The Right To Fix
Too_Many_Tools
Posts: 765
Came across this article while surfing the Net..
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18155/fight-for-the-right-to-fix-it
Your thoughts?
As a designer and a consumer, I really do not like any product that cannot be fixed at a reasonable cost to the owner.
When my son wanted a Macbook, I checked out its design...let's just say that I will not be buying one for myself.
http://www.macworld.com/article/2910314/apples-new-12-inch-macbook-closely-guards-its-secrets-with-screws-solder-and-glue.html
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18155/fight-for-the-right-to-fix-it
Your thoughts?
As a designer and a consumer, I really do not like any product that cannot be fixed at a reasonable cost to the owner.
When my son wanted a Macbook, I checked out its design...let's just say that I will not be buying one for myself.
http://www.macworld.com/article/2910314/apples-new-12-inch-macbook-closely-guards-its-secrets-with-screws-solder-and-glue.html
Comments
By the way, and I have asked this here before, what is it with young girls and broken iPhone screens?
There is an iPhone repair shop in my office building and it seems to have an endless line of young girls coming in with their iPhones every day. The usual fault being a cracked screen.
I have been watching this for years now, the girls far out number the the boys.
One day a middle aged guy asked me for directions to that store. I mentioned it was odd to see a guy going there. He told me "Well, actually I have three daughters and I'm here on behalf of one of them"
It's nuts.
However, if the manufacturing techniques are not so easy to repair, the remedy should be the right to learn, not a mandated, easy fix product.
The simians who designed the special glass used on our smartphones and some other devices, rated it as perfect. For themselves, that is, but not for humans, young people and pets, but not including cats.
Totally in agreement with iFixit. We should be able to fix what we have purchased. At one time I was a big Apple supporter, but have become totally disgusted with the direction they have gone in. Worse than what IBM was doing in the mainframe market early on, and I suspect (and hope) Apple will suffer the same fate.
@Heater
I think the reason for so many girls having broken screens is that they store their cell phones in their back pockets. Every one of my teenaged nieces and their friends do so, as do a lot of the older ones. Very easy to forget it's there when sitting down.
My guess is that other manufactures are going the Apple way. It's far simpler and quicker just to glue everything together than to design a thing to be dismantleable and mess around with with making batteries removable and so on.
MS has certainly gone that way with it's Surface machines.
Gone are the days of inheriting your grandmothers sewing machine that still worked and could be serviced if it broke.
Oh contraire.
It was one like this:
Boy that brings back some memories. I came across a cast iron base like the one in the picture you posted. It was quite rusty and had no table, but the price was right ($2.00) so I bought it. Had it sandblasted, sprayed it with clear varathane as a rust inhibitor, and made a nice oak top. Made a great sewing table and hobby bench.
Often I will pay a little more to get something the can be repaired, or pay a little less for something I can enjoy smashing to peices and re-purpose for my own devious ends.
All the Apple and Android stuff I have, I got for free, because thats all its worth. Same with my car, its a loaded luxury model of the midrange generic sedan, I just waited until I found a slightly used one that cost less than the cheapest new car. Makes a real statement, "I don't care about anything aside for getting from A to B reliably."
Not everyone wears the "I void warranties" t-shirt, but some of us try to walk that walk. If I own it, I'm going to break it, try to fix it, and try to break it again. Keeps punks like me off the streets.
It would be nice if all companies made a line of products designed to be opened up and tinkered with. Until then, we have Parallax.
Good point, but it would be nice if they didn't actively go out of their way to make repairing products difficult.
They don't make any money shipping air. Yes, that is a design rule check. How much less air is in the new product?
Their value proposition is centered on specific things not aligned with service. Often, it's cheaper to replace rather than service too. That's a perfectly valid business model.
Many people, who buy their products value the use and design value and their time high enough to ignore repair. So long as that is true, Apple is just fine. Other choices exist and those tradeoffs play out in the market accordingly.
That's good, since it means slimmer laptops. Still, we should be able to open them to replace defective parts and have access to those parts.
They make stuff. Truth is, you are completely free to open it up and do what you want. I did, and it was tough, but possible.
I wrote this above. They make them how they make them, and we choose. If we choose Apple, then we don't care to open it, or we plan on upping our game to open it in a productive way.
You can open it, and you can get parts. It is just hard. Given how Apple competes, making it easier adds no real value. No joke.
Others make it easier, and they compete differently than Apple does.
Your choice from there. You just don't have to pick Apple.
But, if you want the thinnest sexy lsptop, those are the terms. It is even more expensive to make it thin, sexy and easy to repair.
Comes down to just what is worth what.
For Apple, it comes down to value they can charge for. They have learned people won't pay more for an easy to repair device, but they will pay more for a thin, sexy, high performance one.
Apple can also say we have a right to learn too. Get after it, up your game,.or get an easier to tear into product. Not sure that is entirely fair, but that is how it is.
I was was absentmindedly watching a tear down of a fake iPhone on Youtube the other day. A really cheap knock off apparently. I started to think it was better than the real thing. Same size shape etc, easier to open, easier to replace the battery, a removable SIM card. Much, much cheaper!
Paradoxically, despite the apparent unrepairabilty of Apple products there must be half a dozen Apple service shops in this town of less than one million people. Seems more Apple products are getting repaired than any other. At least the one I walk past everyday has an endless stream of customers. Mostly young girls who have cracked their iPhone screens it seems. It's like the old days when the was a clock maker on every main street fixing clocks and watches.
Hmm...I have to pop in there and ask them what they do actually fix most of the time.
No problem with that, I don't!
Most of them are fairly easy, even the ones with the back glued on like my previous Xperia Zs. My wife even replaced the touchscreen on her Xperia herself! But now that I have a Nexus 6P I'm trying not to break anymore phones.
I went to fix up a friend's late 2012 Macbook and found that the SSD had completely failed and an early 2012 model SSD does not fit but are easy to get. Apparently rather than slowly die and make the Mac look back they just refuse to work so that you have to spend $$$ and hope it doesn't fail too soon again. There's not too much you can repair in units themselves, the boards and parts are covered in a black conformal coating etc.
I have my theory about SSDs that they are a massive marketing fraud, people buy them because they have "faster boot times"
Welcome to "that" hotel in California
Mark my words. Soon it will be illegal to break all these devices on our person and in our homes and cars that track and spy on us.
That said, it's all a nice package. Plenty of people are happy to pay for that.
Never did use music software. I have a big music folder, and it's in there. I point a program at it, or copy bits of it, or the whole thing to a phone and go.
The Droid music app is happy to find album art, make playlists, etc...
Never needed more than that.
John Abshier
Re: right to break
Yes, agreed. I do not see a requirement for that to be easy making any real sense. IMHO, the right balance is to ensure the right to hack, and more generally learn.
This is where things go wrong, like John Deere locking down all software on the farming equipment. Farmers have traditionally been hackers, making whatever they have get the crops in.
Deere locks stuff down, and they have their reasons, but the farmers have their circumventing reasons too.
If we don't enable both, artificial value happens, and that means paying money for essentially nothing meaningful.
If we do enable both, then we get infringement, piracy, etc...
There is no perfect solution, just ugly tradeoffs. I much prefer the right to hack tradeoffs myself.
The modern day "Maker" movement is no doubt a wonderful thing. But I get a bit queasy thinking about it. Seems like only yesterday that pretty much everybody was a "maker". Mothers were running up clothing and curtains and such on their sewing machines. Fathers were making furniture, fixing the house and car. And lots more beside.
Somehow we entered a period of fifty years or so where people stopped making anything and forgot how to.
The Maker movement may go some way towards rectifying that situation.