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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.
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.
This better hit Sony. I repair laptops and there absolutely are no spare parts for Vaio laptops because Sony refuses to sell them to anyone, One of my customers got a screen repair quote of $800 from Sony for their $850 Vaio. Thankfully it was also used in a Toshiba so I got the exact screen on ebay. But HDD caddied, plate covers, USB off-boards, forget it.
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."
It's actually quite a bit more insidious than anything Apple has done.
Microsoft: Uses standard manufacturing process that just so happens to make a device a bitch to open and impossible to re-close without a standard manufacturing device.
Apple: Creates a non-standard screw with no technical manufacturing advantages for the sole purpose of preventing 3rd parties from opening their device. Uses trademark and patent law to protect the design. Sues producers of the tools to prevent them from falling into the hands of repairers.
You must have been smoking some seriously good stuff to have come up with your sentence. At least MS's design had a technical and manufacturing advantage. But you are right about one thing, the bias is ridiculous. Fuck Apple.
Some users may be biased against Apple, that you can't avoid in a large community but I believe Apple gets what they deserve here.
What you may be right about is that maybe other companies also deserve some negativity from us. I personally despise the sealed battery strategy that has become the norm on smartphones and I hate every company for it. Some will call me hyprocrite for buying a non removable battery smartphone on my next change but I can't buy something that does not exist (I won't considered unknown brands).
Another trends I hate is the "Mobilization" of desktop computers (App stores, built in publicity (clean installations of Win 10 have crap like Candy Crush preinstalled, publicity in Windows explorer...), spying, apps force UIs designed for touch on everyone...)
We users are losing rights on our devices and if we don't push back we'll keep losing
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.
I think MSFT gets its fair share of criticism here. So does Android/Google. Apple was the leader in the closed ecosystem, so they got more attention for that reason. MSFT doesn't appeat to want to be left out and is working hard to get its fair share of that criticism.
I will always give preferences to devices that are somewhat repairable. Easily replaceable screens and batteries (and possibly USB ports) should be a selling feature. I hope people continue to make it clear that is what they want. I understand that devices might be more resilient and weatherproof if they are epoxy filled, but I owned had plenty of devices which were easily repaired yet fully met by 'toughness' needs. Some people might need more rugged stuff than me.
I don't work for MSFT, but I saw a MSFT employee beat the crap out of Chuck Norris with a Mac Book.
That's how Chuck Norris scratches an itch.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I still use a decade old Thinkpad. Works fine and the only two modern things inside it are the SSD and the WiFi card - I need the 802.11ac support. A Core2duo is absolutely fast enough for HD video. My decade old PC is doing fine as a home server. All solid capacitors FTW.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap