[HN Gopher] Microsoft continues right to repair about face, make...
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft continues right to repair about face, makes its hardware
easier to fix
Author : rntn
Score : 159 points
Date : 2023-08-12 11:29 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techdirt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techdirt.com)
| [deleted]
| tmikaeld wrote:
| I'm not an English native speaker, but what does that headline
| even mean? " Microsoft Continues Right to Repair About Face"
| sigwinch28 wrote:
| The title feels a bit like a garden-path sentence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
| bleachedsleet wrote:
| An "about face" is a term commonly called in military cadence
| indicating the soldier should turn around, completing a 180
| degree turn. So when used colloquially it means someone or some
| business had a complete change of mind on some topic. In this
| case, Microsoft has changed their approach to repairability.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Ah, you learn something new every day! Thank you
| pessimizer wrote:
| English is mostly military metaphors, sports metaphors, and
| gambling metaphors stuck together.
| [deleted]
| greggsy wrote:
| 'About face' is refers to 'a reversal of attitude, behavior, or
| point of view'.
|
| In this case, they used to be against allowing users to repair
| their devices (using glue, usually), but they took an _about
| face_ and are making it easier.
| junon wrote:
| I'm a native speaker and I didn't even know what it meant.
| Don't worry lol.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| :-D
| pxeger1 wrote:
| "about face" means "complete change in stance"
| robertoandred wrote:
| It's missing several hyphens. "Microsoft continues right-to-
| repair about-face."
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's a clear sentence, but if you're not a native speaker who
| is up on current lingo and idioms, it's an ambiguous twisty
| maze of a sentence. I'm trying to translate it into Spanish
| (not native for me) that communicates the same feel, and I
| would be dizzy trying to read it.
| charles_f wrote:
| I had to search as well
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/about-face
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| I would also like to see "Right-to-repair" hyphenated, else
| it's the right to "repair about face".
|
| At first I was thinking Face-ID or Windows-Hello.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| According to Merriam-Webster, it should be About-Face with a
| hyphen in between.
| ghaff wrote:
| MW is pretty canonical for American English but the use or
| non-use of hyphens in many contexts (including this one)
| varies sufficiently that I'm not inclined to say one or the
| other is universally right or wrong. I'm not sure I would
| have used one here without looking at MW although I can see
| why it might be preferred.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| For words that can be confusing if not read as tacked on to
| the next (or if read as being connected to the previous one
| instead of the next one) then the hyphenation is strongly
| recommended to avoid misparsing.
| chaostheory wrote:
| It's not perfect, but I like Microsoft under Nadella's reign.
| temac wrote:
| If we are talking about Microsoft as a whole, then there is no
| "about face" unless they change their mind implied by their
| planned obsolescence decision about Windows 11 not even running
| on Zen 1 or Skylake for no real reason.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| As long as there are no board schematics provided, things are not
| reparable. Just certain modules containing 100s-1000s of
| components can be changed (and thrown directly into the trash).
| greggsy wrote:
| Is that where faults really occur though? Could repair shops
| troubleshoot and repair a bad trace or capacitor on a multi-
| layer board?
|
| I recognise that there is environmental and functional value in
| repairing a $600 part, but the reality is that it's not
| currently economical, even with schematics.
| junon wrote:
| > Could repair shops troubleshoot and repair a bad trace or
| capacitor on a multi-layer board?
|
| With schematics, in certain scenarios, absolutely.
| naikrovek wrote:
| not for less than the cost of a new board. not at scale.
|
| a small shop can do it if they grow slowly. a component-
| level repair shop run by Microsoft which did not swap
| parts, but repaired them, can not scale quickly. there just
| isn't that much talent available to do this, and even when
| there is, it would be tight, economically.
|
| it costs Microsoft less to build a main board than the
| price they sell it for. the hourly time of the repair
| person multiplied by the time to diagnose, repair, test,
| document, and clean a main board would quickly go beyond
| what a new one costs Microsoft.
|
| component-level repair just is not feasible at scale.
|
| should they make schematics available anyway? yes.
| Zagitta wrote:
| Except if the environmental cost wasn't externalized it
| would be unfeasible to _not_ do component level repair at
| scale.
|
| Another aspect to this is that it board repairs could be
| made significantly easier if companies bothered designing
| boards with proper test points and expected values
| documented in a diagnostics manual. Just take a look at
| how old school oscilloscopes and other test equipment was
| designed with not only full schematics but well defined
| diagnosis procedures.
| blackoil wrote:
| A repair person near customer in US may have a very large
| environmental cost.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Why would you have it repaired by an expensive American
| when someone in China will do it for next to nothing?
| [deleted]
| not_your_vase wrote:
| There are small specialized shops doing that using schematics
| that fell off the schematics-delivering-truck. Their success
| rate is not 100%, but enough to make a living. If it could be
| done officially, even with real support from the originator
| companies, it could be even better economically.
|
| Doing these programs is just hindering the real right-to-
| repair cause. They pretend that these programs help, but once
| they get bored of selling these parts 3 years later, nothing
| changes. Everything becomes e-waste at the exact moment when
| it was planned in the original powerpoint they created before
| starting the development of the product.
|
| At the same time if you know which capacitor to change, you
| will be able to do it 50 years later too (with a bit of hand-
| dexterity) - or you can ask someone else to do it for you. It
| is not expected that whatever basecomponent will go out of
| production (with the exception of specialized MCUs). An "xbox
| controller left trigger sensitivity assembly (rev 6)" on the
| other hand was never meant to be manufactured longer than the
| life of a domestic hamster.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Louis Rossman ran a profitable repair shop doing precisely
| that. Lots of minor damage like water damage that kills a
| computer is just a board-level single fuse or chip
| replacement. Some specific computer models have weaknesses
| where you can diagnose it pretty quickly.
| Vogtinator wrote:
| "ran"? AFAIK he still does, he just moved from New York to
| Austin, Texas.
| 533474 wrote:
| Indeed, like those old CRT service manuals....Any new
| legislation on the matter should promote sharing of schematics
| or at least a substantial list of troubleshooting
| tips...reverse engineering modern multi-layer boards is such a
| pain otherwise...
| bpye wrote:
| Afaik framework does provide those, MNT Reform is obviously
| fully open - any others?
| zlg_codes wrote:
| I really don't trust Microsoft to stay on the correct side of
| anything. They might play along for now, but how long?
|
| Generally, I consider Microsoft software and hardware to be of
| lesser quality than others. I cannot trust that my ownership of
| the computer will be respected.
| notatoad wrote:
| Yeah, calling this an about-face on right-to-repair seems
| wildly optimistic.
|
| Making some products that are repairable is really not the same
| thing as supporting your right to repair any product you own.
| prirun wrote:
| When Microsoft does not have market-share lead, they are pro-
| customer in that market - hardware in this case. If Microsoft has
| the leading market-share and doesn't feel threatened, they are
| anti-customer, ie, Windows.
|
| This usually holds for any large corporation.
|
| "Elsewhere, Microsoft has been doing a better job ensuring that
| consumers have access to both service manuals and essential parts
| needed to independently repair the company's hardware, ranging
| from its Surface tablets and laptops to Xbox game controllers."
|
| Microsoft's Surface tablets and laptops (I didn't even know they
| sold laptops!) are a blip compared to Apple. Notably absent are
| Xbox _consoles_ ; they don't have a market-share lead in
| consoles, although though with their recent acquisition, they
| might in a few years. So yeah, no console right-to-repair
| nonsense.
|
| Corporations are just like people: they act in their own
| interest, with the big difference that most people are moral and
| will consider how their actions might adversely affect others
| while corporations don't give a shit.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| > This usually holds for any large corporation.
|
| This is the whole concept of market competition being a good
| thing for customers. Its also the thing that is hugely lacking
| in most major industry sectors because of decades of mergers
| and laws making it harder for new entries.
|
| As you've pointed out, Microsoft will screw over customers the
| nanosecond it sees it can get away with it.
| nolok wrote:
| > Notably absent are Xbox consoles; they don't have a market-
| share lead in consoles, although though with their recent
| acquisition, they might in a few years.
|
| It's important to understand that Xbox is almost a non entity
| in the rest of the world, it's irrelevant in Japan and distant
| third in Europe (beside UK where it's first/equal with
| playstation). Xbox 360 carved a bit of a share in the rest of
| europe but then Xbox One destroyed that in one fell swoop and
| it never recovered since.
| dijit wrote:
| As a person who has worked in the AAA video games industry
| for nearly a decade now: this is the truth; though actually a
| bit more dire than you make it.
|
| From what I recall XB1 had a really _mild_ advantage in north
| America which looked striking because it was a mere 50% of
| PS4 in every other market.
|
| With PS5/XBX the gap is even wider in favour of the
| playstation.
|
| Notably PC players are around the same number as XB1 players,
| though are slightly overrepresented in Europe compared to
| other markets.
| qwytw wrote:
| MS is(has?) merged Xbox with PC PC gaming. Counting Xbox
| separately might not make much sense anymore when they are
| no different to locked down budget gaming PCs which can
| only access the MS store.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| They really haven't been merged in a meaningful sense;
| the PC gaming market is predominantly focused around
| other stores than the MS store, particularly Steam, and
| Xbox can't/won't have anything to do with that.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I wish they would lose the OS market and stop adding all the BS
| that has been there since roughly Windows 8 through to 11.
|
| I want accounts that arent linked to my hotmail so fully
| offline accounts should be the default, zero ads to buy office.
| Zero preinstalled garbage apps. Let me buy a Windows Pro for
| Devs license that comes super stripped down, even Cortana is
| fully removed. I want no distractions from my work with
| preinstalled garbage.
|
| Microsoft I will pay way more than whatever Pro goes for, and
| more than your ads give you back, since I eventually rip it all
| out of my OS. Also all metrics off by default.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > I want accounts that arent linked to my hotmail so fully
| offline accounts should be the default, zero ads to buy
| office. Zero preinstalled garbage apps. Let me buy a Windows
| Pro for Devs license that comes super stripped down, even
| Cortana is fully removed. I want no distractions from my work
| with preinstalled garbage.
|
| A version of Windows like that exists, but you can't buy it.
|
| It's called Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 (21H2).
|
| Howver, there's a free evaluation version available from MS.
| If you're really that interested in it, I'm sure you'll
| figure out how to promote that "evaluation" version to
| "retail" and then kms activate it.
|
| I'm daily driving it. And loving it.
| deadlyllama wrote:
| Build yourself a Windows install USB stick with Rufus using
| its automatic ISO download system. When you write the image
| it has an option to make the installer create a local account
| and turn all the stupid prompts off.
| rollcat wrote:
| Oh, same thing about the app stores. When Epic vs Apple popped
| up, MS was very vocal about what constitutes a fair cut for the
| store operator - as long as it was desktop or mobile. Games
| however, according to MS, are obviously very different - their
| XBox store actually making them decent money is totally
| unrelated.
|
| I guess good for the consumer, as long as MS is losing a bit.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| > Microsoft's Surface tablets and laptops rely on Windows.
|
| Seems a bit contrary to your opinion that one product can be
| both PRO and anti-consumer, no?
| appplication wrote:
| This is a good observation and holds more broadly, in that
| corporate values are not aligned with what is right, but with a
| market niche that can be captured by adopting these vales. Lyft
| being the "do good" company vs Uber. Meta open sourcing their
| models vs OpenAI. Apple being privacy centric vs Google.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Remember also that Lyft's original positioning was the "cool
| bro" company that thought that "mustache rides" and fist
| bumps were the funniest thing ever. That was when Uber was
| the "rich bro" company. When Uber became the bad guy, Lyft
| became the good guy.
| m463 wrote:
| Honestly, Microsoft should not be in the hardware business, it
| competes with their OEM customers that load windows.
|
| Personally, I think of microsoft hardware as a "proof of
| concept" or "reference design", sort of like how intel has nucs
| or nvidia has founder's edition cards.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > When X does not have market-share lead, they are pro-
| customer.. If X has the leading market-share and doesn't feel
| threatened, they are anti-customer
|
| Ye, we've known for over 110 years that giant Monopoly-
| capitalism doesn't work.
|
| But apparently neither Congress nor denizens of this forum
| accept that simple truth, and are happy to approve corporate
| mergers that reduce competition.
| bobboies wrote:
| Somewhere along the line they changed the Xbox UI to sell more
| widgets. I hate that--let me see all my apps first and
| foremost, not apps that I don't want. If I'm in a shopping mood
| I'll open the store... and they brought that same pattern to
| Win11. Stop selling us shit we don't want please MSFT.
|
| Customer first vs corporation first.
|
| The truth is, if they don't see lots of returns on software
| they force it down customers throat. If that doesn't generate
| enough revenue they just kill it on the spot.
|
| Microsoft had some great products but it's hard to want to buy
| anything from them now because it'll be EOL in one or two
| years... feel bad for folks who bought surface duos, to name a
| more recent one.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| This is very obviously not always true. For example, the
| Microsoft Surface line has _always_ been a tiny blip in it 's
| market and yet iFixit rated 5 years of products the lowest
| score possible on their repairbility scale[0]. And it is not
| unusual at all for non-leading companies to have pretty anti-
| competitive practices.
|
| This whole comment feels like "yeah, well don't give them
| credit for it because they don't really mean it".
|
| I don't give a shit if they mean it. If they are doing pro-
| consumer things I'm going to reward them and if they stop doing
| it, I'm going to stop rewarding them. That's how you send a
| signal and get broadly better practices. Making up complicated
| theories for why you still shouldn't be happy about good things
| is both silly and doesn't help anything get better.
|
| [0]https://www.ifixit.com/tablet-repairability?sort=score
| HeWhoLurksLate wrote:
| The surface laptops were also originally pushing the limits
| of slimness to push manufacturers to make pretty windows
| laptops, too, right?
| 666satanhimself wrote:
| [dead]
| mcpackieh wrote:
| When Microsoft isn't in the lead they _might_ be pro-
| consumer. But not necessarily so, as you have found.
|
| The reverse is far more certain. When they're in the lead,
| they're assholes.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I don't give a shit if they mean it. If they are doing pro-
| consumer things I'm going to reward them and if they stop
| doing it, I'm going to stop rewarding them.
|
| The issue is that you have to think two steps ahead.
|
| Microsoft wants to sell hardware, so they sometimes make
| hardware customers actually want. Reward them, you might say
| -- buy one of those instead of a Chromebook or a Mac.
|
| But then you get Windows with it. It pushes all of
| Microsoft's services on you, and if you're not paying
| attention your files end up on OneDrive and your documents
| end up in Microsoft-proprietary formats, and then you're
| stuck with that even if the next Surface goes back to being
| unrepairable.
|
| Now, you could buy a Surface and put Linux on it, for
| example. But that's not going to save you if that's not what
| you actually do.
| tomcam wrote:
| > I don't give a shit if they mean it. If they are doing pro-
| consumer things I'm going to reward them and if they stop
| doing it, I'm going to stop rewarding them.
|
| It wasn't until a couple of years ago, near the end of a long
| life, that I realized it's much more humane to reward good
| behavior than to keep crapping on those who change their ways
| "too late".
| supazek wrote:
| How are you rewarding them? By upvoting HN posts?
| dewert wrote:
| That's an uncharitable interpretation. They likely mean
| they will buy Microsoft hardware until Microsoft becomes
| customer-unfriendly in this space.
|
| Whether that's a much bigger signal than an upvote might be
| debatable, though.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Pro consumer means different things to different consumers.
| Like I could care less about ease to fix. But make it light
| with good battery life and good performance that's what I
| care about as a consumer. If you have sacrifice any of those
| to make it easier to fix then it's a bad "consumer" trade off
| IMO.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| In general these things are not actually trade offs. The
| amount of weight required to use an M.2 SSD or SODIMMs
| instead of soldering them is only a couple of grams, for
| example. It has no perceptible effect on any of the things
| you care about.
|
| It might, however, save the company a few cents per unit.
| At the cost of making the device unupgradable -- which
| lowers your resale value even if _you_ never do it. So they
| cost you dozens to hundreds of dollars so they can save a
| few cents. That 's customer-hostile.
|
| And, of course, the other reason they do it is _to_ make
| the device unupgradable, so you have to buy another one
| sooner. Which is downright malicious.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Would you call it complicated to simply not be interested in
| software that reverts settings and babysits you, thwarting
| your control of the machine? Windows 10 and 11 do that and
| have telemetry baked in.
|
| I wouldn't consider valuing one's security or privacy as a
| complicated theory.
|
| Maybe you're more easily swayed but it takes more than a
| token "hey guiz we make repairable stuff" from the very firm
| that has tried to kill alternatives since its inception, to
| change my mind. It turns out that reputation matters for a
| business and I still remember the 90s.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| You're letting perfect be the enemey of the good. It's
| possible to do two things at once: say good job on
| repairability and also, bad job on software.
| jfghi wrote:
| I'd frame it more as describing inherent nature versus a
| minor attribute.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Before this, your options were "Windows with lots of
| telemetry + non-repairable hardware". Today your option
| is "Windows with lots of telemetry + repairable
| hardware". That sounds like a strict improvement to me,
| even if I agree with you on the issues with Windows as an
| OS
|
| I am not personally in the market for these devices right
| now, but my work device is required to on Windows, and I
| am in a small enough org that my input would be sought if
| I needed a new device. I would very happily ask for a
| more repairable machine compared to a less repairable
| one, and having additional repairable options is a good
| thing.
|
| And if someone came to me asking for advice on what to
| get, but was unwilling to switch to linux, I'm glad that
| I have some new repairable options to provide them.
|
| Yes, the telemetry in windows is bad, but this is still a
| strictly superior situation that what we had previously,
| and it doesn't make the telemetry thing worse. I just
| don't get how bringing up other things that haven't
| improved (and may never improve!) invalidates the fact
| that this is better.
|
| Repairability seems to very slowly be becoming more
| common in consumer devices. Hopefully, it becomes
| standard enough that it's not something we have to be
| interested in, and focus can shift to things like
| software. But for now, both suck, and both need to get
| better, and I'm going to be happy any time either one of
| them improves.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Right, reparability is part of the inherent nature of a
| laptop, while user-hostile software is a minor attribute:
| it can be worked around (group policies rarely break) or
| replaced.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| It is possible to do those things but they strike me as
| two positions that cancel each other out.
|
| Perfect is the enemy of the good, but not for the same
| reason most posit. Why settle for good enough when we can
| push companies to do better? Why settle for "at least I
| can repair it" when it's both possible and sustainable to
| ship quality hardware _and_ software?
|
| Taking babysteps toward acceptability isn't really
| something I'm willing to budge on. Frogs are boiled
| incrementally, too.
| tomcam wrote:
| It's possible you don't have experience working in a
| large company? It's a bit of a miracle that any hardware
| project gets done in my opinion. Delivering on time is
| enormously difficult. Adding "would be good" features
| like maintainability means cutting something else, likely
| more cost, and a schedule hit. That costs the whole team
| at review time.
|
| Even the most devoted person can have trouble moving the
| needle without exquisite political sensibilities. There
| are plenty of people working in toward the goals you
| describe inside Microsoft already, but it's insanely hard
| to get things like this to critical mass.
|
| Very often in real life we have only bad choices.
| RandomWorker wrote:
| When it comes to choosing between a Mac and a PC, many people opt
| for a Mac because of its superior build quality. However, it's
| worth noting that Apple products have consistently received low
| scores from iFixit, indicating that they are difficult to repair.
| For Microsoft to win, maybe the strategy is to advocate for
| repairability and encourage Apple to prioritize it in their
| designs. Thereby taking Apple s focus away from innovation to
| repairability.
|
| iPhone 14 was underwhelming in sooooo many ways, but it's
| repairability went up! My sense is that the iPhone 15 will lack
| innovation due to the USB C conversion... and we will see what
| the iPhone 16 will bring.
|
| But legal troubles force Apple's hand, and they can't focus on
| adding value in other ways.
| rat9988 wrote:
| The usb c tangent is kind of weird. It feels like an anti
| regulation stand for the sake of it.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| It's not like switching to USB-C will be any great technical
| feat for Apple. There is already USB-C on the iPad, and the
| iPhone is just a smaller iPad. It won't even cost anything:
| they are going to need to reconfigure their production lines
| anyway for whatever other changes they make in that
| generation.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > It won't even cost anything:
|
| It's costing Apple probably tens of millions of dollars of
| annual revenue from Lightning cable/connector sales and MFi
| licensing fees to other vendors.
|
| At the same time, Lightning has been getting a bit long-in-
| the-tooth (USB2.0 speeds are impractical for making local
| backups of iPhone photo libraries) - as much as I want to
| believe that Apple would have switched the iPhone over to
| USB-C within a few years, I realise it's equally possible
| they'd have introduced a "Lightning 2" or similar.
|
| ---
|
| There are still rumours out there that the iPhone 15 could
| be port-less in Europe, and so only charge via Qi - which
| coincides with Apple actually increasing the physical spec
| gap between North American vs. East-Asian models of iPhone
| for example (e.g. no SIM tray in NA vs. but people in SE
| Asia get physical dual-nano-SIM trays - and still no return
| of the headphone jack.
| qwytw wrote:
| > There are still rumours out there that the iPhone 15
| could be port-less in Europe
|
| I'm not sure taking a significant hit to their revenue
| would really worth just to avoid using usb-c.
| rvba wrote:
| They earn a lot from their propertiary cables.
|
| Lots of apple fans overpay to shpw that they can overpay.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| No-one is being ostentatious about owning genuine iPhone
| Lightning cables.
|
| Besides, Anker and Belkin's cables are way better.
| danielhep wrote:
| Anker and Belkin are absolutely paying Apple
| certification fees.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| This is an incredibly bewildering argument. It seems to imply
| that getting rid of the worthless lightning connector somehow
| means the _entire company_ can 't focus on other aspects of the
| product?
|
| By this same...train of logic. We shouldn't legislate phones
| won't explode. Or Samsung won't innovate in other ways, because
| they're too busy keeping their phones from exploding!
| realusername wrote:
| > iPhone 14 was underwhelming in sooooo many ways, but it's
| repairability went up
|
| Its theoretically more repairable but since they increased the
| number of pairing issues, I'd say that their latest model is
| the most unrepairable iPhone yet.
| haunter wrote:
| We need this for consoles too!
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The best way to repair an xbox shouldn't be with a home oven
| but here we are
| smileybarry wrote:
| That's the Xbox 360. From 18 years ago.
| 666satanhimself wrote:
| [dead]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-12 23:01 UTC)