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To make it like cars, like many have already said, it's not just you can't fix it, it's no one but the dealer can. This is actually happening with some car manufactures and it pushes the price for repairs way up. (Can't put my hand on the study/report I saw a while ago). This is a very very bad thing. Just think about your wallet for starters! No competition! People just stupidly expecting this as a ok trade off are sleep walking us all in dark waters indeed. In both the case of computers and cars. It does effect tinkerers and engineers, we would be stuck with either old kit we can play with, or new we can't, we aren't a big enough market in ourselves to get tailed to. This effects everyone because it means less people know how anything works as it's all hidden from anyone view. Things should be out in the open for all to learn from if we so choose. If you don't care how stuff works that's fine, but to make it so you couldn't find out even if you wanted to is just stupid. I actually think in both the case of computers and cars, it is government's job to play the long game and step in and regulate to protect the consumer by preventing locking out of competition.




Member since:
2005-07-22
I think the market is diverging with the advent of appliances like the iPhone, iPad and their imitators.
I make the car analogy.
The iPad, iPhone etc are your bog standard car that apart from filling the windscreen washer bottle many owner never open the bonnet/hood.
However that are still the people who like to tinker with their cars. Be it fitting a zillion watt sound system, bigger exhause, different camshafts & fuel injectors etc etc, they are the tinkerers.
As any market matures the proportion of the market of the 'non tinkerers' grows whilst (again proportionally) the % market share of the tinkerers shrinks.