[HN Gopher] Microsoft Has Committed to Right to Repair
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Microsoft Has Committed to Right to Repair
Author : jonbaer
Score : 16 points
Date : 2021-10-08 19:59 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| brundolf wrote:
| I see this as a shot at Apple, just like Apple made a shot at
| Google over tracking. Apple is much more dependent than Microsoft
| on hardware sales, particularly tightly-integrated hardware, so
| they'd be burdened disproportionately by right-to-repair laws.
|
| Of course even if it comes from a cynical place it can still have
| a good impact.
| drewcoo wrote:
| _the company will study the environmental impact of right-to-
| repair and act on its findings by the end of the next year_
|
| The title seems misleading.
| adolph wrote:
| 1. show me don't tell me
|
| 2. make something worth repairing
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > show me don't tell me
|
| The reparability score of the Surface Laptop has increased with
| newer generations.
|
| 1 -
| https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+Tea...
|
| 2 -
| https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+2+T...
|
| 3 -
| https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+3++...
| rektide wrote:
| For all the fear we had of Microsoft Secure Boot & UEFI, it's
| mostly pretty good. Over a decade into it & none of the early
| fears we had seem to have manifested, about users losing control,
| about the terms of the deal in Secure Boot being updated to be
| exclusionary. Because of this, Windows running PCs have been
| capable of running alternate OSes, capable of being maintained by
| their owners indefinitely.
|
| AFAIK it's still impossible to delete the MS keys on many many
| systems, meaning secure boot will never ever be able to block
| Microsoft or the feds from loading whatever boot payload they
| want on your laptop,
|
| But the Microsoft resident keys feel three-hundred-thousand-times
| better than the fat-load-of-nothing we've gotten from Android
| handset manufacturers. I'd guess less than 1% of handsets
| probably have manufacturer unlockable (not hacked unlockable)
| bootloaders. This is so anti-right-to-repair it's sick. Once a
| phone stops receiving support, we basically have to throw it out,
| or hack the bootloader, to begin to repair them.
|
| Chromebook at least is better. Often there's a weird ritual of
| opening the case & removing a screw, then the device visibly
| shows it's in unsafe mode, but there's a well defined normal path
| to a device handing itself over to users. Apple interesting
| repeats the split: they seem ultra-hostile to unlocking mobile
| devices, but the new M1 powered macs? They went out the door
| capable of running alternate OSes, didn't try to stop that.
| Apple's first desktop-class chip, and while you can't buy the
| chip, they also haven't stopped outside users. I find that
| fascinating.
|
| Interesting to see John Carmack recently get Facebook to also
| start towards doing the right thing, at least on the old Oculus
| Go hardware[1] (not the newer Quest though)! Good job being able
| to announce that, two weeks before Microsoft announces they're
| going to do the right thing, support right-to-repair.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28647316
| https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1441496416463904768
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(page generated 2021-10-08 23:02 UTC)