Comment by MostlyStable
7 days ago
>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.
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.
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...
This is mostly because Americans keep electing total morons.
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> 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.
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...
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> 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.
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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.
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.
And making them more repairable as someone else said has tradeoffs. It’s not like Apple is the low cost leader. Choose another vendor
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 ;)
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> 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.
Have you heard the good news about regulatory capture?
Probably not if you're one of the public.
Imagine how the world would look if the EU mandated rs-232c ports on all devices. Or 3.5" headphone jacks. Or the use of D batteries for all electronics. How about ms-dos compatibility?
Are these examples supposed to be bad? I think the world would be in a better place.
We can't rely on the government to step on any time consumers are getting abused. We need to teach consumers to do better.
Both you and GP are correct!
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
People need to stop buying apple products. Anyone dumb enough to have already done so deserves what they get.
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.
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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.
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.
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)
”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”.
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The EU is literally run by conservatives. Where are the scary socialists hiding?
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Gigachad writing there <3
Their point is almost the exact opposite to the one a 'gigachad' would make.
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> usb-c
Don't forget about the time micro-USB has mandated. Was that "competent government"?
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.
Chat control is not something that indicates competence. They're throwing darts and sometimes hit the board.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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
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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.
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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
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> 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.
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.
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.
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> 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.
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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.
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>> 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.
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> 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.
> 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?
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> 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?
> 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.
> 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
Oh no, my laptop is 2mm thicker than a different laptop. Won't someone think of the 2mm?
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> 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.
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.
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)
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> 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.
I never said the lunch was free only that it should be nutritious.
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> 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.
> 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.
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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.
> heavily regulated industries like healthcare, education, and transportation have seen basically no innovation in 50 years
Wut?
> 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.
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Healthcare? Maybe you distinguish that from medicine somehow, but I'd rather have [literally any disease] today than fifty years ago.
Do you have a reference for the neo being easy to repair? Is this regarding the keyboard? Or the whole thing?
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...
"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'.
> 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.
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 :)
They will change their game in some ways, or they'll have to stop selling in the EU. I'm sure the Neo was engineered for this. Apple really hate re-engineering mac cases. Even the plastic macbook that had a huge design flaw (the cracking topcase because of the screen bezel spacers crushing it), had this flaw for 4 years until they finally fixed it, and that was not really to fix the problem but because they wanted to do a glossy new design. For some reason they preferred fixing the topicase over and over for free instead of just fixing the problem. And it wouldn't have needed much. All that would have been needed was to modify the screen bezel: Make the plastic spacers either a lot wider (to spread out the pressure) or of a softer material. It's pretty insane they didn't even bother to redesign such a simple plastic part.
I had mine replaced 3 times over the 6 years I used it. Sometimes with some complaints as I had replaced the LCD with a matte panel (the plastic macbook used an atrocious quality ultra-reflecting TN screen with shit viewing angles). But they always did it for free after some pressure.
So I can imagine they wanted to be ahead of the game this time because the EU will set a deadline and they hate doing redesigns. I can't fathom why they hate doing that so much though. I worked in manufacturing too and we did small tweaks periodically, every 2-3 months or so there'd be a minor hardware revision to take comments from QA into account or to optimize for pricing & availability of components. Usually not the kind of redesign an untrained eye actually would notice. But Apple somehow just hates it.
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.
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.
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)
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.
> 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
macOS has slid a long way down the quality ladder over the past ten years.
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.
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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.
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Sure, but relative to windows…
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
>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?
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.
Yes, they did actually fire the guy who did the iPhone 4 antenna. The butterfly keyboard guy is now working with OpenAI apparently.
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.
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.
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.
The MacBook neo keyboard is replaceable with a sticker and a bunch of screws. This was always possible. Apple just doesnt care.
Bunch of screws : 41.
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.
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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.
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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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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 ?
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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).
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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.
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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.
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...
Ease of repair and "build quality", are to some degree (although not entirely) tradeoffs against each other.
Thinkpads are a counterexample.
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.
+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.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
Your individual choice will not make systemic changes.
>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.
Then why do newer Apple devices have significantly better repairability vs older ones ? The build quality has gone down?
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
No.
You are wrong.
There are Apple laptops, and other devices, that were relatively easy to service and were lauded for their build quality.
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.
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.
you seem to assume that markets regulate themselves. This is a common fallacy. Good regulation is fundamental in any working society.
Yes, the belief that markets self regulate, was proved incorrect by the 2008 financial crisis.
well it's a good solution in the sense that it would solve the problem and it would be great for all of us.
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.
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 €730 ($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.
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.
s/zealot/advocate/
s/denier/opponent/
s/late-stage capitalism/socialist propaganda/
If you're asking genuinely:
1. It's wrong to assume beforehand that the other party is irrational.
2. To refute the other side, you have to engage with their strongest argument.
This is an intellectual issue, and no intellectual issue could be resolved by dismissal.
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.
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