice, if you aren't willing to sue them, they can deny the warranty all they want to, and they probably won't ever get in trouble for it.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[drinkypoo]

In California I can just take it back to where I bought it and demand a refund, so I have it easy...

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in the cases of houses specifically, there is a type of sale contract that does exactly that. You are selling the person the house and, as part of the sales contract, they agree not to do certain things with the house, such as tacking on a new garage, or they agree that they must do certain things while they own the house, such as join a home-owner's association and abide by the HOA's rules.

The problem is that that is NOT the sort of contract you're signing when you purchase a phone. Unless the fine print says that you agree not to modify or repair the phone (if, for example, you got the phone as part of a service agreement with a provider) then you are free to do whatever you want with it.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Playing the devil's advocate... Where exactly is our "right to repair" granted? Is it in the constitution? Is it a bill signed into law?

Well, gee, Bill, I dunno. Are you American perhaps? Because if you are, you should be aware that America's system of government was based on the principles of Natural Law. Which, among other things, holds that you have all rights possible just by virtue of existing. The Constitution, then (among other things), lays out the circumstances in which the government may limit or infringe those rights in order to accomplish its business.

It's a very important point. If you are American, you don't get granted rights by the government; you already have them. We the people may, for various reasons, grant the government the power to limit our ability to exercise those rights, but until such is done (and btw, America? STOP DOING THAT!) then yes, you have the right to repair as well as any other.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[MrNiceguy_KS]

One word: taxidermy

I have to admit, this idea had never before entered my head, but now - well, I'll just say that if I ever have an arm amputated, I'm going to end up with one kick-ass cupholder.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[mrchaotica]

Playing the devil's advocate... Where exactly is our "right to repair" granted? Is it in the constitution? Is it a bill signed into law?

What part of the concept of "ownership of property" do you not understand? It's been a fucking axiom of English common law since before English common law even existed!

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[mrchaotica]

The real reason we see this is twofold - first, because of manufacturing and second, because of fraud.

No, you missed the third -- and most important -- reason: if the corporate oligarchy can abolish the concept of property rights (only for "consumers," of course), they can turn us all into serfs and force to rent everything from them in perpetuity.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[gnasher719]

When companies can claim copyright on screws, and use the DMCA to claim you can't refill your ink cartridges ... you're damned right the legal system needs fixing.

Lexmark tried that stunt with ink cartridges, and they got their legal ass handed to them. Because they didn't actually bother reading the DMCA. DMCA is supposed to prevent illegal copying of copyrighted software, and no such thing happens when you refill your ink cartridge. No copying, no DMCA.

Re: Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Literally every repair shop in Mexico disagrees with you. Shops will give you a discount for letting them keep your used oil or tires at a change, because they're perfectly usable. Hell, even in the US where labor is more expensive, it still costs less than half as much to get a nail removed from your tire and have it patched as it does to buy a new tire.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I understand the concept quite well thank you.

You haven't explained how manufacturers are required to make their goods consumer serviceable or to supply parts for repairs.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Everyone understands the concept of sale and ownership. However, you haven't explained how this "right" compels manufacturers to make their goods consumer serviceable or even to supply parts to the consumer.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[kimvette]

I've torn down my S4 completely to replace a shattered screen. For an early large-screen smartphone it is remarkably slim. The new glued-together-to-render-unrepairable model hasn't really saved any space; it is only contributing to the e-waste problem. I hate that we have become such an irresponsible society where everything is becoming disposable.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: taxidermy

I have to admit, this idea had never before entered my head, but now - well, I'll just say that if I ever have an arm amputated, I'm going to end up with one kick-ass cupholder.

Since you are talking about taxidermy - you must mean some contraption covered with your arm's denatured skin. With all the "people meat" thrown away.

Re:Let them lease, but not screw with sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, bullshit. My Samsung phone is readily disassemble-able, there's even plenty of YouTube videos showing how. It has screws, but they're all tiny Philips screws so you don't need a special screwdriver. You can buy parts dirt cheap on Ebay.

Most of which are not made by Samsung and of questionable quality. As opposed to made by Samsung and of questionable quality, that you can get replaced by Samsung.

exaggerate much

[Anonymous Coward]

The Apple Recycling Program offers free and environmentally friendly disposal of your iPod and any manufacturer's mobile phone.

http://www.apple.com/recycling/ipod-cell-phone/

Re:exaggerate much

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair enough, but does not solve the problem. I should be able to have the device repaired, not disposed of.

Re:exaggerate much

[fafaforza]

Or you could keep that hardware out of African smelter and running perfectly with a few cents' worth of copper:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVAmnV65_zw

Re:exaggerate much

[gl4ss]

thats veeery generous of them.

oh wait, 99% of countries they offer it in already have consumer laws that dictate that the shops that sell the stuff have to accept used electronics and dispose of them properly(and as apple is doing direct sales, this puts them on the hook). who wants the hassle of going to the place to dispose of them though... not surprised of apple branding legal requirements as 'bonus' though!

the problem is more along the lines of apple not providing parts for fixing(3rd party pretty much) and their move to non-fixable at all on purpose devices. now this wouldn't suck so much if for example your ipod classic 160gb broke it's headphone jack(like all of them do, eventually).. since uh, what are you going to replace it with? a 16gb ipod touch?

thats the real problem, you find a device you like and you can't keep it running and you can't buy a replacement.

Re:exaggerate much

[Kohath]

No. It's a million times worse than this article could ever possibly suggest. Unrepairable products are worse than Hitler and they will cause a plague of giant, unkillable kitten-eating spiders to build hidden nests in your home and workplace to covertly drain your blood little-by-little when you're distracted -- possibly by the crippling fear that your gadgets might break and you might have to buy the new improved one for yourself. The only thing worse than unrepairable products is people who exaggerate.

Re:exaggerate much

[Dog-Cow]

If it's worth fixing, Apple will fix it and sell it as refurbished. Only applies to Apple hardware, obviously.

Re:exaggerate much

[Dog-Cow]

Apple sells refurbished devices. Going to an Apple Store and exchanging your broken device for a working one isn't a major problem, environmentally speaking. Of course it costs you more money, but that's a separate issue.

Re:exaggerate much

[cfalcon]

What they won't do is necessarily repair shit for me when it is broken.

I haven't had a problem with any of their phones, but I had an ipod with a loose headphone connector. They simply told me they couldn't repair it. Not "it's not under the warranty so it will cost X", but just "nope, can't be arsed to pop open the proprietary screws we used and solder it down". They offered me like a 20 dollar credit on an entirely new one- which at the time was a couple hundred bucks for a model that was not particularly even an upgrade.

Re:exaggerate much

[3.5 stripes]

Let's hope you did it to yourself, as you missed the blinding sarcasm and satire that were probably visible from space..

Re:exaggerate much

[Anonymous Coward]

Wave hi to planned obsolescence.

North America has fallen victim to a serious case of Consumer Society Sickness(tm).

Everything has to be shiny new all the time. It's half the reason (the other half is fucking greed) that everything made is shit. Corporations know these sick people will want an excuse to replace it in six months anyway.

Re:exaggerate much

[The-Ixian]

Except that now you have to go buy a brand new device for several times the cost of repairing it might be (especially if you can do it yourself).

It is a lock-in technique, obviously.

At some point down the road, when there are no more cheap labor pools, resources become more scarce and landfills are overloaded, we will see a return to re-usable stuff... but I guess for the next few hundred years at least, stuff is going to get more disposable due to the short sightedness of greedy corporations.

Re:exaggerate much

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a realtor in our area doing the same thing "If you aren't happy with your contract within 24 hours, tear it up, who else does that?", well, everyone complying with MN realty law...

Re:exaggerate much

[Grishnakh]

That's what you get for buying from Apple. They're the absolutely worst manufacturer that way. Next time don't buy Apple.

Re:exaggerate much

[cfalcon]

Well, actually I fully intend to continue buying Apple- but it is clear that I have to do this knowing that their items are like, charged items from D&D or something.

I'm on my third Apple phone. The first one I was using happily (and it still works ok), but upgraded because I needed a technical capability that it didn't posses, just more horsepower. The second one, after three years, started coming apart at the seams a bit- plus, they had finally launched a larger phone (the 6 plus). That was a little bit lame, but my expectations for phones are that they are expensive and are with me all the time, and that they are reasonably current because I play mobile games on them- I view them more like video cards than CPUs, basically.

I would be very worried if I had a laptop, where anything could go wrong with a part and be told to get fucked. I would be moderately concerned with their laptop-like builds of most of their Macs for the same reason.

It's clearl

Re:exaggerate much

[Anonymous Coward]

Sarcasm should be subtle, even make you doubt if it is sarcasm or not.

This was just stupid.

Re:exaggerate much

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair enough, but does not solve the problem. I should be able to have the device repaired, not disposed of.

Apple is evil, because GP didn't specifically mention that Apple does repair stuff? Insightful my ass.

Re:exaggerate much

[Anonymous Coward]

Sarcasm should be subtle, even make you doubt if it is sarcasm or not.

This was just stupid.

You must be new here. I have seen much harsher and dead-serious Apple Haters (not just) on Slashdot.

It's fucked up, but really

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a 4 axis mill and machine the bit, it's easy...

Just break them until they make something truly new.

Re:It's fucked up, but really

[Z00L00K]

Except that modern phones don't even have screws, they are glued together.

Re:It's fucked up, but really

[Grishnakh]

Only shitty ones are glued together. My Samsung has a removable back cover and screws.

Repairing is for Cows

[Anonymous Coward]

You are all Cows. Cows say Mooo. Mooo! Mooo! Moo cows Mooo. Mooo say the Cows. YOU REPAIRED COWS!!!

Re:Repairing is for Cows

[cfalcon]

> YOU REPAIRED COWS!!!

The cow troll is actually getting kinda funny.

Re:Repairing is for Cows

[The-Ixian]

I still don't really even understand what the cow thing is all about.

Obviously a method of trolling, but what is the reference?

Is the troll trying to say that we are all easily lead by the nose? That we eat grass? That we are docile cute animals?

Re:Repairing is for Cows

[Pseudonymous Powers]

I still don't really even understand what the cow thing is all about. Obviously a method of trolling, but what is the reference? Is the troll trying to say that we are all easily lead by the nose? That we eat grass? That we are docile cute animals?

I think what happened was, by the time Cow-Troll was trying to come up with a gimmick, cows were all that was left. The other trolls had already cornered the market on racism, sexism, jingoism, and greased-up Yoda dolls.

Re:Repairing is for Cows

[gzuckier]

> YOU REPAIRED COWS!!!

The cow troll is actually getting kinda funny.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/i...

Re:Repairing is for Cows

[cfalcon]

Good cowtroll pic, but I can't help thinking that it needs some... repairs?

They protest too much...

[MikeMo]

Doesn't it seem to be a bit self-serving for a repair company to complain that things need to be more repairable?

Re:They protest too much...

[PopeRatzo]

Doesn't it seem to be a bit self-serving for a repair company to complain that things need to be more repairable?

Not quite as self-serving as a company that makes a product that's prone to breakage and cannot be repaired.

Re:They protest too much...

[MyAlternateID]

Doesn't it seem to be a bit self-serving for a repair company to complain that things need to be more repairable?

I care first and foremost about: are they telling the truth and do they have a point? As a distant second I might think about their motivation.

Usually, any concerns about a cynical motivation are used to explain a falsehood. It's not as common as it should be, but sometimes, people actually do build a profitable (and thus, self-serving) business around a good idea that really fulfills a legitimate need.

Please consider: if this company can repair your phone, there is also at least a slim chance that you can repair your phone yourself. This is a case where your interests could (should?) align with theirs. I mean really, proprietary screws? That's just plain asinine. There is no legitimate reason to do that. It deserves to be called out publically.

Re:They protest too much...

[fafaforza]

By self serving I presume you mean looking to make a living. This selfishness will benefit the world by keeping hardware from being smelted in Africa by 7 year old kids on open fires fueled by old CRT casings.

I'm fine with a craftsman eking out a living fixing things that are broken that the manufacturer has no interest in repairing.

Similar legislature was enacted in the auto repair industry. Would you prefer to be forced to go to the dealer for any sort of repair? Or would you prefer to save yourself a good amount of money.

Re:They protest too much...

[rtb61]

So you are saying that repair companies do not like difficult to repair products because they make more money repairing them. Difficult to repair just means consumers can not readily repair it themselves and must take it to a repair company and pay them in order to carry out the repair.

So it just happens that iFixit https://www.ifixit.com/ is "iFixit is a wiki-based site that teaches people how to fix almost anything. Anyone can create a repair manual for a device, and anyone can also edit the existing set of manuals to improve them. Our site empowers individuals to share their technical knowledge with the rest of the world.", you claim in that light is really quite nasty and smells of corporate propaganda.

To make it clear, yes it is self serving to complain bitterly about being ripped off with unrepairable products which result in shitty resale values. What, I am meant to live my life to serve corporate profits instead, seriously WTF?

Re:They protest too much...

[Anonymous Coward]

All screws were proprietary at some point in the distant past.

Re:They protest too much...

[Anonymous Coward]

What, I am meant to live my life to serve corporate profits instead, seriously WTF?

Sure, it sounds bad when you put it like that...

anti-repair ain't all that

[turkeydance]

here's why: 1. digitally, it's 0 or 1. on or off. do or do not. there is no TRY. 2. it will work day one or not. USUALLY, if it works out of the box, it's good for a while. 3. if failure occurs soon enough, your credit card provides additional compensation. 4. if it appreciates in value: buy it. if it depreciates: lease (rent) it. 5. finally, proprietary screws open opportunities for the after-market.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really want to open up that after-market? I thought it was bad with phone chargers until we called them out on it and they all had to go USB. Now they're all making custom screws. Screw that.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[freeze128]

Here is a repair scenario that you forgot:

You buy a phone, and like it. You use it. A lot. Over the course of using it, the usb charging port starts to become intermittent. It's a part whose value is $.50 or less, but if it can't be repaired, you have to throw the whole phone away. What a waste of money!

Another one:

The battery in your phone is no longer holding a useful amount of energy to power the phone all day. You could replace the battery and bring the whole phone back to "like-new" condition, but the manufacturer has glued the case together. This is the malicious intent: The manufacturer *KNEW* that the battery would not last forever, and still welded the case shut. You would not stand for this if it were your car.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[BradleyUffner]

The battery in your phone is no longer holding a useful amount of energy to power the phone all day. You could replace the battery and bring the whole phone back to "like-new" condition, but the manufacturer has glued the case together. This is the malicious intent: The manufacturer *KNEW* that the battery would not last forever, and still welded the case shut. You would not stand for this if it were your car.

I really don't like defending cell phone companies, but I have to play devil's advocate on this one. Gluing all the components together may be the only, or most cost effective, way of giving the phone enough structural integrity to not bend when put in your pocket. These things are /always/ malicious, sometimes it is a really engineering problem that needs to be solved in a way that balances the different things the consumer wants.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[MyAlternateID]

The battery in your phone is no longer holding a useful amount of energy to power the phone all day. You could replace the battery and bring the whole phone back to "like-new" condition, but the manufacturer has glued the case together. This is the malicious intent: The manufacturer *KNEW* that the battery would not last forever, and still welded the case shut. You would not stand for this if it were your car.

I really don't like defending cell phone companies, but I have to play devil's advocate on this one. Gluing all the components together may be the only, or most cost effective, way of giving the phone enough structural integrity to not bend when put in your pocket. These things are /always/ malicious, sometimes it is a really engineering problem that needs to be solved in a way that balances the different things the consumer wants.

Did you intend to write "these things are NOT /always/ malicious"?

Anyways, with the wide variety of fasteners, case designs and manufacturing techniques, all of which are a small fraction of the total cost of a smartphone, to suggest that this really is the one and only viable and cost-effective way to make a study phone requires a burden of proof.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[Anonymous Coward]

The manufacturer *KNEW* that the battery would not last forever, and still welded the case shut. You would not stand for this if it were your car.

In my car, the battery was on the trunk, under the spare tire, connected to a sensor that would trigger a light on the dashboard that only a service center with the computer specific to the car could reset (and no, you will not pass the SMOG test to get registration with that light turned on). Hence, Autozone declined to sell the the battery of the car, and I had to pay 150 extra dollars to an authorized mechanic to do a job I could have done myself otherwise. Thank you BMW.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[metrix007]

I would buy that, except early smartphones had much the same components and did not have that restriction, as some newer models do not. This would indicate an industry trend rather than an engineering problem.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[garote]

"Burden of proof?" That's just pompous.

You're perfectly welcome to strong-arm your way into the design lab of some major phone company and look at all their failed, cracked, dented, bulky, ugly prototypes. If you can. Then line them up next to the one they shipped, and quiz a collection of bystanders on which phone they would prefer to purchase.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[sexconker]

I fucking knew it would be a BMW. LOOOOOOOL!

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[Anonymous Coward]

'"Burden of proof?" That's just pompous.'

Apparently so pompous you didn't understand what he meant!

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[Opportunist]

In that case, kick out your designers and engineers and hire better ones.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[Anonymous Coward]

Those "easily repairable" Phones either sell poorly or are much more fragile/less durable so they last less. Oh, but replacing your entire phone more often is much better ecologically...

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[Opportunist]

It's a BMW, the Apple of car manufacturers. What exactly did you expect?

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[Anonymous Coward]

If my phone cost as much as my car yes. However, my phone costs less than one new tyre.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[drinkypoo]

It's a BMW, the Apple of car manufacturers. What exactly did you expect?

No, Bentley is the Apple of car manufacturers. Big cost premium, small improvement in luxury, vague about specifications. Stupid product names.

Re: anti-repair ain't all that

[Asha2004]

Sure, engineering, that could be the cause. However since there are plenty of 5" phones which are not glued shut and Apple has a history of viciously protecting access to their hardware that would not be my guess...

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully no one really cares what you say and if you think you can do better and it would create a market stir then put your money where your mouth is and stop crying that you're put upon. Who knows, you could well be right but we'll never know as long as you put more effort into your Slashdot street cred (actual market value: absolute zero) vs being truly progressive.
 
Until you pull yourself up by your own boot straps you're just going to continue to be bitter and I'm going to continue to buy Corporate X's latest toy and not give a damn.
 
Have a nice day.

Re: anti-repair ain't all that

[Anonymous Coward]

This do not work when ALL phone makers do the same... You really belive on the "free market" fairy tale? By chance you are a Republican?

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[Widowwolf]

Except- You know there are workarounds for just about every type of fault: Including ones like this http://repairpal.com/how-to-re...

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[The-Ixian]

Yeah right... maybe if you include those gold rims in the cost of the "tyre".

A new iPhone can cost over $1000...

I would expect to be able to use such a device for many years... but that is not going to happen. Even if nothing breaks, Apple will force obsolescence inside of 3 years.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[Grishnakh]

Bullshit. The Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5 were huge sellers, are very durable (waterproof even for the S5), and they're easily disassembled.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[Opportunist]

Bentley is more the Blackberry of car manufacturers. Nobody in their sane mind would want one of the dated tech boxes, and nobody who has one bothers to look under the hood because the sales drone said that whatever is there is good for you.

Re:anti-repair ain't all that

[MyAlternateID]

'"Burden of proof?" That's just pompous.'

Apparently so pompous you didn't understand what he meant!

Amen, sir or madam. Around here, the complete and utter failure to comprehend never seems to stop anyone from writing a snappy response anyway.

where has the author been

[Osgeld]

companies have been using proprietary screws, not selling parts and not providing manuals for decades now, I mean did he just pull his head out of his ass or did he think the security screws companies have been using since at least the 1980's are standard just cause recently you can buy a cute little kit off think geek?

Re:where has the author been

[Opportunist]

But now we're not just talking about oddly shaped screws where it's hard to get a screwdriver for. We're talking about patented screws where it's pretty much impossible to get a screwdriver for, at least legally.

THAT is the difference in those screws.

Re:where has the author been

[Osgeld]

A lot of security bits start off that way, here's one from 1979
http://www.google.com/patents/...

here's its impossible to find illegal spanner
https://www.google.com/webhp?s...

welcome to 36 years ago
 

iFixit is NOT unbiased

[phayes]

The declarations of someone who is complaining that others are making it harder for him to make a buck need to be taken with a large grain of salt. iFixit for all their merits sells spare parts & repair kits. It is thus clearly in their own interest for everyone else to make it profitable for them to sell their products. iFixit would be very profitable if all phone manufacturers did everything they could to make it easier for them to sell their repair kits & repair/upgrade instead of replacing.

Their contention that do-it yourself repairmen are better for the environment it is completely unsupported. iFixit does not recover the broken parts that their clients are replacing and old parts are typically tossed in the trash. Manufacturer repair shops like Apple's have recycling policies that do recycle broken parts as well as old devices that people turn in when upgrading.

When iFixit starts systematically recovering the old parts when they sell replacement kits AND shows in some meaningful way that they are responsibly recycling them as well as Apple has shown to do, then they can talk about how environmentally virtuous they are - not before.

Re: iFixit is NOT unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

The declarations of someone who is complaining that only they can repair what they made need to be taken with a larger grain of salt.

Re: iFixit is NOT unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

And without communications, the Bush Crime Family has an easier time of killing us. That's a also why they stand against encryption.

Re: iFixit is NOT unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

> when you find yourself worshipping the bush family,

Because complaining about not being able to repair something is totally the same as "worshipping bush."

Liberalism is a mental disorder.

Re: iFixit is NOT unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

The Shrub stands against all technology.

Re:iFixit is NOT unbiased

[Opportunist]

Actually, demanding more easily repairable devices wouldn't be in their best interest if they sell repair kits. If the phones are easier to fix, nobody needs the repair kits anymore.

Re:iFixit is NOT unbiased

[Solandri]

The declarations of someone who is complaining that others are making it harder for him to make a buck need to be taken with a large grain of salt. iFixit for all their merits sells spare parts & repair kits. It is thus clearly in their own interest for everyone else to make it profitable for them to sell their products. iFixit would be very profitable if all phone manufacturers did everything they could to make it easier for them to sell their repair kits & repair/upgrade instead of replacing.

I disagree. iFixit would be out of business if all phones and laptops were easy to take apart to repair. I don't have to visit iFixit to repair most Windows laptops because their disassembly is (reasonably) straightforward. I do have to visit iFixit to repair most Macbooks because Apple tries to make it as difficult as possible. Most of the spare parts and repair kit tools iFixit sells are only necessary because of the proprietary and weird things Apple has done to make their products difficult to open up and take apart.

So iFixit is actually advocating something which would effectively put them out of business. A true sign of people who value the craft more than the money they earn from it.

Re:iFixit is NOT unbiased

[AmiMoJo]

Their contention that do-it yourself repairmen are better for the environment it is completely unsupported. iFixit does not recover the broken parts that their clients are replacing and old parts are typically tossed in the trash. Manufacturer repair shops like Apple's have recycling policies that do recycle broken parts as well as old devices that people turn in when upgrading.

You are missing the point. When faced with a broken device and a very high Apple repair bill (have you see how much they charge for things like new keyboards, screens and batteries?) many people will just throw the device away and buy a new one. In fact that was Apple's original policy on iPod batteries that died after 18 months. Buy a new iPod.

Repairing is almost always better for the environment than making a new one.

Re: iFixit is NOT unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the poster was making a reference to Bush's famous "go shopping" line after 9/11, which of course was absolutely stupid and useless advice unless one takes it in the context of American businesses need us all to be good little consumers and not worry about anything. In that case it makes perfect sense as a marketing campaign from the first "CEO President". Whatever you do, never stop spending on stuff because our economy is so hollowed out by sociopathic corporate leaders now that it can't take such a thing.

"Go learn self defense" would have been much better (and as a liberal gun lover I would have welcomed that sound advice), but of course that would empower people and conservatives are usually dead set against that these days, all the while preaching that they're for it.

Re:iFixit is NOT unbiased

[Grishnakh]

Oh please. Most people aren't that technically inclined, so places like iFixIt will always be able to survive on regular beer-swilling Joes who just want to fix their device without paying someone outrageous labor rates to do it for them. Maybe for you, disassembling the Windows laptop is straightforward, but other people will want more hand-holding. There's tons of YouTube videos showing stuff like this. Something doesn't have to be intentionally designed to be difficult for someone to make a video showing laymen how to fix it themselves.

Re:iFixit is NOT unbiased

[shmlco]

I fixed ny stepson's ASUS notebook a year ago and it too needed a video repair guide to crack the case, remove the keyboard and fan and in the process gain access to the failed power board.

The power board, BTW, failed because it cracked and it cracked because the power receptor was soldered directly to the power board with no other strain relief. As such, every time you moved the laptop while it was plugged in the cable would pull on the receptor which stressed the board... until it broke.

Easy to repair? Not really, though it was repairable and parts were available. Flip side is that if the thing had been properly engineered in the first place I wouldn't have had to have made the repair at all.

Re:iFixit is NOT unbiased

[gnasher719]

You are missing the point. When faced with a broken device and a very high Apple repair bill (have you see how much they charge for things like new keyboards, screens and batteries?) many people will just throw the device away and buy a new one.

Only if they are stupid. Instead of throwing the device away and buying a new one, they can return the broken device to Apple for an "out of warranty repair", which means Apple takes the old device and hands over a "refurbished" device, which in practice often is brand new. The price is usually about half the price of a brand new device.

Re:iFixit is NOT unbiased

[phayes]

No the point you are attempting to make is invalid (at least for Apple). Piecemeal replacements of parts that are not recycled responsibly is ecologically unsound. Apple, when you take a defective device in, repairs and then reconditions the device to be resold if economical and responsibly recycles the bad parts/entire device in any case. Apple also accepts old phones (including non-apple) when people buy new gear.

iFixit sells parts that end up in random landfills because they do not recover the bad parts and people in general just toss them in the trash. iFixit's (& your) pretense that repairable == ecological is false.

When iFixit starts collecting the bad parts when they sell replacements and details how they are recycling them, then they can talk about being ecologically responsible. Until then it's just the bitching of the head of a buggy whip corporation seeing his profits go down as cars (thin lightweight large-screen phones that need to be glued together to remain structurally sound) replace horses (smaller thicker phones with discrete, easily replaceable parts).

Re:iFixit is NOT unbiased

[phayes]

Come back in 10 years and try to say that again.

iFixit exists because at a certain period in time between humongous PCs with MANY discrete replaceable elements (like the original "portable" compaq) and all in one devices, there is/was a place for them. I can remember going to radio shack with my father to plug the vacuum tubes we pulled out of the TV into a test device to figure out which one had gone bad and causing problems. iFixit's rants that Apple is making it hard for them is the equivalent of radio shack bitching on how those new transistorized TV's were bad for the environment because you couldn't as easily test for a failed transistor.

People didn't want easily repairable (but flaky) TV's, they wanted something that was reliable for the period of time they were going to use them. Getting rid of the heat/weight/connector issues by integrating has been going on for decades.

Same thing now with phones, tablets & even laptops (as my son's macbook proves) & the complaints of the radio shacks of the world whining that things should stay the same so that they can continue to make a buck are irrelevant.

Re:iFixit is NOT unbiased

[phayes]

They only sell the repair kits because reductions in the size of devices got to the point where people rarely had the necessary tools. iFixit's margins are higher on the parts anyway & they'd certainly stop selling them if it weren't necessary for their present business...

Re:iFixit is NOT unbiased

[Rakarra]

Their contention that do-it yourself repairmen are better for the environment it is completely unsupported. iFixit does not recover the broken parts that their clients are replacing and old parts are typically tossed in the trash. Manufacturer repair shops like Apple's have recycling policies that do recycle broken parts as well as old devices that people turn in when upgrading.

You believe this? No, seriously, you think this crap actually gets recycled, and disposed of in an environmentally-friendly way?

Bull. Shit. It gets shipped overseas to "recycling partners" at which point Apple and Co can wipe their hands clean and say they did their part. But where does it actually go? To Africa, where children burn cables and other electronics in fires to try and smelt off the metal. Or it just goes to China, where it's buried in a landfill. Apple and others

You really think that broken IC can actually be recycled? You think that circuit board has components that will be disposed of in a cheap, yet recycling-conscious manner?

Absolutely not. The three Rs in order of decreasing importance: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Reducing how much you use will almost always be a bigger win over recycling.

Re:iFixit is NOT unbiased

[phayes]

Apple's recycling policy is in the public record, been scrutinized and come up clean so clearly whatever you believe is based on ignorance. That other companies like iFixit fail to implement a responsible recycling policy is undisputed but you need to examine what apple is doing before you attempt to dispute my arguments. Spend some time actually learning about the subject.

Re:iFixit is NOT unbiased

[coinreturn]

The declarations of someone who is complaining that others are making it harder for him to make a buck need to be taken with a large grain of salt. iFixit for all their merits sells spare parts & repair kits. It is thus clearly in their own interest for everyone else to make it profitable for them to sell their products. iFixit would be very profitable if all phone manufacturers did everything they could to make it easier for them to sell their repair kits & repair/upgrade instead of replacing.

Their contention that do-it yourself repairmen are better for the environment it is completely unsupported. iFixit does not recover the broken parts that their clients are replacing and old parts are typically tossed in the trash. Manufacturer repair shops like Apple's have recycling policies that do recycle broken parts as well as old devices that people turn in when upgrading.

When iFixit starts systematically recovering the old parts when they sell replacement kits AND shows in some meaningful way that they are responsibly recycling them as well as Apple has shown to do, then they can talk about how environmentally virtuous they are - not before.

Just reposting your insightful post which echoes what I came here to post myself. Some fool moderated you troll.

Disposable Products

[Anonymous Coward]

Disposable Products, made by disposable labour, marketed to people with disposable income, who can be treated as same.

Re:Disposable Products

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Used to listen to disposable music, watch disposable movies and play disposable games. - Everybody wins!

Oh, wait...

Apple would say

[hcs_$reboot]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:Apple would say

[Anonymous Coward]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

No, you fanboi, Apple would say (AND HAS SAID) you're holding it wrong. Only after a massive public backlash did they reverse course. That's the depth of how much they care about you, their customer.

Re: Apple would say

[Karlt1]

No, you fanboi, Apple would say (AND HAS SAID) you're holding it wrong. Only after a massive public backlash did they reverse course. That's the depth of how much they care about you, their customer.

If by "reverse course" you mean "sold the same phone (the GSM iPhone 4) for four years without any modifications to the antenna design", I agree with you completely.

Re:Apple would say

[hcs_$reboot]

you fanboi

What part of "Apple would say" didn't you understand, Abrutitus Coward?

Re: Apple would say

[dgatwood]

IIRC, they made a number of firmware changes to improve things.

Very good channel on the topic

[fafaforza]

https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup

There's really no reason for Apple not to give more information on their hardware, other than forcing you to forgo a $50 repair in lieu of a $700 motherboard from Apple. So many of this guy's fixes are very simple. Just fixing some contacts with a few pennies' worth of solder.

But because Apple doesn't want anyone to track down these little issues, the whole thing gets shipped to some country with no environmental and labor laws, where noxious gases are released into the environment. This is how Apple became so wealthy, I guess. Good for them.

Re:Very good channel on the topic

[hcs_$reboot]

There's really no reason for Apple not to give more information on their hardware, other than forcing you to forgo a $50 repair

• - Don't feed competition with detailed manufacture information
• - Ensure a constant and high level of service
• - Keep the same components in all devices
• - Image preservation: don't look like some other cheap brands

Not a fanboi, just trying to find relevant arguments (plus the obvious ones you gave) that help Apple to stay at the top of the standards...
(NB slashdot please fix your css)

Re:Very good channel on the topic

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple don't make anything. Samsung and LG do the real R&D and fabricate of the hard stuff. Then a Chinese sweatshop stamps the components together. There's nothing in Apple products that isn't available off the shelf to everyone else right now, other than their slightly modified ARMs (which is designed for exactly this).

The simple reality is Apple (and others) want you to throw out $700 devices because a know failure point will die X months down the road. Had they put a simple removable back on the devices for access to the battery (which is guaranteed to fail), Apple would have a better standing. But sheep like you will just get into line to buy the next iThing += 1. Bahahahaa.

Re:Very good channel on the topic

[tipo159]

I am sure that Apple and others want people to buy new smartphone hardware every couple of years, but, over a couple of years, the faster processor speed, better graphics capability, larger storage capacity and/or new features are things that people will actually make use of and not just buy because it is new.

I hung onto my iPhone 4 for a long time, but, when I finally gave in and got a iPhone 5S last year, it works so much better that I was wondering why I had put it off for so long.

And, as hard to repair as they are now, I think that it is easier now. The first gen iPod touch had a soldered on battery that was tricky to replace without overheating components adjacent to the connector. I replaced the battery on a newer one recently and it was so much easier. Then again, part of why it was easier was better tools are available, including stuff from iFixit.

Re:Very good channel on the topic

[l.a.rossmann]

Hey, if you think it's very simple I've got a job for you! It's been like pulling teeth finding a half decent apprentice.

The reality is that they go through great effort to ensure no one can work on their products. I had the privilege of lobbying in favor of the right to repair bill in front of senators and assembly-people and the words that came out of their mouths astounded me. They said Apple lobbyists told them that if we repair their products we are modifying them and turning them into PCs and then they will no longer be Macs so we are defrauding the customer, if we had access to the documentation we would be creating knockoffs. All sorts of other silly nonsense!

Yes, that is exactly what I am going to do in my 700 sq ft store with a staff of four people... design knockoff Macbooks and build the PCBs by hand. Wave solder all the components with my wave soldering machine. GTFO!!!

The problem? No one bothers going up to clarify this junk. Since no one takes the time to visit these politicians, they take Apple's word for it. Hell if they know about component level electronics repair, and honestly, why should they? They have far more pressing matters on their plate.

Same with cars

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

For the past 20 years the automechanics of my family would lament the computers in the cars make parts of the car impossible to fix without a hookup device. Then over time they would complain that doing something that would be easy to do on an older car was almost as if the engineers designed the cars not to be worked on. And just on Slashdot in the past 2 years, an article was posted about how some car companies were thinking of making a TOS that says you can't work on your own car. I understand about liability and them not wanting to be responsible if you get hurt working on your car, but for that to be a reason to take it away from you isn't right. I don't care if it gets 5mpg less, but a car or truck that could be worked on could be a marketable thing if you could get around liability. Of course this idea is probably just as bad as The Homer Simpson Car. Liability laws are out of hand, and one of the reasons we have to pay for costly insurance.

Re:Same with cars

[Gilgaron]

I was buying headlamps for my (2007) car and complained to the salesman about how I had to look up the instructions online because the manual said to take it to a dealer. He told me that many newer cars required the bumper to be removed to change the bulbs out. I've since heard the EU made or is making some laws about serviceability for bulbs and filters. I'm on my original cabin air filter in that car because you have to remove the glove box to swap it out. Some of it, though, is clearly just done because it made it easier to assemble. Doesn't make it less annoying.

Re:Same with cars

[EdwardFurlong]

The directions for a Prius headlight change say to remove the bumper, although you can get away with not removing it. Dealerships used to charge 1000 dollars to change two headlights, now they only charge 500. Of course you can buy two bulbs for 75 instead. Imagine what would happen if you were forced to go to a dealership and pay 10x for every little thing.

Re:Same with cars

[ravenscar]

As someone who works on cars and motorcycles as a hobby, I'd say yes and no.
1. Plugging into your car to find out where the faults are is fantastic. Emission laws have resulted in cars being much more complex. With all of the sensors all over the vehicle (MAF, MAP, O2, CPS, ABS, etc.) it's great having a computer tell you which one is sending voltage outside parameters. If there was no computer telling you where the problem was you'd spend quite a bit of time with a multimeter.

2. When someone says that something is harder on a new car than an old car, sometimes that's true. Smaller bodies, different collision requirements, etc. all result in less room. On the other hand, a ton of stuff is modular and easily swapped out. In fact, it's easier to swap out than in the past. The problem is, the swapping out is much more specific to the vehicle and manufacturer. If you aren't familiar with the car, it can be quite a pain. But...

3. Just about everything is on the internet these days. There's a video step-by-step for just about any procedure on any car. That's something you didn't have back in the day (although I suppose it was less necessary).

I've hated Apple WAY before

[AndyKron]

I've hated Apple WAY before they came out with that damn patented screwdriver.

Re:I've hated Apple WAY before

[Anonymous Coward]

Torx screwdriver set

Re:I've hated Apple WAY before

[Lunix Nutcase]

Watch out everyone. We've got a badass in our midst.

Re:I've hated Apple WAY before

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Pentalobe is not torx.

Not just phones...

[LVSlushdat]

I supported Dell corporate systems for the last 10 or years of my working career, and recall that you could go out to the Dell website and download service manuals for all of the Dell models we had, namely Optiplexes and Latitudes, I've been out of that world since about 2010, and when I bought my current laptop, a Dell Precision M4400 in 2012, I, naturally went to download the service manual for it, and found there was no such thing anymore.. All there is now is a quick-reference guide for each model... Pretty fucking sorry, Dell... And now I see they're pulling the same shit as Lenovo with the MITM certs... Now all I can say is FUCK YOU TOO, DELL... No more new Dells for me and mine.. Used only..

Re: Not just phones...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell wants blacks to die so of course they follow the orders of the Republucans in this matter, like all others.

Re:Not just phones...

[MobSwatter]

I supported Dell corporate systems for the last 10 or years of my working career, and recall that you could go out to the Dell website and download service manuals for all of the Dell models we had, namely Optiplexes and Latitudes, I've been out of that world since about 2010, and when I bought my current laptop, a Dell Precision M4400 in 2012, I, naturally went to download the service manual for it, and found there was no such thing anymore.. All there is now is a quick-reference guide for each model... Pretty fucking sorry, Dell... And now I see they're pulling the same shit as Lenovo with the MITM certs... Now all I can say is FUCK YOU TOO, DELL... No more new Dells for me and mine.. Used only..

Yep, me too. Was replacing caps in GX270's and GX520's before they were doing logic board replacements. Kind of sad to see they did this crap and then bought Sonicwall.

Re:Not just phones...

[pop ebp]

Dell Precision M4400 in 2012, I, naturally went to download the service manual for it, and found there was no such thing anymore..

You mean this?
http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_laptop/esuprt_precision_mobile/precision-m4400_Service%20Manual_en-us.pdf

Sure it looks like it was badly converted from a web page, but it is usable.

As far as I can tell, the newest models have service manuals too (sometimes called "Owner's Manual").

Re:Not just phones...

[The-Ixian]

Tell me about it.

SonicWALL was always a device I knew would just work. I never had a problem with a SonicWALL prior to Dell's acquisition of it.

Now it seems like every firmware release adds new bugs.

There are features in our current SW that downright don't work (pre-made application layer rules mostly).

Really sucks too. I have been pretty invested in SonicWALL (maintained my certifications) until now.

Dell is has been on a buying spree for a while and really seems to just crapify everything they touch...

Apple, Makers of Disposable Consumer Electonics

[BrendaEM]

Soldered on this, glued in that. Now, we can make hardware that won't go obsolete after a few years, but now also, people want to make everything so it can't be repaired.

Like they say, we are just borrowing this planet from our children.

Re:Apple, Makers of Disposable Consumer Electonics

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still waiting on stuff that is self-healing/self-repairing/self-reassembling so that I don't have to worry about repairing it anymore!

California's Lemon Law to the rescue

[macraig]

Sounds like Apple and other arrogant manufacturers are playing the odds of running afoul of California's so-called Lemon Law. It's about much more than just automobiles. It's very much about "right to repair".

Re:California's Lemon Law to the rescue

[gumbi west]

say more...

Re:California's Lemon Law to the rescue

[macraig]

I wish I could, but too many details have fled since I researched it for my own encounter with such abuse. I had an awesome Nokia monitor - back when Nokia still made such awesome things - but the time came when it failed. In trying to get it repaired, I discovered that Nokia had sold off that business to Viewsonic, which had promptly cancelled the manufacture of spare parts for that model. I learned of the Lemon Law and how it requires manufacturers to keep repairable all products sold for more than $100, for no less than 7 years. My monitor had failed in much less than 7 years. Viewsonic told me to fuck off and refused to cooperate in any fashion. Neither would it assist in its repair or even offer me a comparable refurbed Viewsonic model as a replacement. I eventually contacted a law firm specializing in class action suits, but they didn't see big enough dollars signs in it. I gave up and moved on, which is exactly what Viewsonic wanted. Apple and all these other manufacturers try to thwart the right to repair because it's also exactly what they want: for us all to give up and buy more.

Re:California's Lemon Law to the rescue

[rjune]

Did you ever look into small claims court? Many times, it's not worth the companies time or expense to fight it and they'll just pay up.

Re:California's Lemon Law to the rescue

[macraig]

No, I didn't....

Re:California's Lemon Law to the rescue

[rjune]

I don't have all of the details, but I understand the each corporation has a agent registered in the state that the summons would be sent to. I guess that Google would be the place to start to see if this is a viable option depending on state law and especially the time elapsed. IANAAL and IANACR (I am not a California Resident) so everything should be checked out if you consider this option. Good luck!

Re:California's Lemon Law to the rescue

[macraig]

I don't think I can do it now, since I gave up keeping the monitor itself. It would be pretty difficult to make a case without the body. Habeas corpus, they'd cry.

wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA:

In our conversations, he gets most excited talking about the water pump repairmen he's met in Kenya, Cairo’s best mechanics, or people in Delhi who cut open old CRT televisions and monitors to make new ones. (This is extremely dangerous; each CRT television has roughly 10 pounds of lead in it.)

Lead is extremely dangerous? You're kidding, right? My father worked with televisions and 60/40 tin/lead solder for decades and is still here in his eighties to nag me about it. No ill health issues there. You must be from the same brigade of idiots that banned CFCs for refrigeration, which was all due to patent expiry btw.

Re:wtf

[Z00L00K]

Lead is poisonous if you ingest it, but working with it on a daily basis when repairing stuff isn't that bad if you don't lick your fingers.

CFC isn't comparable, it's causing atmospheric damage instead.

Re:wtf

[drinkypoo]

Lead is poisonous if you ingest it, but working with it on a daily basis when repairing stuff isn't that bad if you don't lick your fingers.
CFC isn't comparable, it's causing atmospheric damage instead.

The problem is that most of the electronics "recycling" is happening in third world countries without adequate pollution controls. Insulation is frequently burned off of wires as a prelude to recycling their copper. Nobody is using fume collectors when they desolder. A lot of the waste is disposed of improperly and then the lead has a chance to enter the water table.

Yeah, so?

[Anonymous Coward]

Big deal. You don't like their products, then don't buy them. Stop supporting them. Last I heard, you can make a product almost any way you wish. It's the consumers who define if it's worth buying/selling or not.

Now, get off my lawn, 'cause I got a sprinkler to "iFixit"

Re:Yeah, so?

[Opportunist]

Care to mention something we can replace those products with? Tell me about an easy to fix cell phone, I'd really wish to have one.

Re:Yeah, so?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fairphone 2 seems to clearly qualify. Even though I personally am not a fan, plus their lack of common sense in choosing suppliers for the first one doesn't make me want to trust them. But that's just me.

Re:Yeah, so?

[Grishnakh]

My Samsung Galaxy S4 seems to be easy to disassemble. The S5 is the same.

angst over old tech . . .

[swell]

Apple is among the worst for this situation. I believe that almost every Apple device today is sealed and unserviceable. The disk drive in my old iMac died years ago but it is such a pain to get inside I just use an external drive. I'm a hardware/software hacker and I like things that I can mod and upgrade. Sorry, that's so last century. Unfortunately the time I spend hacking is not as productive as the time I spend using my devices as a tool to get real work done.

On the upside, every time I bring my stuff to the Apple store for repair or other problems; they fix it for free. I've never paid a cent. Not only that but I get useful information from the Apple Geniuses in the process.

The Apple devices are a consumer product, like a toaster or printer ... they are mostly disposable in the first world market that Apple serves and considered to be a temporary step in product design and functionality. It is assumed that their lifespan is limited, and rightly so. If we keep our 10 year old tech and expect it to serve our current requirements we are not optimizing our experience.

It's expensive to enjoy cutting edge tech because it will quickly become obsolescent. It's not because the manufacturer made it unserviceable, it's because it's old. Give it to your parents and get the latest shit. If you are a true nerd, go ahead and fiddle with the old devices; but if you are a productive person just use what serves your needs today and tomorrow.

Re:angst over old tech . . .

[drinkypoo]

It's expensive to enjoy cutting edge tech

Why does this fact belong in a discussion about Apple? Apple has only once had anything like cutting-edge technology. We called it Altivec, and now every processor has one or more vector units. Their advantage lasted about five seconds. Remember, Apple's original "make it big" products are the Apple II, which was little better than kit computers of the day (and for good reason) and the Macintosh, a fully-graphical computer system with no hardware graphics acceleration. The Amiga made it look like a squashed turd all day, and if Commodore had been a real company, today it would be "Apple who?"

Re:angst over old tech . . .

[andrewbaldwin]

I'm sorry, I cannot buy into the statement

"If we keep our 10 year old tech and expect it to serve our current requirements we are not optimizing our experience."

I know I'm a grumpy old man and a full time cynic but...

Over 25 years ago, I used a 286 based PC with under 1MB RAM and a word-processor loaded from floppy. I could start the wp in a few seconds and create documents.

Fast forward to today. My employers have dropped the latest MS Office on us. With a 4 core processor and 8 GB RAM it takes Word over a minute to start (I've got so bored I started timing it, mean is 73s, median 72s).

I know I'll get responses from people saying I can do so much more - but 90%+ of my work is basic paragraphs, tables and simple formatting (enterprise customers don't go in for multimedia inserts).

Also

"It's not because the manufacturer made it unserviceable"

We can debate this in terms of the direct product construction, but the hidden expense is in the software unserviceability designed to enforce obsolescence and upgrades.

Personally, and for environmental reasons, I dislike seeing working technology thrown out (which is why I use Linux on an older PC rather than buying new every couple of years).

Re:angst over old tech . . .

[The-Ixian]

My employers have dropped the latest MS Office on us. With a 4 core processor and 8 GB RAM it takes Word over a minute to start

If you have a Microsoft Account, you can just use Word Online... no load time.

Or just use Wordpad for basic paragraphs and simple formatting... it can even save in .docx.

Re:angst over old tech . . .

[shmlco]

"My employers have dropped the latest MS Office on us. With a 4 core processor and 8 GB RAM ...."

About 1.7 seconds from launch to new empty document on my quad-core i7 MBP. 'Course, it has a really fast SSD, which is from where most of the speed benefits are derived.

How to beat any weird screw

[Neo-Rio-101]

Weird screws are nasty, but not impossible to circumvent with this one weird scientific trick that you will never believe actually works...!

OK ok.... here's what it is:

All you need to do it get a bic biro pen, pull out head and shaft, and then melt the plastic case tip in a flame.
Then place the molten plastic bit over the "impossible to open" screw. Hold it there until the plastic becomes solid again.
Et voila.... you now have a screwdriver, moulded from the weird screw you need to open. Have fun.

Re:How to beat any weird screw

[Z00L00K]

Except that the manufacturers have transitioned from screws to glue to screw with us.

Re:How to beat any weird screw

[freeze128]

You're right, I *DON'T* believe that actually works. That custom Bic screwdriver of yours will break its tip the first time you try to turn it. It may be fine for screws that have already been loosened, but you need to apply enough torque to break the screws free, and that would just strip your pen.

Re:How to beat any weird screw

[MobSwatter]

So I'm guessing Steve Jobs isn't turning in his grave and all the money spent on therapy after what Gates did to him was well spent. But somehow the damage still shows in the product engineering at pretty much every angle.

Re:How to beat any weird screw

[Anonymous Coward]

The other way is to drill out the screw if possible and replace with a standard screw of the same size thread. This might not be possible on tiny screws tho.

Re:How to beat any weird screw

[drinkypoo]

Weird screws are nasty, but not impossible to circumvent with this one weird scientific trick that you will never believe actually works...!

I won't believe it because I've taken things apart and I know that they use thread locker. I've destroyed the tips of REAL screwdrivers trying to take screws out of hardware.

Re:How to beat any weird screw

[AmiMoJo]

If the cheap plastic they make BIC pens out of was adequate for making screwdrivers don't you think they would use it? Why go to the expense of a metal screwdriver when plastic will do just fine?

Actually, they do make plastic screwdrivers for turning things like potentiometers. They are used for calibrating things since using a metal one would affect the system being adjusted. If you try to use them on normal metal screws though, you will strip them and need to buy a new one.

Re:How to beat any weird screw

[Anonymous Coward]

I did exactly this to open up my Nintendo Gamecube (I had to adjust the laser because it stopped reading games) and it worked like a charm.

Re:How to beat any weird screw

[Anonymous Coward]

Just drill out the weird screw and replace with a standard one.

Re:How to beat any weird screw

[Anonymous Coward]

Cell phone screws don't really need a lot of torque to unscrew, if the shaft is long enough.

enterprise user needs the right to remove storage

[Joe_Dragon]

enterprise user needs the right to remove storage / have the right destroy it and get it fixed. Dell and others are good with this. Apple not so much soldered in storage in a laptop is going to far.

...AND THAT IS WHY YOU ARE ALL WRONG!

[TiggertheMad]

Dumbass Americans only care about eating more food, getting more fat, going to doctors for their fatass lifestyle diseases, complaining about the cost of food, driving their SUVs while never driving off-road or hauling cargo or carrying lots of passengers and complaining about the price of gas, voting for one party that wants to fuck up the nation or the other party that wants to fuck up the nation when they could write-in sane candidates, drowing themselves in shallow moronic soul-less meaningless popular culture and pretending like it's deep and profound, buying shit they don't need with borrowed money they don't have (America has a NEGATIVE average savings index, not that most Americans know what a savings index is), and believing every lying word of propaganda and manipulation that comes from their bought-and-paid-for government and their bought-and-paid-for mass media and following stupid moronic trends while operating general-purpose machines they don't even try to understand or secure so they can post trivial minutia about their pathetic little lives to be read by fellow jackass Americans who don't care.

An excellent manefsto! Now all you need to do is get a hoody and a big stack of postage stamps, and you are all set...

Commercial Radio Transceivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Commercial radio manufacturers are like this. (Motorola, Tait, Kenwood, ICOM, Simoco, etc.) and the whole industry sucks for it!

Generally you can only get the software and programming lead to program them if you are a dealer. If your a customer you have to pay the dealer more for one program than it is to buy the program cable which is usually just a MAX232 chip between the radio and the COM port or a USB adaptor.

Trying to get service manuals, schematics, firmware and alignment/feature adjustment software (strictly dealer only) can be even harder to get.

Run out of options

[renzhi]

I always wanted electronic products that I can fix (or have it fixed) if something went wrong, or change a component. I can vote with my money, sure, but we are running out of options. That's why I'm still using my HTC Desire Z phone, but I also can't find new battery now.

When we had the Project Ara for discussion some times ago, there were so much negativity in this forum. If a forum full of geeks is so negative towards this project, how would you expect the general populace to do?

Design for recycling and repair

[advocate_one]

should be mandated from the top...

Re:European Government

[Anonymous Coward]

The European Government is proposing legislation to FORCE electronics & TV manufacturers to make many electronic products, including large screen televisions mostly repairable, easier to dismantle. This is exactly a counter to the - just buy a new device - argument and comes as a solution to the otherwise enormous hazardous waste problem.

It follows such ideas as this Electronic Waste Reduction Policy: A Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe aims to “transform Europe’s economy into a sustainable one by 2050”. The roadmap identified the use of waste as one of the EU’s key resources to lower dependence on imports and reduce environmental impacts."

Keywords include: Life Cycle Assessment, Identifying product ‘hot-spots’ — key parts of the product which can provide the greatest improvements in the product’s resource efficiency. The printed circuit board, LCD panel and large plastic parts, such as the television frame, were identified as hot- spots for recycling. [And] decreasing the manual dismantling time of individual components, to help keep this process economically competitive with the faster, but less environmentally friendly, mechanical shredding option. (This implies easier openability & easier mechanical disassembly - hence less glue & pentalobes)
Also Indium, & other strategic material content is proposed to be labelled.

I haven't yet read of this approach being aimed at 'phones & other smaller electronic devices - but it does make sense for future resource efficiency

fairtrade phone?

[Eunuchswear]

So why not mention of the fairtrade 2?

https://www.fairphone.com/2015/11/18/guest-blog-ifixit-on-fairphone-2-the-first-truly-smart-smartphone/

most products should be a service

[Anonymous Coward]

if people would no longer buy a "product" but a "service", the product's reliability an repairability becomes a major concern for the manufacturer instead of the consumer

Parallels to IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it is time for a class-action lawsuit against these anti-repair offenders.

In the 1970s, IBM was playing a similar game, attempting to prevent third-parties from building accessory hardware for their mainframes (i.e hard-drive consoles). A legal dispute followed and a court ordered IBM, when then dominated the computer market, to open up their products.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!!

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

The U.S.A. used to be run by people like Red Forman. These days, however, it is run by people like Bob Pinciotti.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S.A. used to be run by an angry drunk guy? But now it's run by a guy married to a Bond girl?

And you think this isn't an improvement?

Re:MOD PARENT UP!!

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Red Forman was angry because he was surrounded by idiots like Bob Pinciotti. And I don't know which version of the show you watched, but I can only recall one episode where Red was drunk. He had just lost his job or something.

And FIY, Bob was so stupid that the Bond girl left him.

it's damn stupid....

[Anonymous Coward]

My galaxy just malfunctioned.. I'm an EE and I *know* what the problem is. and if I could access that part of the #$%@& phone I could fix it in 3 minutes, but I can't because they decided to fuse the entire case, LCD and flex harness together into one piece that is inaccessible without breaking several other pieces. The result is it is now economically unfeasible for me to repair it so I have to go buy a new one at significantly less (Time and money) than it would cost to repair. What a freakin waste...

Re:iFixit is for cows.

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

I always get a laugh from these one-liner moocow posts, there's always an on-topic keyword in there somewhere.

Complete horseshit

[Anonymous Coward]

My ISP requires me to call them to change the name and password for my wireless network because I lease a modem from them. Fuck this landlord attitude.

People who know little to nothing about hardware

[ToddInSF]

literally do not give a shit. And most people who fawn over apple products fall into that category.

Remember the awesome server Apple came out with a few years back ? They don't want you to either. It was a failure because the very reason the PC went from being a purely niche product only a couple dozen people would ever want to a product everybody wanted and could afford is because of the modular and upgradeable nature of it.

Apple has long been the enemy of hardware geeks, and there is zero incentive for them to stop doing evil so long as all the clones keep eating up Apple shit.

Like most branding, Apple products are not about a good product anymore, it's about a prestige buy that people make to compensate for their otherwise shitty lives. That's what advertising and marketing have always been about. I side with the late Bill Hick; if you work in marketing or advertising, please, just kill yourself.

sometimes they're generous, but weird...

[gzuckier]

I bought a lawn spreader made by a large nationally known company. A little tiny plastic widget broke, rendering it not quite useless, but requiring much kluge to use. I couldn't find repair parts on their website, so emailed them asking. They replied that certain parts like the wheels or stirrer, big parts all, they would replace for free, but little tiny parts not available; so instead they would refund the price of the whole thing to me. ???

Re:MOD PARENT UP!!

[Lotharus]

"Flamebait?" Sounds like we've got some mods acting on emotion rather than logic. This post (and its parent) is spot-on.