One reason these legislative efforts have failed is the opposition, which happens to sell boatloads of new devices every year. Microsoft’s top lawyer advocated against a repair bill in its home state. Lobbyists for Google and Amazon.com Inc. swooped into Colorado this year to help quash a proposal. Trade groups representing Apple Inc. successfully buried a version in Nevada. Telecoms, home appliance firms and medical companies also opposed the measures, but few have the lobbying muscle and cash of these technology giants. While tech companies face high-profile scrutiny in Washington, they quietly wield power in statehouses to shape public policy and stamp out unwelcome laws. Tech companies argue that right-to-repair laws would let pirates rip off intellectual property and expose consumers to security risks. In several statehouses, lobbyists told lawmakers that unauthorized repair shops could damage batteries on devices, posing a threat of spontaneous combustion.
What’s good enough for the car industry, is more than good enough for these glorified toaster makers. Cars are basically murder weapons we kind of screwed ourselves into being reliant on, but Apple and Microsoft make complicated toasters that you need to really screw up in order to hurt anyone with. Computer and device makers must be forced to make parts and schematics available to any independent repair shop, just like car makers have to do.
So many perfectly capable devices end up in dangerous, toxic landfills in 3rd world countries simply because Apple, Microsoft, and other toaster makers want to increase their bottom line. It’s disgusting behaviour, especially with how sanctimonious they are about protecting the environment and hugging baby seals.
Of course none of this is news to anyone in the industry. It’s always the same story: the common man fighting for the right to repair against multinational giants with enough lawyers and lobbyists to block them in virtually every jurisdiction that tries to solve the problem.
Apple and microsoft even fought the “Fair Repair Act”, which was being pushed by farmers in Nebraska who’ve become desperate because they cannot repair their farm equipment.
“Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors Because of a Repair Ban”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPYy_g8NzmI
PR puts on a friendly face, but what they are doing behind the scenes is downright evil. For better or worse, big business usually overpowers the little guys, both in the legislative process as well as in court.
Alfman,
There are legitimate cases where “repair” might not be a good option, on the other hand, yes there are truly evil “innovations” as well.
For example, tying the fingerprint sensor to the secure enclave essentially prevents replacing it without also replacing the motherboard. Otherwise, a bad actor could just replace the sensor, and unlock all your data. So for those limited cases, until a good technical solution is found, I would be okay with being unable to repair that part.
However they have also started soldering RAM to the laptops, they now even solder SSDs, which are the fastest failing parts. SSD fails in two years -> your entire motherboard needs replacing. This is really evil. I have a new Lenovo laptop that has soldered RAM, and if I had known, I would not have chosen it.
They could at least make a list of serviceable parts. Like:
“If you buy this laptop, you can fix/upgrade the RAM, SSD, screen, keyboard, and battery; however the following are not serviceable: CPU, GPU, fingerprint sensor”.
For Apple, it would probably be like:
“If you buy this laptop, you can fix/upgrade the screen, and battery; however anything else, including the keyboard cannot be fixed without replacing the entire motherboard.”
sukru,
We need to distinguish between the owner and a malicious actor in this case though. Consider that a door lock is meant to protect an owner from a burglar, but NOT to keep the owner out or prevent the owner from repairing/changing the lock. The point being there’s a huge practical and ethical difference between designing technology to stop intruders and designing technology to stop owners.
Yea, I haven’t gotten snagged with this yet but I’m going to have to pay a lot more attention to these types of limitations in the future.
Yeah, there was an article a while back where people tested whether components like web cams could be swapped with other known good & authentic components, and it turns out apple is increasingly relying on unique peripheral identifiers to intentionally stop repairs from working. On the one hand, it doesn’t effect me much as a non-apple user, but I am very concerned that, as other manufacturers see just how successful these types of locks are for apple’s aftermarket repair business, other manufactures could begin to copy them, which would be bad.
These companies don’t consider people buying their products owners of those products. Greed is the machinery of capitalism, not morals or rights. Nobody should ever expect any of these companies to willingly give consumers any power, control, or leverage without prying it from their cold dead hands.
As far as trying to deter people from repairing by soldering things directly to pcb’s, that’s nothing a relatively inexpensive scope and a little time learning to microsolder can’t fix, assuming you can get the replacement parts.
friedchicken,
Greed is part of human nature, and the companies are run by people. That also extends to governments, which are usually in bed with large interests, even NGOs, or unions, etc. Anything humans touches basically.
The important thing is being able to balance all the “greed”. The free markets, in theory, does this by competition. But we now have artificial barries.
Take copyright. I believe it is a necessary evil, but the current rules extend it too much. Mickey Mouse basically is in indefinite extensions, and the occasional fair use wins are now highly celebrated, and are very rare. DMCA takes it even a step further and makes it illegal to tamper with “protection mechanisms”.
So, in theory, there should be nothing to stop people opening up shops that will upgrade your laptop. They can do the “microsoldering” for you (I am terrible even with regular soldering). However companies use the force government, or just their weight to ban them.
Apple bans SSD kids: https://www.engadget.com/2010-11-30-apple-forces-photofast-to-abandon-256gb-upgrade-kit-for-macbook.html
Nintendo bans mod kits: https://www.pcmag.com/news/nintendo-clamps-down-on-3ds-mods-hackers
Just random examples. I am not saying the companies should be do things they don’t want. However they should also not be allowed to tamped with third party support for their products either.
sukru,
You touched on the root cause of all of this – human nature. The society we live in is of our own making and the degree to how shitty we are to one another and everything else on Earth knows no bounds. It would be nice if the world were more righteous, and that’s something to strive for, but I’m not sure it’s truly attainable. Humanity has been around for a very, very long time and it doesn’t seem we’ve managed to move the needle much. You don’t survive as an apex predator by holding hands and cuddling.
friedchicken,
Sad but true.
I understand what you are saying, although as someone who’s done some soldering I’m not so comfortable doing tiny components by hand. Larger components yes, but not small ones and not with so many pins. I think it’s regressive that laptops and even desktop systems now are being engineered to not be user serviceable, especially for things like NAND flash drives that have a limited lifetime and need to be replaced to keep a computer from becoming a paperweight.
Regardless, this is starting to become the new normal…
https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-scourge-of-fully-soldered-and-non-upgradeable-laptops.496091.0.html
Also, the barriers to repair are evolving, with m.2 drives and components that are tethered using digital locks such that 3rd party repairs and upgrades can be denied by the manufacturers even when technicians physically replace them correctly.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/45921/is-this-the-end-of-the-repairable-iphone
I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think these manufactures are going to continue taking more and more control away from owners absent legislators stepping in to stop it. But at the same time I’ve got no confidence in the legislative process. We may be marching towards a future where commodity computers simply won’t be repairable or upgradable. 🙁
sukru,
All in all, I agree with what you are saying. I don’t think copyright is fundamentally evil, it used to be quite reasonable however it’s become so heavily corrupted over the years that the original intentions are barely recognizable. Today’s copyright policy can be summarized with “all your base are belong to us”, haha.
Alfman,
Scope/micro soldering seems scary but it’s basically the same process, just a bit less forgiving. Like most tasks, using the right tools can make all the difference. I’ve tried doing repairs winging it that resulted in (failed) nightmares. By comparison, I’ve used the right tools and things couldn’t have been easier. That being said, I doubt it’s something most people would pursue but you only need to know one person who does. 🙂
I think you’re spot-on that we’re firmly headed in the direction of less right and/or possibility to repair. There’s simply no getting around the connection between big money and our legislators/legislation. When it comes to right-to-repair, I have no confidence in government, the courts, or people’s willingness to fight for it. Ultimately I feel it’s a battle we consumers can’t win in the foreseeable future – I’d love to be proven wrong though.
Alfman/friedchicken,
The “consumers” are not on our side. When LG had V20 with a replaceable battery, SD card slot, and not only an audio port, but a proper HiFi DAC (that can do DSD and 24bit audio), nobody bought it (well, except for me). It did not help that LG abandoned software updates shortly after, either.
When Lenovo designs a new laptop, within the almost same exact chassis of older upgradable one, nobody bats an eye if they now solder the RAM onto it. Business customers just lease it machine for a few years, and upgrade to whatever comes next. Most consumers have no clue what RAM is. That leaves a very small enthusiast population, that are probably better served with Dell XPS (which has its own problems, but have been working great for me, yes I have multiple laptops).
https://www.windowscentral.com/can-you-upgrade-ram-lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon#:~:text=Best%20answer%3A%20No%2C%20you%20cannot,the%20new%20Dell%20XPS%2015.
If consumers and business consumers don’t care about reparability, and manufacturers want more control, who would you think the government will side with?
The big problem is what is good or righteous or justice?
It’s not like there aren’t organizations trying to build better products. Fairphone, linux phones…
How affordable or sustainable those business are is something we will simply see.
To build the factories to build all the equipment takes a lot of time, money, labor, skill.
To run the factory takes a lot of labor and skill and organization
To support the products takes a lot of support staff.
To sell the products takes a lot of marketing and sales people.
None of these people come free, nor does the training required to bring them to a level of skill.
I’m sure Apple and Microsoft would gladly build phones as repairable as possible without any planned obsolescence built in software or hardware. They’d just want to make sure their business model is sustainable… at the very least, not losing money. How’s this X dollars from your mobile operator (ATT, Rogers, Bell, Verizon…) goes to the phone manufacturer? That was part of the old blackberry service model. Or maybe just government subsidies. I literally just throw those out there as options. I don’t advocate for them, but we can’t have our cake and eat it too.
In these covid times, I’ll give another example. I’m in Canada and I think it really came as a shock to most Canadians that we literally had 0 vaccine production capacity for covid. Canadians pride ourselves on our universal healthcare and yet, we literally couldn’t produce any vaccines. And let’s remember, not all things are sold by for profit corporations. There are non-profits, mutuals, charities, crown corporations… and so many other kinds of organizations. None saw fit over the many years in Canada to build such vaccine production capacity.
Apparently, since we were not investing or making it workable for drug manufacturers to do there thing, nothing was being made. Recently the government signed contracts with a variety of drug companies to build plants in Canada. A government subsidy.
Again, I’m not saying this is right or wrong, but factories and researchers and everyone else costs money. Seems like a good idea to me. We have a social good we’d like to promote (universal vaccination), it’s going to come at a cost. We should pay that cost as a society or individually.
If right to repair is a social good we’d like to promote, it’s going to come at a cost.
Yamin,
I understand the point you are making, however we’ve had centuries of repairable products since the industrial revolution through the prime years for personal computers and there was no lack of technological progress or business oppertunities throughout the decades. They didn’t need to sue repair shops. The natural way for companies to drive demand used to be innovation, but that is giving way to planned obsolescence to artificially increase demand over what consumers naturally want & need through after-market manipulation, Meanwhile these huge multinational corporations keep making record profits. I think the core problem isn’t sustainability but greed.
Ultimately the root problem is wall street expectations. In wall street’s eyes, a perfectly sustainable company is junk if it’s valuation isn’t going up. And in order for that to happen, prices have to keep increasing, markets have to consolidate until the competition becomes futile, and/or longevity has to keep going down. None of these outcomes are good for consumers.
Apple seems to be the worst brand on earth for those kind of things. I really wonder how most people love Apple, being such an evil brand…
Caraibes,
Well, we shouldn’t really assume people love everything about a company just because they buy their products. Unfortunately we’ve got a very strong duopoly and not much viability for alternatives. Ultimately this means that one way or another we end up consuming products built by companies who’s practices we dislike due to the lack of effective competition. For better or worse, many corporations faced with the choice of being ethical or profitable will choose the later and wall street rewards them handsomely for it. There’s a saying that “money is the root of all evil”; in the corporate world money is often used to justify actions that are detrimental to society.
“Apple seems to be the worst brand on earth for those kind of things. I really wonder how most people love Apple, being such an evil brand…”
Years and years of indoctrination into their cult…
Both Alfman and leech have summed the answer to your question quite nicely. I’ve asked many people why use Apple products and practically everyone responded with either asking me what better alternatives there are or not even having an answer. You can either be raped to your face, whored out, or both. Take your pick.
Because what you think of “evil” is perfectly acceptable to loads of other people.
People have different priorities. For geeks, being able to repair and truly control their devices is a main priority, whereas for most consumers computers are just a black box whose main purpose is to be a good looking appliance to do things like browsing the web, sending e-mails, and do some productivity at work/home.
There are tons of other areas/products you probably have no idea about how the realities of which other people may feel very passionate and knowledgeable about
javiercero1,
Sure everyone has different priorities. And granted tech savvy users are more likely to fully appreciate the right to repair. However that is not to suggest that ordinary people aren’t negatively effected by irreparable devices, the detrimental impacts of e-waste, planned obsolescence, etc. These are problems that effect all of us.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/complete-control-apple-accused-of-overpricing-restricting-device-repairs-1.4859099
Turning a blind eye is not the solution, it just allows things to get worse. The burden is on our shoulders to speak up against planned obsolescence.
“things to get worse” is a blanket purely subjective qualitative assessment.
If you have applecare, for example, you really don’t care much about the “repairability” of the device, since that’s Apple’s responsibility. And maybe the customer gets a device/product that for their specific use case(s) is subjectively better for them than the alternatives or previous offerings.
javiercero1,
Except things do in fact get worse when companies to create more waste and artificially shorten product lifecycles.
You could, but you’re asking consumers to pay more for the privilege of having a repairable product, when it should be repairable by default.
Apple care is not cheap either…$400/year fee for an extended warranty on a $1200 product is kind of a rip off, especially considering apple care doesn’t fully cover all repairs and you may have to shell out even more out of pocket. As a consumer, you may be able to find more competitive warranty coverage elsewhere:
http://www.squaretrade.com/smartphone-warranty
http://www.squaretrade.com/laptop-warranty
Also, some people may live in a country that grants consumers additional repair and refund rights, which can be invoked in cases where the manufacturer is initially uncooperative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M6I-w7AR-U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VczSKUfcPZ8
More waste is part of the economic system. Repair ability doesn’t really reduce the ecological impact that much. Recycling does a much bigger positive effect.
Apple care is $8/month for an iPhone. In the EU the guarantees are 2 years, and in some countries they may be start enforcing 3 years soon. Which that should take care of most reparaibility issues for a product like an iPhone.
I think what this affects most are not consumers, but the cottage industry of small/medium computer repair shops.
javiercero1,
That’s false. Allowing components to be reused is significantly better than recycling them because recycling takes a tremendous amount of energy and creates it’s own pollution compared to just allowing existing components be resold/reused as is. Apple is particularly guilty about this and as one of the world’s leading brands they deserve criticism for being a significant contributor to this problem.
Nobody is forcing products to be worse to make them repairable, it’s about putting a stop to some of the worst corporate anti-right-to-repair practices, like stop interfering with the repair industry. And make no mistake, time and time again apple are guilty as fuck:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/07/apple-geep-iphone-recycle-shred/
Yeah, and what happens to the broken parts? Do they magically turn into pixie dust and flowers? Repairing also takes plenty of energy.
The issue with reparaiblity seems to be between the repair/support industry and Apple. Both will use the “customer welfare” as an excuse to make their case as to why they feel entitled to my mone. In the end I don’t give a crap really which party fixes my iPhone Apple or a small shop.
The way I see it, as long as the operation of my device is guaranteed by the vendor, I see no “anti consumer” behavior from them.
javiercero1,
Don’t be so childish, you know I have a valid point, Obviously components need to be sent for recycling eventually, but not when owners and repair shops still need them for repairs.
If your local repair shop is using broken parts to repair stuff, you should reconsider giving them your business.
javiercero1,
Yeah, and when my bike goes flat I’ll need to throw out the whole thing. Good grief. I can’t decide what’s worse, the companies that make products less reusable to increase profits, or the sheep defending them by promoting willful ignorance like a mindless trump supporter.
You aren’t interesting in repairing your devices…good for you man, but your arguments against the repair industry are pathetic nonsense. The right to repair is a serious issue. Any chance you are affiliated with apple? That would explain a lot.
The only things pathetic here are you reading and comprehension skills and usual fallacies.
A bicycle is an orange, and a water resistant compact portable networked device, with tremendous levels of integration and miniaturization, is… an apple.
If you want a repairable device, buy a repairable device. I’m most definitively not stopping you.
Some of you are like the Vegans of the tech world.
javiercero1,
An ad hominem attack is the the perfect rebuttal for the right to repair debate. Pat yourself on the back ’cause that’s original and brilliant.
So what? Louis Rossman specializes is fixing macs and has proven on several occassions that he does a better job of it than apple is willing or able to do when it’s a level playing field. If Apple were truly interested in doing what’s best for its customers, Apple would recognize Louis Rossman’s achievements and give him and others like him awards. They’d seek to hire guys like him to train apple technicians to be better at repairs than they are. It speaks volumes that Apple has chosen to fight with lawyers and block repairs instead. What’s really troubling is the environmental consequences of allowing manufactures to use planned obsolescence in the interest of profit. The environment is a case where someone else’s poor choices and/or greedy motives ends up harming myself and my kids.
Of course you aren’t stopping me, but that is exactly what apple is doing to device owners and repair shops! Yes that’s mess up, which is why a right to repair is needed.
You didn’t answer the question: do you have any affiliation with apple?
I hate to be a naysayer but I prefer my devices to be as compact and as power efficient as possible and I am willing to sacrifice repairability for this. Moreover I typically don’t want to wait for device repair and much prefer the option of simply trading in for a refurbished unit and reinstalling.
I appreciate others will disagree with me but why do we need laws to solve this? Why can’t we let the market decide – perhaps with judicious use of labeling.
Others thoughts …
– I am concerned about e-waste but this is a separate issue. Manufacturers should be 100% responsible for their e-waste.
– Planned obsolescence has nothing to do with repairability. There are some very easy to repair devices which don’t get updates a year after you buy them and there some hard to repair devices that get 5+ years of updates.
– This is not just an issue related to Microsoft and Apple ( don’t drink Thom’s tinfoil flavored koolaid ). Every major electronics manufacturer opposes this. As an example it was Google and Amazon who worked to oppose the Colorado repairability laws last year.
ikristoph,
I think that’s based on a misunderstanding, albeit a common one. Repair-ability is getting worse NOT simply because devices are getting smaller, but because manufacturers are deliberately designing products to be impractical to repair and have been taking strict measures to cut off repair supply chains & information. Using government connections to stop shipments of repair parts. Authorized repair shops have to ship back original parts rather than risk them entering the second-hand market. Recyclers have to certify that used products are destroyed to prevent them from being resold to the repair industry. It’s really sad when viable products have to be trashed to satisfy corporate greed.
Unfortunately this goes way further than products becoming more difficult to repair as the trivial consequence of getting thinner, this is NOT what anyone considers evil. What is evil is when corporations are actively doing everything they possibly can to make sure owners cannot independently control & repair their own products.
What’s happening behind the scenes is objectively bad for the repair industry, it’s objectively bad for consumers, and it’s objectively bad for the environment. Nobody wins except of course for the manufacturers who can monopolize the right to repair and sell more units. Win/Win! /sarcasm
You need to reevaluate the logic here. Planned obsolescence and non-repair-ability naturally go hand in hand.
There’s no denying it’s a very widespread problem. A lot of the right to repair laws are not targeting apple, like the farmers in nebraska, but apple is consistently on the right side of this fight. I for one think we need to condemn it everywhere, including at Apple.
Woops. I typed “the right side”, but obviously apple are the ones consistently allocating teams & resources to blocking right to repair, which I think is ethically the wrong side to be on in this fight. It’s very likely that Apple, more than any other single company, is the reason owners don’t have the right to repair today.
I think the two principal points I would make here are …
1) If the lack of repairability objectively hurt the consumer significantly, would you not expect that devices that were more repairable would sell better? The fact that there is no clear correlation between repairability and consumer behavior – even in the Android market – suggests that consumers clear do not feel that much ‘pain’ from lack of repairability of their devices. Since there isn’t much consumer pain, legislating to the device makers detriment seems like government overreach in the free market.
2) I maintain that planned obsolesce is largely independent of repairability and this can be clearly shown statistically. The bulk of modern devices become obsolete not because their broken and cannot be repaired but because these are no longer supported by their manufacturer with prevalent software technologies. Only a small fraction are obsolete because of a hardware failure.
ikristoph,
It’s true that people generally don’t think about repairs that are far away when buying a product, but that doesn’t mean aren’t harmed when the manufacturer includes anti-features to ensure it’s difficult and/or expensive for owner to repair. Remember, with planned obsolescence it doesn’t much matter why it becomes unusable, only that the consumer can be convinced that it’s not worth fixing. Apple’s goal then is to deliberately make something that would ordinarily be a trivial fix difficult. Obviously many manufactures are guilty of these practices and not just apple, but it’s disingenuous to pretend planned obsolescence doesn’t hurt regular people. Not only does it ultimately cost consumers more money, which is the goal after all, but it directly leads to more waste that harms our environment, wastes energy, exacerbates the conflict over raw materials, creates additional wastes through the logistics chain. It’s all connected and no amount of handwaiving changes that.
That’s bull. Louis Rossmann has a tiny repair shop that specializes in fixing apple products and if I recall he’s said that he sees 60 apple users per day who’ve been turned away by apple stores saying their devices aren’t worth fixing and they should buy a replacement. I know you don’t give a crap, but obviously the people involved do.
http://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup
Apple has been fighting repair stores just like Rossmann’s. I’m afraid it’s a battle that apple will ultimately win, not only because they have more muscle, but because they are introducing digital locks on components that will prevent replacements from working even when a shop uses authentic donor parts. We’re nearing the end of the road for 3rd party repair shops who defy apple’s repair monopoly, which is just the way apple wants it. Only a foolish person is going to cheer for that.
There are many ways to achieve a manufacturer’s planned obsolescence goals, making products non-repairable is one of them.
–I’m afraid it’s a battle that apple will ultimately win, not only because they have more muscle, but because they are introducing digital locks on components that will prevent replacements from working even when a shop uses authentic donor parts. We’re nearing the end of the road for 3rd party repair shops who defy apple’s repair monopoly, which is just the way apple wants it. Only a foolish person is going to cheer for that.–
Yes I do agree that when it comes to repairing Apple devices this will most likely come to end at some point. There is exactly example that open source that kind of says apple can do it now they are making there own silicon packages.
Do note you don’t require digital locks to block repair. Pocket Beagle quite while back showed way forwards. Reality is apple computer could in theory reduce to a single chip with a stack of resisters internally. Just like how the Pocket Beagle does it.
Something to remember with the idea of planned obsolesce. Look at the amiga and c64 computers they are still be repaired and upgraded today even that they are truly obsolete. If enough information exists to repair systems they can be maintained for insanely long time. Remember amiga and c64 today are having particular hard to get chips being replaced by modern day fgpa chips as in alternative parts options. The arguement no longer supported by their manufacturer as reason for planned obsolesce is not a solid arguement when you look at old amiga and c64 where the manufacturer does not exist yet they are still being repaired and maintained. Notice something these are systems without any form of hardware locks preventing repair. Yes these are also from the time frame when a maker of a system would truly give you a full circuit diagram.
Yes locking what software you can run on hardware makes planned obsolesce way more possible same with not handing over circuit diagrams does. There is also those old systems vendors did not have exclusive parts supply contracts early on so for the first 10 years of the devices parts to repair them could be simply made. After that third party parts were able to appear but his was back then those vendors had not patented the parts that were breaking.
The basic play book to create planned obsolescence
1) Make item poorly that it breaks early this was documented with the light bulb and others. This includes like the apple monitor cable in laptops where high voltage for the back light is straight next to a low voltage connection leading straight to the CPU to kill it so when the isolation fails the CPU dead. Note I said when isolation fails not if because its a pure when its going to happen without question if the machine remains operational for long enough. There are different parts inside the apple laptop designs that are basically this is design to fail and take the complete system with it. This is exactly what you expect to find inside something with intentional obsolescence.
2) Restrict parts supply so a functional repair business can not form to keep the item working past the planned end. This does lead to abusive contracts on many parties
3) Patent everything you can so once parts supply runs out new parts cannot be acquired simply for 20 years as anyone making new parts you don’t approve of you will be able to stop with patents. One of the flaws in the patent system is that you can block production of something because it breach of patent and not be selling rights to use said patent. This needs to be fixed. With the current illness problem if the patents for making the treatment had to be able to be licensed a lot more of the vaccines would be out there as more factories would have been able to start.
The issues that cause planned obsolescence can be quite harmful. Too far poor designed in point 1 could result in a person electrocuted. Point 2 lack of people to perform prevent of maintenance this can lead other issues. Point 3 problem is basically directly causing extra deaths the moment that don’t need to happen.
The framework laptop is a interesting push back the other way that items like it need to be supported.
oiaohm,
I agree with everything you posted. Most of us took it for granted. Future generations are already destined to be much more dependent on the manufacturers holding the keys.
ikristoph,
If rape/murder/assault/subjugation/slavery/torture/robbery/bullying etc. are considered universally immoral/criminal/wrong and detrimental acts towards every single human being, would you consider it as government overreach, if legislation made provisions to reduce/punish these acts, even though they do not occur to you, your immediate surroundings, in your city or in your country? No, right? Really, should we wait for a statistical significance of objective pain/mayhem/turmoil towards citizens/consumers until we legisate against obvious wrongdoings?
Planned obsolesce is usually achieved though a clever combination of contrived durability, prevention of repairs, perceived obsolescence, systemic obsolescence, programmed obsolescence, software lock-out and legal obsolescence. No, it is not as simple as repairability vs supported prevalent software technologies.
We are forced to buy disposable items
Check out how much I could do with my old HP 250 G4 https://mobilespecs.net/laptop/HP/HP_250_G4_T0J15PA.html
1. Added 4 GB of memory
2. replaced HDD with SSD
3. replaced the battery
4. replaced the cooling fan
5. Instead of CDRW installed an additional drive HDD
Any reasonably competent academic could write up a report covering all the issues raised. I’ve read similar on environmental policy. It was an excellent example of identifying the issues, seperating them out plus all the layers, and although lengthy was a clear and easy read with sensible conclusions.
Personally I tend to like small and light not bloated energy and processing hogs. This does require thinking through upfront and a sensible design and optimisation and portability approach. Some technology wasn’t really there but by and large most phones past Android 4.3 are good enough for the range of basic tasks. There is better about now and it is genuinely better in some departments especially cameras but worse in others including forces software obsolecence and lack of repairability and, of course, battery energy drain issues and lack of replacability.
My personal needs are a phone which is at a good baseline. Enough oomph not to be laggy and can serve as a replacment desktop at a pinch. Basic email, browsing, and video playing and suchlike. A camera which has at least the equivalent resolution and dynamic range of slide film. An SD card and replaceable battery is prefered. The usual connectivity for audio and a mouse etcetera. Repairability such as like the old Galaxy Nexus or a Lenovo laptop. A good used and spare parts market. None of this is a lot to ask.
Higher public spend as a percentage of GDP on R&D can reduce business risks. Good welfare and healthcare like good infrastucture pays off in quality of life and lower costs in the long term. Longer life of products means fewer resources used and fewer factories needed to maintain margins. A shorter working week increases quality of life and spreads the jobs around.
I think a lot of people get this.
HollyB,
+1
I think most people do get it, but many probably feel helpless. Buying a product is not an endorsement of it’s anti-features. I’m sure there are lots of long term apple users who really don’t want to switch because it’s always been their favorite platform, but wish apple would stop fighting against right to repair. You mentioned privacy issues before and it’s the same thing there. I use android despite all the things I oppose about google tracking and not because of it! Market duopolies limit our choices.
I agree with you about the value of the public sector investing in quality of life as well. Alas the US government is so hyper partisan that the scenario looks unlikely to improve in the near term – the republican senators have vowed to block every piece of legislation under a democratic president and alarmingly even blocked a commission to investigate this year’s capital riots. This is the state of the US right now, I’m really curious what outsiders think of all this.