HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ verdverm

TL;DR Steve supports Right to Repair in this video

⬐ boba7

Yes. HN obviously hate this.

⬐ Popegaf

Looking at the responses against Mr Wozniak, if they are primarily from Americans, makes me raise an eyebrow. The impression of the country that I get from abroad is one of an insistence on "freedom" and "liberty". In this issue though, owning devices that limit your freedom and liberty in regards to repair is actually fought for.

Is the issue being framed incorrectly by the "right to repair" movement? Or are "freedom" and "liberty" understood very differently across the pond?

⬐ htk

Freedom and Liberty are also valid in the Markets. Companies are free to create devices the way they believe is best, and customers are free to buy from the companies they choose.

⬐ omgwtfbbq

And they should be free to repair objects which the own. This legislature would obviously increase freedom and you seem to be parroting Anti-Repair Lobbyist talking points

⬐ GhostVII

I think many Americans are against more government intervention, which is what you would need for most "right to repair" efforts. To be able to repair different devices more easily, we would need legislation forcing these manufacturers to provide more support and follow more open standards. Which may be a good thing, but doesn't really fit with the goal of limited government and personal freedom and responsibility. Some people think companies should be free to build devices however they wish too, and people can make their own decisions on whether to buy them.

⬐ TeeMassive

> I think many Americans are against more government intervention

The counter-argument to that is that mega corporations are government like power structures in their owns rights and have been deputized by the government officially and unofficially many times.

⬐ deorder

No mention of Louis Rossmann to who Wozniak is replying to?

https://youtu.be/8hVjvKQ5CXY

⬐ AlexeyBrin

The video starts with "Hi Louis" (I missed it first time when I played it, so I tried again), not the full name, but it is clear that the video was recorded in support of Louis Rossmann initiative.

⬐ Envec83

Am I the only believing it should be a free market, where each company follows the strategy it prefers?

Let the market decide if repairability is desired or not. If customers really want it, certainly there will be companies offering it.

Much better to have millions voting with their money and purchases than a few bureaucrats deciding how they believe things should be.

⬐ aequitas

If you want a truly free market you need to abolish patents, trademarks, DRM and a lot of other laws as well. How else are other companies free to compete or consumers free to choose? The current market does not exist in a vacuum.

⬐ trentnix

You are describing a "free for all" market, not a "free market". Protection for patents and trademarks is absolutely compatible with a "free market" economy. But that doesn't mean that all patents and trademarks that have been granted are valid.

The patent and trademark system needs work, but the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater.

⬐ overscore

Environmental and consumer rights regulations are also compatible with a free market.

⬐ Dracophoenix

No they are not. Patents are incentives. You can weigh the benefits or lack thereof and chooses to opt-in or opt-out. Regulations are a government-created burden. You can't opt out of a regulation.

⬐ passivate

If you don't pollute the rivers, then you can avoid the "regulatory burden". If you don't serve food that contains poison, then you can avoid the "regulatory burden". If you don't sell cars whose brakes fail then you can completely avoid this "regulatory burden". If you're not a predatory lender then you can avoid this "regulatory burden".

⬐ zsmi

This is not correct. For example, I designed my circuit so it meets EMC regulations and standards, like I should. I still have to file my paperwork with the FCC which definitely counts as a "regulatory burden".

⬐ passivate

I was merely responding to the parent comment that strongly implied all regulations were burdens. There are many of them that do make sense! Would you not agree? I mean, without that common ground, it would be hard to have a discussion from two extreme positions (X is all good, X is all bad)

I am not intimately familiar with the example you gave so I shall just take your word for it that it is a flaw in the system.

⬐ aequitas

You can't opt-out of patents. You cannot enter the market with a product that infringes on a patent.

⬐ overscore

> Patents are incentives.

They are also regulations. You can't opt-out of the patent system.

> You can weigh the benefits or lack thereof and chooses to opt-in or opt-out.

What is your proposed mechanism to opt-out? Do you mean that an inventor can choose not to apply for a patent? If so, that's not an opt-out of the patent system. You are still subject to all other valid patents.

> Regulations are a government-created burden.

Including patent regulations. It seems you support the regulations that you consider "good" and call them incentives.

Environmental and consumer rights regulations are both regulations and incentives in exactly the way patents are. They are enforced by the state and incentivise certain behaviours.

> You can't opt out of a regulation.

True. As stated, you can't opt-out of patent regulations either.

⬐ FpUser

>"The patent and trademark system needs work, but the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater"

This baby is only protecting big corps now. Nothing can be done at the moment without violating some "rounded corners" patent. The only reason individuals can get away with it for a while is that it is not worth for patent holders chasing. As soon as they make some money the vultures come down.

⬐ kiba

Innovators absolutely do get their stuff patented, but it's no guarantee that they will continue to act as innovators rather than rest on their laurel. The current 3d printing scene was held back by pioneers in the field until patents expire. You could say that today is really the golden age of 3D printing.

⬐ kiba

The patent and trademark system needs work, but the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater.

There's so many kinds and examples of egregious behaviors by patent holders that you have to wonder if we're just better off with starting from scratch and deal with the tradeoff that may come with it.

⬐ rightbyte

Atleast for software. Most software patents I read are silly.

⬐ swiley

1) Electronics manufacturing tends to consolidate which results in no market. We went almost 10 years without a single company producing a phone with a GPU that had open source drivers for example

2) They're only asking that companies not make it legally impossible or use software to prevent people from buying and replacing components. IMO the only reason you would do that is to force people to throw away broken devices.

⬐ itismetheidiot

For a European the above statement sounds so strange, alsmost fictional like. I thought that we have already established that a truly free market does not exist.

⬐ joshgree88

Here here!

⬐ endgame

It's "hear, hear".

⬐ afarviral

Hare here!

⬐ FourHand451

There, there!

⬐ Crosseye_Jack

From someone from the UK, it's more like "Errrrerrrrr"

https://youtu.be/CLSq1h7AvkE?t=70

⬐ swiley

I've had similar emotional reactions to hearing about Europeans censoring/surveilling their citizens (openly, unlike in the US where it still happens but it's "secret" and illegal.)

⬐ pmoriarty

The US had a "free market" in the age of the robber barrons[1] and before the creation of the FDA, where companies did what they wanted and "let the market decide".

It was a nightmare.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)

⬐ bserge

Sounds like early industrial/Victorian era Britain.

⬐ 2OEH8eoCRo0

Right. These government bodies didn't appear overnight. They were created for a reason.

⬐ forinti

Imagine a place where no lower bound on quality is established on anything.

You'd have to spend all your time advocating, evaluating, fighting for everything important in your life: the quality of your housing, the quality of your children's education, the quality of your car and your consumer goods, and so on.

⬐ chrisseaton

But imagine something you presumably don't care about - such as say the feng shui of housing.

Say the government started dictating minimum standards of feng shui, and costs went up because of it, and you couldn't have the house you wanted because it didn't match feng shui standards.

Wouldn't you say 'but I don't want feng shui - I don't care about feng shui'.

⬐ trentnix

And imagine how much better each of those things would be if they were held up to additional scrutiny!

⬐ arriu

So if we go off of Woz's example, you would have preferred it if bell was allowed to say what kind of phone you were allowed to have and that the "few bureaucrats" should not have stepped in to allow other manufacturers to build phones.

People could not have voted with their wallet because there was no alternative. We're approaching the same type of problem with tech giants. People just want to ensure that components can be replaced and that the tech giants aren't going out of their way to prevent that.

⬐ deregulateMed

Bell got lots of government money to grow.

It's like if Apple grew because of government intervention. Oh wait...

⬐ gohbgl

Wow, the voice of reason in the first comment? Am I really on HN? Of course, you are 100% correct. There is nothing stopping one of the big players from offering a more "repairable" product to satisfy all of the supposed demand. Remember, R2R wants to force their ideas upon _everyone_. Doesn't that mean, that there should already be a huge group of people who are willing to buy repairable devices? Instead of making new laws, R2R should be focused on repealing existing bad laws that hinder competition (patent, copyright, regulation, etc).

⬐ em-bee

none of which will help, because the big companies will just buy up all the competition. and not all regulation hinders competition, anti-monopoly regulation protects competition. and so does right to repair btw, because now i can run a repair business that competes with the manufacturer in fixing their devices.

⬐ gohbgl

I find it hard to believe that there is such a thing as a long lasting natural monopoly. The only monopolies that seem to last are the ones that are rooted in state coercion. Besides that, when I talk about "getting rid of regulation", I of course mean to get rid of barriers to entry. It may be feasible for large companies to set aside a couple of millions for a dedicated compliance department. Small startups do not have those resources. But even in the current market, as imperfect as it is, there are a countless competing electronics manufacturers. How is it that not a single one of them has started to offer a product line that caters to the "repair" crowd? Maybe that is something that's worth looking into?

⬐ em-bee

well, actually there is at least one: the fairphone. but its product is not competitive enough to be able to attract everyone who is in the repair crowd. that said, it's doing better than the openmoko did, so there is hope. the problem is now that manufacturers need to discover this market and want to compete in it.

⬐ hellbannedguy

There isn't always an alternative though.

People should be able to fix their car, appliances, watches, etc.

It's not just about personal computers.

Companies know they don't have to supply parts, schematics, and can even brick devices if a person tinkers with their product.

They are relying on those customers coming back for repair.

Do you like bringing your new car to the $290/hr. dealership mechanics, because the independant shop can't access to brain of the car?

⬐ g_p

There is perhaps a bigger picture "tragedy of the commons" scenario where external regulation is needed - absent intervention around repair, companies are likely to keep churning out short lifespan electronics, creating an eWaste problem down the line. That's an externalised cost that the producers of the eWaste are unlikely to bear.

If the supply of rare earth metals and other components needed to produce products is constrained or politically at risk, it makes sense for strategic intervention to try to ensure better longevity of products, to improve resilience. That's a government level risk in some ways, as countries are now highly dependent on technology.

Disruption to chip supply chains is already having an impact. If the financial incentives are to drive selling more chips to replace existing devices whose lifespan could be extended by repair, it's possible we reach a "local optima" free market solution that limits device lifespans, where a global optimum point exists with long lifespan devices that are easily repaired, and gives better "big scale" outcomes, but which might not yield the same cosy 24 month re-purchase cycles for mobile handsets etc.

On the other hand, consumers don't have the option right now to buy a repairable device, so they can't easily vote with their wallets and signal their demand for this. In an era of chip shortages, as a government I would want to ensure I was gearing up policy-wise for a period of reduced availability of supplies, prioritising the key demand that is nationally significant, rather than letting the free market determine they can make more profit from selling another range of new mobile phones at inflated high margins, since the last generation of handsets had an artificially suppressed lifespan.

⬐ clarkevans

> There is perhaps a bigger picture "tragedy of the commons" scenario where external regulation is needed

These markets are already regulated. Trade secret, Copyright, and Patent laws provide to vendors monopoly powers. There is no commons to speak of.

⬐ AnIdiotOnTheNet

I think that's a perfectly fair opinion, but the HN-gestalt entity seems to be all for free-market solutions when it comes to things like Uber and DoorDash where they can make a lot of money being a "disruptive" "software engineer" at the expense of other people, while simultaneously bemoaning any application of free market on their social networks and phone operating systems.

Personally, I don't really believe "free markets" are inherently good and would prefer something like a "fair market" that helps ensure competition doesn't get easily shut out by big players and generally limits their ability to make people's lives worse for the sake of profit.

⬐ Crosseye_Jack

The issue for me with letting the market decide is that for the general population they only discover the reparability of a product after they have purchased it.

⬐ bserge

The problem is most customers simply don't care. So they "choose" whatever the manufacturers give them.

One by one, remove the replaceable battery, remove the 3.5mm, remove the microSD card slot (and neuter it software side so it's near useless), some will complain, but the majority will just adapt to it, buying new phones more often, wireless earbuds, more expensive phones with more storage. Just as the companies wanted.

Looking back, the majority will see all the things they lost but by then it's too late (or not, change can happen thanks to movements like RTR).

So, the free market works more like tyranny of the majority in practice.

⬐ dlivingston

Is removing ports really equivalent to tyranny? Is it damning that modern computers don’t have floppy disk drives anymore, or 56k modems, or VGA ports?

At what point in a technology lifecycle does discontinuing support for that technology stop becoming “tyranny”?

⬐ sudosysgen

if you're replacing VGA with DVI or 56k modems with ethernet that's one thing. If you're removing the headphone jack and replacing with a proprietary wireless audio API that no one else can access so they're stuck with inferior protocols, that's something else.

⬐ disruptthelaw

The solution to that is for savvy consumers like us to band together and form a non governmental ratings agency that gives a stamp of approval to products that meet a repair standard. Same as “certified free range” or “certified kosher” food. Or if we insist of policy intervention then we should just force companies to have a label specifying if the product is repairable or not. That on its own should be a sufficient intervention to influence buying behavior but maintains free choice for everyone

⬐ hnlmorg

If it were as simple as that then we wouldn't be having this conversation because enough companies would already offer it. The problem is that it's less hassle and far more profitable for companies not to offer the right to repair.

What's in the best interest for consumers isn't always what's in the best interest for corporations. Hence why governments sometimes need to step in with legislation.

⬐ passivate

Some billionaire doesn't get to release products that harm the environment just so they can line their pockets. What a company has the "right" to do - is something that we the people decide. We don't want to promote glued together "single-use" products that generate more e-waste and harm the environment. If you take away the politics, the vast majority of people would align with sustainable development goals.

⬐ None

None

⬐ alexashka

Voting with your wallet works for fashion choices, it doesn't work for anything worth a shit because most people are idiots who don't know they are idiots.

A lot of them like to 'believe' instead of bothering to understand or recognizing they are too stupid to understand for example.

⬐ dwild

> If customers really want it, certainly there will be companies offering it.

There is customers that really want it and there's companies that offer it.

The big issue is that reparability is an afterthought, you only consider it once you need it and at that point, it's already too late. It's also a rare event, thus again something easy to forget.

That's all forgetting the environment impact of replacing a whole unit instead of defective parts. We sadly are far from being able to make companies responsible for the waste their product cause. This would at least make sure less waste is going out.

The craziest is that many right to repair cause aren't about forcing companies to do anything, many are just to allow people to repair their device. You simply can't repair a John Deere tractor without a license, which is just absurd.

⬐ dpkonofa

This is another example that, to me, does a disservice to the R2R movement. A tractor doesn't need the technology that John Deere has put into it to limit its functionality. It's a tractor. Tractors have been around for ages and ages and the basic ideas behind how they work hasn't changed. John Deere is artificially limiting the repairability of their tractors. It would be one thing if a "quality of life" component on it went out but the tractor still worked. It's wholly another to say that the whole tractor can't work because a single, optional component is not working. With tech devices, many of the components are either integral to the system or are required in a chain for reasons related to device integrity or security. It's not really the same thing.

⬐ deregulateMed

The problem is that corporations use mind control (marketing/psychology tricks) to get people to buy their stuff.

The free market is generally great but our biology has an exploit actively being exploited.

Sure there are lots of us that use logic and reason to make purchasing decisions... But there are many people who do not. Dancing cartoons of young skinny people on flashy backgrounds to music DOES get people to spend money.

⬐ mtreis86

There is no such thing as a free market, in practice.

⬐ disruptthelaw

I’m with you comrade https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27762177

I too got downvoted

⬐ howaboutnope

> a few bureaucrats deciding how they believe things should be

Classic.

> What has been created by this half century of massive corporate propaganda is what's called "anti-politics". So that anything that goes wrong, you blame the government. Well okay, there's plenty to blame the government about, but the government is the one institution that people can change... the one institution that you can affect without institutional change. That's exactly why all the anger and fear has been directed at the government. The government has a defect - it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect - they're pure tyrannies. So therefore you want to keep corporations invisible, and focus all anger on the government. So if you don't like something, you know, your wages are going down, you blame the government. Not blame the guys in the Fortune 500, because you don't read the Fortune 500. You just read what they tell you in the newspapers... so you don't read about the dazzling profits and the stupendous dizz, and the wages going down and so on, all you know is that the bad government is doing something, so let's get mad at the government.

-- Noam Chomsky

> The neoliberal era of the last generation is dedicated, in principle, to destroying the only means we have to defend ourselves from destruction. It's not called that, what it's called is shifting decision-making from public institutions, which at least in principle are under public influence, to private institutions which are immune from public control, in principle. That's called "shifting to the market", it's under the rhetoric of freedom, but it just means servitude. It means servitude to unaccountable private institutions.

-- Noam Chomsky

The (not really) free market already decided that the rich should get richer that survival of the human species doesn't even compute as an agenda item. How inspiring, how wise.

And of course, people organizing themselves via government is just "a few bureacrats", but you asking if you're "the only one" to believe what you believe, or a company "deciding the strategy it prefers", that's different.

⬐ zeroego

These quotes are good food for thought. I've never read anything from Chomsky. Any books in particular that you would recommend?

⬐ howaboutnope

To be honest, I haven't read that many of his books (yet), other than smaller ones plus "Manufacturing Consent" and "Hegemony or Survival". These quotes I transcribed from interviews, and his talks and interviews I can absolutely recommend. They vary in (audio) quality because there's a gazillion of them, but seek and you shall find for sure. Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7bjZTmk0uU

⬐ swiley

He's pretty awesome. Here's his website: https://chomsky.info/

I heard about him in college via the "mathematical linguistics" stuff which was a pretty creative idea.

Like anyone else he also has defects, his more recent commentary on American politics is arguably worthless because he completely dismisses everyone to the right of him as "the most dangerous group on the planet."

⬐ sudosysgen

I understand what you mean but Chomsky is actually very, very accepting of people to the right of him, given how far-left he is.

He's probably the only major earnest anti-capitalist that still supports the right wing of the democratic party.

But yes, if you pin him as a "Democrat" you might get that impression, in reality he's so far left that the Joe Biden administration has classified his beliefs as subversive and dangerous.

⬐ iseethroughbs

We know what Wozniak would say, as he's a tinkerer from a time when computers were "human-sized" and able to be tinkered with.

I think realistically the only thing we can demand is user-replaceable battery. Everything else is doomed to end up on a single chip integrated. And that chip either works, or doesn't. It's not about profit, it's about integration and miniaturization.

⬐ dpkonofa

I think you're exactly right. He's, unfortunately, an artifact from a time when devices just weren't as complex as they are now.

⬐ fsflover

> I think realistically the only thing we can demand is user-replaceable battery.

No. Have a look at these three modern smartphones:

"IFixIt: Your Smartphone Doesn’t Have To Be Glued Shut!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCccpgposh4

⬐ starky

Of course your smartphone doesn't have to be glued shut, but the video shows 3 phones that are larger, have lower quality materials, and are missing features like water resistance.

The fact of the matter is that customers won't buy those phones over the "premium" phones even if they are impossible to repair.

My potentially unpopular opinion (as someone that does mechanical design of electronic devices for a living) is that iFixit is actively hurting right to repair by focusing on the wrong things. They are focusing on an ideal that is never going to come to fruition because most customers won't buy a product that is worse than they have today just so they can repair it themselves. A vast majority of customers don't want to repair their own devices even if they were "easy" to repair. Rather, they should be following Louis Rossman's goal to make repair guides and parts are easily available to independent repair shops so that more people can easily have their devices fixed by 3rd party repair providers. A goal on top of that is that effectively "consumable" parts (e.g. the battery, ports), should have to be accessible without risk of damaging expensive components (i.e. you should be able to change them without removing the screens on the phone).

⬐ smoldesu

Broken digitizer/cracked glass is also fairly easy to repair, and should be included with that. Besides that, I think phones are at a scale where repairability becomes a bit of a moot point.

⬐ omgwtfbbq

This sounds like Apple apologism. Repair shops certainly have the capability to fix these devices but are hampered by actively Apple who would obviously prefer you go through them for repairs which are nearly as expensive as buying a new phone which is the whole point.

⬐ iseethroughbs

I see you haven't been a victim of a shitty third party repair shop. Yet. I have stories to tell.

I don't mind us demanding Apple to be more flexible in authorizing and training third-party technicians, providing them with parts.

But I don't need every idiot to have a repair shop. I don't need this to be a "right". You still need to meet some minimum bar of competence in my book.

⬐ hnick

Watch a repair video, there are those who can solder new chips on. The problem is when Apple bans their suppliers from selling them to individuals or hardware locks components based on ID. These are artificial roadblocks and part of what r2r wants to address.

Remove those two barriers then people can fix or not as their skill or funds allow.

⬐ mensetmanusman

Apple would be half the size it is if people could easily repair their devices. What’s good for the environment is not good for profits.

⬐ dijit

I'd like to see evidence supporting that.

The reason _I_ buy apple products is because they actually fix my machine when I bring it in for repair and don't do what HP, Dell and ASUS used to do which is hide behind: "please resend", "works for us", "we've had it for 18 weeks and now the warranty period is over" stuff.

⬐ bengale

They also seem to be surprisingly long lived, every Macbook and iMac I've purchased in the last decade is still in use somewhere in my extended family. One or two have had batteries replaced by Apple, and one has had a new keyboard but they're all still chugging along.

⬐ FPGAhacker

I use apple mainly now, but my dell repair experiences were fantastic. They always sent a tech to me to do the repair. Support was always my #1 reason for choosing dell.

⬐ judge2020

I've had good luck getting them done on-site in the business context, but otherwise they required shipping it or simply recommended Geek Squad since I live in a far-out suburb.

⬐ kevincox

So what?

Apple profits are not good for society as a whole. I don't see why we should optimize for Apple's profits.

⬐ vbezhenar

My anecdote: I bought Dell Latitude and there are instructions how to disassemble the entire laptop on the Dell website. I did not see circuit schematics, though I'm not skilled enough to make any use of it, but it's something at least. I easily upgraded RAM and installed SSD. That was one of the factors of choosing this specific laptop for me, I wonder how many people consider it. I had terrible experience with Apple Macbook when I realized that disassembling it is extremely hard with glued battery, extremely tiny and fragile connectors, and so on. I tried to repair charger and replace a cable which ended up poorly, because charger case was glued and I broken it. I routinely perform simple repairs on a more repair-friendly devices, it's not like I'm completely clueless. So I decided not to buy that kind of computer ever again, despite the fact that I prefer macOS to Windows or Linux.

⬐ chrisseaton

But then you have to have a laptop that looks and feels and works like a Dell Latitude.

That fixability has a cost in ugliness and weight and usability.

No thanks.

⬐ sudosysgen

That's not really true. Using screws instead of glue and adding 1mm and 50g to the laptop isn't the same as becoming a Dell Latitude.

Dell Latitudes look like what they look like mostly for cost and durability reasons, not repairability.

⬐ mensetmanusman

The no thanks attitude might be at odds with a healthier environment. It’s like the tragedy of the commons.

⬐ chrisseaton

Making components user replaceable rather than soldered in requires more connectors so more waste.

⬐ mensetmanusman

Shops in China can replace iPhone components with soldering using the proper equipment.

⬐ chrisseaton

Great! So what’s the problem?

⬐ swiley

Apple has made it illegal to obtain parts, people doing this have obtained the parts from other people who are breaking the law/contracts they signed.

Apple also uses software to disable replacing parts.

⬐ dpkonofa

Apple, nor any other tech company, doesn't have the power to make something illegal and they don't artificially disable parts. They disable portions of the device that rely on those parts for integrity or security reasons. Stop lying.

⬐ Ammonium

I recommend you open any internet browser, go to the search bar, and type "lobbying". Even better, search for "apple lobbying" and you might find extensive examples of apple influencing policymakers for their own benefit. You seem to have repeatedly missed the point in this thread.

⬐ smoldesu

Probably the fact that Apple arrests the people building/distributing these machines without punity.

⬐ chrisseaton

So go to Apple to get it done if they're not available otherwise?

⬐ mensetmanusman

Apple doesn’t allow or release parts.

⬐ chrisseaton

So go to Apple or an authorised servicer to get it repaired?

⬐ vbezhenar

This is absurd. That is absolutely tiny connector which produces negligible amount of waste and could easily save the entire device from being dumped in trash.

⬐ chrisseaton

Why would you dump the device in the trash? That's a bizarre thing to do with valuable components.

Take it to Apple or an authorised repairer, or have it recycled.

⬐ mensetmanusman

Many components are disabled from reuse with software.

⬐ chrisseaton

Apple refurbishes or recycles those components for you.

⬐ mensetmanusman

They do so with such large profit margins it turns consumers towards new devices. Apple prevents third parties from doing so.

⬐ aequitas

There is a broad spectrum between a fully modular fat and ugly laptop and a glued shut light and shiny one. Also right to repair is not only about how trivial a repair steps should be, but how easy it is to get spare parts and schematics to do proper repairs at all.

⬐ kipchak

I wonder what the closest comparison of weight for a repairable vs unpreparable laptop would be - a Latitude 5320 is lighter than a 13" MBP but that's largely due to plastic vs aluminum. Maybe the 2015 to 2016 13" MBP is a good comparison at .5 Lbs difference?

⬐ shawnz

Possibly relevant context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hVjvKQ5CXY

⬐ gamesbrainiac

Steve Wozniak is such a pure soul.

⬐ jsiepkes

He certainly comes across as a nice guy. But he also has his own crypto-coin so pure soul might be a bit of a stretch.

⬐ jazzyjackson

Hadn't heard of that, efforce.io, huh, "securitized energy savings", sounds a bit like ENRON to me.

⬐ libertine

crypto = dirty/bad/unpure souls, or it just tarnishes purity?

⬐ s_dev

I don't like this "guilty by association" trend that has become popular. Steve has a crypto-coin -- so what? That means what exactly?

The implication you're making is that he is either knowingly damaging the environment, scamming vulnerable people or wasting energy without having to do anything to support that assertion.

⬐ jsiepkes

> The implication you're making is that he is either knowingly damaging the environment, scamming vulnerable people or wasting energy without having to do anything to support that assertion.

I don't have to support the assertion because I never made it, you did.

You extrapolate my words to extremes by saying "The implication you're making" followed by a false dilemma of three choices based on that extrapolation. So no, I don't have to support the assertion you made.

⬐ s_dev

> so pure soul might be a bit of a stretch.

This is exactly where you imply it.

⬐ jsiepkes

So from just that you can extract my words must mean he "either knowingly damaging the environment, scamming vulnerable people or wasting energy"?

But I do think you need to be spotless for the term "pure of soul". And no, I don't think he is "either knowingly damaging the environment, scamming vulnerable people or wasting energy". But I also don't think he has a spotless record either.

I don't like this "everything is either black or white" trend.

⬐ underseacables

I love Woz, but does he still retain any sway in the community? He has often spoke out in favor of things or against things but it doesn’t seem to really matter to the industry.

⬐ a1371

Yes it will matter a lot. Apple is one of the giants standing in the way of right to repair. Being able to say "Apple cofounder is with us" will be a huge convincing point for the general public. The plan is to put the right to repair on the ballot, so public support levels do matter.

⬐ squarefoot

"Apple cofounder is with us"

Not just the cofounder but the real genius behind all their early products. Jobs was excellent at selling great products, but it was Wozniak who engineered and built them that great. Unfortunately in this world it's the non technical people who always get more consideration compared to engineers. Bill Gates himself had good hardware/software knowledge having worked with embedded systems for traffic control before MS, yet he is only remembered as former Microsoft chief.

⬐ iseethroughbs

I did expect him to compare it to the Apple I and II and he did. Unfortunately a device like an Apple Phone or Apple Watch are basically a chip tied to a battery. They're nothing like the crude (by comparison) human-sized components of the systems of yore.

Honestly I have just two wishes: headphone port, and replaceable battery (as in, by me, in like a minute).

I doubt they'll happen.

⬐ boyadjian

The problem is not only the right to repair, but that some product available for sale, are of such bad quality, that they will work only for a very limited time. Buying a good brand is the most important thing. For example, a good brand will provide spare parts to allow you to repair yourself

⬐ ChrisArchitect

posted in various forms a lot over past week, including a more correct youtube link prior to this

Bunch of other discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27779907

⬐ deregulateMed

The same people upvoting this also buy Tesla and Apple products.

It's mind boggling to me, but I see how much pride their users have for showing off corporate logos.

⬐ tqwhite

I was a young person during the tube era. My dad was one of those guys with a bag full of tubes. The reason he was carrying them around was that NOTHING WORKED. The 'right to repair' was actually, a horrible 'burden of repair'. It's great that it helped Woz made Apple but it was also an era of buggy whips whose passing I do not lament.

I would not support anything that added a microgram to my iPhone or MacBook or give up even one tiny feature to support the tiny fraction of people who can do repairs.

I would be comfortable with establishing a legal framework that allows standing for litigation on the basis of "subverting the right-to-repair for anti-competitive reasons" with those reasons being constrained to behavior truly unwarranted and without meaningful contribution to the quality of the product I get.

⬐ larossmann

>I would not support anything that added a microgram to my iPhone or MacBook or give up even one tiny feature to support the tiny fraction of people who can do repairs. I would be comfortable with establishing a legal framework that allows standing for litigation on the basis of "subverting the right-to-repair for anti-competitive reasons" with those reasons being constrained to behavior truly unwarranted and without meaningful contribution to the quality of the product I get.

Luckily, nothing I've advocated for will do that!

Keep your A1989 Macbook the way it is. Change nothing, but this one thing: when it stops charging, let Louis(or you) buy an ISL9240 from mouser.com. And let people buy a schematic from Apple, instead of waiting for it to get pirated to vinafix, or leaked to me by a fan who works at Apple.

That's it. That's all.

No change to your device's functionality, no change to your device's weight, no change to your device's software.

Does this sound fair?

I really do want to engage with people who have concerns about what Right to Repair might do to their devices. I want to learn your concerns. I want to learn how to ensure Right to Repair bills, as they are drafted, never inconvenience you or lower the quality of the devices you use. I want to learn how to create messaging that makes it clear that this is my goal.

Serious question, and I'd be honored to get a reply.

⬐ indymike

> I would not support anything that added a microgram to my iPhone or MacBook or give up even one tiny feature to support the tiny fraction of people who can do repairs.

That is not what the right to repair is about. It is about allowing people who are not the manufacturer or blessed by the manufacturer do a repair.

⬐ MikeUt

> to support the tiny fraction of people who can do repairs.

And the massive fraction of people who can now choose who to hire for repairs. It is a lie to claim only repairmen are affected.

⬐ nicetryguy

> The reason he was carrying them around was that NOTHING WORKED.

You are confusing the advancement of technology with the legal right to modify the things that you own. Completely false equivalence.

⬐ beefok

This is kind of off topic, but, in my mind, 'right to repair' has more to do with combatting throw-away consumerism versus quality products. Certain appliances could be made much better over having to buy 10 annoying dryers over the course of your lifetime (or whatever product becomes harder to DIY repair.) The amount of waste produced every time someone buys the next generation just because something broke outpaces the ability to recycle/repair, hell even lightbulbs [1]. There's also market value in making things intentionally obsolescent after a small amount of time. For instance, Apple purposefully slowing down an iPhone when there's a new model [2].

I'm not 'anti-consumerist', I'm just aware that we've built a society around throwing things away way before their expected physical lifetime of use.

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/t... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51706635

⬐ farias0

It's not supporting "the tiny fraction of people who can do repairs". It's supporting everyone who might choose to take it to a third party instead of Apple when it breaks -- be it for better price, better service, or even to force Apple to be competitive on both fronts. Hell, it's even supporting the very idea of fixable devices, as this arguably impacts not only post-sale support, but also the very design of said devices.

It's not black and white, we don't need to go full cyberpunk wild west to establish some level of control over our electronics.

⬐ aequitas

> be it for better price, better service, or even to force Apple to be competitive on both fronts

Just being able to take your Apple device to a local repair shop, have it diagnosed and repaired while you wait, instead of driving through half the country and having to give up your device for days/weeks because Apple authorised repair centers are not allowed to keep spare parts in stock and have a whole backlog of repairs to perform.

⬐ MayeulC

TL;DW: He's very supportive, and talks about how things used to be fixable and have plans included on paper, "open source".

He says Apple II shipped with complete schematics and source code listings.

⬐ hellbannedguy

I sometimes wonder what the world would look like if Woz got his wish to not bury the Apple II (Which had a huge amount of ports for tinkerers/electronic maker type enthusiasts).

I was too young for the Apple II, but as a kid I saw a father working with his in his garage. He was always inventing something, and connecting it to the Apple.

In a way, it was one if the first Raspberry pi's? Kinda?

⬐ ekianjo

The Commodore 64 was much more akin to the Raspberry Pi's. You didn't have to be rich to have one.

⬐ blooalien

Ah, the C= 64! Another great old machine. Did things no other personal computer of it's time could do. And Commodore Amiga was amazing, too. I miss Commodore hardware sometimes.

Still tho, gotta love that toys like Raspberry Pi and Arduino (and other similar stuff) have been reviving the old-school "hacker" and "maker" mentalities. Downright amazing some of the nifty stuff people been building lately with them single board computers and other such components.

⬐ AnIdiotOnTheNet

Really there were a lot of contenders for this title in the 8-bit micro age. I'd say I miss it, but I was too young to be a part of it. Sometimes I think I was born a generation late.

⬐ zabzonk

From wikipedia, the introductory price was:

> US$595 (equivalent to $1,596 in 2020)

Slightly more than a Pi. I could not afford one back then, particularly when you factored in the floppy disk drive prices.

⬐ Narishma

Still 3 times cheaper than the Apple II.

⬐ gfxgirl

same as Mac vs Windows today. Cheapest Mac Laptop $999. Cheapest Windows laptop $199, $299?

https://www.amazon.com/Laptops-Under-500-Computers-Tablets/s...

posted from a mac

⬐ iratewizard

Windows does manufacture a few laptops, but most are not Windows machines. They are machines that choose to license Windows for the OS component.

⬐ tbihl

Microsoft would be the manufacturer.

⬐ tyingq

There were some price wars later where the C64 and some other 8 bit PCs became reasonably affordable.

⬐ ekianjo

it was the most popular computer of its time. you need to compare with how expensive computers were at the time otherwise your figures are meaningless.

⬐ swiley

I'd liken some of the smaller z80 machines and "trainers" to the raspberry pi.

But the reality is nothing quite like the pi existed back then. Computing was significantly more expensive than it is now.

⬐ tqwhite

The reason it was fixable is because almost nothing worked correctly for very long once it left the factory. It was not a golden age.

Our TV was out for a month once because my dad could not figure it out.

⬐ Sunspark

Why didn't he just call a repairman?

⬐ blooalien

My first personal computer was an Apple II+, and let me tell you, those schematics and other available information made it crazy hackable. I wired and coded all kinda fun features into that thing that it wasn't technically even supposed to be capable of, and it was hella fun doin' it. :)

⬐ GuB-42

I am not surprised. I mean, that's the guy who signed a Hackintosh. He has always been the hacker in my view, when Jobs was the businessman.

⬐ dpkonofa

I hate to be that guy but this sounds very much like "old man recounts tales of how things were 'back in my day' to youngsters". The Apple II was not anywhere near as complex as the computers and devices we're talking about now and it wasn't wrapped up in the patents and chip licenses that nearly every piece of technology today is wrapped up in. You can't even have a DSP (digital signal processor) that would be repairable or that you could include schematics for without vioating any number of patents held by third-parties or patent trolls (and I'm not, in any way, saying that patent trolls aren't the spawn of the devil).

Apple wanted to make FaceTime open sourced and they couldn't because of a patent troll. I don't even think we can get into the complexity of today's hardware systems without running into any number of reasons why that stuff can't be "open-sourced". It's great that super-techy people want to be able to repair their own devices (and there's no reason currently why you can't) so I feel like the current right to repair movement, and especially people like Louis Rossman, are doing a huge disservice to the ideas behind people's actual rights to repair devices they buy when they conflate them with "open-source" and completely ignore the fact that 99% of people don't care.

Unless they find a way to show people what the upsides and downsides of the current situation are objectively, they're never going to get the support they need. As it stands, they're being misleading at best and downright lying at worst to try and push a narrative that gets to the end goal and, as soon as the lies come out, it'll push the momentum backwards instead of carrying it forward. The number of people with expertise to actually fix most of these issues with these complex devices is incredibly small and dwindling and opening that up to anyone and everyone without some kind of plan in place is just going to spectacularly backfire.

⬐ foerbert

I'm not sure I understand why a schematic would violate a patent. As far as I'm aware, patents do not exist to make information secret, but to provide a temporary exclusive legal right in exchange for making the information public.

⬐ dpkonofa

A schematic, in and of itself, may not violate a patent but providing a means for someone to create a part that requires software that's patented may open up people and companies to litigation that would kill them. Qualcomm, for example, holds patents for any number of chips that are in mobile devices from any tech company. A phone manufacturer, more than likely, wouldn't be able to provide schematics for their device that would include any details of how to repair that chip without having to defer to Qualcomm as it itself is only licensing that technology for production of their devices. Patents provide that exclusive legal right but, in most cases, don't extend that right to licensees. The whole situation is a mess.

⬐ foerbert

I don't think you're correctly understanding what is being asked for, and even if you do, I don't your analysis is correct.

First of all, nobody is asking for detailed instructions on how to produce all the parts from some base level. A schematic is only really going to show a level deeper. It would be plenty useful just knowing what connects where, and why. Meanwhile the actual knowledge to produce the part from scratch isn't even that useful in terms of repair unless the scale is rather massive.

Secondly, I'm not aware of any reason it would be so terribly illegal to tell somebody how to violate a patent. The whole point of the patent system is to let people know how to do exactly what the patent is for - but in exchange the creator gets a temporary legal means of preventing others from actually doing it. The actual means of violating a patent are inherently public - otherwise the patent could not exist in the first place.

So I have no idea how Qualcomm would sue anybody out of existence for telling people information that is already public. Of course this is limited to patents. There may be other aspects in play that would result in secret information that could not be distributed. But patents are not it.

⬐ neuralRiot

One thing we tend to forget is that not everybody lives in the US, there’s a lot of places where repairs are a thing and techs do magic with almost nothing but they need to resource to piracy for information and to black market for replacement parts.

⬐ dpkonofa

While this is definitely true, I think it's less of an issue than we might think at first glance. There's nothing currently that would prevent a repair shop from repairing a device or sourcing parts from other devices. Even if we're talking about Apple devices or even Sony devices, there needs to be a balance between repairability and access. Back when the Apple II was released, the internet didn't really exist so someone's issues or complaints with a device were pretty localized. Now, someone with enough social followers can create a PR nightmare for a company based on something that's totally out of that company's control so it's no surprise that no one wants to open up that Pandora's box.

I'm fascinated by the fact that people like Louis Rossmann are both the perfect example of why Right to Repair should work while at the same time being an amazing example of why the current versions of R2R can't work.

⬐ larossmann

>There's nothing currently that would prevent a repair shop from repairing a device or sourcing parts from other devices.

It can be done, but it is a huge waste.

Take the A1989 Macbook. Let's say you bring it in because it stops charging. It's 2019. It's dead. Let's pretend I am a normal repair shop, and not someone with youtube fame that can find someone at intersil/renesas that can get me chips.

Let's say the ISL9240 charging chip dies.

I can, in theory, do my research, and find out that the iPhone XR charging case uses the same chip. I can buy that charging case for $100+, disassemble it, locate the ISL9240, remove it, reball it, and replace it on the customer's logic board.

but......this is insane.

a) I have to waste a battery charging case, including the lithium battery.

b) I am adding $100+ to the repair cost since I have to stock & sell this case now just to get a chip.

c) I have to do research to figure out what other device on the market uses this chip, on top of the work of figuring out what is wrong on a complex 5+ layer PCB.

The viability of this repair, for a shop that needs to get their customer in & out in a day or two for them to remain satisfied, goes out the window almost immediately.

>Even if we're talking about Apple devices or even Sony devices, there needs to be a balance between repairability and access.

What does this actually mean? What is the downside to this chip being made available for sale, so that when the device fails it can be repaired? What are we balancing here?

>Now, someone with enough social followers can create a PR nightmare for a company based on something that's totally out of that company's control so it's no surprise that no one wants to open up that Pandora's box.

It is 100% within the company's control whether or not they want this part to be available; the reason it cannot be sold to anyone is because they make it that way.

>I'm fascinated by the fact that people like Louis Rossmann are both the perfect example of why Right to Repair should work while at the same time being an amazing example of why the current versions of R2R can't work.

Where is the argument in favor of why this cannot work, and how I am example of it? Where is the citation? How is it for decades parts and chips were made available with zero problems and now it can be asserted that this "can't work" with no explanation?

This increasingly feels like someone's throwing poo at the wall in the hopes of finding something that sticks.

⬐ dgb23

He goes over some fun and inspirational stories about that yes. But it's much more than that:

"In a lot of people's minds power over others equates to money and profits. Hey, is it your computer, or is it some companies' computer?"

He talks about companies trying to control and inhibiting repair and modification and compares it to the liberating and creative experience that he had and how that lead to him building the apple. He also compares the situation to a previous phone monopoly and how standardization and freedom lead to innovation.

The message is really strong and important and goes beyond what I assumed is going on with this movement. The Right to Repair isn't just about being able to fix things yourself. It is about fundamental freedoms that enable creativity, innovation and efficiency.

⬐ em-bee

in other words, the Right to Repair movement is doing for hardware what the Free Software and Open Source movement is doing for software.

⬐ kevincox

I think it depends who you ask.

There are definitely people that want to go this far. They would like to see full schematics and part listings.

However I think most of the people don't need the specifications in "the preferred form for modification". They simply want to stop companies from taking steps against repairs. They don't necessarily want help doing the repairs, they just don't want to be thwarted. For example

- Outlaw contracts that forbid part manufacturers from selling parts to third parties.

- Outlaw "chip paring" features such as would give errors if you replaced a screen because it was the "wrong" screen.

- Remove restrictions on repair shops such as limits on number of parts and allowed types of repairs.

⬐ suyash

great analogy

⬐ nicoburns

It's partly this. It's also partly about restoring the kind of rights one is supposed to get under the first-sale doctrine: ownership over the thing that you have bought.

⬐ SomeGoon

So why is it partly? Are you saying that Free Software Movement isn't also about having ownership over your own devices?

Because it absolutely is about that - no manufacturer should be able to tell what you can and cannot do with your own device. That includes what kind of OS you're able to run, what kind of programs, how much data you're sending to them, etc. Controlling your software is still stealing ownership from you because when you can't control what software are you running, you can't control what your device is doing.

⬐ em-bee

what he means with partly is that a part of the right to repair movement is about restoring a right that was already define in law, namely that when you buy something, you own it, and you can do whatever you want with it (including repairing or modifying it)

the Free Software movement is about the same, but a right to repair and modify software was never defined as a law.

so the difference is that the Free Software movement is about gaining new rights, that we didn't have, while right to repair is about restoring rights that we already had, and that have been taken away.

⬐ SomeGoon

Ok - I get it now, fair point.

⬐ II2II

The right to repair has nothing to do with open source and it is probably best to avoid conflating it with open source. It is going to be difficult enough to pass legislation to enable the access to components and schematics, as well as to prevent the implementation of technical barriers intended to make independent repair (and modifications) illegal. The reason why we reached this abysmal state of affairs has more to do with consumer apathy, a set of property rights for producers that were naively reasonable, and a twisting of laws that were intended for other purposes.

Put in other terms, the Apple II was not open source. The schematics were freely available, at least some of the ROM's source code was available, there were no barriers to repair (if I recall correctly, there were no custom chips/components), and people were free to modify the hardware. Yet you could not make copies, straight-up or modified, without being sued by Apple. A cleanroom approach would have to be taken to make something compatible. The world seemed to be okay with that. Things like schematics and code served supported repairability, which was an expectation of consumers back then, so the vendor voluntarily provided it.

That being said, a true open source approach to hardware would have still been frowned upon back then.

⬐ SomeGoon

I will assume that you meant Free Software Movement instead of the Open Source one, as people easily confuse these two. I agree how conflicting FSM with RTR would be detrimental to the actual possibility of implementation. However, Free Software Movement actually goes hand in hand with Right to Repair - both are about the basic right to own and control your own device.

Luis Rossmann even (maybe non-intentionally) touched on it in a recent video and said that's it's unacceptable for manufacturers to block bootloaders on their devices, restricting you from the type of OS you can run. That's strictly a Free Software Movement issue and not necessarily a Right to Repair issue.

Right to Repair is basically hardware equivalent to FSM. You can even think about it as such - one is fighting for your right to repair your own device and the other for your right to repair software on that device. Obviously, that's a major simplification and there are many other implications in both movements, but they're both set on the same set of principles.

That's why a big part of the Free Software community is using old thinkpads - they have the freedom to run whatever software they want (as they don't have Intel Management Engine) AND the right to repair and modify the actual hardware (those devices are a joy to open and repair).

I also believe that companies should provide hardware schematics with their devices and customers should be able to repair them and modify them using these. As for the "copy" part, I don't quite get what you mean. What exactly did you mean by copy?

Is a device with one part changed/repaired is a copy? Is a device build completely out of parts got from other, damaged devices is a copy?

Because if you meant that you can't just use the schematics to build and sell a device based on them as your own, original device then that's obvious. Copying a device and selling it as your own creation is just fraud and absolutely not the kind of thing that FSM is fighting for. It's a common strawman argument used by the FSM opposers though.

⬐ denton-scratch

> Yet you could not make copies, straight-up or modified, without being sued by Apple.

Well, you could; you just couldn't sell them. You could make them for private use, if you wanted.

⬐ bengale

The conflation of right to repair with other things might make the whole enterprise impossible. It's currently very difficult to claim support for something when the goalposts keep moving.

I'm very much in support of companies being required to provide schematics, where reasonable. Also I see no reason why they should be able to stop manufacturers selling parts to repair shops.

I don't think that forcing design choices, such as modular components, easily replaceable batteries, requiring certain ports and things like that are a good idea. These ideas should stand on their own, if there is a market for it then let people make that choice for themselves, including the downsides that come with it.

I think if right to repair can't get a handle on what's being advocated for then things like phones and laptops will be left out of any major legislation.

⬐ larossmann

Here's an interview I did with National Review where I discussed this topic. I'll include the exercpt that applies to your concern below. https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/a-computer-repair-exp...

"So one example of what Right to Repair is not: The European Union, I believe, was looking to mandate that Apple use USB-C instead of Lightning, because USB-C is a standard and Lightning is not a standard. I don’t want people to think that has anything to do with Right to Repair because it doesn’t; that’s completely separate. I’m not looking to tell Apple, “You need to use this type of charge port. I want you to use micro USB. I want you to use USB-C. I want you to use this.” No, what we’re saying is, regardless of what you use to charge your phone — you could use a banana to charge it — just give us access to be able to purchase that charge port so that if the charge port in the phone breaks, we can fix it for customers rather than tell them, “Your phone is now a brick.” So I think that is a good example of what Right to Repair is not: We’re not looking to say, “You need to use this port. You need to do this.” Just don’t intentionally lock people out of the ability to fix it once you’ve chosen how to design it."

-------

Right to repair has a fine handle on what is being advocated for, and it is spelled out in the legislation. I don't think people read it though. In the EU, it is different than in the US. I do not support legislation that forces design choices on modularity or using specific ports. That's EU Right to Repair, but I have no business on that since I don't live there.

US right to repair is about making things available. Use microUSB, USB-C, mini-usb, parallel port.. so long as it's made available for purchase to repair shops/users.

⬐ dpkonofa

With respect, I think you're being disingenuous here and I think you know it. No one is telling customers "your phone is now a brick" when their charge port breaks and "right to repair", as a whole" does not have a fine handle on what's being advocated for. If it did, there wouldn't be so many different variations of understanding for "right to repair" actually is. The number of variations for it in the various bills being floating around is innumerable and there are very few people, and I'm excluding you in this, who aren't trying to push their desires for it for anything but selfish reasons.

I get that you're kinda the de-facto figurehead of the movement but let's not pretend that your reasons for supporting this are altruistic and that you're not pushing for this because you run a business that needs this to go through. Regardless of what companies we're talking about, your business would eventually go under if the current situation doesn't change so forgive me if I take everything you say with a grain of salt, especially considering that you've made misleading claims in your videos and ignore when people call you out on it. That, to me, is not the way to grow support for people's rights over the products they own. The only way to do that is to be blunt and honest about what the situation is on both sides and what the motivations for the two sides are. They are not irreconcilable.

⬐ larossmann

> I think you're being disingenuous here and I think you know it.

Saying "and you know it" isn't an argument, it's what people fighting back and forth in drama TV say.

> No one is telling customers "your phone is now a brick" when their charge port breaks

I did not say they tell customers your phone is a brick when their charge port breaks.

AASP did say, that when your headphone jack(attached to charge port) breaks, your only solution is

a) Send it back to manufacturer b) 2 week turnaround time c) All data GONE d) You spend half the cost of a new one, to get someone else's refurbished phone.

Citation: https://youtu.be/OR5ZUl0Q-NI?t=100

Brick could technically be one way to put it, since they will not fix your phone.

>and "right to repair", as a whole" does not have a fine handle on what's being advocated for.

It actually does. The bills in almost every state in the U.S. are virtually identical. What are the differences between House Bill 1212 in Washington and S4104 in New York that make it impossible to tell what is being advocated for? What are the inconsistencies?

These are bills in different states on opposite sides of the US, with totally different legislators; and each bill makes it clear they are advocating for the same thing.

What causes confusion over what Right to Repair is asking for is the opposition. They will make things up, like claim I am asking for source code, or demanding everything be modular. None of this is in any of the bills. No one cares though, because no one reads them.

>especially considering that you've made misleading claims in your videos and ignore when people call you out on it.

No citations. I'd respond to your assertion of a misleading claim if I knew what it was.

>That, to me, is not the way to grow support for people's rights over the products they own. The only way to do that is to be blunt and honest about what the situation is on both sides and what the motivations for the two sides are. They are not irreconcilable.

This seems to have gained a lot of steam. There are a small minority of haters, but that is what it is. You'll get that with anything that you do, and there is no movement that avoids this.

>and there are very few people, and I'm excluding you in this, who aren't trying to push their desires for it for anything but selfish reasons. I get that you're kinda the de-facto figurehead of the movement but let's not pretend that your reasons for supporting this are altruistic and that you're not pushing for this because you run a business that needs this to go through.

So now we have moved onto, "I don't have an argument so I am going to call you self interested." :( This one is less fun.

I have 1.58 million subscribers on YT. I hate using this word: it makes me sick.. but it is the case. I am "famous." If I say, "man, if only I had a schematic for an 820-00170" on stream, it gets emailed to me by someone from a hushmail address. If I say "man, I'd love to fix X, I just can't get this chip. Damn. If only I knew someone at TI.", I get a box with no return address in the mail with a spool of chips, and a handwritten thank you note for the content. This will happen from now until the end of time, because once you reach 1.58 million people, at some point, one of those people works somewhere or knows someone who can get you what you need.

I'll be fine. My business will go on just fine. I'm good.

You know whose repair businesses won't be fine? The repair shops that AREN'T run by C-list youtube celebrities. The businesses that are genuinely at the mercy of what they can buy from ebay or mobilesentrix.

I chose to get to this part last, because IMO it is deflection without substance. How does whether I benefit from something matter when arguing whether it is a good thing for society? It's like saying "Look at how selfish he is, PRETENDING he is altruistic when advocating for clean drinking water legislation. He's not doing it because he cares about making the world better. HE JUST WANTS CLEAN DRINKING WATER FOR HIMSELF TOO! BECAUSE HE DRINKS WATER! Yeah, can't trust him."

This is nonsense. It is natural, if the world is made a better place, that you as a citizen of the world are one of the beneficiaries of this improvement.

My customers benefit from saving money & time, and having choice(including the choice to get access to the parts/manuals to do the repair WITHOUT INVOLVING ME from this same legislation). Other shops benefit from having tools, diagrams, etc to do their job. I benefit from job security in the event that "fame" isn't enough going forward to get me what I need to do my job.

I like seeing people follow in the footsteps to success I was lucky enough to achieve. YT can be said to be a form of advertising, but stuff like this https://repair.wiki/w/A1707_2016-2017_15%E2%80%9D_Touchbar_M... I write in my spare time because I like knowing that someone else might be walking that path I took to success a little easier with less roadbumps in it. There is a happy feeling I experience knowing I am improving my small corner of the world.

⬐ dpkonofa

>No, what we’re saying is, regardless of what you use to charge your phone — you could use a banana to charge it — just give us access to be able to purchase that charge port so that if the charge port in the phone breaks, we can fix it for customers rather than tell them, “Your phone is now a brick.”

This you? I literally just pasted this from above. How is that not suggesting that people are telling customers that their phone is a brick when the charge port breaks?

Also, puhleeeeeeze... it's a good thing for society? There are any number of people for whom this won't be a good thing. I don't doubt that your business will go on just fine and that's why I think you're reticent to talk about it. The repair shops that "aren't run by c-list YouTube celebrities" can't do what you do. The majority of people running repair shops can't do the repairs you do. You may think it's easy but you completely ignore the number of the mall kiosk "repair shops" that do shoddy work and can't put a new screen on right and expect them to do work that requires soldering and component-level surgical operations.

You know how auto repair shops have a really, really poor reputation and how it's usually a joke about how taking your car in for an oil change results in all kinds of "upsells" for people who aren't savvy with their cars? This is exactly why. Also, before you make some kind of straw man up, I'm not suggesting that there's no middle ground or that the current situation is the perfect situation either. I'm only saying that you pretend like everyone else is going to get the same experience from every repair shop and all we have to do is pass these Right to Repair bills and the free market will take care of everything and that's just a bunch of bull.

⬐ larossmann

>This you? I literally just pasted this from above. How is that not suggesting that people are telling customers that their phone is a brick when the charge port breaks?

I do not mean the phone is an actual red rectangular prism used to construct buildings, and anyone listening to that video knows that. I mean that to the customer, they have a device that is dead. You are using the literal interpretation of the word brick to be ridiculous.

>Also, puhleeeeeeze... it's a good thing for society? There are any number of people for whom this won't be a good thing.

Name one person that would be harmed by the availability of a charging chip.

>The majority of people running repair shops can't do the repairs you do. You may think it's easy but you completely ignore the number of the mall kiosk "repair shops" that do shoddy work and can't put a new screen on right and expect them to do work that requires soldering and component-level surgical operations.

I do not ignore the fact that there are bad repair shops. The existence of a bad repair shop, whether first party or third party, is not an argument to remove people's ability to repair their own property.

>I'm only saying that you pretend like everyone else is going to get the same experience from every repair shop

Again, we'd probably be able to speak and get along much better if you stopped making things up. I understand. You dislike me. You're salty about me - I get it. but there is no need to continuously make things up. I have not stated this. There are good repair shops, and horrible repair shops - and I feature BAD repair shops on my channel in repair videos. I castigate their practices & bad work. I have no problem doing that. There is bad in every industry.

My argument is that, the existence of one bad repair shop, is not on its own enough to justify restricting repair for everyone.

⬐ dpkonofa

>You are using the literal interpretation of the word brick to be ridiculous.

No, I'm not. I mean it in the sense you're referring to and, again, you know that. No one in their right mind would infer that I meant an actual brick. You're so insufferable and dishonest, Louis.

⬐ nicoburns

> No one is telling customers "your phone is now a brick" when their charge port breaks

Apple is. They'll "repair" it for you (they go out of their way to make sure that nobody else can - if not with the charge port then certainly with some of the other components) for a price. But they typically do this by replacing the item and destroying the old one. And the difference between that and a true repair matters from an environmental perspective.

⬐ dpkonofa

This is not true. Apple does not say your phone is a brick and they don't destroy old devices. They disassemble them and re-use the working components to build remanufactured devices for warranty use. They literally have multi-million dollar machines that are built specifically to be able to take apart old iPhones component by component to allow them to be reused or reintegrated into the manufacturing process for warranty devices.

This is the kind of stuff I talk about when I say that people like you are hurting the R2R movement. Either you're not aware of these things or you're intentionally being misleading to try and push people into supporting R2R. In both cases, you're doing a disservice to the discussion.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17258180/apple-daisy-ipho...

⬐ nicoburns

I still think you ought to be able to take your phone to 3rd party repair shop and get it fixed. And that Apple (or whoever) should be forced to facilitate this to some extent.

⬐ dpkonofa

You can do that. Apple even offers a certification program for repair shops to get genuine parts so long as they do the repairs up to Apple's standards and via their procedures. They do facilitate this completely.

⬐ kolvis

That whole certification program was a PR stunt.

⬐ larossmann

>Apple does not say your phone is a brick

If a customer has a basic problem, and you tell them that

a) You will not fix their phone b) You will not recover data from their phone. c) Your only option at Apple is to have them send your phone off to neverneverland, and get someone else's refurb for half the price of a new one

Did you tell them that their phone was now a red colored rocklike substance that can be used to build a house? No, bt that doesn't mean the person who left that store being told their phone was a "brick" was lying to you. You're effectively telling them their old phone is bricked. The fact that this was done for a long time over basics such as a charge port is sad.

Let's not even get into the fact that boards that had been inside iPhone 6+ and flexing for years were being used in refurbs. People who paid the replacement fee were given refurbs that were close to failure, and once warranty ran out, bye bye.

Whether or not a robot is going to go through your recycled device to give Apple a refurb to sell isn't what matters to the customer. When a customer who has a basic headphone jack issue gets told "there is nothing I can do for your device other than send it back to the manufacturer and get you a replacement in two weeks for $349 when your phone's resale value is $300" when a headphone jack goes bad, instead of "yes, let me perform a 15 minute repair using a cheap flex cable that a toddler could do", that sucks. Right to Repair isn't about forcing the manufacturer to fix it, either. It's about making sure the parts are made available, so that either a repair shop, or the consumer themself, can do that job rather than have their phone go off to a robot.

⬐ dpkonofa

Again, you're being disingenuous and it's really off-putting considering that everyone here knows your story. It's great that you have the skills to do the 15-minute repair with a cheap flex cable and it's great that you're training an army of toddlers to do this very repair process for every phone with a broken jack. The fact of the matter is that 99% of customers don't care if it's "their" phone that they have when they leave the store so long as it's indistinguishable for them. It doesn't matter to them if they get a whole new phone so long as they have their info on it and, if they're doing what they get told to do repeatedly by both the phones themselves and the staff at Apple, then they'll have a backup of their data that can be easily restored in minutes or, at worst, an hour or two.

If right to repair isn't about forcing manufacturers to fix things, then why is it about forcing manufacturers to facilitate anything that could hurt them or their brand? Third parties are free to make their own parts and they're free to perform repairs with parts from other devices. Your misleading argument basically amounts to "I want Apple to do work and keep stock for me so that I can make money at their expense without having to follow their standards or guidelines". That's nonsense.

⬐ larossmann

>"I want Apple to do work and keep stock for me so that I can make money at their expense without having to follow their standards or guidelines".

This is also incorrect. I don't understand why you find the need to continuously make things up throughout your posts in this thread.

The law is not asking Apple to stock the chip. It would be sufficient if they not restrict the manufacturer of the chip, from selling freely in the market.

Why do you repeatedly lie? It's really not cool.

>that 99% of customers don't care if it's "their" phone that they have when they leave the store so long as it's indistinguishable for them.

You are implying that most customers DO NOT CARE about paying $349 vs $50? They do not care about having to reload their data from scratch vs. leave in 10 minutes with everything as it was?

How can you imply I am being disingenuous and say this with a straight face?

>. It's great that you have the skills to do the 15-minute repair with a cheap flex cable and it's great that you're training an army of toddlers to do this very repair process for every phone with a broken jack

Yes, it is great - you can have as much salt as you want about an "army of toddlers", but yes, technicians doing repairs for $50 in 10 minutes without erasing data that the manufacturer wants $350, in 2 weeks, while erasing data is a GOOD thing. Feel free to make fun or handwave it away as much as you want, but in the real world people value their time & their money and don't wish to senselessly waste it.

>"I want Apple to do work and keep stock for me so that I can make money at their expense without having to follow their standards or guidelines". That's nonsense.

You are correct; this is nonsense, because you strawmanned & made it up, as you have most of what you've posted here. Nothing I have asked for would be an "expense" for the manufacturer.

Stop making things up. It's seriously not cool.

⬐ bengale

I’m in the EU so that probably skews my view on it. Tbh every time I hear your take on right to repair I find it lines up with where I stand. The more that you can be pushed as the voice of right to repair the better. I think the vast majority could agree on this position.

⬐ hilbert42

Thank you Steve. That's the world I grew up in and that's the way it should be.

⬐ Hangry

Yeah, I would LOVE it if I can actually snag detailed datasheets and examples without signing NDAs.

Why do companies sometimes try to hide how their components work?

⬐ rasz

Fun little known fact - most laptop "manufacturers", Apple excluded mind you, dont own the IP going into their products. They themselves dont have access to datasheets and schematics! You might think sure, Acer, but even HP does this!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manu...

Those products are designed and manufactured in China or Taiwan with minimal western input and heavy IP restrictions (in the other direction to what would make sense at first glance), often including exclusive service contracts. To conclude most laptop manufacturers dont really know how their products work in the first place :)