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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."
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.
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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
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/
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.
Not quite as self-serving as a company that makes a product that's prone to breakage and cannot be repaired.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
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.
Disposable Products, made by disposable labour, marketed to people with disposable income, who can be treated as same.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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.
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.
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.
God spoke to me
I've hated Apple WAY before they came out with that damn patented screwdriver.
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..
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
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.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
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".
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.
...omphaloskepsis often...
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.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Except that modern phones don't even have screws, they are glued together.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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.
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.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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?
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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?
should be mandated from the top...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
> YOU REPAIRED COWS!!!
The cow troll is actually getting kinda funny.
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/
Watch this Heartland Institute video
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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
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.
The U.S.A. used to be run by people like Red Forman. These days, however, it is run by people like Bob Pinciotti.
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?
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
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.
Only shitty ones are glued together. My Samsung has a removable back cover and screws.
My Samsung Galaxy S4 seems to be easy to disassemble. The S5 is the same.
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.
I always get a laugh from these one-liner moocow posts, there's always an on-topic keyword in there somewhere.
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.
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. ???
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
> YOU REPAIRED COWS!!!
The cow troll is actually getting kinda funny.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/i...
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Good cowtroll pic, but I can't help thinking that it needs some... repairs?
"Flamebait?" Sounds like we've got some mods acting on emotion rather than logic. This post (and its parent) is spot-on.
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com