[HN Gopher] My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expe...
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My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix
Author : TobiasBerg
Score : 352 points
Date : 2026-03-29 19:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tobiasberg.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (tobiasberg.net)
| hurricanepootis wrote:
| This isn't an issue with macbook keyboards, a lot of windows
| laptops have their keyboards riveted to the C cover of a laptop.
| matt_heimer wrote:
| isn't an issue ONLY with macbook keyboards. It is absolutely an
| issue that shouldn't exist.
| hurricanepootis wrote:
| Yes, my bad. I totally agree with that it does indeed suck.
| I've had to replace the C cover of my laptop before for
| reasons not related to the keyboard (a screw post broke
| because Dell had the bright of idea of attaching a metal
| screw post to the body with plastic). I ended up fixing that
| issue, but the keyboard that was installed in the C cover was
| noticeably shittier than my old one.
|
| I'm now on a Framework 13, and it's been pretty fun so far.
| jwlake wrote:
| ifixit sells just the keyboards, why doesn't that work?
|
| https://www.ifixit.com/products/macbook-pro-14-a2442-a2779-a...
| MrDOS wrote:
| The article is ten paragraphs (two of which are four words or
| shorter). The entire sixth paragraph is dedicated to answering
| that question.
| mosselman wrote:
| Someone posted a video on how to slam out the rivets with a
| screwdriver.
| SkiFire13 wrote:
| I don't see a replacement guide link on that page, but
| curiously there's this note:
|
| > The aluminum upper case and installation screws are not
| included.
|
| I would assume you likely need those too, as the article also
| mentions.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| Wouldn't the screws in your existing generally be reusable
| for this replacement?
| mh- wrote:
| Yes, they're not highly torqued or anything. I would reuse
| them even if it _did_ include new screws.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| the keyboard in the current macbook pro is RIVETED.
| k310 wrote:
| Go figure. MacBook Neo Is the Most Repairable MacBook in 14 Years
| [0]
|
| Much as a laptop would suit me, I opted for a mini and a large
| display.
|
| Come keyboard time, I was ready to spend $$$$$ for an Apple
| keyboard, but the only backlit ones come on laptops. I'm using a
| Logitech now, with the option of charging it all the time, else
| the lights dim themselves to conserve battery.
|
| Yes, I was 19 once. And three times after that. But there we go
| again, stuff designed for 19 year-olds.
|
| How about this? (image at imgbb.com)
|
| https://i.ibb.co/66RZd3b/mbp16-m3-max-01.jpg (JK)
| k310 wrote:
| Replying to myself because I forgot the reference [0]
|
| I'm happy with the downvotes if they're for the JK laptop
| keyboard mashup.
|
| Otherwise, pretty much as others have posted. Peripherals otta
| be peripheral, not welded in place.
|
| I worked around the dilemma.
|
| Twice.
|
| An iPad pro has a keyboard, trackpad and BT mouse.
|
| And I have a doorstop iMac because of a somehow dead display.
| (repair $$$$$ )
|
| I very much favor separate everything.
|
| Peace.
|
| [0] https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-
| most-r...
| BoredPositron wrote:
| What MacBook is it? If you don't have the insane butterfly
| switches single keys are pretty repairable now.
| drdirk wrote:
| My MacBook Pro M1 keyboard repair costed >700EUR, this is not a
| butterfly keyboard. So also new models have an expensive
| keyboard replacement.
|
| My previous MacBook Pro keyboard was a butterfly keyboard and
| also broke, but got replaced for free. I don't feel I am a
| heavy user as the MacBook Pro is mostly connected to an
| external keyboard and am pretty annoyed by apples keyboard
| quality (based on my sample size of 2).
| brailsafe wrote:
| I think those are just the keycaps, not the switches or the
| actual board underneath
| mhjkl wrote:
| You can remove and replace the switches too
| KnuthIsGod wrote:
| My first computer was a Mac Plus.
|
| I got to experience Apple's customer hostile practices.
|
| Many years ago l decided never to buy an Apple product again.
| justinator wrote:
| AppleCare is honestly a great deal, especially for laptops. M1
| Macbook Pros from 2020 are humming along just fine for regular
| people who see no reason to upgrade.
|
| The future is now, old man.
| tim-tday wrote:
| Bought AppleCare for my AirPods. Never again.
| bombcar wrote:
| AppleCare is only worth it for expensive things with big
| repair costs; the "repair fee" for AirPods is such a high
| percentage of the replacement price that it just is not
| worth it.
| phil21 wrote:
| AppleCare is leaps and bounds better than any other
| insurance you can buy for mobile or laptops.
|
| For accessories I don't see the point, those are
| effectively disposable wear items.
|
| Ironically a large part of deciding to migrate to an iPhone
| from android was final frustrations with even Google
| purchased devices under warranty coupled with hardware
| quality requiring repairs. My wife's experience with
| AppleCare won me over.
|
| If nothing else it's first party insurance. I will never
| purchase device insurance offered via a third party ever
| again. Either its first party so I'm dealing with the place
| I bought it or nothing at all.
| echoangle wrote:
| > AppleCare is leaps and bounds better than any other
| insurance you can buy for mobile or laptops.
|
| Which doesn't tell you a lot because they are pretty bad,
| too. Being better doesn't mean it's a good offer.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Insurance for things you can afford to replace never
| makes sense anyway. The expected cost of insurance will
| always exceed the expected cost of replacement in the
| long run.
|
| Unless for some reason you know you will be breaking your
| device much more than the average person.
|
| Insurance is for things that are unlikely to ever happen
| but would financially ruin you if they did.
| klausa wrote:
| >Insurance for things you can afford to replace never
| makes sense anyway. The expected cost of insurance will
| always exceed the expected cost of replacement in the
| long run.
|
| "Peace of mind" is not free.
|
| Paying ~ten bucks a month to insure my phone and not have
| to worry about it getting damaged is worth it to me, even
| if I could afford to replace it if I broke it; because
| now I just _don't worry about it_.
| dbdr wrote:
| Why would you worry about it if you can afford to replace
| it?
|
| If you say you worry about the cost, shouldn't you worry
| even more about the higher cost of the insurance? Sure,
| for one item the variance is higher if you are uninsured,
| but if you have several such items, variance goes down,
| and you are saving all the more money.
| klausa wrote:
| Because even though I can afford to buy/repair a new
| phone if I break mine; it still _feels_ terrible to have
| to spend 500+ bucks because I was a dumbass.
|
| I literally toss my phone to my couch or my bed from
| across the room dozens of times a week without worrying
| about misjudging the throw (which happens more than I'd
| like to admit), toss is on the ground at the gym, have no
| problems taking long baths with it, washing it under the
| sink if it gets dirty, and do dozens of things I would
| not do if I had to pay a full price if I ended up
| actually breaking it.
|
| Having AC+, lets me treat the device with the level of
| carelessness that is worth the price to me.
|
| Math-wise with how durable recent flagship devices are,
| you are probably correct that I'd be better off
| financially to just accept that I will break a phone
| every couple of years and just eat the cost.
|
| But psychologically, I'm happier paying ~120bucks a year,
| than $500 in repair fees once in a while.
| dbdr wrote:
| Yes, the argument is that the entity providing the
| insurance is surely earning more income that they are
| paying out since in addition to payouts, they also have
| overhead costs and must be profitable. Said another way,
| their customers are paying more than they receive, on
| average. That's a mathematical and economical certainty.
|
| You are right that it might still feel better to you to
| pay regularly instead. That's subjective.
|
| Knowing that you will likely end up paying less in the
| long term if you don't pay the insurance might help
| getting over that feeling, but that's a personal choice
| in the end.
| klausa wrote:
| It's bordering on insurance fraud and I usually trade-in
| my devices back to Apple so I don't bother with it; but
| there's probably at least one case where both you and
| Apple come out ahead financially.
|
| AC+ includes what they call "Express Replacement
| Service", where you will send you an entirely new device
| as part of your claim, and they'll reuse your old one for
| parts.
|
| If you _just happen_ to accidentally fall with your phone
| in hand right after the new ones come out, the delta in
| price between "a scuffed up, used 1-year old phone" and
| "brand new refurbished device from Apple" is higher than
| the price of the insurance and incidental damage fees.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The peace of mind I have is that the $1000 for a new
| phone is sitting in my bank account. If I break my phone,
| I can get it replaced, and if I don't, I get to keep the
| money. While buying Apple care is ensuring you lose since
| you pay for a new phone whether you break it or not.
| ginko wrote:
| >Insurance for things you can afford to replace never
| makes sense anyway. The expected cost of insurance will
| always exceed the expected cost of replacement in the
| long run.
|
| Not sure about Applecare but Lenovo has support packages
| where if your thinkpad breaks they'll send a technician
| over to your place to fix it within 24 hours. That's
| definitely worth it for a work device IMO.
| lefra wrote:
| I bought this kind of insurance for my PhD (Dell laptop,
| same 24 hours technician on site guarantee). Although
| quite expensive, I don't regret it: my screen and
| motherboard got replaced about two years in.
| phil21 wrote:
| Definitely agreed, to a point. Phones I used to break so
| often it seemed worth it, although a lot seemingly had to
| do with device quality vs. me being especially clumsy. My
| iPhone has been dropped, dunked in the bath, etc. just as
| much as my past Pixels but is going on 3 years now. I
| never made it a year previously.
|
| My laptop I'm on the fence about. It's a $3,000 machine
| that isn't especially robust if dropped, but I haven't
| broken one in a decade or two. Probably won't pick it up
| on the next one I buy. The unrepairability of modern
| Macbooks is what got me to buy it in the first place
| though. An old Thinkpad I could self-insure for quite
| cheap because I had the ability to replace any component
| failure myself. Not so true on the Macbook. I also see it
| as travel insurance - I can walk into any Apple store in
| a major city and in theory get a replacement device on
| the spot. Of course that theory has yet to be strongly
| tested.
| alchemism wrote:
| As a longtime iPad Pro (large) user that always gets the
| AppleCare, I have walked out of the store with a brand
| new device a half-dozen times with only a few questions
| asked.
| radley wrote:
| I've never worried about AppleCare for my Apple products,
| until this year when I signed up for AppleCare One. I bought
| a few new devices, including the Studio Monitor XDR. For the
| XDR alone it's worth it, since replacing the screen is a
| multi-$1k repair.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I just looked up Apple Care. Costs $449 AUD (~$300 USD) for 3
| years of coverage on a MacBook Pro.
|
| A quick search shows that it's ~$500-$600 to fix the screen
| if it does break; I didn't bother looking up the keyboard but
| I'd assume it's much, much less.
|
| So basically, on the off chance that your MacBook does shit
| the bed in the most expensive way, you save ~$150 or so? But
| in the almost-certain case that your Macbook is fine, you're
| down $450?
|
| That is not a great deal at all, haha!
| klausa wrote:
| >A quick search shows that it's ~$500-$600 to fix the
| screen if it does break; I didn't bother looking up the
| keyboard but I'd assume it's much, much less.
|
| _The_ point of that the article you're commenting on, is
| that a keyboard replacement on a MacBook is very expensive.
| Why would you make that assumption?
|
| The "most expensive way" to shit the bed is also not the
| peripherals of the computer dying, it's the logic board
| giving up the ghost.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I'm a repair tech - hence made some assumptions that the
| author did not make.
|
| Have done riveted keyboards on non-Mac machines before
| and would be surprised if an independent shop charged
| more than about $150 USD for it. It's not that hard to
| do.
|
| You're right about the logic board being an extremely
| expensive fix, but it's also significantly less common
| than something like a keyboard, USB port, speaker or
| screen.
|
| This is also something extremely Australian-specific, but
| consumer guarantees would probably cover any logic board
| damage within the first 1-3 years anyway, regardless of
| AppleCare warranty.
| knivets wrote:
| What if your screen breaks or logic board? Top of the line
| MacBooks cost ~4-5k. I recently had to service a battery
| and they replaced a top case and a keyboard free of charge.
| I will continue paying for AppleCare as long as they will
| allow me
| subpixel wrote:
| You're underestimating the probability of multiple things
| needing attention over 5-7 years.
|
| That is baked into the price of AppleCare just like any
| insurance premium.
|
| I definitely think coverage should be free for 2 years
| though.
| akvadrako wrote:
| I had AppleCare when my keyboard failed. They blamed it on me
| because of an dent about 1mm wide I never noticed on the back
| corner.
|
| So you just get screwed twice.
| mattbillenstein wrote:
| Framework Laptop + some form of Linux - MacOS keeps getting worse
| and the hardware exceeding hard and expensive to repair.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| If they would have sprung for the AMD395+ in the latop @ 128GB,
| you'd have a fair comparison for AI compute.
| 0xedd wrote:
| HP Zbook G1a 14. OEM Linux support.
| zapnuk wrote:
| Framework Laptop is more expensive than a Macbook Air with all
| around worse hardware. For a framework 13 I'd have to pay
| 1900EUR with a 16GB setup. For 1450 I get a MBA with 24GB ram.
| Similar with a dell or lenovo who get smoked in performance
| comparisons.
|
| It might still be worth it for those who hugely value open
| source and repairability but as for value I think its save to
| say that Apple is currently in a league of their own. Even if
| the altest os update is a flop.
|
| Also, the Macbook has improved repairability. While its still
| not great its better than a few years ago.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| > Framework Laptop is more expensive than a Macbook Air with
| all around worse hardware.
|
| Is it though? I'd agree the hardware is less capable but if
| your Macbook anything is really just one 'top case' repair
| away from being more expensive. RAM failure is 'motherboard
| replace', the display? it is similarly expensive to replace.
|
| So I would agree that it is more expensive to purchase a
| Framework laptop than a Macbook laptop, but also feel it is
| more expensive to _own_ a Macbook laptop than a Framework
| laptop. Also I just replaced the screen on my FW13 not
| because it was broken but because they have one with 4x the
| pixels on it now. That 's not something I could have done
| with the Macbook.
| wat10000 wrote:
| What is the probability of those things failing during the
| time you have the MacBook? I've had Apple portables since
| they were called PowerBooks and the only problem I've had
| that wasn't caused by violence was a battery swelling, and
| that cost me something like $120 to replace, not a big
| deal. If you add 5% to the price, that's probably about
| your expected cost for repairs or premature replacements if
| you don't have a habit of damaging your equipment.
|
| If'd rather not take a low risk of a big repair/replacement
| bill and you don't mind helping Big Fruit make a bit more
| of a profit, you can pay them $50-150/year (depending on
| model) to take that risk. Multiply that by the number of
| years you expect to own the device to come up with a "real"
| cost including repairs/replacements.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| > What is the probability of those things failing during
| the time you have the MacBook?
|
| and
|
| > ... you can pay them $50-150/year (depending on model)
| to take that risk.
|
| These things are related, Apple knows what the failure
| rate in the field for their hardware is, and they "price
| in" that failure rate into their AppleCare costs. On my
| iPad pro, that's $90/year.
|
| That said, it is entirely a 'bet' on your part as to
| whether or not you're in a position to cover costs of
| repair/replacement in the event of damage. That depends
| on a lots of factors and includes how much you can
| tolerate not having the equipment for a while, Etc.
| stavros wrote:
| My Framework 13 is a bit long in the tooth. I can pay 529
| EUR to get a new mainboard and keep the same
| case/battery/speakers/camera/keyboard/mouse/screen/etc.
| Or, I can replace the keyboard for 32 EUR.
|
| It's not just repairs, to upgrade a Mac you have to throw
| away all that perfectly working hardware just to get a
| new mainboard.
| gertop wrote:
| > I can pay 529 EUR to get a new mainboard and keep the
| same
| case/battery/speakers/camera/keyboard/mouse/screen/etc.
|
| Or you can spend 50 euros more and get an entire new
| laptop that is not only much more powerful than your old
| framework but is almost as repairable: the neo.
|
| At some point your argument begins to work against you,
| you should just have talked about the keyword repair
| being cheap. Not how you can get a new motherboard for
| "only" 530 euros.
| exo762 wrote:
| > Or you can spend 50 euros more and get an entire new
| laptop that is not only much more powerful than your old
| framework but is almost as repairable: the neo.
|
| You forget to mention - less powerful than his old FW 13
| with new mainboard/CPU.
| aurareturn wrote:
| I assume he's referring to the AMD AI 340 for 530
| euros.[0]
|
| Macbook Neo 31% faster ST speed and a bit slower on the
| MT.[1]
|
| I wouldn't call the Neo less powerful than his 530 euros
| upgrade. In fact, I'd much rather have the faster ST
| speed in this kind of laptop. Most of the apps you're
| running with this class of laptops will be ST bound
| anyway.
|
| You can literally get a brand new Macbook Neo using Apple
| EDU pricing for the price of a slower AMD motherboard
| upgrade. This is why Framework is an absolutely terrible
| deal overall. I'm not even convinced that Framework is
| better for the environment since Apple laptops last
| extremely long and will very often have second and third
| hand buyers.
|
| [0]https://frame.work/nl/en/products/mainboard-amd-
| ai300?v=FRAN...
|
| [1]https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/17360869?
| baseli...
| mittensc wrote:
| I can configure a 1400E framework 13 with a bring-my-own ssd
| + linux.
|
| I can drop it down to 1050E without the ram if i take ram
| from my older laptop.
|
| Upgrading or fixing this is very easy. RAM/SSD i can take
| with me over multiple generations of a laptop.
|
| I can't do that on a macbook, if anything breaks there
| (screen, ssd, ram, keyboard, battery bulging...) I might as
| well buy another.
|
| Then there's the issue of macos... you're stuck with it, if
| you don't like it, it's a dealbreaker.
|
| There's also issue of waste... I can make a router/firewall
| from an old framework mobo. I can't do that with a macbook.
| zapnuk wrote:
| Sure, a poweruser can bring their own ram/ssd. But again
| they pay almost as much and have a worse system performance
| wise.
|
| Normal users don't profit from anything you listed. They do
| have to buy a notebook with all components, and thus
| currently have to pay more for linux/windows hardware
| compared to Apple.
|
| Also, RAM isn't backwards compatiple. Literally had this
| problem with my old ddr4 not fitting in the newer ddr5
| slots when my ddr5 acted up.
| bigyabai wrote:
| It's not just Tahoe; macOS is simply insufferable for many
| users. You can pitch Apple Silicon to gamers, warship
| captains or datacenter users, but they won't care when the
| dust settles. It's a device for people that want a Mac, and
| if you want a PC, server or homelab then you gotta get
| different hardware. It's entirely a software limitation,
| imposed by Apple.
|
| I don't value open source or repairability _that_ much. I
| just want to develop server software, and on macOS I always
| end up with the same janky VM-based workflow I suffer through
| on Windows. On the desktop I have no reason to waste my time
| with macOS, and I don 't use a laptop often enough to justify
| reincorporating macOS into my life.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| The downside of an Apple is generally you can't improve the
| hardware by replacing it piecemeal as new hardware comes out.
|
| That was my goal buying a Framework... to get to refresh
| hardware regularly as better stuff came out rather than
| waiting 10 years to buy a new laptop.
|
| Will it work that way in reality? No idea, but I thought it
| was at least interesting enough to take a gamble.
| aurareturn wrote:
| FYI, for those who are consider Framework, you are usually
| getting a laptop that is 2x as expensive as a Macbook but
| slower, with a worse screen, far worse performance and battery
| life, and likely not as reliable as a Mac long term.
|
| You can basically buy 2 Macbook Airs for the same price as
| Framework 13 and keep one in the draw if you are ever scared
| that one breaks. That's how bad of a deal Framework is or how
| much of a value Macbooks are.
|
| Try configuring a Framework yourself and you'll quickly find
| that even the basic configuration goes over $1400. Any upgrade
| on the CPU and you're already at $1770.[0]
|
| You can usually get an M4 Macbook Air 16GB for $750 - $800 on
| sale. So you can get 2 of them for the same price as one
| Framework 13 and still significantly outperform it.
|
| Framework is an idealogical buy. It just isn't worth it
| otherwise.
|
| [0]https://frame.work/products/laptop13-diy-amd-
| ai300/configura...
| acheong08 wrote:
| I've personally found the repairability to be worth the price
| for me. I got the baseline $999 back when it launched & have
| done stupid things like spilling a whole gallon of milk on
| it. Had to take it apart & clean as well as replace the
| keyboard but now it's still chugging along. Used to own a
| MacBook & the keyboard started dying after a year with a
| failed A key. Very expensive to replace so I just remapped
| caps lock to A. Then the screen started getting weird color
| issues and dead pixels. A MacBook Neo does look attractive
| though. Probably better performance.
| aurareturn wrote:
| I don't think the new keyboards have issues as the
| butterfly era. Indeed Mac keyboards were junk before Apple
| Silicon.
| jijijijij wrote:
| The recent base Framework 13 would cost you $1,170, Ryzen AI
| 5 340, with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and 4 full featured (USB4)
| USB-C ports. Note: You can buy the RAM and SSD separately,
| Framework even links PCPartsPicker (no price for 2x8GB RAM,
| so price is for single 16GB). How much storage space does
| your last gen M4 Macbook Air come with? 256GB would be
| irrelevant for most anyone, as you cannot upgrade... unlike
| with a Framework, where you can upgrade everything.
|
| You are comparing dissimilar things, anyway. On a recent
| Macbook, you are hard stuck with MacOS. If you don't want
| MacOS (or ARM for that matter), Macbooks could be free and
| it's still the worse deal. Macbooks are subsidized by pushing
| you into the increasingly locked-down software/hardware
| ecosystem, where Apple is rent seeking. Paying for a
| firewall, or virtualization environment is mostly unheard of
| in the Linux world. It's like a cheap printer, where the real
| cost is DRM protected ink.
|
| On a Framework you have excellent support for both Windows
| and Linux. You are free to do whatever you want.
| aurareturn wrote:
| The recent base Framework 13 would cost you $1,170, Ryzen
| AI 5 340, with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and 4 full featured
| (USB4) USB-C ports.
|
| $1,170 for a laptop that uses one of AMD's lowest end
| laptop chip. The M4 Macbook Air can be had for $750 often.
| It's superior in every single way as a laptop including
| vastly superior performance, battery life, screen, touch
| pad, build quality, portability.
|
| You can buy RAM and SSD for many other much cheaper Windows
| laptops too. I don't see why anyone should buy
| significantly overpriced Framework laptops.
| You are comparing dissimilar things, anyway. On a recent
| Macbook, you are hard stuck with MacOS.
|
| macOS is excellent, much better than Windows nowadays. If
| you're a dev, macOS is also generally superior to Linux
| since dev tools often come out on macOS before Linux. macOS
| is also generally a much better machine when you're not
| doing dev work.
|
| You can argue about how Framework is better here and there
| but in reality, Framework only makes sense for 0.001% of
| laptop buyers, maybe less.
| jijijijij wrote:
| You casually brush over the fact, that you were
| confidently misinforming people.
|
| > macOS is excellent
|
| > If you're a dev, macOS is also generally superior to
| Linux since dev tools often come out on macOS before
| Linux.
|
| Lol. Sure, buddy.
| smilliken wrote:
| If you're price conscious, buy the self-assembled framework
| kit. It's fun and takes half an hour to assemble.
|
| I got a framework 16 with a handful of upgrades for $1400. I
| added 96GB of RAM purchased separately for $300 (before the
| shortage). I also got a 4TB NVMe for $300. What do those
| upgrades cost cost in a macbook?
|
| I think most people care more about their OS than their
| hardware specs, so they defend their purchase like it's part
| of their identity and it's hard to have a rational
| discussion.
|
| Edit: If you're talking about the Intel model, I agree with
| you. The Ryzens are fantastic.
| aurareturn wrote:
| In the context of an M5 Max with 96GB of VRAM, it's a
| bargain compared to the price you'd have to pay for an
| Nvidia GPU with 96GB of VRAM for AI.
|
| But if you're talking about slow RAM, you're right. Apple
| doesn't sell slow RAM on their laptops.
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| Looks like it's possible to replace just the keyboard
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SeSQ0DpG1HA&t=907s&pp=2AGLB5AC...
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| It is. It's simply expensive.
| mosselman wrote:
| No, a new keyboard is between 12 and 50 euros depending on
| where you get it, the video is the missing piece.
| mememememememo wrote:
| > mapped capslock + J K L I
|
| you need to visit the confessional for that
| ebbi wrote:
| Cautiously optimistic, given the repairability of the MacBook Neo
| keyboard, that this design will make it to the rest of their
| laptops when the refreshed designs are released (next year?).
| julienreszka wrote:
| >Here's hoping governments regulate laptop manufacturers to
| actually make repairable machines in the future.
|
| if you thing government regulation will help you you are lying to
| yourself that's not how the world works
| Fargren wrote:
| Government regulation has mandated USB-C in all devices, which
| helps me every day. Just to name something in the realm of what
| the article is about.
| bigyabai wrote:
| If you think Apple is incapable of designing repairable
| keyboards, then I'd like to know how Lenovo figured it out:
| https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Lenovo+ThinkPad+T480+Keyboard+R...
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Chewing on lead paint and reading Ayn Rand is not how to learn
| how the world works either.
| tim-tday wrote:
| I just had the most horrendous Apple repair experience. In
| standard warranty with Apple care. Would NOT authorize a mail in
| repair. Would only authorize walk in to my local shitty Apple
| authorized third party repair center who were unable / unwilling
| to reproduce.
|
| Fought with them for weeks. Escalated. They lied and said they
| were doing a no cost replacement. Had to fight the charge. Then
| they lost my return.
|
| So much so that I've started switching to Linux and de-googled
| phone. (Switching off of iPhone just to go to google seems like
| the greater of evils)
|
| The non Apple ecosystem is much more mature than last I checked
| but still irritating. De googling was my biggest challenge.
| Getting a viable replacement for Mac OS was the easy part.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What was the problem? If the local repair center couldn't
| reproduce it, what was going on?
|
| And what do you mean they lost your return? Like it got
| delivered and then it was lost? Surely they gave you a working
| unit at that point?
|
| I've had a bunch of experiences with Apple repair and always
| always been fast and great. I mean, they're definitely the best
| service of literally _any_ corporation I 've dealt with, by
| far. Sometimes you get unlucky I guess with a particular rep or
| something hard to reproduce, but it sounds like you got
| _extremely_ unlucky? It definitely isn 't representative in my
| experience, not even close.
| relium wrote:
| My MacBook Pro M1 keyboard broke too and Apple wanted $900 to
| replace it. I bought a $30 replacement on Amazon and started
| replacing it myself. Unfortunately the repair was a bit too
| complicated for me, but luckily one of my co-workers had more
| patience and replaced it for some beer.
|
| This video is a good overview:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGmMpEEP5ls
| Gigachad wrote:
| Thankfully the m1 was the last of the evil design era for Macs.
| Modern ones are significantly better. The neo being the best,
| able to be fully disassembled with a screw driver in a few
| minutes
| docmars wrote:
| I don't even understand the functional purpose of the rivets if
| the keyboard is already held in place with a million screws and
| the key slots cut into the aluminum frame. It makes no sense,
| seems like a waste.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Does anyone know if this is covered under the Apple Care plans?
| My 16" M1 MBP keyboard has been no problem, I'm just curious. Not
| saying that negates the issue.
|
| Unfortunately, AFAICT, these repairability issues are largely due
| to the move to thinner and lighter laptops. Replacing my MILs
| Microsoft Surface tablet was a pain in the butt. Had to cut the
| case open and tape it back together. But that thing was insanely
| small and light. My MIL liked it because she has a lot of trouble
| carrying anything very heavy.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Keyboards on MacBook Pros have been riveted since at least
| 2014. That doesn't necessarily disprove your argument, but it
| does move the "thin and light" bar farther back than one would
| expect from the phrasing.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Apple has long made trade offs in pursuit of "thin and
| light". Apple announced the 2014 MBP as "People love their
| MacBook Pro because of the thin and light, aluminum unibody
| design". https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2014/07/29Apple-
| Updates-MacBo...
| radley wrote:
| Ah, that timeframe is helpful to know. I had to replace the
| keyboard in my 2012 MBP twice, and was able to do it myself
| both times.
|
| Since then, I always use keyboard skins.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| The new MacBook Neo's keyboard is not riveted and instead
| held with screws. As far as I could tell it is still just as
| thin and light as other MacBooks.
| vr46 wrote:
| Yes it is, I had my M! Max keyboard replaced as repairing the
| individual keycaps didn't work, and then they replaced the
| entire logic board while they were testing due to finding an
| error. Total cost was around EUR1400, to me EUR0. New bottom
| case, new battery, new logic board.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Swedes many times have a defeatist attitude towards companies and
| authorities, and expect that they will never get any help unless
| they have a right to it (from warranties or such).
|
| The author doesn't mention ever contacting Apple to get his
| keyboard fixed. Maybe he could have gotten pleasantly surprised?
|
| "Here's hoping governments regulate laptop manufacturers to
| actually make repairable machines in the future."
|
| However, this quote is not a surprise at all, and goes perfectly
| in line with Swedish philosophy. And the philosophy of this
| message board as well.
| stkhlm wrote:
| The author isn't Swedish. I've known him for 18 years. Not sure
| where this comes from.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| His name is Swedish or it could be Norwegian.
|
| Anyway, did he contact Apple to see if they could help him
| out? Because sometimes Apple fixes these things for free.
|
| I've had very good and very bad experiences with Apple
| support for hardware failures. It's worth trying to contact
| them, instead of calling for more government regulation.
| stkhlm wrote:
| He went through the Apple Icon -> "About This Mac" -> "More
| Info" -> Coverage Expired Details Button -> Clicked the Get
| Support button and ended up in an infinite loop of
| questions on the Apple website if I recall correctly.
|
| Not great support on Apples side there.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That's not the point where you give up. That's the point
| where you call or e-mail the company to talk to a human.
|
| Hence my comment about defeatism. Sometimes you have to
| push a little bit before giving up and crying for the
| government to come help you. Big companies aren't
| unbending stone statues.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| >Here's hoping governments regulate laptop manufacturers to
| actually make repairable machines in the future.
|
| No, this is a bad solution. If you want a repairable machine, buy
| one. They exist. Others have already mentioned Framework, but
| there are other options that aren't that far down the spectrum
| either.
|
| One of the things macbook users praise the most is "build
| quality", which often means the solidity of the device, lack of
| flex, etc. These quality features are, in part, achieved by the
| same choices that make it hard to repair. Ease of repair and
| "build quality", are to some degree (although not entirely)
| tradeoffs against each other.
|
| I say this as a framework owner who would never buy something as
| irreparable as a macbook. Regulation is not the answer here.
| wvenable wrote:
| > No, this is a bad solution.
|
| You didn't say why this is a bad solution. The government
| mandates that cars get safer every year and fatalities are down
| 78% from the 1960s. Whenever government regulates things to
| benefit people, people tend to benefit.
|
| > One of the things macbook users praise the most is "build
| quality", which often means the solidity of the device, lack of
| flex, etc.
|
| It seems like the Macbook Neo has a lot of those properties as
| well for a very inexpensive device that is extremely easy to
| repair.
| internet2000 wrote:
| > It seems like the Macbook Neo has a lot of those properties
| as well for a very inexpensive device that is extremely easy
| to repair.
|
| It's slightly worse, slightly more flex, thicker and heavier
| vs an Air in spite of having a smaller battery and more empty
| space. It's all trade offs.
|
| If you want repairable, please buy a Framework or Lenovo.
| Backseat industrial designing through legislation is not the
| answer.
| wvenable wrote:
| > Backseat industrial designing through legislation is not
| the answer.
|
| Again, why not? It's not mandating design, just minimal
| standards for repairability that should be obvious. If
| Framework and Lenovo can do it and Apple can do it on a
| $600 laptop, why can't everyone do it?
| leetbulb wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| > why can't everyone do it
|
| What everyone is missing: Because other manufactures do
| not have to; the profit margins are too good to give a
| shit, and they allow some pretty fierce competition
| within the target demographic:
|
| <soapbox>
|
| Sadly, the general public still just wants the cheapest
| option to consume their bullshit content, even if it
| needs to be replaced a year from now after their cat
| walks on it and causes critical damage.
|
| The MacBook Neo is brilliant in that Apple takes a share
| of this market with a premium and affordable product that
| is basically just their previous generation phone, with
| the expensive bits likely sourced from their exchange
| program or surplus supply. Products that at some point
| the same people would've loved to have, but couldn't
| afford. Now repurposed with a larger screen, sporting the
| envied Apple logo, at an affordable price, and targeting
| that same demographic as the hot new thing, just one
| generation later.
|
| I have a feeling we'll see this pattern continue, and
| it's genius. Minimizing waste, maximizing profits, and
| giving the consumers what they want, while maintaining a
| gap between low-end and high-end -- people that spend
| $$$$ still want to feel special, of course.
|
| Don't get me wrong, the Neo is great, especially for us
| hackers, but it is absolutely not meant for us in any
| way. What is in our favor: it does, at the very least,
| raise the bar for these other manufactures that product
| absolute garbage.
|
| </soapbox>
|
| Someone needs to be a reference as to what is feasible in
| order for a standard to be established. Apple, Framework,
| and I guess Lenovo are the ones doing this these days.
| RIP the others.
| free_bip wrote:
| Oh no, my laptop is 2mm thicker than a different laptop.
| Won't someone think of the 2mm?
| VogonPoetry wrote:
| That 2mm uses at least (2*335 + 2*235) * 2mm * 1mm =
| 2,280 mm^3 more material for the case. (a wall thickness
| of 1mm)
| stavros wrote:
| I don't understand your math. The 1mm (the wall) was
| there already, so why is it being counted here? Plus,
| multiplying by 1 doesn't do anything? Also, the 2mm extra
| won't be solid plastic (they'll be solid air, since
| that's why we're adding the extra thickness, for the
| room.
|
| If anything, the extra material for the case would be the
| perimeter length times the perimeter wall width times the
| height.
| Arcuru wrote:
| > If anything, the extra material for the case would be
| the perimeter length times the perimeter wall width times
| the height
|
| That's what they did?
|
| Perimeter length = 2*335mm + 2*235mm
|
| Wall height diff = 2mm
|
| Wall width = 1mm
|
| (2*335 + 2*235) * 2mm * 1mm = 2,280 mm^3
| stavros wrote:
| Ah, thanks, I think what happened was that the asterisks
| were turned into italics and confused me. I think the
| message was edited to clarify.
| VogonPoetry wrote:
| The post was fixed about 30 seconds after making it - due
| to the *s being interpreted as italics. It is a shame
| there isn't a preview button when composing posts.
| stavros wrote:
| Or just more sane markdown handling :/
| FabHK wrote:
| I've started multiplying with "x" here... 10 mm x 10 mm =
| 100 mm^2.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Although there is a "clear" way of representing the
| functions, I have come to think it might not be as clear
| to many people.
|
| For instance
|
| (3m+5m)(2m)/(2(2))=5m^3
| shagie wrote:
| > It is a shame there isn't a preview button when
| composing posts.
|
| The delay setting in your profile (mine is set to 2).
|
| New Feature: Delay -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231024
| There's a new field in your profile called delay. It's
| the time delay in minutes between when you create a
| comment and when it becomes visible to other people. I
| added this so that when there are rss feeds for comments,
| users can, if they want, have some time to edit them
| before they go out in the feed. Many users edit comments
| after posting them, so it would be bad if the first draft
| always got shipped. Delay is initially 0.
| The maximum effective value is 10. It only applies to
| comments.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| and less broken devices hitting landfill
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| That may not even be where the devices are most toxic to
| the environment :\
|
| How about all the energy waste for manufacture of what
| are "engineered" as effectively disposable components &
| assemblies in numerous facilities?
|
| Also scattered local emissions, not only at the factories
| and delivery ships & trucks, but consumers kick up all
| kinds of exhaust and waste just earning the money to
| participate in such a scheme. And way more so for short-
| lived products that are the _least bit overpriced_
| compared to how they could be from the same factory.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Backseat industrial designing through legislation is not
| the answer.
|
| ???
|
| What makes this "backseat"? When it comes to consumer
| products, legislation is often the _only_ answer in most
| cases.
|
| What makes this case different? Why should there be an
| exception carved out for laptops?
| cpt_sobel wrote:
| > Backseat industrial designing through legislation is not
| the answer.
|
| But it _could_ save us from Lenovo or Dell or any other
| company copying Apple's design practices (and the latter
| largely already has), while, as another poster mentioned,
| not mandating design per se, but rather just setting
| minimum standards.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| > Backseat industrial designing through legislation is not
| the answer.
|
| You can still legislate parts availability and availability
| of docs.
|
| You can legislate parts pairing or outright ban it
|
| There is plenty that can be done, just need competent
| lawmakers
| bloppe wrote:
| Car safety is a bad counterexample because the risk is
| otherwise often externalized i.e. your car can easily hurt a
| total stranger whereas the consequences of your choice in
| laptop are strictly personal. And as GP stated, regulating
| this sort of thing would definitely force a particular trade-
| off on everyone. A lot of people would be pissed to have
| MacBooks with worse "build quality" even if they were more
| reparable. Having a choice is better.
| gambiting wrote:
| >> your car can easily hurt a total stranger whereas the
| consequences of your choice in laptop are strictly
| personal.
|
| You know that safety for pedestrians is also a very tightly
| regulated car safety category, right? Obviously, there's
| not much that can be done if you get hit by a car going
| 70mph, but the fact that most people should survive a 30mph
| impact with a modern car is mostly thanks to regulations
| requiring crumple zones specifically designed to protect
| pedestrians in a collision. And yeah, there are huge trade
| offs - I imagine people would generally prefer a car that
| doesn't need incredibly expensive repairs after a minor
| collision because everything at the front just crumpled,
| but then they would be guaranteed to cut off legs of any
| person hit - it's a trade off.
| bucephalos wrote:
| Not in the US. Specific pedestrian safety features are
| not included in cars sold there due to lack of
| regulation. FMVSS was planning a regulation modelled
| after ECE R127, then the administration changed and no
| progress since...
| gambiting wrote:
| Well yes, which is why most American cars are not
| approved for sale over here.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Lack of regulation resulting in worse outcomes is also a
| data point for regulation being able to solve problems.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It would be trivial to limit a car's speeds in
| residential and urban areas based on GPS, and that would
| dramatically decrease risk to people outside of cars.
|
| Or mandate in car cameras that record the driver to a
| blackbox to determine if the driver's negligence caused
| others to be damaged. Also a cheap implementation that
| would immediately make drivers be more attentive.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>It would be trivial to limit a car's speeds in
| residential and urban areas based on GPS, and that would
| dramatically decrease risk to people outside of cars.
|
| Only partialy agree. As in - yes I agree in principle,
| but I don't agree it would be trivial.
|
| My sister had insurance with a black box policy, where
| everything she did in the car was recorded. And on her
| drive to work, she would always get a threatening email
| saying "we've recorded you going 70mph in a 20mph zone,
| if this continues we will cancel your policy". We had to
| ring them up and demand the GPS trace, and guess what -
| at one point she was going on the motorway _above_ a
| 20mph road, but the system probably just did "what is
| the speed limit at X/Y coordinates" and was getting 20mph
| for the nearest road. We've had to do this several times
| when she had the policy.
|
| My own Volvo XC60 frequently tells me I'm going over the
| speed limit as it thinks the road I'm on has a 50mph
| limit when in fact it's 70, and in another place it
| thinks it's 30 when in fact it's also 70.
|
| Not to mention that the speeds entered on Google Maps are
| often just wrong and take forever to update. And it's
| funny when people like Harry Metcalf say that every new
| car he tests insists that his own private drive has a
| 20mph limit when obviously there is none. Imagine if you
| couldn't turn that off!
|
| So yeah, very easy to implement(and it's a great idea!)
| but in practice it's one of these "looks easy on paper,
| but in reality it's super hard to do reliably".
| wvenable wrote:
| I disagree. The lack of repairability has external costs
| not born by the purchaser or the manufacturer -- more toxic
| trash unnecessarily added to the environment.
|
| Forcing a particular trade-off on everyone is entirely the
| point. It's the point of car safety, it's also the point of
| minimum warranties, electrical emission regulations, safety
| standards, etc.
| VogonPoetry wrote:
| Does this also mean only using "standard" parts? Or does
| the manufacturer have to over-produce the parts for, lets
| say 7 years, and then warehouse and ship those parts,
| probably multiple times. Or keep a low rate production
| line running for 7 years? What happens to the parts that
| don't get used? Are they scrapped?
|
| That "what if" cost is going to be built into the cost of
| the laptop. Repairability doesn't always keep the cost
| low. The purchaser will definitely have to foot the cost
| otherwise it isn't sustainable.
| wvenable wrote:
| Repairability definitely doesn't keep the costs low. If
| it was cheaper and easier, it wouldn't have to be
| regulated. As for supply chain management, companies that
| get that equation correct are going to benefit. Which is
| exactly how it should be.
|
| We define the rules of the game and companies that can
| best implement those rules will succeed. That is
| capitalism.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It won't self resolve because consumers don't fully
| factor in every detail while buying, and they often don't
| get such granular choice anyway.
|
| It's easier and more profitable for companies to make a
| product that catastrophically fails around about when the
| new model is out. So that's what they do. Until just now
| when the EU is reeling them back in line.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Does this also mean only using "standard" parts? Or
| does the manufacturer have to over-produce the parts for,
| lets say 7 years, and then warehouse and ship those
| parts, probably multiple times. Or keep a low rate
| production line running for 7 years? What happens to the
| parts that don't get used? Are they scrapped?
|
| None of that is relevant in this context: The parts _are_
| available, but the laptop is designed and built such that
| the alone keyboard cannot be replaced.[1]
|
| [1] Not sure if this is possible on that specific laptop,
| but with a steady hand, a tiny drill, maybe a magnifiying
| glass too, you can maybe drill out the rivets, then
| replace the keyboard, then either re-rivet it back again
| or tap very tiny thread into the laptop and use screws.
| StingyJelly wrote:
| The laptop is deffinitely designed in a way that the
| keyboard is extremely hard to replace. Took me like 5
| hours across 2 days. Rivets are not even the worst part,
| I used tiny drill and carefully glued in the replacement
| keyboard using phone screen glue (B7000) between the
| keys. (glue needs to go both on the frame and on the
| keyboard as there is a gap that needs to be bridged)
| Since there are screws along 3 of its edges, I deemed it
| good enough. drilling and tapping or riveting would have
| been extra painful.
|
| What makes the repair more complicated is that 1) you
| need to take out basically everything to get to the
| keyboard. There are many different screws, luckily ifixit
| has a disassembly guides with their sizes. Still it was a
| bit painful to reassemble. 2) One of the things you need
| to take out or at least lift is the glued in battery -
| this took a lot of careful prying with thin plastic sheet
| and dousing it in ipa. 3) backlight is glued on to the
| case in an extremely fragile way, so it needs to be
| replaced with the keyboard or will probably look uneven
| after repair. (i reused the old one as I don't mind it
| but still, it could just have been glued to the keyboard
| itself and it would be easier to repair.
| southerntofu wrote:
| > Does this also mean only using "standard" parts? Or
| does the manufacturer have to over-produce the parts for,
| lets say 7 years
|
| Why not? I don't understand how it's legal for
| manufacturers to produce absolute trash that can't be
| replaced and will just end up in a landfill. I think 7
| years is far from enough, but because computers evolve
| quickly maybe 15 years is ok. For the rest of electro-
| mechanical goods, 50 years should be the baseline.
|
| If a car or fridge from 50 years ago is still working
| with proper maintenance, that should be the minimum to be
| expected from products released today.
| bloppe wrote:
| It's much more effective and economically efficient to
| deal with externalized pollution costs with deposits to
| incentivize proper disposal.
|
| A ton of normal users will simply never bother to repair
| their own laptops no matter how easy it is, but you don't
| even have to recycle your own bottles and cans to see the
| effectiveness of bottle deposits work. Someone will
| usually come and recycle them for you in any big city.
| wvenable wrote:
| I already pay a deposit and "recycle" all my electronics.
| And some recycled electronics are already repaired and
| repurposed. If that was easier, more electronics would
| get a second chance at life.
|
| Right now if you have two broken MacBook Neos, one with a
| broken motherboard and the other with a broken screen,
| you can make one working MacBook Neo without even needing
| to solder anything in just the time to takes disassemble
| both and reassemble one (which has been demonstrated in
| minutes).
| 1718627440 wrote:
| > It's much more effective and economically efficient to
| deal with externalized pollution costs with deposits to
| incentivize proper disposal.
|
| Or to just mandate devices that doesn't need to be
| dispose so often.
|
| > A ton of normal users will simply never bother to
| repair their own laptops no matter how easy it is
|
| Doesn't matter, because simplicity contributes directly
| to prize and when you can get your existing device fixed
| for cheaper than getting a new one, you likely will do
| it.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > A lot of people would be pissed to have MacBooks with
| worse "build quality" even if they were more reparable.
|
| It is not a given that being repairable results in worse
| build quality.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is a given if someone could have made a superior
| product in the last 15 years, i.e. more repairable laptop
| with higher build quality, they would have.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > It is a given if someone could have made a superior
| product in the last 15 years, i.e. more repairable laptop
| with higher build quality, they would have.
|
| Most of the PC competitors of the last 15 years have
| struggled to even come close to achieving similar build
| quality.
|
| I'm not sure who this mythical competitor could be, who
| is supposed to not only match unibody aluminium MacBook
| build quality, but also solve repairability, and come in
| with a final product that is cheaper?
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| A lot of the recent car safety features are cameras and
| ADAS which make it safer for pedestrians. The problem is it
| makes the car so expensive no one can afford to buy it or
| to repair it. There needs to be some standards to drive
| down the cost.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Do you have a source for the cameras and ADAS driving up
| the cost of the cars dramatically?
|
| The EUR14k Dacia Sandero ships with camera-assisted
| emergency braking and lane assist. By the time you get up
| to a EUR24k MG 4, you get full level 2 driving. These
| don't seem like very high price thresholds
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| https://www.kbb.com/car-news/whats-making-car-repair-so-
| expe...
|
| Cars have much longer lifecycles that the repurposed
| consumer technology in the ADAS. A camera module is
| cheap, but a camera model for this particular
| make/model/year is outrageously expensive if not
| unobtanium 10 years later. Theres the famous f150 story
| where the tail light housing with blind spot monitoring
| cost $5k.
| jdpedrie wrote:
| > The government mandates that cars get safer every year and
| fatalities are down 78% from the 1960s. Whenever government
| regulates things to benefit people, people tend to benefit.
|
| On some metrics. On affordability, new cars are considerably
| more expensive. Whether that's a worthwhile tradeoff is
| beside the point. The GP's point is that there's no free
| lunch, and your example doesn't address that.
| wvenable wrote:
| I never said the lunch was free only that it should be
| nutritious.
| dingaling wrote:
| Amd for the diner, new cars are much less nutritious due
| to the regulation. They're like some sort of bland
| protein-shake lunch.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| My father thinks all cars look the same now. Do you mean
| that?
|
| For my part, cars are more comfortable (bar all controls
| in a touch panel and ever more propietary software) and
| fuel efficient
| wvenable wrote:
| No, they are more nutritious just like that bland
| protein-shake is. All those cool hot-rods from the 70s
| will crush you to death easily while wasting more gas to
| do it.
| an0malous wrote:
| > You didn't say why this is a bad solution.
|
| The fear is that regulations ossify industries and that's why
| heavily regulated industries like healthcare, education, and
| transportation have seen basically no innovation in 50 years.
| If you mandate that all electronic devices must have USB-C
| cables, how can anyone invent something better than a USB-C
| cable? And for what, so people don't have to have multiple
| cables? That's not even in the top 100 problems that a
| government body as large as the EU should be concerned about.
|
| > Whenever government regulates things to benefit people,
| people tend to benefit.
|
| Healthcare, education, transportation, and housing would all
| be counterexamples depending on how you want to frame
| "benefit."
|
| > It seems like the Macbook Neo has a lot of those properties
| as well for a very inexpensive device that is extremely easy
| to repair.
|
| This is counter to your point, no one regulated that Apple
| make the MacBook Neo easy to repair. Apple is incentivized to
| follow the market.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > If you mandate that all electronic devices must have
| USB-C cables, how can anyone invent something better than a
| USB-C cable?
|
| That already happened with Micro USB. The EU initially
| mandated that manufacturers agree on a standard socket,
| because the absolute zoo of charging ports back then was
| counter-productive and only generated e-waste. Ultimately
| they agreed to use Micro USB, but obviously that's not
| what's used today.
|
| These regulations are not just dumped on the manufacturers
| - there's a period of consultation and a grace period to
| implement them. If something actually better came up, you'd
| eventually see it mandated.
| spaqin wrote:
| > If something actually better came up, you'd eventually
| see it mandated.
|
| While I generally am quite content with that particular
| mandate and it does more good than bad, I would have to
| disagree on this. Something better doesn't come from
| nowhere - hell, USB itself has gone through a long and
| arduous path until it came to the (messy) standard it is
| today. This is essentially banning any other standard to
| grow and be improved upon with feedback and iteration.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I don't believe other paths would yield better results.
|
| It took Apple a looong time to adapt USB-C, which was
| already running circles around Lightning five years after
| the introduction of the latter. Ironically Apple
| participated in the development of the standard. They
| just couldn't be arsed to implement it.
|
| Multinationals don't do anything unless they absolutely
| have to. Apple notably all but threatened to move out of
| the EU due to USB-C regulations. They were actively
| preventing their users from having a better standard
| because it hurt their bottom line in the field of
| accessories.
| flir wrote:
| Healthcare? Maybe you distinguish that from medicine
| somehow, but I'd rather have [literally any disease] today
| than fifty years ago.
| hananova wrote:
| The argument about ossified connectors is obviously made in
| bad faith, since it obviously didn't happen. USB-C isn't
| the first mandated connector, that was micro-usb. And when
| the time came to upgrade, the mandate was changed. None of
| that imagined ossification happened back then, and it won't
| happen when we go from USB-C to USB-D or whatever.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > heavily regulated industries like healthcare, education,
| and transportation have seen basically no innovation in 50
| years
|
| Wut?
| mattstir wrote:
| > and that's why heavily regulated industries like
| healthcare, education, and transportation have seen
| basically no innovation in 50 years.
|
| Not to get distracted, but aren't these three all
| incredible examples of innovation over time? Healthcare
| alone is significantly better than it was 50 years ago and
| it's not really close. 50 years ago, this hip new treatment
| called electroshock therapy was being used to "treat" being
| gay. It was also within touching distance of getting a
| lobotomy for depression or anything else your husband
| thought was a problem.
| an0malous wrote:
| The rates of depression in the US are at an all time high
| [1]. The primary theory behind the cause of depression
| and mechanism of most antidepressants has been abandoned
| [2]. Not treating homosexuality as a disease isn't an
| innovation, it's a cultural change.
|
| You could maybe argue mRNA vaccines or semaglutides are
| big innovations, I think we've made a ton of progress
| against HIV, and it seems like we've made progress
| against cancer, but when you factor in how much
| government money goes into this research and compare it
| against the advancements we've seen in computational
| technology it's a lot less impressive. You could buy a
| raspberry pi for like $50 today that outperforms every
| computer made 50 years ago, whereas the cost of most
| medical imaging has actually increased [3]. Likewise the
| inflation adjusted cost of college degrees and building
| new rail lines or really any infrastructure has increased
| precipitously since 1970.
|
| 1.
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/releases/20250416.html
|
| 2. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jul/no-evidence-
| depression-c...
|
| 3. https://www.jacr.org/article/S1546-1440%2822%2900710-4
| /fullt...
| matt-attack wrote:
| Do you have a reference for the neo being easy to repair? Is
| this regarding the keyboard? Or the whole thing?
| huxley wrote:
| The keyboard is probably the hardest bit but even then it's
| more just some tedium rather than difficulty.
| https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-
| most-r...
| bzzzt wrote:
| The innovations that mattered were seat belts and airbags.
| After that you have to correct for all the electronic gadgets
| that also actively distract or make drivers over-confident.
| Real numbers are not available, but governments keep
| mandating all kinds of questionable safety features that
| increase the price of vehicles (and insurance) and reduces
| competition in the market.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I'll grant you some of the more recent driver-attention
| monitoring features, but you'd be hard put to make the case
| that the blind-spot warning during lane changes, the cross-
| traffic warning when reversing out of a parking space, and
| the emergency brake when the car in front of you brakes
| hard, don't all save lives (and, perhaps more relevantly to
| the industrial players, collision insurance claims)
| bzzzt wrote:
| Those things could save some lives of course, but it's a
| small drop. And then there's the issue of people trusting
| on those safety systems and driving more reckless than
| before. It also helps not to live in a country where
| everyone is driving trucks ;)
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| > You didn't say why this is a bad solution. The government
| mandates that cars get safer every year and fatalities are
| down 78% from the 1960s. Whenever government regulates things
| to benefit people, people tend to benefit.
|
| That's widely incorrect. EU mandates some active systems (TC,
| ABS) and some basic level of physical protection, but
| majority of gains there have been driven by manufacturers
| trying to ace eachother in EuroNCAP rating
|
| EU makes sure woefully unsafe car can't be sold, sure, but
| most of the progress here has been manufacturers, and non-
| car-related road safety improvements.
| mrtksn wrote:
| What if the repairable ones crunch the numbers and find out
| that Apple got the right idea from business standpoint and the
| only reason they can't do the same is that their laptops or
| their brand is not as good? It will mean that if they actually
| end up making a product that people want that product will not
| be easy to repair as well.
| radley wrote:
| > If you want a repairable machine, buy one. They exist. Others
| have already mentioned Framework
|
| But that means Windows or Linux, not macOS. There's serious
| trade-offs that you're dismissing because you personally don't
| need macOS, but that's not the case for everyone.
|
| #hn-bingo
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| macOS has slid a long way down the quality ladder over the
| past ten years.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| In what way? Tahoe's UI SNAFU aside, it seems like it's
| basically just a more polished version of the older macOS
| versions from a decade ago.
| vintagedave wrote:
| I run into bugs every day. It wakes, and has a black
| screen not wallpaper. Change spaces and the focus is
| wrong for half a second. Login screen is a pain because
| it collapses all users together. Notifications don't
| scroll if they stop scrolling when the cursor is over a
| gap between them. Something on the system constantly eats
| disk space, and I think it's the system updates. If I
| dock two apps in one space, sometimes one is black. If I
| zoom out to the Spaces overview it shows fine in the
| preview though. In the Terminal if I close a tab it can
| focus an entirely different window.
|
| I could go on for hours. It's a buggy mess these days and
| I miss Lion and Snow Leopard desperately.
| nine_k wrote:
| Unless these problems only started after an upgrade to
| Tahoe, I would strongly suspect defective hardware in
| your case.
| leptons wrote:
| Nothing mentioned in the previous comment is indicative
| of a hardware problem. If you think I'm wrong, please
| describe a plausible mechanism to cause any of the
| problems described above. They all are plausibly software
| bugs. I mean, Apple hardware is not really any better
| than any other piece of fallible hardware, and their OS
| has been a buggy mess since Apple DOS. Most pieces of
| software as large as an OS are buggy in many ways, and
| Apple has not been proven to be the exception.
| vintagedave wrote:
| Yes, these got a lot worse after Tahoe. The past few
| versions have all had issues on multiple machines.
|
| None of this sounds like a hardware error. Something like
| notification scrolling is simple bad programming and bad
| QA. You scroll the list of them, but when the mouse
| cursor ends up on a gap between them, the new scroll
| event doesn't apply. They're all individual even though
| shown together.
|
| Or a black screen on wake - that has the mouse cursor and
| login prompt, it just sometimes doesn't load the
| wallpaper or does it slowly. Not hardware - just
| something buggy. It's unbelievable when I compare to
| Leopard or whichever version it was introduced the
| rotating 'cube' of login screens, which always had
| wallpaper and loaded fast. Here we are fifteen years
| later with incredibly better hardware and the thing lags.
|
| Same for the rest.
| jorvi wrote:
| For all its faults I do still like modern macOS, but it
| is a far cry from the beauty that was Mac OS X 10.6.8
| (Snow Leopard).
| FabHK wrote:
| Fast user switching turned into excruciatingly slow user
| switching.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| In the java triggers a crash in apples IO library and
| they wont fix it way.
| saagarjha wrote:
| What's the crash?
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Sure, but relative to windows...
| radley wrote:
| Oh, I completely agree. But they can get away with it
| because we depend on the platform more than the individual
| apps.
|
| And yes, Tahoe is shiny hot garbage piled on top of so much
| broken software, just to push an effect trick. I'm not sure
| how I feel developing with SwiftUI when Apple clearly can't
| make it work for their own apps.
| nottorp wrote:
| > we depend on the platform more than the individual apps
|
| The only way you actually depend on the platform is if
| you do Mac OS / iOS development.
|
| However, I happen to work on a project that requires both
| Windows and Linux, so I get reminders every day of why I
| should stay on Mac OS as desktop.
|
| Caveat 1: no, I'm not upgrading to Tahoe or iOS 26.
|
| Caveat 2: I wouldn't dream of running a server on
| anything but Linux. Desktops with a GUI though...
|
| The problem that fucks us over is that Mac OS only has to
| be better than the competition.
| agarmash wrote:
| With all the valid reasons not to upgrade to iOS 26,
| here's one strongly suggesting doing so:
|
| https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-
| intelligence/dar...
| nottorp wrote:
| That only reinforces Apple being assholes. They are
| perfectly capable of delivering security updates to ios
| 18, they just choose to not do that for phones that can
| run 26.
|
| By the way does that mean you can root a phone that's on
| iOS 18.6? :)
| cpt_sobel wrote:
| > The problem that fucks us over is that Mac OS only has
| to be better than the competition.
|
| I'm with you here, but I'm having a _much_ better time on
| my Linux machines (KDE and Cinnamon Mint) than on my
| (unbelievably-powerful-but-for-what) M4 Max MBP. It's so
| much cleaner, even without having upgraded to Tahoe, and
| imagine that I don't even like tinkering that much, it
| just works.
| nottorp wrote:
| I was using KDE when I switched to Mac OS from Linux as
| my main desktop (2013 ish).
|
| Must admit I've only looked at the default desktop in
| Ubuntu in the past years, and that's ... disappointing.
|
| Maybe I should look at how KDE is these days, but it's a
| second class citizen in most major distros isn't it?
| Except in this Mint i've never tried.
|
| I also have this fetish for cool and quiet. Can I run KDE
| on a box that idles at 10 W and never turns the fan
| audibly on?
| cpt_sobel wrote:
| > Except in this Mint i've never tried
|
| Well, Cinammon is the windows manager for Mint, it's the
| barebones experience that's the closest to Windows (?)
| style, it's mostly what you see is what you get, but
| still very customizable.
|
| KDE used to be extremely buggy 5-6 years ago and since
| testing it on my Steam Deck, from my experience, this is
| no longer the case. It's a bit more feature-rich and
| flashier than Cinnamon.
|
| > Can I run KDE on a box that idles at 10 W and never
| turns the fan audibly on?
|
| No laptop I'm aware of will do this, no idea about ARM
| adoption.
|
| Personally I'm glad to have a windows manager that
| doesn't force dumb decisions down my throat. On MacOS I
| have to wait for half a second for the focus to land on
| the next window when I switch desktops, the only
| workaround exists as a minor feature recently introduced
| to BetterSwitchTool called instant desktop switching or
| something. And it's to be mentioned ofcourse that for all
| similar fixes you _must_ give full screen recording and
| accessibility permissions to 3rd party software. And
| don't get me started on the stupid windows management
| (maximize != full-screen, minimized windows not
| recoverable with keyboard only etc)
| nottorp wrote:
| > No laptop I'm aware of will do this, no idea about ARM
| adoption.
|
| Oh the 10 W is my mac mini. The macbook pro idles at 5 W,
| display included :)
|
| > you _must_ give full screen recording and accessibility
| permissions to 3rd party software
|
| Well what do you expect? If Linux/KDE had a permissions
| system you'd have to grant it too.
|
| > maximize != full-screen
|
| Um. Yes. They should be different. They've been different
| ever since we had windows on screen in any system that
| I'm aware of.
|
| Not that I'm a major fan of window management on Mac OS,
| I just got used to it.
| lucasfin000 wrote:
| The "just buy another one" argument only works if the
| alternatives are even comparable. For a lot of people, macOS is
| a hard requirement and not a preference, so telling them just
| to buy a framework that runs Linux ignores that entirely. Right
| to repair regulation doesn't force Apple to make a worse
| product it just requires that the parts and repair information
| are available.
| jclardy wrote:
| Interestingly, Apple's newest and cheapest laptop (the Neo) is
| super repairable. And even the keyboard is finally replaceable
| without having to replace the entire top case. Hopefully the
| trend is continued in the next redesigns of the Air and Pro
| which are due soon.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Next year all consumer devices are required to have user
| replaceable batteries in the EU. Apple has noticeably been
| making massive design changes on many products to get closer
| in line with these laws.
| throw939484999 wrote:
| Goverment regulates everything including cow farts!
|
| Apple can keep their unrepairable macbook. Butc should not be
| marketed as "green product". It should pay extra as ICE cars,
| be excluded from educational markets, public institutions
| etc...
| kakacik wrote:
| What a wildly incorrect comment. You realize its perfectly
| feasible and fully within apple engineers powers to design
| trivially repairable notebook (or any other device) while not
| losing any of those qualities you mention (which are easy to
| find in expensive competition too)? Don't make those extremely
| well paid engineers incompetent just because it suits your
| argument.
|
| But vendor lockin mandated by management is way more powerful
| than powers of engineers, apple ain't immune to this since its
| accountants and lawyers running the company.
|
| I'll give it a benefit of a doubt and won't claim its a PR
| comment and just a uncritical fanboy one, but its pretty close.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Decades of HN users finger wagging and suggesting FOSS hardware
| has progressed society nowhere. 12 months from EU mandatory
| replaceable batteries and products across the industry are
| being redesigned with repairability, usb-c, and user friendly
| designs.
|
| It's time to accept regulation actually does work when you have
| a competent government.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Indeed, government regulation is decried mostly because of
| all the cases where it got polluted by special interests,
| instead of following the interests of general consumers.
|
| This is how you end up turning a chunk of your food supply
| into fuel to subsidize crops which aren't all that good at
| being distilled into fuel in the first place...
| Gigachad wrote:
| This is mostly because Americans keep electing total
| morons.
| nine_k wrote:
| Not that most other nations do dramatically better, alas.
| Gigachad wrote:
| There's actually few that are this bad. Generally we
| refer to them as developing countries or war torn.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I would actually suggest this is symptomatic of the real
| problem: money in politics.
|
| Elected officials (and some appointed, like SCOTUS) keep
| changing laws and precedents to allow more and more money
| in politics. They can't quit all that dark money -
| without a lot of funding, you don't get elected. Usually
| the best funded candidate wins.
|
| There was an anonymous oped from a congressman some years
| back which bemoaned the reality - that 60% of their time
| was dedicated to meeting with donors for reelection
| campaigns instead of working on real problems.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| When one party will violate every norm and law to the
| greatest extent that they can get away with it, it's
| pretty much impossible to compete with them. I want good
| things for people. I can't compete with fascists because
| they will cheat and lie and employ violence. My positive
| intent is almost impossible to out thwart their dirty
| deeds if they are willing to break laws / change laws and
| I won't.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| There's only one party and it's color is green. Donors
| know red or blue doesn't matter, so they give to both.
| gcanyon wrote:
| That's just an unreal characterization that plays into
| the hands of the "red" team. One side has put up
| presidents and congressional leadership that worked
| (mostly, I'm not saying they're perfect) within the
| traditional framework of the system. The other has put up
| a president who literally does not understand the meaning
| of the word "no," expects that everyone will let him do
| pretty much anything he wants, and a congress that agrees
| with him. Notably, that side was different in 2000, 1988,
| 1980, etc. -- not perfect by any stretch, but not this.
|
| The difference matters.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Do you want another authoritarian, corrupt, cult of
| personality leader like Trump? Proclaiming "both sides"
| and ignoring nuance like you're doing is how no one gets
| held accountable for the real harms that are taking
| place. Please stop holding water for the MAGAs/GOP.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| America has had even more corrupt/authoritarian/cult of
| personality leaders than Trump. They were younger and
| their brains still worked so they did way more damage
| than trump too. Most Americans just don't learn much
| history so can't compare.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > America has had even more corrupt/authoritarian/cult of
| personality leaders than Trump.
|
| Like who?
| guzfip wrote:
| Andrew Jackson to this day is a darling among
| conservatives in America.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Assuming you're from the USA, your two main parties are
| exactly like that. The appearances have changed, but
| Obama drone-assassinating random children on the other
| side of the world was not much better than what Trump is
| doing.
|
| Not defending Trump, to be clear, just saying US
| imperialism and fascism has much deeper roots and that
| removing Trump is not going to fix any issues the rest of
| the world has with the USA.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| It was not better, it was _less_. US imperialism has deep
| roots, yes, but a large chunk of the world who would
| tolerate a moderate level of it, don 't tolerate _this_
| level.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| I don't see any _not tolerating_ it in practice.
|
| A lot of invective, but nothing in practice that really
| indicates _not tolerating_.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I hear rumblings about foreign companies disconnecting
| from American services and products. You don't turn large
| ships on a dime, but they are turning.
| southerntofu wrote:
| I don't think it was less, though only future historians
| will come up with actual numbers. It was less public,
| though.
|
| Most of the world never tolerated it. Even when western
| governments tolerated it, the population did not; see
| also the huge worldwide demonstrations against the Iraq
| war.
|
| I think the difference in perception is because the
| european oligarchy is now being effectively treated as
| was previously the rest of the world, so they're now
| taking a stance because they feel threatened, whereas
| they previously saw themselves as aligned with the US
| government no matter what.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Can you point to an objective assessment of Obama's drone
| policy?
| southerntofu wrote:
| Unfortunately, i don't know of a complete reference
| resource. I'd be interested if you found one. A quick
| research later i found this CFR resource [1] which
| probably underestimates the number of civilians killed.
|
| I remember reports at the time on the Intercept and other
| media about the entire kill chain. If i remember
| correctly, the policy was to count anyone who was not
| proved to be a civilian as an active enemy in the body
| count. There was this DOD/CIA press conference announcing
| they made a targeted killing and that their target
| assessment was mostly based on the individual's height.
|
| Then there's of course Obama famously and publicly joking
| about his children's lovers suggesting they should behave
| or would get killed by << predator drones >>. [2] Let me
| know if you dig interesting links on the topic!
|
| [1] https://www.cfr.org/articles/obamas-final-drone-
| strike-data
|
| [2] https://abcnews.com/WN/president-obama-tells-joke-
| jonas-brot...
| alsetmusic wrote:
| USA government is corrupt, true. Current admin is balls-
| out corrupt in ways that have a French legislator calling
| out that impeachment would have happened there. It's
| shockingly out in the open corrupt, and that's saying a
| lot because most of the people ripping us off want to be
| somewhat quiet about it and not draw attention.
| southerntofu wrote:
| I didn't hear about this french legislator, but that's
| funny given the level of rampant corruption in french
| government. Nothing new (see also Pasqua, Foccart, etc),
| but in the past decades the information was not widely
| available so it was at least possible to pretend not to
| know.
|
| Much of the government including Macron himself are
| involved in corruption scandals. Others are involved in
| rape scandals. Others in fiscal fraud. But you're correct
| they're not as open about it as Trump is.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| It amazes me that so many people blame the politicians
| and not the people who elected them.
| frantathefranta wrote:
| Blaming voters for being stupid is not widely accepted
| yet.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| The voters aren't stupid. They are actively malignant and
| cheer what the administration is doing.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Okay but what solution lies down that road?
|
| That's the problem. People don't want to blame the voters
| because there's no solution. We are grasping for
| something that is possible to fix that isn't just
| "Somehow americans are especially bad at doing very basic
| things for no reason"
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Well, I personally am making the "Ben Kenobi" choice. I'm
| hoping to leave the US and retire and die and make it the
| next generation's problem.
|
| I've done my part, I have voted for "progressive"/safety
| net policies and the US has gone in the opposite
| direction. This isn't some shrill unthought out plan.
|
| I'm actually in the country now I plan to retire to for
| six weeks and I'm coming back for a month in the summer,
| part of the ex-pat community and meeting people, my wife
| and I have been learning Spanish and I speak it _okay_
| and I know the processes for establishing residency here
|
| I'm over dealing with the American people. As a minority,
| I find the entire attitude outside of the US refreshing
| even as the only Black couple in our expat group. For
| reference, my still living parents grew up in the
| segregated South.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| The large citizenries that later (19th century) forced
| administrations into constitutions and participation in
| policy started out with state mandated education and a
| class consciousness that is based on being knowledged and
| sophisticated. You need to make the next generation as
| smart as possible as you can, optimally also on topics
| concerning the society and economics.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| The late 19th century was also when "Separate but Equal"
| was enshrined as the law of the land by the Supreme Court
| and a few decades later there were Japanese internment
| camps...
| naikrovek wrote:
| Well we can't recall the voters, so there is no point in
| addressing them. They are a problem because in the US
| there used to be an FCC rule that said "if you call
| yourself a news program, you must tell the truth," and
| that was overridden by the Supreme Court during Reagan's
| term.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| No there was never a rule about "telling the truth" the
| rule was "equal time". So if one party said "vaccines
| keep people from dying" and the other party said
| "vaccines would cause you to grow extra limbs" you had to
| allow them both on.
|
| Second, it had nothing to do with the Supreme Court. The
| theory was that the airwaves belong to the public and the
| FCC has jurisdiction. It never applied to cable channels
| like FoxNews
|
| Third, the current FCC is going after broadcast networks
| for not being fair under the rule
| 1718627440 wrote:
| > The theory was that the airwaves belong to the public
| and the FCC has jurisdiction.
|
| Now most things go over the shared network (InterNet) so
| that problem should have fixed it self, no?
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Airwaves are limited resource - especially spectrum
| suitable for broadcast. Two companies can't share the
| same broadcast spectrum.
|
| The Internet is not a limited resource and not owned by
| the public and licensed to broadcasters. More than one
| company can lay cable.
|
| Do you really want the government policing what can be
| said on the internet?
| fragmede wrote:
| It does already. Section 230 in the US isn't an unlimited
| get out of jail free card. Other countries have varying
| amount of policing, with differing levels of success and
| corruption. Spain, the UK, and China all come to mind
| here.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Section 230 only has to do with defamation in this
| context not "misinformation".
| sehansen wrote:
| Part of the reason money has such a big influence on
| elections is that first-past-the-post election system you
| have over there in the US. When voters have to make a
| binary choice between two participants, low-information
| campaigns like hit-pieces are able to make a big
| difference and are cheap to communicate en-masse. When
| voters have a actual choice between four parties on the
| left and four parties on the right, hit-pieces will only
| make a voter switch from, say, one left-wing party to
| another. So since the return-on-investment on political
| advertising is much lower, much less money will be spent
| on it and there will be less of it. And what will be
| there will be of higher quality.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| If any of what you just said was true in practice,
| Australia would be a gleaming example of how democracies
| with strong civil society organisations can be run.
|
| Instead, Australia is best described as pigs at the slops
| trough.
|
| A nation that seems to only want to vote for leaders who
| have a public humiliation kink.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > that 60% of their time was dedicated to meeting with
| donors for reelection campaigns instead of working on
| real problems.
|
| This is the same story told by Tom Morello, guitarist of
| Rage Against the Machine (at the end of the early life
| section):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Morello#Early_life
|
| Key line: "He had to compromise his entire being every
| day."
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Yes yes yes. Dark money. Nepotism. Corrupt courts.
| Gerrymandering .... anything to deflect from the fact
| that so many voters still put thier mark beside the
| biggest idiot. And i mean that literally. American voters
| like tall people.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heights_of_presidents_and_p
| res...
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| They're _all_ problems and they all contribute to the
| reality of our government being unable to actually _do
| anything_ beyond tax cuts.
|
| * People elect morons because we have been slowly
| destroying our education system since the 50's and we can
| barely turn out anyone who can think worth a shit. That's
| by design, as local elections overwhelmingly swing
| Republican, and Republicans on balance gain from an
| ignorant electorate.
|
| * Additionally, we are now bombarded with "information"
| from wake to sleep every single day, and beyond the
| actual problems which are already stressful enough, we
| also have a whole bunch of made up culture war nonsense
| that mainstream and alternative media loves to discuss,
| both to fill airtime and because researching and covering
| nonsense is far less work, less legally actionable, and
| garners more attention overall. Information overload
| affects people too and makes them more likely to choose
| easy/quick things.
|
| * Dark money is also a HUGE issue because it permits
| capital to influence elections like never before. It's no
| coincidence all of this shit got turbocharged after
| Citizens United.
|
| * Gerrymandering is also a huge, huge issue wherein
| Democrat votes are simply disregarded or packed into
| single districts, which helps local elections shift
| further right constantly.
|
| * The courts are also hideously corrupt. The Supreme
| Court is utterly failing to reign in the Trump
| administration on everything short of wiping their asses
| with the constitution, and that's not shocking
| considering how many of them were appointed by Trump and
| confirmed by the inept Congress.
|
| And then any time Democrats do manage to acquire
| something resembling power, they have so many fires to
| put out that they can barely get us back to an even keel
| before another "outsider" dumbass comes in and starts
| screwing it up again.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| People aren't electing "morons" out of ignorance. They
| are electing people that hate the same people they hate.
| You are blaming ignorance where it is active malice.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Electing people for the things they hate is ignorance for
| politics as a serious field.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Again you call it ignorance instead of malevolence.
|
| How is electing Trump any different than George Wallace
| having a slogan of "Segregation Now! Segregation
| Tomorrow! Segregation Forever!"?
|
| There was no ignorance. Everyone knows that the
| government has a "monopoly on [legalized] violence". If
| they can elect people who will turn that violence against
| people they don't like, they are doing it with full
| knowledge.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Politics is an arm's race. This is going to be an
| unpopular opinion, but Democrats do all the same things
| Republicans do. Arguably they differ in how they do it,
| and how much. Democrats gerrymander, and as well traffic
| in conspiracy theories for example (the latter they do
| less than Republicans, but they still do it).
| braebo wrote:
| They aren't even remotely close to being the same at this
| point.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| American government was actually perfectly able to "Do
| things" right up until 2008. Republicans and Democrats
| quite literally worked together in Congress in broad
| cliques that normally crossed party boundaries, and did
| this all the time. When Clinton's admin was trying to
| save money on the budget, the fights in Congress
| frequently crossed party lines and were outright
| bipartisan, about actual merits (claimed or real) of the
| programs they were cutting or vouching for. You had
| Republicans rightly blasting certain Democrats for saying
| stupid things about the SSC _shoulder to shoulder with
| other democrats_.
|
| Then in 2008 Mitch McConnel said, literally to reporters,
| "I will make Obama a one term president" and declared
| their job was to not let the government do anything.
|
| And just like that, it became _Republican Party Doctrine_
| that you do not cross the party line or else you get
| fired. This was absolutely supported and highly praised
| by their constituents! As Democrat politicians continued
| to work their assess off crossing the aisle, finding any
| way to keep the country functioning as half of the
| government declared strike (the irony).
|
| But for some reason we aren't allowed to say this.
| Republicans directly say their plan and strategy and
| malice _to the camera_ and we get punished for showing
| their voters exactly what they vote for.
|
| Democrats are _still_ trying to make deals, because half
| of them are literally just republicans with a (D), but if
| you ever ever ever ever cross the aisle as a Republican,
| _even to fix a problem your base has spent decades
| screaming about_ , you get primaried.
|
| Republican voters have done this. The republican party
| has chosen to do this. They own this.
| gmerc wrote:
| ... and legalized bribes as lobbying.
| varispeed wrote:
| It is also because corruption is called lobbying in
| America. Corporate lobbying should be illegal and
| punished severely (including capital punishment for
| directors and confiscation of the corporation).
| cromka wrote:
| This. Came here to say this. People completely forget
| about this supposed nuance when comparing US and Europe,
| but this is exactly what leads to fundamentally different
| outcomes in legislation and, by extension, people's
| expectations of their governments. That frog is long-time
| cooked.
|
| As an ex-expat to US, I never could stop smh over how
| Americans are not making it a number 1 issue for
| themselves. Private prison, private healthcare, gun
| industry, all types of small industries keep US
| government in their pockets and the society, as a whole,
| in a complete gridlock, unable to meet its actual
| expectations.
| analog8374 wrote:
| People believe whatever authority tells them. It's one of
| those bug/feature things.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| It's not like "privacy first EU" didn't just try to pass
| Chat Control
| vrganj wrote:
| The EU did _not_ pass Chat Control is the key message
| here. Your framing is strange.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| And only 40% of people still support Trump. But the
| analogy is the same.
|
| If you have 10 friends and ask them where they want to
| eat for dinner and six say let's go to an Italian
| restaurant and 4 say "let's kill Bob and eat him", you
| still have a shitty group of friends.
|
| It only takes one controversy to tip the scales. All
| governments have a propensity to want more power.
| vrganj wrote:
| The analogy is not the same. Trump was elected. Chat
| Control failed its vote.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > All governments have a propensity to want more power.
|
| Some governments have more effective checks-and-balances
| than others. The EU is a much looser confederation than
| the US, with significantly more power still invested in
| the member states (many of whom themselves are also loose
| confederations of semi-autonomous provinces...)
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| And let terrorism happen to any number of the member
| states. They would demand Chat Control being passed
| swiftcoder wrote:
| The EU is no stranger to terrorism? The troubles in
| Ireland, ETA in Spain, Al Qzaeda and ISIL in
| France/Spain/Germany, domestic terrorism in
| Norway/Germany/Denmark - all in the last 35 years.
| sham1 wrote:
| If you want a government of saints, you will be sorely
| disappointed. The four people who want to kill Bob and
| eat him for dinner will always exist, and the important
| part is to not let them actually decide on the dinner
| plan instead of just throwing your hand up in the air and
| giving up on planning dinners because some people are
| loonies and should not be given power.
|
| Yeah, just like with Chat Control and such, it takes
| vigilance and informing people around you in order to
| deny these sorts of things from happening, but we can
| take some respite in it not happening. The USB-C
| regulation changed things for the better by forcing the
| most obstinate member of the mobile phone ecosystem to
| adopt the connector. The replaceable battery regulation
| will force manufacturers to make their devices more
| repairable, and that is a good thing.
|
| Discounting that because of political mistakes that were
| only narrowly avoided seems frankly myopic. You can't
| just argue against all the good things the EU has done
| with "whatabout Chat Control"
| BoorishBears wrote:
| That's a great example of their point, all I got was a
| mechanically inferior connector (putting the most important
| piece of the female connector on a floating sliver of plastic
| was a choice) and the cable hell attached to USB C.
|
| If USB C had been so important to me I wouldn't have bought
| iPhones all those years.
| crimsontech wrote:
| I have tried to explain this so many times to people. You
| could just scrape out the lint from the lighting port with
| a tooth pick. The fragile part was the easily replaceable
| cable. Now the fragile part is in the iPhone itself.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Lightning had the contact springs in the phone, USB-C has
| the contact springs on the cable. This is the part that
| wears out, and USB-C moving to the cable is an
| improvement.
|
| Throughout its life, Lightning suffered from "black pin
| plague" where when springs in the port wore out, the
| power pin would start arcing. Now you have a cable with
| poor connectivity on the power pin, and you use this
| cable in another Apple device and it starts arcing on
| that device as well, causing that device to start
| transmitting this disease. It was a terrible design and
| USB-C does not have it.
|
| https://ioshacker.com/iphone/why-the-fourth-pin-on-your-
| ligh...
| Gigachad wrote:
| Apple was on the design committee for USB-C, they also
| failed to make lightning an industry standard after 10+
| years. The EU didn't design the connector, they just
| required the industry pick a design, and USB-C is what
| Apple and the rest designed.
| bigyabai wrote:
| If Lightning is so important to you then you can still use
| Lightning-based iPhones. Nobody took away the hardware they
| sold you, they just mandated that the new ones adopt a
| common standard.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| If lightning was vastly superior, they could still have a
| lightning port in addition to the usb, or make a
| different version with their propietary port for the rest
| of the world. But it wasn't superior.
|
| I understand the added difficulty of making a version
| with a different port. Again, if it was Uber superior, it
| would have made for very good advertisemebt for apple.
| avidiax wrote:
| You also got a connector that supports much more than USB
| 2.0 speeds. It also supports high power charging, video,
| thunderbolt, etc.
|
| Lightning was a dead-end connector that was only kept
| around to keep the Made-for-iPhone moat drawbridge up.
|
| USB-C makes the right design choice in putting the springs
| in the cable. Those wear out over time. I've never seen the
| male part of the female USB-C break, but I'm sure it's
| possible. But reversing this would require that the springs
| on the USB-C cable are on the outside, and those are quite
| fragile, so that sounds like a worse idea.
|
| USB-C is mostly a good design.
| hbs18 wrote:
| > I've never seen the male part of the female USB-C
| break, but I'm sure it's possible
|
| I know anecdotes don't mean anything, but I have. Every
| USB-C phone I've ever had, apart from my iPhone that I
| currently use, ended up with having completely worn out
| connectors after two-three years of use. They stop
| holding cables in firm enough and start only making the
| connection when holding the cable at an angle.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Could you mention what phone models were those. I haven't
| seen one port go bad.
| hbs18 wrote:
| They were an LG Nexus 5X, a OnePlus 3T and a Xiaomi Mi 8.
| The ports became loose on all of them over time,
| especially on the OnePlus where the cable would just fall
| out if you held the device upright, and in its final days
| the Xiaomi would need the cable pushed at an angle to
| make a connection.
| Dusseldorf wrote:
| I don't want to sound like a jerk, but have you
| considered that you might need to improve your
| putting/unplugging habits? I used to have connectors and
| cords break after around that much time. Around 2018 or
| so I bought a new set of chargers and decent quality
| cloth sheathed cables. Because all my cords were new, I
| was much more diligent about carefully plugging and
| unplugging (no mashing the port, no flexing across the
| short axis, no yanking by the cord) and eventually a
| habit formed. Not a single one of those cords, nor any of
| the ports on my phones, have broken since then. Even the
| daily use ones next to my bed!
| hbs18 wrote:
| I treat my phones carefully, I've literally never cracked
| a screen on any of them, the same goes for handling the
| charging cable and port. I'm always quite gentle with it,
| never leaving it propped up by the cable or at a weird
| angle, and the cables I used were the original ones that
| came with my devices. Mainly because my phones spend a
| lot of time plugged in acting as a hotspot for half a
| week, so I try to minimize the harm I cause by the extra
| (un)plug events.
|
| The Lightning port iPhone that I used for 3 years however
| handled my usage just fine (just tried it now and it
| feels just like it did new), and the USB-C one I've had
| for half a year seems to be holding up fine as well.
| These I used with a mix of cheap Aliexpress cables and
| the genuine Apple ones.
| TheLegace wrote:
| I don't understand this logic. If lightning connector had
| less issues than USB-C how could it the users fault for
| not being careful. This exactly how engineers/developers
| answer to problems they cause with bad engineering/design
| choices. Anyone that gives feedback is blamed. It leads
| to terrible engineering decisions like the USB standard,
| which frankly has always been bloated and terrible
| because of its design by committee. As much I would love
| a standard connection port for all my phones I won't
| accept substandard engineering. That's why I am still
| holding onto my lighting connector devices even though on
| principle I disagree with using them.
|
| Who gets to decide that I have to treat my devices that I
| pay for like fragile glass vases.
|
| I do both QA and Development and pretty competent at
| both. I almost never make broken things or poorly thought
| out because I know this negative feedback loop will
| continually make the situation worse. Lack of empathy for
| people that use products just leads to issues like
| Windows taskbar not even being able to search for
| applications. Its all the same thought process that leads
| to the result.
| nosrepa wrote:
| Probably a lot of lint in there! My 4 year old phone gets
| that way until I clean it out with a plastic pick (very
| vigorously at that) and it's like new again.
| Halian wrote:
| Would that USB 2.0 Type-C were somehow outlawed, or even
| better that every device that used Type-C supported
| everything it can do.
| ianburrell wrote:
| You don't want that. I was organizing my cables and
| noticed how much thicker the USB3 cables are than USB2.
| USB2 cables are cheaper than USB3 cables, the latter have
| gotten cheaper but still buy two USB2 for some USB3. USB3
| cables are also shorter cause harder to transmit signal,
| this has also gotten better.
|
| The flaw is that USB-IF didn't require marking faster
| cables. Putting a blue ring, stripe, or dot would have
| solved the problem.
| speleding wrote:
| USB-C is decent for data transfer. It's pretty poor for
| power delivery: the pins are too close, so it's not rated
| for use in bathrooms or kitchens, and there are many more
| of them than needed for power delivery, making it
| relatively expensive to use in things like children's
| toys.
|
| It was a mistake to conflate flexible power delivery and
| data transfer, you rarely need both at the same time.
| It's possible to design a better and cheaper 3 or 4 pin
| power delivery standard that can use higher power. But
| the law now says USB-C and good luck ever changing that.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| USB is a bus that is intended to be universal for serial
| *data*, that is what it is designed for.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Apple can't even make their strain relief on their cables
| work properly due to "being ugly" so preferring them to
| USBC is just another case of Apple-juice-kool-aid
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| it's ridiculus that this is still the problem ,that's no
| 1 cause for dead cables for our helpdesk
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Putting spring on the connector part rather than socket
| part means the easily replaceable part has wear item.
| Lighting is designed wrong here.
|
| And our helpdesk had more broken lightning connectors than
| anything else in shop that's ~ 50/50 PC/Mac
| mrWiz wrote:
| I'm surprised to hear that it was such a common failure.
| I used plenty of lighting devices back in their hay day
| and plenty of USBC devices since they became common. I
| don't tend to treat those devices gingerly and have _far_
| more issues with USBC than I ever did with Lightning,
| even accounting for the fact that lots of devices have
| USBC but only phones and mp3 players had lightning.
| edhelas wrote:
| Gigachad writing there <3
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Their point is almost the exact opposite to the one a
| 'gigachad' would make.
| 0dayz wrote:
| And yet their name concludes otherwise.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Fair point! I didn't even notice their username, in case
| that weren't very obvious.
| piekvorst wrote:
| Having the government regulate the free market is an issue of
| physical force and should always be discussed as such. Are
| you willing to deal with men by force beyond retaliation?
| This issue is moral, not practical.
|
| Besides, it's easy to sell one's freedom to a competent
| government, but it's insanely hard to get it back when it
| rots. This has been the case of many welfare states. "Let's
| force them to do the damn thing" is the very root of all
| social conflicts, not a magical solution. Being able to
| withstand it is a commendable exception, not rule.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Look, there is certainly a good argument to be made that
| regulation of this sort isn't the best way to achieve the
| goal.
|
| However, trying to use an argument that this is 'an issue
| of physical force' is a ridiculous way to make an argument
| for that perspective. All laws eventually come down to
| that, so it is pointless to debate that for every
| discussion on what the law should be.
| piekvorst wrote:
| Laws protect everyone's rights, both consumers and
| producers. When they are targeted to favor a specific
| collective, it's fair to bring up the issue of physical
| force. The 20th century is repleted with examples of one
| social group fighting the other by seeking special
| privileges and favors.
|
| So I don't think it's ridiculous, I think it's efficient.
| ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote:
| The perfect example of cognitive dissonance! The
| government, which mandates that the can of tomato soup I
| buy must not contain any glass shards, is immediately
| equated with physical violence. Although the shopkeeper who
| requires me to pay for the can before I take it out of the
| store is far more likely to get in my face if I don't
| follow their rules. I don't understand this worldview.
| You're selling your freedom to big corporations. Your life
| expectancy is declining. Your food is of poor quality. Your
| cities are full of homeless people. But then again, I am an
| unfree European blinded by communism.
| piekvorst wrote:
| If I buy a can of soup and find glass in it, I have a
| valid claim against the manufacturer. It's a matter of
| holding someone accountable for fraud or negligence, not
| a matter of regulation. The proper route is a court, not
| a bureaucratic agency that preemptively dictates
| production methods on the assumption that every
| manufacturer is a potential prisoner.
|
| > get in my face if I don't follow their rules
|
| If a shopkeeper asks me to leave because I refuse to
| follow his rules, he's exercising his right to control
| his own property, he's not initiating force.
|
| > You're selling your freedom to big corporations.
|
| I'm not selling my freedom to corporations, they can't
| throw me in jail, or take my property by edict. The
| government, by contrast, holds a legal monopoly on force.
|
| I am not an American, so I cannot diagnose declining life
| expectancy, homelessness, poor food, and other problems
| from afar. But I do know this: personal problems don't
| give one a moral claim on other people's labor. Need does
| not justify compulsion, and citizens are not sacrificial
| animals.
|
| > I am an unfree European blinded by communism.
|
| You hinted that Europe's communist past was somehow not a
| cautionary tale.
|
| > The perfect example of cognitive dissonance!
|
| Dressed-up ad hominem. You have no idea what I do or
| don't hold in my mind.
| ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote:
| > not a bureaucratic agency that preemptively dictates
| production methods on the assumption that every
| manufacturer is a potential prisoner.
|
| I see it exactly the other way around. I want this to be
| clarified upfront, not after I've already cut my tongue.
| What I don't understand is why market participants are
| being given special treatment here. There are laws, and
| they must be followed. That applies just as much in other
| areas.
|
| > personal problems don't give one a moral claim on other
| people's labor
|
| Which problem is personal and which isn't? You seem to be
| twisting this to suit your questionable argument.
|
| > You have no idea what I do or don't hold in my mind
|
| But I read what you write and interpret it. Just as you
| read what I write and interpret it. Here's another ad
| hominem for you: in your worldview, there is no morality
| at all. At least, none that is consistent. People like
| you behave toward the state like moody teenagers toward
| their parents. You don't want to be told what to do, but
| you wouldn't survive a single month without the
| institution you so despise.
| piekvorst wrote:
| > why market participants are being given special
| treatment here. There are laws, and they must be
| followed.
|
| Laws are contextual, they depend on more fundamental
| principles. A regulation that says "you must use this
| specific screw size" isn't a law in the same sense as
| "you shall not murder." When a "law" violates the
| principle of non-initiation of force, when it tells a
| manufacturer how to exercise his property rights under
| threat of imprisonment, it's not really a law but edict.
|
| The issue is who decides and when. A court decides after
| harm occurs, based on evidence of actual negligence or
| fraud. A regulatory agency decides before anyone does
| anything, based on hypothetical risks, and compels
| compliance under threat of force.
|
| > Which problem is personal and which isn't?
|
| A personal problem is one that doesn't involve the
| infringement of rights against another person. Most
| problems are personal. One's homelessness doesn't give
| one a right to another's property. The moment you say
| "your need obligates me," you've crossed the line into
| compulsion.
|
| > in your worldview, there is no morality at all. . . .
| People like you behave toward the state like moody
| teenagers toward their parents.
|
| That tells me enough about the depth of your study on
| this subject. Morality is a science of identifying the
| principles by which a rational being sustains his life.
| You're not discussing that science, you're reaching for a
| metaphor.
|
| > But I read what you write and interpret it.
|
| "Cognitive dissonance" is an accusation about the state
| of my mind, not an interpretation. You don't get to call
| me internally contradictory and then say "I'm just
| interpreting."
| eszed wrote:
| Yeah, that guy got unnecessarily personal. Let me try.
|
| You're right that civil judgements (and, though you
| haven't mentioned it yet, reputational brand damage
| through public exposure) are important checks on harm,
| but they break down in particular circumstances. In the
| first place, they're not a fair fight: corporations are
| able to limit, or even prevent, access to the court
| system by forced arbitration, jurisdiction changes, or
| intentionally running up attorney fees beyond what any
| plaintiffs can afford to risk. They also have ($PSEURY=,
| again) larger megaphones than any individual can reliably
| command.
|
| The toy example of glass in a soup can makes for a
| perfect case, but civil suits are impossible to pursue
| where harms are long-term, diffuse, cumulative, or simply
| too difficult for a jury of lay-people to understand. For
| instance, we all know that lead is harmful, but when
| multiple sources of lead exist it's impossible to prove
| (to the standard correctly required by the courts) that
| _this company 's_ lead caused _your particular_ illness.
| It 's similarly impossible to prove that any particular
| cancer-causing agent caused any particular cancer, even
| when we know statistically that it has raised the cancer
| risk profile of millions of people, and therefore been a
| causative factor in many deaths.
|
| If we insist that the _only_ mechanism for redress be
| individual companies held to account in individual cases,
| we either give up on the idea that corporate behavior can
| be aligned with the public interest, or (worse?) we make
| sure that politically-disfavored companies will be
| scapegoated by the media or the courts, while better-
| connected players get away with anything at all.
|
| Please allow me to forestall one possible counter-
| argument: if you, as my Libertarian-ish relatives do,
| reject outright the idea of "public interest", then we
| won't have much to say to each other: our world-views are
| simply too different. Otherwise, I'm interested in what
| you have to say.
| piekvorst wrote:
| I don't know the precise legal mechanisms for handling
| diffuse harms like the ones you describe. Determining the
| best means of applying the principle of suing
| corporations in practice is an very complex question that
| belongs to the philosophy of law. My task here is only to
| establish the nature of the principle and to show that it
| is practicable.
|
| That said, here is my principle: at any time, the
| government is orders of magnitude more powerful than any
| corporation. I think it is proper, in some cases, for the
| government itself to act as a plaintiff, to aggregate
| evidence, bring suit, and prove causation statistically.
| I can't delimit that role precisely, but I side with you
| that in some cases only the government has access to all
| necessary evidence.
|
| And no, I don't agree with the idea of "public interest."
| Any claim that "the public interest" supersedes private
| rights means that the interests of some men are to be
| sacrificed to the interests of others.
| eszed wrote:
| > the government is orders of magnitude more powerful
| than any corporation.
|
| As a practical matter, that's untrue in many, _many_
| places around the world, and there are no reasons why it
| couldn 't become true in the USA, or any other advanced
| democracy. Even if you don't think that is yet the case
| where you live, can you at least agree with me that many
| leaders of / investors in large corporations want it to
| be, and are working towards that end?
|
| I think your position in your second paragraph is at odds
| with your position in the third.
| piekvorst wrote:
| I do agree. In many places, governments are weak,
| captured, or corrupt. But those are mixed economies, in
| which state and corporate power fuse into one corrupt
| swamp: corporations lobby for regulations to crush
| rivals, officials sell favors. That's not evidence that
| economic power equals political power, it's evidence that
| abandoning the principle of a government limited to
| retaliatory force produces a cold civil war of pressure
| groups. The solution isn't more regulation, it's total
| separation of state and economics.
|
| > your second paragraph is at odds with your third
|
| No. The government acting as plaintiff is still
| retaliatory force: harm occurred, the state helps
| identify the perpetrator. That's not "public interest"
| overriding private rights, it's the government protecting
| individual rights by standing in for many individuals who
| share a common injury.
|
| And yes, corporate leaders want political power. That's
| cronyism. They want to use force because they can't win
| in a free market. It's a road to dictatorship, but the
| road is laid by the principle of "public interest," not
| unlimited profit motives.
|
| There's no such thing as "the public," only individuals.
| When one treats "the public" as a blank check to override
| private rights, one is really saying: some people get
| sacrificed to others. The taxi industry lobbying to ban
| Uber isn't about safety or competition. "Affordable
| housing" mandates that force landlords to subsidize
| strangers aren't compassion. This institutionalized cold
| civil war won't end until the state stops pickign
| winners.
| rjmunro wrote:
| > If I buy a can of soup and find glass in it, I have a
| valid claim against the manufacturer.
|
| What does that mean?
| piekvorst wrote:
| It means you can sue for product liability under common
| law. Negligence, breach of warranty, or strict liability,
| depending on jurisdiction. Court decides after harm.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Right, this typically works very well after you spend
| tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars getting all the
| stuff to court in the first place to have a trial drag on
| for years in discovery all the while the hospital is
| sending out debt collectors.
|
| Oh, that's if it wasn't actually a shell company in the
| first place that has no assets.
|
| A good portion of the things you mention existed before
| we had food regulations, you could sue the business if
| you had issues with them. The problem is the vast portion
| of the population is far too poor to do that. Regulations
| stop the harm before it happens.
| piekvorst wrote:
| My claim is narrower: the principle of retaliatory force
| is practicable. That is, a society can function using
| only courts, class actions, and government-as-plaintiff,
| without preemptive editcs on screw sizes or battery
| compartments.
|
| As I said earlier in this thread:
|
| > Determining the best means of applying the principle of
| suing corporations in practice is an very complex
| question that belongs to the philosophy of law.
| vrganj wrote:
| Sue them in who's court? With who to enforce the ruling?
|
| The... _government_?
| piekvorst wrote:
| Courts, police, and the army are proper. That's
| government. The difference is what kind of government. A
| proper government holds a monopoly on retaliatory force,
| it acts after someone initiates force or fraud. It
| doesn't dictate your screw size, battery compartment, or
| production method before you've harmed anyone.
| vrganj wrote:
| ...why? This sounds incredibly arbitrary.
| piekvorst wrote:
| It's not arbitrary. It's called the distinction between
| retaliatory and preemptive force. Retaliatory force
| requires a victim and evidence of causation. Preemptive
| force has no objective anchor, hence arbitrary by
| definition. You can't jail a man for a crime he might
| commit tomorrow.
| sham1 wrote:
| And pray tell, who comes up with common law? And who
| enforces the judgment of the court? And what gives the
| court the authority to judge on the matter of glass
| shards in your tomato paste?
|
| Fun fact about the common law in fact is that it came
| into existence because the English government after the
| Norman conquest needed a unified theory of law for the
| king's courts that was distinct from manorial and canon
| laws. 1154 Henry 2 the Plantagenet ascended the throne
| and wanted a code of law that would apply everywhere in
| the realm as opposed to local laws, the aforementioned
| manorial laws, as well as being secular, unlike canon
| law.
|
| So without the government, you wouldn't have this common
| law your legal theory relies on.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| >>> If I buy a can of soup and find glass in it, I have a
| valid claim against the manufacturer. It's a matter of
| holding someone accountable for fraud or negligence, not
| a matter of regulation. The proper route is a court, not
| a bureaucratic agency that preemptively dictates
| production methods on the assumption that every
| manufacturer is a potential prisoner.
|
| This is a common conservative trope. We don't need
| regulation because customers can always sue. (Famous
| interview with Milton Friedman.) Good luck finding a
| lawyer who will sue because of some glass in your soup
| can, or, for more serious cases, who can out last (or
| match the spending of) a billion dollar corporation. Yes,
| sometimes the underdog wins. Rich people can sue, and may
| not need the governments regulatory help. For most
| people, there is absolutely no recourse, particular for
| technically complex things, like prescription drugs.
|
| The idea that the legal system can consistently make
| better informed technical decisions than government
| scientists is not well supported by the evidence.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| > If I buy a can of soup and find glass in it, I have a
| valid claim against the manufacturer.
|
| Only because there is a court system provided by the
| state and because there is regulation that says that soup
| doesn't contain glass. Otherwise the manufacturer can
| just say "You didn't want glass in your soup, sucks, but
| for us glass in soup is part of the accepted
| distribution. Be happy that you got additional glass for
| free." .
| hnfong wrote:
| > It's time to accept regulation actually does work when you
| have a competent government.
|
| Given that it's the EU making those regulations, it looks
| like the government only has to be semi-competent. Maybe the
| only requirement is that they're not totally in bed with the
| big corps making money.
| egeozcan wrote:
| > Given that it's the EU making those regulations, it looks
| like the government only has to be semi-competent
|
| Context: I'm not a EU-native, I've migrated to here.
|
| It disturbs me a lot when people keep repeating the
| "incompetent government" narrative when it comes to the EU,
| but when you compare it to the dictatorship that I escaped
| from, they still seem way more competent, surprising when
| the big advantage of a dictatorship is supposed to be
| increased efficiency while reducing personal rights.
|
| Personally I cannot name a better government (or governing
| body, given that we are talking about the whole EU)
| anywhere else on this planet.
|
| I feel I'm incredibly lucky to live here even when the
| economy is getting tougher. The only thing that worries me
| and makes me consider leaving is the right-extremes, which
| to this day, thankfully had limited influence.
|
| Sorry for the digression, but I just wanted to address this
| repeating pattern. It's possible that you have very valid
| reasons to call them semi-competent and that I'm
| overreacting.
| hnfong wrote:
| Nah it was kinda a tongue in cheek snipe at the EU which
| may or may not be justified. Appreciate the counter-
| point.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Oh, okay. Sorry for the wall of text against the small
| snipe :) It's just that these things stick.
| dxdm wrote:
| No, thank you for posting it. Things like this need to be
| said.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Even here in Europe, most of Southern Europe was a bunch
| of Dictatorships up into the late 70s! Spain, Portugal,
| Greece...
|
| Not to mention Eastern Europe until the wall fell. All
| dictatorships in different forms. So yeah we've had our
| share as well.
|
| The problem with the EU is that it seems to be becoming
| more susceptible to industry lobbying. As of late they
| are reducing environmental laws (the banning of ICE
| cars), weakening GDPR and DMA/DSA etc. Not very happy
| with that. Ursula herself was all about her 'green deal'
| during her first administration and now she's breaking it
| all down.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| I hope you don't live to see the return of dictatorships
| in Europe. And I don't mean Hungary.
|
| https://jacobin.com/2025/05/ve-day-wwii-fascism-
| liberalism
|
| There's a storm coming.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| I know :'(
|
| In my origin country too unfortunately. But not where I
| live.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| >As of late they are reducing environmental laws (the
| banning of ICE cars)
|
| I think that particular one is because they realized
| their timeline is impossible to hit without utterly
| crippling EU
|
| > weakening GDPR and DMA/DSA
|
| There was always a lot of push for that, it is very much
| "yes/try later" on those legislations, we got the biggest
| traitor of the freedom out (UK) but there are still
| countries either interested, or incompetent enough to
| think the pushed ideas are a good thing
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| It's a bit of hit and miss, really. Like every big
| organisation, it's not a single, coherent entity, but has
| branches and departments filled by real, flawed people,
| so in practice it depends on which industry your're in.
| For example, digital policy bureaucrats are usually
| extremely competent, like, they do know how the stuff
| discussed here on HN works. (That they often have
| differen expectations from what people here want is
| orthogonal). Automotive industry is on the other hand
| squarely in bed with manufacturers (cars, but also
| accessories like child safety chairs). The average is
| suprisingly good, esp. in comparison with national
| bureaucracies.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| You're worried about the Right-ists.
|
| When it has been the Left that has largely governed
| Europe for the previous few decades to bring it to the
| point where it is now where the economics and defence
| capabilities of nations that once ruled the world are now
| laughing stock on the global stage.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Way back in the times of sailing ships with cannons?
|
| Absolutely Europe ruled the world economically and
| militarily.
| egeozcan wrote:
| > nations that once ruled the world are now laughing
| stock on the global stage
|
| ...and yet it gets repeated!
|
| I'm not worried about the right ideology. Last time I
| took a political test, it told me I'm slightly right-
| leaning, but that changes every time I take such tests :)
|
| I said that I'm disturbed by the extremists who plan to
| take away my legally earned rights.
|
| European countries have rules and requirements like most
| other countries. I looked at their criteria, it sounded
| fair, took the deal and now I'm here. I pay my taxes,
| obey the rules, even applied for citizenship (takes
| ages), and I expect my rights to be protected as well, as
| long as keep my end of the deal. Those people threaten
| that golden rule.
|
| Some seem to be obsessed about ruling and military power,
| and from the outside, they seem to believe that you only
| are allowed to move in this world if you kill/defeat the
| previous residents.
|
| Those are the people I'm scared of.
| Xixi wrote:
| I wonder to what extent in this instance it is driven by
| the EU regulating (mostly) foreign companies rather than
| (mostly) domestic ones.
|
| Said differently, it is much easier for the EU to be
| impartial and competent when regulating Apple or Samsung
| than when regulating Volkswagen or Stellantis...
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Well if you have seen how EU regulates domestic companies
| you would not wonder about that. There is no mercy.
|
| US companies just hit that barrier more often
| historically because they got used to "lobby it and it
| goes away" attitude to law, and when it doesn't work we
| have harpy screeeching about EU using laws to tax US
| companies that do not want to abide to law in place where
| they are doing business
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > it is much easier for the EU to be impartial and
| competent when regulating Apple or Samsung than when
| regulating Volkswagen or Stellantis
|
| They are still regulating the auto manufacturers pretty
| harshly, and without any particular favouritism, even
| though that is letting foreign players like BYD eat the
| lunch of the domestic manufacturers (who mostly seem to
| have bet the farm on a US-led return to fossil fuel
| dominance)
| abc123abc123 wrote:
| Nope. What the real effect has been is a waste of billions of
| billions that have gone into changing stuff that never needed
| changing. Future development has now been slowed down as well
| in the EU.
|
| All it takes to see that government regulation never works,
| is to look at how far behind the EU is in terms of GDP growth
| compared with the US and China who both have a significantly
| lighter touch when it comes to regulation.
|
| The EU is f*cked, and will become a little socialist region,
| with manual and tourist industry jobs, where rich people from
| the rest of the world go for a few weeks of vacation.
|
| I left the EU a long time ago, and I've earned so much money
| after leaving the socialist madness, that I recommend all
| young people I meet to do the same.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| "Rrgulation never works", is a very shallow take. It could
| mean anything. China is an autocratic system. Is that
| working? The US is going in that direction.
|
| On top of that, Europe isn't a country. To have less
| regulation, you need more of it. Unifying regulations, or
| else you have dozens of completely different jurisdictions.
| To a large extent, you still do, even with the EU. You
| can't sell to the general public in English. There are so
| many more things holding Europe back than "need
| deregulation".
| ywvcbk wrote:
| It's not self evident this is caused by regulation.
|
| And regulation generally certainly works when it come to
| regulating and splitting up monopolies and oligopolies,
| workers right and etc. (US has plenty of both even if its
| occasionally idiosyncratic)
| vrganj wrote:
| The EU is literally run by conservatives. Where are the
| scary socialists hiding?
| vintagedave wrote:
| > _regulation actually does work when you have a competent
| government_
|
| This is the free market. Free as in, regulated to allow and
| encourage market entry and competition (as with replacement
| keyboards), not free as in unregulated. When you look back at
| when 'free market' was first strongly mentioned as a term,
| this is what it meant.
| corndoge wrote:
| Both you and GP are correct!
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| We've also seen this within the US - California generally
| makes the first move and then companies just follow that law
| because they know others might change and it's easier than
| doing it by state. One relatively small law can have a big
| impact, we also follow GDPR in the US because a lot of
| companies operate in europe too
| hilliardfarmer wrote:
| People need to stop buying apple products. Anyone dumb enough
| to have already done so deserves what they get.
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| I guess I'm happy being dumb if it means I deserve a laptop
| with a battery that lasts all day, a trackpad that doesn't
| feel like it's covered in dry syrup, a case that doesn't
| make noises when I pick it up, and a processor that feels
| like alien tech.
| ezst wrote:
| I haven't used a laptop in the last decade that wouldn't
| last a whole day on battery, or would hold any of those
| qualifiers for that matter, from Apple or other
| manufacturers. Not that Apple are bad devices, but they
| are flawed like the rest of them (often less, and
| sometimes more in areas that may matter less to you, the
| software being a major and increasingly one to me).
|
| Also good to remember that Apple is a company of good
| devices and tremendous marketing, not a company of
| tremendous devices per se. That entails a lot of
| subjectivity and awkward tribalism.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| What $900 laptop with a similar form factor and build
| quality to a Macbook Air am I supposed to buy instead? I
| did quite a bit of research on this a couple of months ago,
| with a strong preference for a Linux compatible device
| (I've never been a MacOS user, and I'm done with Windows
| after 10 dies all the way). After weeks of research, I came
| to the conclusion that my best bet was to buy a Macbook Air
| and hope that Asahi support for M4 chips comes sooner
| rather than later.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Chat control is not something that indicates competence.
| They're throwing darts and sometimes hit the board.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _usb-c_
|
| Don't forget about the time micro-USB has mandated. Was that
| "competent government"?
| 1718627440 wrote:
| That government has a limited jurisdiction over the
| offenders. They were still effective to the point, that
| there was only a single company not having microUSB.
| Granted that wasn't a small part of the market, but also
| not the largest.
| Levitating wrote:
| We can't rely on the government to step on any time consumers
| are getting abused. We need to teach consumers to do better.
| Trannosaur wrote:
| Also, they're ignoring the true cost of unrepairable hardware
| which is e-waste. Perhaps if they're looking for a lighter
| hand, they'd suggest that less repairable hardware has to
| have a tax that pays for its PROPER recycling.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| And making them more repairable as someone else said has
| tradeoffs. It's not like Apple is the low cost leader. Choose
| another vendor
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Engineering failures relating to repairability defects are
| some of the most annoying.
|
| OTOH they can be a major pillar in a well-orchestrated
| anti-reuse, anti-recycling, anti-environmental money
| machine for some manufacturers.
|
| >Choose another vendor
|
| Good advice, I already did once Woz left ;)
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Or just pay $70 a year for Apple Care like I did for my
| M2 MacBook Air and not worry about it...
| delbronski wrote:
| Yes! We tried leaving tech unregulated and it did not work.
| We got huge monopolies screwing consumers at every turn. Time
| to try something new.
| ajkjk wrote:
| well it's a good solution in the sense that it would solve the
| problem and it would be great for all of us.
| pvtmert wrote:
| Here is the thing, replacing something may be hard or easy. But
| getting the parts (which are already produced and available for
| the manufacturers for their "added value" repairs) should be as
| easy as how they are getting them too.
|
| Not to mention manuals/instructions. Regulation discussed here
| is about these too.
|
| Also as consumer, I would argue the marketing done by apple is
| just scammy. They keep praising how much carbon saved or
| sustainable new machines are. But in fact, a minor issue
| becomes a massive electronic dump.
|
| I also like Macs, I own several of them. Repaired a few. Mostly
| replacing batteries and keyboards. For example 2014 Macbook Air
| had a normal battery, no sticky business. Meanwhile 2020-2025
| MacBook Air has sticky stuff, making repairs harder.
|
| The best part is, 2014 macbook air has 54 Watt/hr battery,
| 2020-2025 models are 53 watts/hour. The lasting battery gains
| are coming from Apple silicon efficiency as well as modern BMS.
|
| Simply put, regulation is the answer. Apple makes it difficult
| because they can, and also because it creates revenue. Of
| repairability was the source of income, you would see 10/10
| repairable macbooks with no (significant) tradeoffs. (ie. it
| could be a few grams heavier for added screws)
| danpalmer wrote:
| > If you want a repairable machine, buy one.... Framework
|
| Sure, but Framework doesn't run the OS I want, doesn't run the
| chip I want, doesn't quite meet the form factor I want. It's
| not an effective market because I can't pick and choose.
|
| The problem here is vertical integration. If you want anything
| from Apple you have to buy everything from Apple.
|
| And the answer to that is: regulation.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Being an effective market doesn't mean you get everything you
| want.
|
| You're actually saying: "I want Apple's software, and I want
| certain chips, and I want a certain form factor. And if Apple
| won't build what I want, I will pass a law to make them build
| it for me!"
|
| Come on man. You will make tradeoffs either way. The answer
| isn't: force a company to build what I want them to build.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Well another version of it is: I want to be able to talk to
| my family, but I don't want to buy an iPhone. The EU
| rightly regulated that any chat network big enough must
| open their doors to different platforms. Or I don't want to
| buy Microsoft Office for my employees but I want to be able
| to do business with those who do, and thankfully we have
| relatively open document formats now.
|
| The chips argument is contrived, the OS argument less so,
| but it's all just network effects at some level, and it's
| important for competition and effective markets that we
| prevent the largest networks from locking people in and
| forcing them to make a lot of other unrelated decisions.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > I want to be able to talk to my family, but I don't
| want to buy an iPhone
|
| How were you not able to do this without an iPhone?
| henry2023 wrote:
| you seem to assume that markets regulate themselves. This is a
| common fallacy. Good regulation is fundamental in any working
| society.
| grumpyprole wrote:
| Yes, the belief that markets self regulate, was proved
| incorrect by the 2008 financial crisis.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| 100% agree. If you don't like that Apple products are expensive
| to repair, don't buy them or suck it up
|
| I came to terms with it, mostly. I buy AppleCare. I've had my
| screen on my M1 Mac replaced twice.
|
| I agree with the sentiment tho. I had the rubber foot come off
| the bottom of a MacBook Pro, Apple wanted $350 to replace that
| $1 part. I found other solutions
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| > If you don't like that Apple products are expensive to
| repair, don't buy them or suck it up
|
| Yea exactly. This is why I switched from Apple to Framework.
|
| I like MacOS better than Linux, but it was worth the hardware
| trade off for me.
| GreenVulpine wrote:
| No. This is a bad solution. You can't blame consumers for not
| making the right choice when there's a sea of irreparable junk
| and a few niche repairable options on the market. Reparability
| should be the default expectation.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Yeah we can keep saying that, but thanks to the EU we have
| everybody with shared chargers. Thanks to the EU, the nintendo
| switch has a replaceable battery. Thanks to the EU, we have
| USB-C on iPhone.
|
| I'm sorry but your argument conflicts with reality at this
| point: regulation works better for expectations on hardware.
| tencentshill wrote:
| The Macbook Neo is just as high-quality as any other Apple
| product. Apple has some of the most brilliant engineers in the
| industry, they can absolutely design a repairable device to
| their own standards.
| leptons wrote:
| >Apple has some of the most brilliant engineers in the
| industry,
|
| Did they fire the guy who designed the magic mouse? What
| about the one who designed the iPhone 4 antenna? Are they
| still working there? The butterfly keyboard? The class action
| Apple lost over the Macbook 2011 design flaws? Should I go
| on?
| FabHK wrote:
| iPhone 4 was a tempest in a teapot. But yeah, the circular
| mouse and the butterfly keyboard...
|
| Having said that, it seems obvious that there is a tradeoff
| between repairability, price, and compactness. And Apple
| offers devices on different points on that triangle.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Yes, they did actually fire the guy who did the iPhone 4
| antenna. The butterfly keyboard guy is now working with
| OpenAI apparently.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >One of the things macbook users praise the most is "build
| quality", which often means the solidity of the device, lack of
| flex, etc. These quality features are, in part, achieved by the
| same choices that make it hard to repair.
|
| Lol what.
|
| Nothing about apple design is a sacrifice to repairability. The
| only reason they make it hard to repair is because when your
| Mac breaks, you go buy another one. Can't afford it? Then you
| are not "classy" enough to own a Mac.
|
| I swear, there must be some epidemic where Mac fans are losing
| their marbles even more so today.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| Your individual choice will not make systemic changes.
| userbinator wrote:
| _Ease of repair and "build quality", are to some degree
| (although not entirely) tradeoffs against each other._
|
| Thinkpads are a counterexample.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > No, this is a bad solution.
|
| This is a great solution. See: EU and normalization on USB-C
| for power delivery and wider market effect. Yes, market was
| heading in this direction, but EU legislation brought it over
| the line.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| The MacBook neo keyboard is replaceable with a sticker and a
| bunch of screws. This was always possible. Apple just doesnt
| care.
| 10729287 wrote:
| Bunch of screws : 41.
| g947o wrote:
| If you have done some repairs, you would know that is
| nothing. And you would rather have screws than glue or
| plastic clips, the more the better.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| The people that complain about the number of screws are
| very counter productive. The important thing is that repair
| is possible at all without permanent damage. Framework and
| some of the 'repair optimized' designs seem to assume that
| the device is going to be repaired daily and that it needs
| to be as easy as possible.
| StingyJelly wrote:
| The bar should be higher than "Better than glue". While
| repair is possible, the number of screws with many
| different screw types still make it needlessly time
| consuming / expensive.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| The ease of repair only needs to be in proportion to the
| likelihood of needing repair and frequency of occurrence.
| al_borland wrote:
| I would think there is a middle ground between a toolless
| design and 40+ screws. When I saw the IFixIt review of
| the Neo, it seemed like an excessive number of screws.
| I'd like to be a fly on the wall in the design meetings
| that led to all those screws.
|
| While a single device for a single user will not need
| daily repairs, when you think about these devices being
| deployed in a school system, there very well could be a
| steady supply of repairs to perform. Streamlining that
| process does matter.
|
| It's almost like Apple was trying to comply with new EU
| laws while still making the repair seem a little
| intimidating, to push users toward professionals.
|
| 15 years ago Apple was making unibody laptops with great
| build quality, and changing out the battery, hard drive,
| and RAM was trivial[0]. The argument that they made for
| removing replaceable batteries and making things less
| reparable overall, was always space constraints. Mounting
| brackets take up space they didn't have. I don't think
| that argument holds up. Since 2010 the large optical
| drive is gone, SSDs are now much smaller, and RAM is
| integrated and also smaller. They should have plenty of
| room to work with to bring back reparability, for the few
| things that can still be meaningfully serviced.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU44Ay7Q0b8
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| More screws means more chassis stiffness. A desireable
| feature.
|
| If I was streamlining the process I'd use an electric
| screwdriver and a 3d printed screw holder.
|
| You dont need a 'professional' repairman to screw things
| in. Most people aren't intimidated by screws, that's
| silly.
|
| SOCAMM2 is a great form factor for user upgradeable DRAM.
| The fragile pins are all on the relatively cheap
| interposer. Id like to see an equivalent standard for
| NAND. M.2 uses more z height than necessary. Especially
| for 2 sided support.
| reeredfdfdf wrote:
| I believe in this case regulation would work just fine. My old
| Macbook Pro from 2012 was just as solid and high quality as the
| newest models, but much more repairable. It's possible to
| create repairable devices without compromising much in other
| areas.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| This was my first thought too.
|
| Not everything you personally dislike needs to be illegal.
|
| MacBooks are great as long as you have the money. OP could keep
| looking for 3rd party repairs, etc.
| streetfighter64 wrote:
| > Not everything you personally dislike needs to be illegal.
|
| I'm having a hard time seeing why making stuff more difficult
| to repair just so that people are incentivized to throw it
| away and buy a new one, should not be illegal. If not for the
| anti-customer attitude, at least for the amount of waste and
| environmental destruction it results in.
| defrost wrote:
| You might be interested in the vast world of public policy.
|
| There's more to the world than banned / not banned.
|
| In this instance, people might want a sensible pragmatic
| government to levy against companies that have high numbers
| of items ending up in eWaste processing (or discarded in
| fly tipping) and offer reductions to companies that invest
| in eWaste processing and collection.
|
| There are also legitimate total lifetime cost of item
| models that suggest clean, fast, simple manufacturing that
| leads to a product hard to deconstruct might actually be
| "cheaper" in time, resources, and energy across a large
| consumer population than a functionally equivalent item
| designed to be "unbuilt" and rebuilt (ie repaired).
| streetfighter64 wrote:
| > clean, fast, simple manufacturing that leads to a
| product hard to deconstruct
|
| This seems like a total fantasy. Do you actually have any
| examples of non-repairability making the process cheaper?
|
| Sure there are lots of economical incentives to making
| stuff that you use until it breaks and then throw away,
| but that's just because the cost of e.g. mining metals or
| taking care of e-waste are externalized, due to using
| unethical labor in third world countries. If the "large
| consumer population" of the west actually had to bear the
| real cost of the electronics they produce, things would
| be vastly different.
| streetfighter64 wrote:
| Another point regarding your last paragraph, there are
| actually tons of examples of Apple (and others) making a
| more complicated (and thus expensive) design sorely to
| prevent independent repair shops from providing cheap
| repairs, thus "encouraging" customers to buy a
| replacement, or use Apple's own "repair", which just
| replaces entire parts instead of repairing them, and
| bills enough for Apple's liking.
| rglynn wrote:
| I guess you can make the argument that legislating
| repairability will raise the price floor for devices
| because it increases the cost to the manufacturer. This
| isn't a problem for most of us in tech, but affordability
| can be an issue for many.
| streetfighter64 wrote:
| Making devices un-fixable often costs more than just
| building them in the most straightforward way. In either
| case, I don't think a few dollars more or less in
| manufacturing costs will impact the consumer prices in
| any way. Let's not pretend that Apple (or other computer
| / phone companies) has thin margins.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Half the responses in this thread are from people who
| replaced the keyboard for about 50$ or so.
|
| Even then, if I want a new ultra thin device that doesn't
| have replaceable storage or user input devices, that's my
| right to buy.
|
| Who is going to magically determine what replaceable means
| ? From the post it looks like OP tried to fix it
| incorrectly.
|
| Does apple owe op a new laptop even if they damaged it ?
| streetfighter64 wrote:
| Well yeah, you can probably fix it for pretty cheap if
| you've just got some know-how. But why do Apple need to
| make it more difficult to fix for no reason? Riveting the
| keyboard to the frame doesn't make the device "thinner",
| and as proved by people being able to fix it without
| rivets, doesn't even really serve a purpose. Your last
| sentence is a total non-sequitur; as far as I can tell it
| does not relate to anything I've said.
|
| Why are you so adamant about protecting your "right" to
| buy a worse product?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I don't understand this authoritarian need to ban
| everything you don't like.
|
| Should the government have a reparability board ? Who
| gets to be on it ?
|
| If it pleases the King , may I buy a laptop while
| traveling and bring it home.
|
| An argument could be made for a refundable recycling fee.
| Say 5% that gets returned when you take the device to a
| recycling center after your done with it
| streetfighter64 wrote:
| I mean, do you also consider it "authoritarian" to have
| e.g. regulations on vehicle exhaust? Should the
| government have an environmental protection agency? Who
| gets to be on it? What about my right to insulate my
| house with asbestos and paint it with lead?
|
| And who's talking about banning private import of
| laptops? You do know that you can regulate national sales
| without controlling absolutely everything right? Whoever
| bothers to travel to a different country just to buy a
| worse laptop should be allowed to do so, it's whatever.
|
| Regarding "recycling", that's all a show in order to seem
| more environmentally friendly with very little actual
| impact. You can look up how electronics "recycling"
| usually works in practice, which normally entails sending
| the waste to third world countries to have some precious
| metals extracted using dangerous and not exactly
| environmentally friendly processes.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vufLW4xOsS4
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ8BjHOdI8g
| 999900000999 wrote:
| > mean, do you also consider it "authoritarian" to have
| e.g. regulations on vehicle exhaust?
|
| In the US this is why so many wagons have turned into
| SUVs which have more lax fuel efficiency requirements.
| They find ways around the regulations.
|
| All Apple laptops have hard soldered SSDs. SSDs have to
| go bad eventually.
|
| Should the government force apple to only sell laptops
| with replaceable ssds ?
|
| The most environmentally friendly laptop is a used
| Thinkpad. But I respect others have a right to buy what
| they want.
|
| Back to the original point, the laptop isn't even hard to
| fix. OP just didn't do there research.
| streetfighter64 wrote:
| One country did a bad job with regulations, therefore
| regulation as a whole is useless? Anyway, the question
| was if you consider it authoritarian, not whether the
| particular legislation in your particular country was
| successful.
|
| _Should_ the government force Apple to sell laptops with
| replaceable SSDs? Perhaps. What 's the upside of having
| to desolder it when it goes bad? What's the upside of
| riveting the keyboard to the frame?
|
| You're also dodging the question of my right to buy
| vegetables with high levels of PFAS and drink water with
| high levels of lead.
|
| > Back to the original point, the laptop isn't even hard
| to fix. OP just didn't do [their] research.
|
| The original point was never whether some guy did a good
| job fixing his laptop or not, but rather whether there's
| any point to riveting the keyboard, and more generally,
| whether it's worth defending companies' "rights" to sell
| intentionally crippled products and pollute the
| environment.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Regulation is the only reasonable answer to this sort of
| problem. The specific suggestion may not be the best possible
| regulation, but we have several hundred years of proof that
| individual market-based action cannot solve what is basically
| an insurance problem.
| bluegatty wrote:
| "No, this is a bad solution. If you want a repairable machine,
| buy one."
|
| Fair to push back ... but your assertion implies one of the
| greater fallacies of free markets.
|
| Free markets don't magically work like that.
|
| When there are only a handful of participants in any given
| market, they don't provide all the options as we would like.
|
| It's 100% true that Apple makes some 'good tradeoffs' for build
| quality - but it's also 100% true that they make tradeoffs for
| vendor lockin.
|
| Lightning connectors are great examples of that.
|
| The answer may be regulation. It depends, and it has to be
| careful.
|
| While it's a very 'iffy' situation with respect to keyboards,
| if we move the conversation to 'batteries' you can see how we
| might want regs that enable some way for consumers to
| mechanically replace batteries - and definitely 3rd party
| repair - and plausibly enable standard 3rd party batteries.
|
| These companies have incredibly monopoly and monopoly power,
| they reason their margins are so high is partly because of
| demand, but also because of 'market power' which can
| significantly distort innovation (think apps on iPhone, totally
| captured market etc).
|
| Unfortunately it's never so easy as 'always regulate or always
| not'.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| > No, this is a bad solution. If you want a repairable machine,
| buy one.
|
| It's a good solution. Even if you don't want to repair your
| meachine, it would be worth more on the second-hand market
| meaning less ewaste for society in general.
|
| > One of the things macbook users praise the most is "build
| quality", which often means the solidity of the device, lack of
| flex, etc. These quality features are, in part, achieved by the
| same choices that make it hard to repair. Ease of repair and
| "build quality", are to some degree (although not entirely)
| tradeoffs against each other.
|
| The neo gets pretty glossy build quality reviews and is one of
| the most repairable macs in decades.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Before Apple ever came along, failure to engineer in all
| kinds of extreme repairability was a recognized hallmark of
| unsuitability for mission-critical applications. Widely
| distributed repair manuals were of course table-stakes too.
|
| Woz was well-aware of this from HP's legendary performance at
| the time.
|
| It's just not easy to stay on the most correct path when
| there are so many shiny distractions.
|
| Now the Neo sounds like a step in the right direction.
|
| >one of the most repairable macs in decades.
|
| With the Neo they could be jumping right back on the right
| path from a distance. Which is an improvement but it does
| also show they could have been doing it the entire time if
| they had the serious commitment to mission-critical users.
|
| The only real way for it to be a game-changer is if they
| actually change their game :)
| mrob wrote:
| Consumer choice only works when there's a free market. Computer
| systems are encumbered by copyright and patent monopolies, so
| there's no free market. I can't buy a third-party Macbook.
| Because these monopolies are granted by the state it's
| reasonable for the state to correct any market failures they
| cause with regulation.
| mentalgear wrote:
| I was hoping with the new Replaceable Battery Law from the EU
| entering this summer, all (i)Phones and tablets were to become
| easily repairable / battery swap-able. I was super disappointed
| learning recently, when considering why the new iPads weren't
| build to be easily open-able like the new Macbook Neo, that
| there's a pretty big loophole the lobby got in: if you can
| proof your battery lasts for 1000 cycles with 80% capacity
| remaining, you can exempt yourself and still seal the device in
| a user not-openable fashion.
|
| (btw: people claiming that it has to be this way because of
| "waterproof": just no. Devices have existed before the whole
| glue sealing non-sense Apple introduced and exist now that are
| equally waterproof without glueing it all together to keep
| user's from the hardware. And even if you think it is that, it
| still wouldn't make sense to glue laptops and desktop pcs
| together who don't even claim to be waterproof)
|
| At least there is a bright side: The EU Repairability Law is
| still pushing companies to make their devices more repairable -
| by demanding that professional repair must be possible from
| independent professionals and tech manufacturers must also
| provide repair parts for x years.
| dahcryn wrote:
| also, let's not conflate easy to repair with cheap to repair.
|
| The macbook is quite easy to repair, it's just insanely
| expensive because they made the choice that, for user
| experience, they attach the keyboard to the machines body.
|
| You can have ease of repair and build quality, but then you
| give up portability I guess (bulky and heavy). And also cost
| goes up
| nandomrumber wrote:
| No.
|
| You are wrong.
|
| There are Apple laptops, and other devices, that were
| relatively easy to service and were lauded for their build
| quality.
| yokoprime wrote:
| this is such a classic american reply. "vote with your wallet"
| and "the market decides". thing is most people don't care,
| don't complain or are not in a situation where they can "vote
| with their wallet". truth is, some regulation must exist to
| nudge companies is the right direction. a good example of this
| is e.g disposable vapes, people love them for some reason, but
| they are extremely wasteful.
| 9rx wrote:
| Trouble is that regulation isn't imposed by an omnipotent
| deity in the sky. In a democracy, regulation must come from
| the very same people who you say don't care, don't complain,
| and aren't willing to change their habits. Given that you say
| the people don't care, aren't willing to change, and perhaps
| even _prefer_ the status quo, regulation isn 't going to
| magically appear.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| I'd like to know what planet you live on where a single time
| over the last 50 years a company has done one solitary thing
| that was good for the consumer without having the gun of
| regulation against their head.
| jollyllama wrote:
| > One of the things macbook users praise the most is "build
| quality", which often means the solidity of the device, lack of
| flex, etc. These quality features are, in part, achieved by the
| same choices that make it hard to repair. Ease of repair and
| "build quality", are to some degree (although not entirely)
| tradeoffs against each other.
|
| You're making an oversimplification. You could make a heavier,
| thicker device with those same qualities that was repairable.
| mcv wrote:
| Unibody Macbooks had excellent build quality (except for their
| vulnerability to spilled drinks), but were very repairable. I
| don't see how build quality and repairability have to be
| opposites.
| hliyan wrote:
| I assume you consider this a bad solution because the free
| market would always converge on the right solution(s),
| including reparable machines.
|
| However, if all participants (in this case manufacturers) in a
| market conclude that:
|
| (1) product B has a lower profit margin than product A, and
|
| (2) product B is superior enough to eventually become the
| dominant variant and
|
| (3) the market size is fairly static and
|
| (4) the first mover on product B is unlikely to maintain a lead
| for very long,
|
| then all participants would choose to suppess product B, even
| without having to resort to collusion.
|
| Not only that, if the manufacturers consider regulation to be a
| market in its own right, i.e. it is available for purchase
| (which it de facto is in countries where lobbying is legal),
| then market forces will also drive regulation away from product
| B.
|
| To me, this explains why some products peak in build quality
| sometime after innovation plateaus, and the continue to
| diminish over time (usually measured in decades). Some
| household appliances have already reached this stage. For Apple
| products, this phenomenon may still be in the future.
| zackmorris wrote:
| MostlyStable, are you a deregulation zealot?
|
| By extension, are you also an antitrust enforcement denier?
|
| Also by extension, do you understand the term late-stage
| capitalism?
|
| Because if you truly believe that regulation isn't necessary,
| then you are either ok with, or unaware that, unregulated
| capitalism ends in monopoly (or duopoly to keep up
| appearances). A free market only has a chance of existing under
| regulation, otherwise it's immediately gamed to maximize
| profit, which leads to runaway wealth inequality (the
| antithesis of a free market).
|
| In other words, a EUR730 ($835) top case replacement is only
| allowed to exist because your worship of deregulation prevents
| the very competition that you yearn for.
|
| I don't normally word my comments this strongly, but we seem to
| have lost our BS detectors since yours is the top comment.
|
| Remember that it's ok to change your mind. So I'm not
| criticizing you, but the mindset that's allowing fundamental
| mistakes to not only go unchallenged, but be celebrated.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Lol I think watching the entirety of the EU run on shitty
| plastic laptops that are government approved would really top
| the British fight against heatwaves by smearing yoghurt on
| their windows.
|
| I think I'd really enjoy this. Yes, please do this.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Then why do newer Apple devices have significantly better
| repairability vs older ones ? The build quality has gone down?
| tracker1 wrote:
| +1 here... Lenovo business laptops have a history of being
| particularly good at being user repairable.
|
| I'm probably going to go with Framework myself whenever I do
| upgrade. Still using an M1 air, which suites my day to day
| needs, I don't develop on it, as I can remote to my desktop
| from anywhere.
| bonyt wrote:
| I replaced the keyboard MacBook Air M1 keyboard with a $20 model
| from Amazon and it's been going strong for a full year. I had
| spilled ginger ale on the original.
|
| The board is riveted in, but there are enough screws to hold the
| replacement in place. Removing the board is a shockingly violent
| process, but it worked for me.
|
| Keyboard: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQBVMM3X (price has gone
| up).
|
| Video of rivets breaking: https://i.tonybox.net/9f2083b218d5.mp4
| (you can see I missed a screw and slightly cut my hand here too).
| TobiasBerg wrote:
| Thanks for posting, I might attempt this if I feel brave enough
| one day! Mind if I link to this from the post? Could help
| someone in the future
| bonyt wrote:
| Sure - of course! Hope it can be helpful.
| x0x0 wrote:
| wow, you are not underplaying the force needed. You can hear
| the rivets going.
| deaux wrote:
| I wonder if anyone has hacked it (in the "Hacker News" sense of
| hack) so that the above keyboard can be used in an external
| casing, without inserting it into the Macbook body. I'd pay a
| lot of money for that. The Magic Keyboard is different.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| i mean it's pretty nice for a laptop keyboard, but i've never
| thought of it as good enough to use externally tbh
|
| or do you mean integrating it into a different laptop a la
| framework? that could be cool, but would also have to think
| how much the chassey stiffness/specific construction
| contributes to the feel
|
| p.s. has anybody here tried (the external) magic trackpad?
| the macbook trackpad is infuriatingly good
| jawilson2 wrote:
| I have the external Magic Trackpad. It is wonderful. I use
| it with my split Moonlander keyboard, and keep it in the
| middle. I honestly can't use a normal keyboard now, MacBook
| Pro included.
| port11 wrote:
| Anecdotal but I never had more hand pain than when I
| ordered a Magic Trackpad and tried to commit to it.
| Pretty bad cramps after a few weeks.
| commandersaki wrote:
| I have a magic keyboard for my studio, bloody expensive,
| but I just love the ergonomics and feel compared to my two
| TKL (really nice) mechanical keyboards.
| ayewo wrote:
| Mind sharing an Amazon link to the electric screw driver you
| used in your video?
| Daneel_ wrote:
| I'm fairly sure that's the iFixit precision electric
| screwdriver: https://www.ifixit.com/products/precision-
| electric-screwdriv...
| streetfighter64 wrote:
| Well done! This is the sort of "old HN" spirit that I love.
| Though if I ever need to do this myself I think I would try
| using a tiny "crowbar" to break each rivet individually, just
| to spare myself from cutting my hand.
| StingyJelly wrote:
| You can use tiny drill to drill off the rivets - much less
| violent. I covered everything in paper / masking tape to be
| able to vacuum off the metal shavings and used small dremmel
| like electric drill with chinese used re-sharpened pcb
| drillbit.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| > I missed a screw and slightly cut my hand here too
|
| After a nasty gash from a washing machine, which impacted my
| typing for a week, I got a pair of these:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Mechanix-Wear-Utility-Gloves-Large/dp...
| $14, may save a doctor visit
| sleepybrett wrote:
| the macbook neo has gone back to a replaceable keyboard. The next
| line of macbookpros are appenrly getting a new case design. There
| is hope.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| This is like complaining that BMW maintenance is expensive.
| aurareturn wrote:
| No this isn't even like that. Frameworks are 2x the price of a
| Macbook without the performance, battery life, build quality,
| screen quality, touch pad, speakers, etc.
|
| If Apple is the BMW here, what is Framework? It's definitely
| not a Toyota.
| contingencies wrote:
| I strongly recommend not buying a Macbook and instead hacking a
| mini: https://github.com/vk2diy/hackbook-m4-mini ... cheaper and
| restores control of peripheral selection and replacement. That is
| to say "such a system will last ~forever instead of ~3 years
| [when the first major component dies and replacement costs ~70%
| of a new Apple product]". Particularly with Asahi Linux
| progressing so quickly. https://asahilinux.org/ Without Asahi
| Linux I would not buy a Mac in 2026.
|
| I too looked at _Framework_ and like the idea, unfortunately in
| my case the supply chain was too slow to be tolerable, before
| even considering the price-performance ratio.
|
| I strongly support the idea that the EU should force vendors to
| make consumer device repairs cost-effective and available or open
| source and expose their component interfaces in exchange for the
| right to sell in Europe. After all, the EU brought us USB-C, so
| we know regulatory pressure works. Thanks, EU!
| coldsunrays wrote:
| > order a replacement keyboard, take the laptop apart, replace
| the keyboard and good to go
|
| That's all it took with my Framework laptop, and I'm very
| grateful for it. I was in a good place financially when I got it,
| but now I'm not. I feel a strong sense of relief that if an
| accident occurs and I need a repair, it won't set me back too
| much.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The trackpad on my 2.5 year old Macbook Air stopped working.
| Apple wanted over PS400 to fix it. Thankfully I found a local guy
| who did it for a fraction of that. Screw Apple.
| heelix wrote:
| Had a similar experience with the XPS series. Was able to find a
| keyboard. When taken apart, realized they had used plastic bits,
| tape, and other things to connect the keyboard to the top lid.
| Seems they expected one to either be handy with epoxy or buy the
| combo.
| bluedino wrote:
| I thought the keys were replaceable now?
|
| (first video I found on a search)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WYT7YIh00Xk
|
| I know in the Butterfly days those keys would break when you
| removed them.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Far more likely it's an electrical contact issue.
| charcircuit wrote:
| It would have been cheaper if the author would have bought
| AppleCare.
| EteenSMASH wrote:
| Buy a framework bro
| Tade0 wrote:
| > I say "stopped working", but technically it works too well now,
| it is being pressed constantly, which makes the laptop pretty
| unusable.
|
| I had this problem in my Framework. I fixed it by... holding the
| laptop upside down and mashing the offending key for several
| minutes. Didn't work immediately, but now you wouldn't tell that
| it was ever broken. I've managed to panic-order (~EUR80) another
| keyboard though, so now I have a spare.
|
| For context a laptop keyboard is build like this:
|
| https://www.iqsdirectory.com/articles/membrane-switch/membra...
|
| This problem is caused by the layers sticking together. In the
| case of the Framework 16 the "d" key sits on top of a foam pad
| which in turn is placed on top of a heat pipe, so this area gets
| particularly hot under load. The layers are often made from PET,
| which starts softening anywhere in the range of 65-87C - so
| easily within range of a laptop heat pipe.
|
| By mashing the key I was hoping to detach the layers and
| apparently it worked.
|
| That being said for gaming I use an external keyboard now,
| because the one built-in is made by an external supplier and I
| don't think they'll start using a more heat-resistant material
| anytime soon.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Apple is disgusting from that standpoint. I have my MacBook Air
| M1's screen break overnight (the "bendgate"), without any reason,
| after 13 months. I didn't buy the extended two years warranty. I
| was one-month off warranty. On a MacBook Air M1 I paid something
| like 1000 EUR VAT included (don't remember the exact price but in
| that ballpark), they were asking 700 EUR to fix the screen.
|
| I still just ordered a MacMini M4 (I know the M5 is coming but
| we've got something like 20 computers at home, including servers,
| NUCs, laptops, desktop, etc. so I may not mind buying a M5).
|
| Still... Apple, from the bottom of my heart: FUCK YOU.
| koinedad wrote:
| I use right command + HJKL with karabiner and use it way too
| much, typing on someone else's keyboard really throws me off but
| it's great for my daily usage
| h4kunamata wrote:
| No symphaty!!!
|
| Apple has been doing this since forever and people keep buying
| its hardware.
|
| You cannot replace a screen even if you buy a genuine one because
| Apple locks hardware ID via firmware, so only they can replace
| that!
|
| Apple own customer is the reason why Apple does what it does
| best: You rent your hardware, you don't and never will own an
| Apple hardware!!
| commandersaki wrote:
| Things _may_ change. Macbook Neo keyboard is straight-forward
| to replace.
| bitfilped wrote:
| Sure it's a giant PITA, but it's not expensive to repair if you
| do the labor yourself. Parts for macbook are easy to comeby since
| Apple decentralizes repairs so heavily.
| erelong wrote:
| Sounds like another (common) Apple L and reason to avoid all
| Apple products
| evolighting wrote:
| Over a decade ago, my father would fix washing machine
| controllers, replacing mechanical timers, buttons, panels, or
| other parts; Now, for the same problem, we just need to replace a
| control circuit board; the circuit board itself is sealed with
| adhesive for waterproofing, which also means the circuit board is
| not repairable.
|
| Maintainability is actually not a mandatory standard, but a
| design trade-off; the biggest problem with the MacBook is not
| this, but rather that Apple does not allow other means of
| repairing the MacBook, such as various certification chips, etc.;
| timvdalen wrote:
| EUR780 is 1/5th of the price of a laptop?
| tln wrote:
| That jumped out at me as well.
|
| It is not hard to spec a Macbook Pro to $4000+ though
|
| I'm a little skeptical of the top case cost - iFixit has these
| ranging from $90 to $160 usually. The most expensive I found
| was $299.
|
| Maybe the author meant the entire repair would cost EUR780.
| riffraff wrote:
| I have a broken _left_ key and went with karabiner too. I still
| plan to take the laptop to assistance at some point and try to
| get it a deep clean up and maybe that will help.
|
| Otherwise fuck apple I'm not paying 700+ to fix a key.
| userbinator wrote:
| _They do this by riveting the entire keyboard assembly to the top
| case. Meaning you can't just replace the keyboard, you have to
| replace the entire top case._
|
| As others have already alluded to, drills and self-tapping screws
| exist, as do replacement keyboards without the top case.
|
| In many other machines, it is common for the factory to use
| rivets on initial assembly, but to service you drill them out and
| replace with bolts or screws. This is the expected procedure and
| even described in the service manual. I actually did this a few
| weeks ago for an old fan.
|
| I'm advocating for right to repair as anyone else, and not fond
| of Apple's decisions in general, but this seems like a tempest in
| a teapot.
| kristianp wrote:
| > In many other machines, it is common for the factory to use
| rivets on initial assembly, but to service you drill them out
| and replace with bolts or screws
|
| That's surprising. I haven't had many brands of laptops, but I
| haven't seen rivets where screws should be. Not talking about
| Macs here.
| userbinator wrote:
| Not talking about laptops but machinery in general.
| skyberrys wrote:
| I'm glad to hear you are able to fix it with software for now. So
| many people can't just do that though and it is ridiculously
| expensive to have it repaired.
|
| Any purchase is a gamble, macs are one of those gambles that
| seems more risky with its difficulty to repair, however I guess
| the expectation is that it's less likely to need it.
| elcapitan wrote:
| I have a Framework that I love and bought for that exact reason,
| but recently Lenovo seems to have upped their repairability game
| again as well:
|
| https://de.ifixit.com/News/115827/new-thinkpads-score-perfec...
| zahma wrote:
| Finally got my $45 payout from the last class action suit against
| Apple for the butterfly keyboard fiasco. Seems like Apple didn't
| learn the overarching lesson here: keyboards have to be robust
| and replaceable because they frequently need replacement.
| bengale wrote:
| > I'll remember this experience and choose to buy a more
| repairable laptop like a ThinkPad or a Framework laptop.
|
| > Here's hoping governments regulate laptop manufacturers to
| actually make repairable machines in the future.
|
| So there is already a solution on the market but for some reason
| the immediate desire is for the government to get involved and
| start regulating laptop keyboards?
| zhanxw wrote:
| I had the same issue and now I cannot use "F" and "Right arrow".
| It is a smart idea to disabled the right arrow key and mapped
| capslock + J K L I !
| zhanxw wrote:
| fyi. The keyboard in my last MacBook Pro also failed. Apple
| Store charged ~$500 to fix it.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| > mapped capslock + J K L I
|
| This is such a good idea that it makes other peoples machines
| nearly useless for you
|
| All credit to https://tonsky.me/blog/cursor-keys/
| omarqureshi wrote:
| FWIW the Macbook Air is slightly more repairable and modern ones
| are decent enough to do work on without the display limitations
| of prior non-pro apple silicon. As a travel machine, I shy away
| from the Pro because of how poor it is to repair.
|
| Unfortunately a Macbook is a hard requirement for travel simply
| because of battery life, at my desk I use my Windows gaming rig
| for work.
| internet_points wrote:
| I remember being so disappointed with Apple back when I had a
| Macbook and the Apple store people were like "nah, if you spilled
| stuff on it you just buy a new macbook"
| eviks wrote:
| > After thinking about it for a bit I decided to remap all the
| arrow keys using Karabiner Elements . I disabled the right arrow
| key and mapped capslock + J K L I. And donated $10 to the
| project. A small price to pay to postpone a very expensive repair
| bill.
|
| Great idea! Though I'd suggest to use RightCmd instead of
| Capslock, it's more ergonomic - you use your right hand just like
| before.
|
| (and yes, it's both insane that the hardware is not repairable
| and that the OS software sucks so you have to use some other
| apps)
| chakintosh wrote:
| I was gonna suggest to the author to lobotomize the key, but
| Karabiner is a viable fix too.
| mmunj wrote:
| Had an issue with a broken keycap hinge a couple of years ago.
| Went to local Apple store and they also told me it's a whole
| motherboard replacement. Got the keycap + hinge from Aliexpress
| for $2. :/
| wolvoleo wrote:
| I'm sure this is failure by design. A lot of customers will think
| "Hey well, this one's got a few years on it, good reason to
| upgrade"
|
| It's worth mentioning that the Neo finally does away with the
| pairing of topcase and keyboard that has been present ever since
| the launch of the plastic and unibody macbooks! Probably to
| comply with upcoming EU regulations.
| 4fterd4rk wrote:
| The planned obsolescence conspiracy theories about the company
| whose products famously last longer and hold more value than
| their competitors ring a little hollow.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I've never seen any evidence that either of those are true.
|
| However, it's not planned obsolescence either. It's just
| math. Building things to be repairable costs more money and
| time. There is very little incentive to do so, because most
| customers simply do not care. Thus, Apple does not bother.
| Nothing conspiratorial about it.
| itsthecourier wrote:
| so this happened to me some years ago. visited a local shop and
| they wanted to change the whole board. went to Los Angeles,
| visited an apple store, got an appointment. went back again to
| the appointment brought the MacBook, they said the same.
|
| went to ebay bought the key, replaced it with tweezers after
| removing it from above without disabling the keyboard (I know, a
| little brutish) and it worked again for years.
|
| give it a try
| SpaghettiX wrote:
| I had the same issue with a different key on 2 separate macs. A 1
| and a 2 year old MacBook pro. 95% of the time I'm WFH using magic
| external keyboard, which also has the same problem so I bought a
| new one. Keyboards are a massive problem at apple.
| Grisu_FTP wrote:
| While i think the usecase of a Macbook and a Framework are really
| different i will always be thankfull to framework for how easy
| they make it.
|
| Broke my keyboard, a few days later i had a new one that didnt
| even take a minute to swap. Wanted to upgrade my GPU twice, didnt
| even take 10 minutes. Biggest difficulty was swapping the
| motherboard, but even that was easy.
|
| The ports i need change all the time, and i can just swap them
| all the time :D
|
| While a framework might be a bit expensive, overpriced even, i
| think the repairability and upgradeability is worth it for me
| hbn wrote:
| I'd be curious to see hardware failure rates of Framework vs
| MacBooks.
|
| Sure you can replace the keyboard on a Framework fairly easily
| but I'd bet MacBook users run into the need for it less
| (comparing modern models; we all know the butterfly keyboard
| era was a dark age for MacBooks)
| foxyv wrote:
| Consumer reports seems to agree. Although I'll take mostly
| reliable and repairable over very reliable and not
| repairable. Stuff happens after all.
| port11 wrote:
| A Framework running a sane version of macOS would be peak
| computing for me.
|
| Not that repairability isn't great, but in 16 years of Apple
| devices my only needed repair was their atrocious butterfly-
| style keyboard, and Apple footed the bill thanks to the Class
| Action Lawsuit.
|
| We merely have to wait on Apple to continue debasing its OS,
| and then many other options will look preferable. Or perhaps
| Linux on Apple Silicon will eventually become stable.
| Melatonic wrote:
| That is sort of what we got when people were making
| Hackintoshes out of Thinkpads a few years ago. Great
| keyboards, great repairablity and upgradeability, etc.
| karussell wrote:
| Linux on Apple Silicon is already stable and nice if you
| accept a few downsides: only M1 & M2 so far, max 8h on
| battery ('office usage'), max 30h with closed lid ('sleep'),
| external display via hdmi and no touch ID.
| dhbradshaw wrote:
| Had a broken key on my m2 air that I couldn't easily fix. Took it
| to an Apple store and a tech worked on it for a bit and came back
| with it fixed.
|
| No charge. I was pretty grateful!
| lightedman wrote:
| This is what you get when you purchase Apple products. Nothing
| new here, I had to deal with this back in the G3/G4 days when the
| laptops were so stupidly-locked you couldn't even apply security
| updates.
|
| Overpriced COTS garbage.
| sigio wrote:
| That's why I only buy Thinkpads from the business/professional
| lines... Replaced the keyboard om my t480 for $24, and replacing
| it myself was a 2 minute job (2 screws, pop 2 connectors,
| replace, and put back together).
| amluto wrote:
| At least some Thinkpads also have an actual drain: if you spill
| a not-especially-corrosive liquid on it, you should be okay --
| the liquid will drain through a channel and out a drain hole on
| the bottom of the laptop.
| TasteTheCrush wrote:
| I am sure there's a video guide on how to do it on your own. But
| actually, your solution is also quite good.
| charles_f wrote:
| My camera started malfunctioning lately (because tropicalized
| doesn't mean you can use it in tropical weather). It worked, but
| when I switched batteries I had to wait a minute for whatever
| capacitor was blown to discharge before it would boot again.
|
| I sent it back for repair to the manufacturer, they gave me an
| "estimate" that it wouldn't be repairable, and generously offered
| a replacement with a refurbished one, at $10 off the price of new
| (plus shipping, of course). I declined the "repair" and asked for
| the camera back.
|
| When it arrived, the stickers I had put around made it clear it
| hadn't even been open. Having seen enough Louis Rossmann, I
| brought it to a camera shop around which is doing microsoldering.
| They replaced a single capacitor (after making me sign papers
| that it would probably never work again, and charging me quite a
| bit - still better than wasting an otherwise perfectly functional
| camera). The unrepairable camera was repaired.
|
| It is so disappointing and unsurprising that a manufacturer
| wouldn't put even remotely any effort into actual repairs, that a
| street shop with actual expertise will happily do. I've come to
| expect no expertise from any service department I communicate
| with. Sending something for repair is almost a sure way that it
| will be broken even further. When even replacing the top case in
| the example of that mac seems overkill, when they could probably
| replace the faulty key with skill and will.
|
| I guess that's a matter of incentives, given that in mass market,
| repairability is not something people look into when shopping.
| gandreani wrote:
| I had the opposite happen to me. I made the same assumption
| when my GPU broke (it was 2-3 months old). I thought I'll save
| time and spend some more money to have it repaired in a local
| shop instead of sending it back to the manufacturer.
|
| Turns out it was a fatal irreparable failure. A capacitor
| overheated and left a small crater on the surface. Because I
| took it to the shop, the warranty sticker was void. Had to buy
| a whole new GPU :(
| chrismorgan wrote:
| An anecdote on third-party keyboard replacements.
|
| I have an ASUS Zephyrus G15 (2021), GA503QM. I've been using it
| _extremely_ heavily for five years. After about three years the
| left arrow key gradually stopped working. I adapted. Some keys
| have become a _little_ less reliable, too, most notably E, and
| it's nowhere near as crisp as it was when new. But it's still a
| decent keyboard, which definitely wasn't the case for two of my
| three previous laptops after even three years.
|
| Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I tried getting a replacement
| keyboard on Amazon, not clearly identified as inauthentic (looks
| identical to the original; perhaps you should guess it, as a
| brand name is attached, WeFly in this case; but I know some of
| these things do claim to be genuine parts despite that). Worst
| new keyboard I have ever even _heard_ of, barring those dumb
| roll-up keyboards. F2 a little sticky, have to press it straight.
| F and J requiring firm pressing to activate. Space not activating
| at the ends. And maybe worst of all, 2KRO (the original is
| NKRO!), with horrific ghosting. When you touch-type, you
| _frequently_ have three keys active at once. Typing "you" would
| get a bonus F11 activation around half the time. "he " a bonus N
| activation. Mashing the keyboard put the laptop to sleep, which
| doesn't even make _sense_ , and badly messed up key pressed state
| (though that's possibly a software problem). Some combinations
| activated keys which _don't even exist_ , like Numpad 0.
|
| With difficulty I was able to return it and get my money back. (I
| also got a refund on a counterfeit battery purchased at the same
| time--branded Wistar but unquestionably labelled as a genuine
| ASUS part, it was labelled in depth as 90Wh, but reported a
| design capacity of 74Wh and behaved so. Not sure if you can even
| _find_ that information under Windows--maybe in Device Manager?
| So alas, for now I'm back on my original battery which is down to
| 51Wh capacity.) I wrote detailed one- and two-star reviews on
| Amazon, which were approved, and then deleted (one same day, one
| after a few days) for no apparent reason.
|
| I'm trying to talk to ASUS to see if I can get a first-party
| replacement, but they don't sell them independently at least, and
| can't tell me a price, so I have to try talking to the local
| service centre. Hopefully it'll be possible and not too
| expensive. Definitely not going to try third-party again for the
| keyboard, though maybe for the battery I'll try one clearly
| marked as third-party.
|
| Since reinstalling the original keyboard last week, a few days
| ago both Control keys stopped working, and the right tweeter
| (which gradually died a year or two ago) has started producing
| white noise when powered up. I should try reseating cables and
| such. It's definitely fairly invasive surgery to replace the
| keyboard. The keyboard, incidentally, is fastened to the case by
| about 70 tiny screws (mine had 71 holes but only 69 screws). For
| now, I mapped Right Shift to Right Control, and have since been
| discovering that I used Right Shift more often than I realised!
| BatteryMountain wrote:
| You know what this means right? Turn this old man into a server
| (remove battery for safety). It will work for many more years.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I was planning on building a PC toward the end of last year,
| but several life things and the need for an inverter (I live
| in India now, and power is regularly off for hours)
| complicated and delayed it, and when I came back to it in
| December, RAM had got super expensive, and I just couldn't
| justify the 50% increase in total price. Now if this laptop
| stopped working more...
| BatteryMountain wrote:
| If you can afford it, a small or medium ecoflow battery and
| one or two 200W solar panels with solve a ton of your
| issues in India, if nobody steals it. I'm in Africa and
| have frequent load shedding too, and I've replaced so many
| devices in my home with rechargeable/outdoor variants that
| can be recharged/powered by solar if needed.
|
| Also, don't buy asus again. If you are looking for
| repairable laptops, dell, hp and lenovo are the only decent
| brands when it comes to repairs & parts (make sure the not
| to buy the cheapest consumer models).
| mezod wrote:
| been there, done that
|
| unfortunately, the karabiner workaround will work for a little
| while, but the rest of the keys will start failing until it's
| impossible to remap the keys :/
| gwbas1c wrote:
| For me, for day-to-day usage, I sit at a desk and use an external
| keyboard. The ergonomics of working directly on a laptop aren't
| very good for extended periods of time.
|
| Case in point: I don't put a lot of stress on my laptop
| keyboards.
| mhjkl wrote:
| What exactly broke? I had this problem recently and thought the
| keyboard was done for, but turns out you can also replace the
| switches (not keycaps) and that solved the issue in my case. You
| have to be very careful though since it is very easy to break the
| switch or key cap if you remove it incorrectly (this happened to
| me while I was trying to clean the keyboard)
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