Comment by 35fbe7d3d5b9

I'm not sure consumers per se want it, but that companies think it's what consumers want, and only make things like that.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy that customers will buy it. I dont have another choice

> A big reason that stuff isn't replaceable anymore is because consumers wants some of the benefits that come w/ non-replaceable parts.

This may be true, but we shouldn't confuse 'a decision made by a product manager' with 'the customers want this'.

Some design decisions succeed because of the other strengths of a product (and the competition cargo-cult copies them), not because they are good design decisions. Some design decisions are made because they are more convenient for the vendor, not better for the customer. Some design decisions are made because of inertia. Pointing to any particular design trade-off in a successful product, and saying that 'Well, this is obviously what the market wants' is not always a correct conclusion to draw.

USB is unarguably the most successful mechanism for two hardware devices to communicate with each-other in history, and yet you need to flip the cable over three times before you can plug it in. Should we conclude that customers want to play the cable fandango every time they plug one device into another?

If Apple would publish schematic, diagnostic software and allow refurbishing and selling of parts to third party - it will keep your iPhone water proof still.

The reality is this, when your device gets old or your screen cracks , Apple will offer to fix it for 70% of a new device price, so you are pushed to buy a new device. I hope this is not controversial and has nothing to do with the water proof preference you have.

Except for the battery I don’t think those things have ever really been user swappable though. The issue with water protection on phones I have worked on is that its hard to maintain when removing the screen because it tends to stick. I guess you could always buy a new gasket which is probably what the Apple store does.

You can have a replacable battery and be waterproof.

But their parent wasn't (in fact, they mentioned x86 and AMD, which are integrated circuits).

Look at a random PC (or, until recently, a random laptop): it's made from a lot of individual components that can be swapped out or upgraded independently. Storage, RAM, CPU, GPU, cooling, motherboard, WiFi chip, Bluetooth chip, speakers, microphone, screen, all the peripherals - they're all designed to work together as a category, and to be easily replaceable. I can source each one from a different vendor, and they'll still work. Hell, in many cases, you can even fix individual components, with a hot air station and a steady hand. And if I upgrade a component, my old one can often get a second life inside another computer, possibly someone else's.

It's a good thing to have, and there's nothing stopping modern laptops, tablets and phones to have the same level of upgradeability and swapability. Nothing - except that the vendors don't want to[0]. These things run on the same set of hardware standards as larger computers, and on literally the same software stacks. I[1] should be entirely able to open up my phone, desolder its battery and memory, swap them out for newer and better ones, apply sealant, close the case and have the whole thing work. There's no technical obstacle here - the only problem are the business strategies of the vendors.

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[0] - I have another long rant for the usual "it's customers who chose integrated over repairable" argument, and I'll post it elsewhere in this thread. For now, I'll just say: it's not like anybody is asking customers to choose. These options are not being made available in the first place.

[1] - Or my friend who spent half his life tinkering with electronics. Or the repair shop down the street. A point commonly missed in discussions about Right to Repair (and Free Software) is that it isn't about expecting consumers to do hardware/software work themselves - it's about making it possible for local markets for software and hardware maintenance and repair to exist.

How do you use your phone in the rain? Whenever I try, I find it's pretty much impossible, because the screen gets all wet and slippery, I can hardly see anything on it because of distortion through individual drops of rain, and I get spurious clicks from raindrops falling onto it. So I have to shield it under an umbrella or something...

And if I have to do that anyway, the phone being less than 100% watertight because the battery is swappable won't be a problem in the first place.

All I'm saying is that R2R in no way changes the products that are available to you if you want product-as-a-service. You can still take your phone to the Genius Bar or lease it from a carrier. It just guarantees that there are also options for those who want to fix their own devices.

Do you have a source to cite for "the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer"?

That seems pretty speculative. The market can be manipulated or directed by more than simply consumer choice, e.g. by business incentives of product manufacturers.

You can't buy a new car like an '88 Camry anymore, the government will not allow it to be sold due to safety and environmental regulation.

> This isn't "my approach" – it's the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer.

We don't know that. We might, if the other alternative was available for purchasers to choose from, but it isn't.

> No it's not, it's looking to enshrine that standard by law for everyone.

That's what's necessary IMO - since if it isn't required for all consumers than there is no motivation to make it available for any customers, we'll continue to be dragged down by the LCD as devices get less and less serviceable. Manufacturers don't like options - options cost money and each additional model you offer drives up how much you spend in storage and production line configuration, so they'll target the majority which probably does want to be able to repair devices but either doesn't realize it's still an option or doesn't have the financial freedom to invest in a higher quality device that has a higher upfront price tag but a lifespan that outlives that difference by leaps and bounds.

Let's set aside software RTR, which at first glance I believe has no increased costs associated (besides a decreased profit margin from lack of shortened support windows and a locked-down ecosystem).

Could you expand on the specifics of what changes RTR would necessitate the hardware to have? Let's say beyond the fact that a non-reversible bond/connector would otherwise be the cheapest option (saving perhaps fractions of pennies on the BOM).

History is full of things that people did not want to mandate via their purchases, but we as a society decided was important... so we made it legally mandatory.

> Nothing is stopping consumers from demanding phones that are self-serviceable

It's not like anyone asked the consumers. Nor were the options put on the market, for the buyers to vote on them with their wallets. The conclusions are assumed in advance by the companies. Meanwhile, consumers choose from what's actually available on the market - not from the space of all possible products.

> they just simply aren't willing to accept the tradeoffs involved (larger size, worse thermals, higher price, etc).

No customer can truly evaluate the tradeoffs involved. For starters, necessary information isn't publicly available. Companies don't publish reports from their product teams that describe the trade-off space they're working on. Would a user-replaceable battery make the phone thicker? How much? Does the glue actually helps with thermals? What's the price difference? Nobody knows, outside the people involved in these decisions.

Secondly, marketers run interference. Maybe a Joe would pay $100 extra for a fully repairable phone, so that Jane could fix it for him when he unavoidably breaks it in six months. Maybe an environmentally conscious Carol would go for one with user-replaceable battery, because she can only afford a cheaper, mostly integrated device. But they won't, because those issues aren't even on a typical person's radar. Instead, the marketing focuses on vague appeal to emotions, misrepresented specs, outright lies, and bait-and-switch "value-add" services. Most people who know better than to fall for such nonsense will just look at the one clear indicator - price.

The point is: when you have a system connected to a bunch of input signals, you can't say that a particular signal doesn't affect the system, if half of the other inputs are flooded with noise that's 20dB higher than any legit signal would be. You first need to shut off the noise!

> If you disagree, there's an unserved market segment wide open for you!

Not for me. There are too many capital barriers to entry around designing and manufacturing high-end electronics. You can't just start a business in this space and hope to offer a comparable price to established magnitudes.

Now if an established company like Samsung or Apple dared to try this, then we'd know. Maybe it would turn out there's no market for repairable smartphones. But I haven't seen anybody giving it a shot in a meaningful way.

> What's changed that prevents you from doing that today?

What's changed is that technologies involved in modern video streaming are designed up front to prevent end-users from recording the stream, and are backed by regulations making some of the workarounds illegal.

MAFIAA may not be able to close the "analog hole" completely, but it doesn't stop them from achieving the next best thing - making it so hard to exploit that almost nobody bothers. This is a positive feedback loop, because the market in general doesn't like to serve small niches unless it has nothing more interesting to do. Thus: no VCRs for Netflix.

Sorry.

But if you had designed the English language better, not making "It" and "I" so similar, this wouldn't have happened.

He probably missed the first t