Comment by TeMPOraL
4 years ago
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.
>These options are not being made available in the first place.
Could it be because it's not financially feasible? If you present the idea of a repairable alternative to an iPad, are any investors going to take you up on it?
I think a big aspect of this whole debate is that manufacturing efficiencies have gone up so much, that it's simply not economically worth it to sacrifice the resiliency and cost effectiveness of making it completely integrated. The cost to launch a new product and manufacturing line is also very high, so that you have to be really sure a sufficient number of consumers will want it.
On top of that, as a seller, you get to keep costs low when you have to spend less on dealing with people tinkering with it and then sending it in for warranty.
Unfortunately, I don't think a "tinkerable" option can compete on price to value ratio such that sufficient people would buy it to make it a feasible investment.
>it's about making it possible for local markets for software and hardware maintenance and repair to exist.
Efficiency is frequently a trade off for a word that I can't think of, but maybe can be described as "security" or "local security". It's similar to not needing a butcher, produce market, shoe store once a Walmart Supercenter rolls into town. I struggle to come up with a legal requirement that would restrict efficiency such that it does not give others (globally) a competitive advantage, but still retains "local security".
We don't need a tinkerers option we just need unobstructed access to the docs and access to purchase proprietary parts to replace failures and those parts should be available at a fair price.
I vote yes for right to repair, both with my dollar and my desire to favor the rights of the citizens of this country.
These devices can still be fixed, if only using specialized tools. However, it's another issue when manufacturers deliberately make these devices more difficult to fix such as using security screws.
Many of the modern smartphones can still be fixed as are laptops.
However, these repair shops only exist if they have the schematic and parts available.
it's not an efficiency issue. It's planned obsolescence.
> Could it be because it's not financially feasible? If you present the idea of a repairable alternative to an iPad, are any investors going to take you up on it? (...) it's simply not economically worth it to sacrifice the resiliency and cost effectiveness of making it completely integrated (...) The cost to launch a new product and manufacturing line is also very high (...)
I believe all of that is true.
Which is why this needs to be corrected by regulation. If making a more user-respecting and environmentally-friendly products isn't economical enough for the market to do it on its own, the economical landscape needs to be altered so that it is.
> as a seller, you get to keep costs low when you have to spend less on dealing with people tinkering with it and then sending it in for warranty
This must be solvable, because somehow it isn't a problem on the PC market, or on the car market.
> Efficiency is frequently a trade off for a word that I can't think of, but maybe can be described as "security" or "local security".
"Distribution" and "decentralization" are the words you're thinking of. Despite the common propaganda to the contrary, centralization is usually increasing efficiency. That's why the market loves it so much (and why every country ends up with laws to limit it). The cost to that efficiency is usually resilience (failure of any single actor becomes a large-scale issue) and slower innovation (bigger actors take less risks, smaller actors tend to cover more of the possibility space, by virtue of numbers).
> It's similar to not needing a butcher, produce market, shoe store once a Walmart Supercenter rolls into town.
And it is a contentious issue. On the one hand, the food gets cheaper. On the other, the jobs get worse, the local community suffers, and money gets siphoned off the local economy. On an international scale, the same thing is called "globalization", which is both widely praised and criticized. In particular, the current pandemic has revealed the resilience problem of our globalized economy, which is why so many countries are now making moves towards reversing it a bit.
I find this type of rant rather unhelpful in this debate. It is not the case that there is no reason for soldered parts. This decision was not made out of spite or laziness. It was done because there was a belief that the product would be better. In particular, it seems that leaving sockets off enables you to make a thinner laptop, and that some of the products use a type of RAM that is not sold to be put into a socket [0]. I would guess that market research also showed that very very few consumers were replacing the Bluetooth chips in their Macbooks. I have a great PC next to me, but it also weighs 20-30 lbs, occupies a huge amount of space, and took me several days of work to make sure all the components would actually optimally work together.
I would find it a lot more compelling to talk about trade-offs than to just throw out uninformed ranting. We used to have laptops like what you're describing, and they no longer sell very well, or are no longer available because they are thicker and heavier than the models that replaced them.
0: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2dyuxa/can_any_engin...