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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."
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/
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.
... these are not rational actors.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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..)
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.
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".
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
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.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
It's a BMW, the Apple of car manufacturers. What exactly did you expect?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Generalise? It captures what's going on frequently enough that it's causing problems for everyone. Nothing wrong with generalising when observing trends.
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.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
That's an argument against representative government too, you know. Which alternative do you prefer?
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.
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.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
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.
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.
Bullshit. The Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5 were huge sellers, are very durable (waterproof even for the S5), and they're easily disassembled.
"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.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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.
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.