[HN Gopher] Steve Wozniak speaks on Right to Repair [video]
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Steve Wozniak speaks on Right to Repair [video]
Author : reisub0
Score : 219 points
Date : 2021-07-08 10:42 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| deregulateMed wrote:
| 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.
| Envec83 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| howaboutnope wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| These quotes are good food for thought. I've never read
| anything from Chomsky. Any books in particular that you would
| recommend?
| swiley wrote:
| 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."
| howaboutnope wrote:
| 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
| disruptthelaw wrote:
| I'm with you comrade
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27762177
|
| I too got downvoted
| passivate wrote:
| 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.
| forinti wrote:
| 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.
| trentnix wrote:
| And imagine how much better each of those things would be if
| they were held up to additional scrutiny!
| chrisseaton wrote:
| 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'.
| swiley wrote:
| 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.
| arriu wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Bell got lots of government money to grow.
|
| It's like if Apple grew because of government intervention.
| Oh wait...
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| 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.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| 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)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Right. These government bodies didn't appear overnight. They
| were created for a reason.
| bserge wrote:
| Sounds like early industrial/Victorian era Britain.
| itismetheidiot wrote:
| 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.
| swiley wrote:
| 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.)
| joshgree88 wrote:
| Here here!
| endgame wrote:
| It's "hear, hear".
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| From someone from the UK, it's more like "Errrrerrrrr"
|
| https://youtu.be/CLSq1h7AvkE?t=70
| afarviral wrote:
| Hare here!
| FourHand451 wrote:
| There, there!
| [deleted]
| g_p wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| dwild wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| 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.
| gohbgl wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| aequitas wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"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 wrote:
| 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.
| overscore wrote:
| Environmental and consumer rights regulations are also
| compatible with a free market.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| 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.
| aequitas wrote:
| You can't opt-out of patents. You cannot enter the market
| with a product that infringes on a patent.
| overscore wrote:
| > 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.
| passivate wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| kiba wrote:
| _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 wrote:
| Atleast for software. Most software patents I read are
| silly.
| [deleted]
| bserge wrote:
| 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.
| disruptthelaw wrote:
| 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
| dlivingston wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| 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?
| deorder wrote:
| No mention of Louis Rossmann to who Wozniak is replying to?
|
| https://youtu.be/8hVjvKQ5CXY
| AlexeyBrin wrote:
| 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.
| Popegaf wrote:
| 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?
| GhostVII wrote:
| 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.
| htk wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| MayeulC wrote:
| 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.
| dgb23 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| nicoburns wrote:
| 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.
| II2II wrote:
| 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.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bengale wrote:
| 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.
| dpkonofa wrote:
| 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.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| foerbert wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| blooalien wrote:
| 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. :)
| tqwhite wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Why didn't he just call a repairman?
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The Commodore 64 was much more akin to the Raspberry Pi's.
| You didn't have to be rich to have one.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Still 3 times cheaper than the Apple II.
| gfxgirl wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| _Microsoft_ would be the manufacturer.
| tyingq wrote:
| There were some price wars later where the C64 and some
| other 8 bit PCs became reasonably affordable.
| swiley wrote:
| 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.
| blooalien wrote:
| 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.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| tqwhite wrote:
| 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.
| indymike wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| farias0 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| nicetryguy wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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
| iseethroughbs wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| omgwtfbbq wrote:
| 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.
| fsflover wrote:
| > 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
| smoldesu wrote:
| 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.
| shawnz wrote:
| Possibly relevant context:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hVjvKQ5CXY
| boyadjian wrote:
| 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
| gamesbrainiac wrote:
| Steve Wozniak is such a pure soul.
| jsiepkes wrote:
| 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.
| libertine wrote:
| crypto = dirty/bad/unpure souls, or it just tarnishes purity?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Hadn't heard of that, efforce.io, huh, "securitized energy
| savings", sounds a bit like ENRON to me.
| s_dev wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > so pure soul might be a bit of a stretch.
|
| This is exactly where you imply it.
| jsiepkes wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| 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.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| kipchak wrote:
| 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?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The no thanks attitude might be at odds with a healthier
| environment. It's like the tragedy of the commons.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Making components user replaceable rather than soldered
| in requires more connectors so more waste.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Shops in China can replace iPhone components with
| soldering using the proper equipment.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Great! So what's the problem?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Probably the fact that Apple arrests the people
| building/distributing these machines without punity.
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Apple doesn't allow or release parts.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| So go to Apple or an authorised servicer to get it
| repaired?
| swiley wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Many components are disabled from reuse with software.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Apple refurbishes or recycles those components for you.
| aequitas wrote:
| 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.
| dijit wrote:
| 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.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bengale wrote:
| 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.
| kevincox wrote:
| So what?
|
| Apple profits are not good for society as a whole. I don't see
| why we should optimize for Apple's profits.
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