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The Right To Repair Movement Is Forcing Apple To Change (vice.com)
The executive director of Repair.org says Apple has "decided to be nicer to consumers in order to stop them from demanding their right to repair," according to Motherboard. Slashdot reader Jason Koebler shared this article:
It's increasingly looking like Apple can no longer ignore the repair insurgency that's been brewing: The right to repair movement is winning, and Apple's behavior is changing. In the last few months, Apple has made political, design, and customer service decisions that suggest the right to repair movement is having a real impact on the company's operations...
Apple has repeatedly made small concessions to its customers on the issues that Repair.org and the larger repair community have decided to highlight. The question is whether these concessions are going to be enough to satiate customers who want their devices to be easily repairable and upgradable, and whether the right to repair movement can convince those people to continue demanding fair treatment.
The article notes that at least 12 U.S. states are still considering "fair repair" laws, which would force Apple to sell replacement parts to both independent repair shops and the general public.
Apple has repeatedly made small concessions to its customers on the issues that Repair.org and the larger repair community have decided to highlight. The question is whether these concessions are going to be enough to satiate customers who want their devices to be easily repairable and upgradable, and whether the right to repair movement can convince those people to continue demanding fair treatment.
The article notes that at least 12 U.S. states are still considering "fair repair" laws, which would force Apple to sell replacement parts to both independent repair shops and the general public.
There is a definite anti-Apple bias on this site. Just recently, a story indicated that the Microsoft Surface couldn't be repaired or even opened up without effectively destroying it. That's clearly an attempt by Microsoft to make it extremely difficult to repair their devices. It's actually quite a bit more insidious than anything Apple has done. At least those devices can be repaired or at least disassembled without destroying them. Yet Slashdot mostly focuses on Apple and readers will bash Apple in every story about them, even if Apple has done something good. The bias is ridiculous and, because this site is associated with Linux and the open source community, it damages the credibility of Linux and open source in the process. The bias is toxic and has destroyed any credibility in calling for easier repairs and many other things the Slashdot community is associated with.
I hope consumers keep the pressure on, and don't get bought off with a few minor concessions. The time to enshrine the "right to repair" in law is now.
If Apple and similar corporations get breathing room, they'll soon have things so twisted around that even opening one of their damned machines will bring the FBI swooping down on you...because terrorism, kittens, children, etc.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
So long as company takes its stuff back for recycling, internal design of a product is between them and their customers.
A corporation is a legal construct whose very right to exist depends on the goodwill of the government, which in theory means The People. Once upon a time, in order to form a corporation at all, you had to demonstrate that there was a public interest. These days, you just fill out a form, and pay a fee.
Recycling is a bare minimum requirement. The best form of "recycling" is reuse. And often, before you can reuse something, you have to repair it. Not to get all hippie dippy or anything, but repair and reuse is by far superior to recycling any time there's not a dramatic energy savings involved in an upgrade. The phone upgrade cycle is particularly needlessly wasteful — the power consumption is relatively irrelevant here, but phone power consumption is actually increasing so that cannot be a counterargument here in any case. But computers in general have reached a point where even relatively gutless machines are useful for years if they can be kept going, and even desktops haven't had a drop in power consumption in some years, either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do... do you try to be this stupid?
Your first and second paragraphs are polar opposites. The REASON people are fighting for Right To Repair is because YOU CAN'T REPAIR a phone or laptop for 1/3rd of the price because of policies practiced by companies like Apple.
You CAN'T legally get the diagnostics software. You CAN'T legally get the schematics to determine circuit paths (one capacitor blows and takes out a chain of parts... how do you know what parts are affected?). And Apple does stuff like the infamous "Error 53" where the home button is PAIRED to the motherboard and if you attempt to repair it, iOS intentionally bricks the phone and--amazingly!--it's a simple procedure for the Apple staff to fix... for a fee.
I look forward to the day when my Ford Focus can only be serviced by Ford technicians, and I can only use Ford Certified (TM) tires on my wheels to ensure "optimum user experience."
Businesses only have the rights they do because the community grants them those rights - including the right to incorporation and limited liability, if the business benefits the community. If the public-at-large decides the corporation is fucking them over, they may decide to remove its right to exist. In a democratic country, the government is supposed to represent the collective views of the people.
In a Republican one, it is meant to reflect the view of Donald Trump^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HThe fithy rich.
(Of course, if you sell your soul to the devil, then the devil has a right to your soul, but if you don't, then its yours).
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
This concept should be extended to enforce the right of people to install whatever they want on hardware they own. And no sneaking around that with semantics. So... want to sell something with a locked bootloader? Fine. Disclose to buyers how to unlock it. Want to sell something with Secure Boot? Fine. Disclose to buyers how they can install their own keys and disable Secure Boot.