I'm not so sure it is willful, in the sense of "How do we make repairs hard?;" rather it is more of design decisions driving how the device is made that makes it hard to repair.
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European Parliament Votes to Support Right to Repair
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My mom had an early car with the all knowing 'computer' board in it. It was coated in that hard resin, and then screwed closed. It failed. Miles from a shop. She paid to have it towed in, and they replaced it. That one failed within a month. First thing, the guy that installed it left the warranty statement for the replacement in the car. It had a 1 year warranty. She called the shop and they said 'these things happen, it'll be another (couple hundred dollars)' Second, when I got there, one of the 'mechanics' said that the board has a fuse, embedded in the resin, and they themselves have taken to digging that fuse out and replacing it on their cars. So far, every board they have 'fixed' has had that fuse blown.
I had to threaten the manager with legal action to get them to honor the board warranty. In the process, he said that 'whoever did the work shouldn't have left that in the car', and I said that they definitely SHOULD have left it, because the replacement WAS covered under the manufacturers warranty, and thanks a lot for trying to extort money from my mom!
So yes, hiding things like fuses and other easily repairable/replaceable items in resin, or locked behind 'special screws' is heinous! It's tantamount to robbery! And in her case, it was disgusting, and horrifying all in one. They TOOK ADVANTAGE of the lack of repairability. As an aside, they took advantage of unsuspecting customers, kept in the dark about their rights to a free replacement under the warranty. As for the manufacturer, they damn well knew that the fuse, safely buried in their resin sarcophagus, was a ticket for more profit in the future. They *could* have made it with a fuse that was easy to replace. They could have designed the board so it didn't need a fuse in the first place. The could have moved the fuse into an inline fuse holder, so common in car electronics.
So, this allegory shows two parts to today's situation: Crooked repair people, and products actually DESIGNED TO FAIL, and designed to not be user repairable. I have fixed many devices by ignoring that 'no user serviceable parts inside' warning. It's put there for idiots that stick their fingers into an energized device and electrocute themselves. Stupid happens. But resin is the worst. I'd say gluing things down is second, but more common.
Anyway, have a nice day...
You can continue using the wrong terms of course if that helps you but that doesn’t make you any more correct.
Apples warranty is a year. The EU consumer law in the individual countries protects you - in certain conditions- against The seller in a purchase. That is not a warranty although its effects are often similar in outcome ie a repair.
Perhaps Apple is one of the most valuable corporations because they profit on selling larger copies of the same stuff to people that under bought?
From the beginning, computers have been user upgradable. I remember buying literal memory chips in long tubes, and inserting them into the sockets on motherboards. Swapping hard drives, video cards, monitors, power supplies.
But protecting the bottom line crept into the business, yet things like memory and video cards remained a user replaceable item. Chips when to SIMMs and SIMMs to DIMMS. Video cards went to more advanced interfaces, and even separate power leads. Hard drives briefly went onto cards inserted on interface cards, but returned to smaller units for notebooks, etc, and were STILL user replaceable. Then greed kicked in. You couldn't use just any memory, you had to use THEIR memory. You couldn't use just any hard drive (even though it was the SAME MODEL, you had to buy THEIR hard drive. Then some companies started playing dirty, and just flat out denying the user the ability to upgrade. HP, I believe, tried that in the PC notebook space, and after people realized what was going on, that model sold like a lead balloon. People were furious to buy a high priced notebook, and not be able to upgrade it.
Well, Apple has been able to avoid a lot of this because they had already started out with a jaundiced eye on their users. From the beginning, well, post Apple ][, they took the idea that the user can't upgrade, not shouldn't upgrade, but bucked the trend of the PC industry, and locked down everything. Aside from a few models of the Macintosh II line, they went full fascist, and people actually bought it. They were buying the interface, and not realizing they were selling themselves out. (I wonder how much of the Jobs lockdown came from his insecurities about electronics design. Did he realize he was a weak engineer/designer?)
And, in the post post Steve Jobs Apple, the lockdowns have even gotten worse. There is NO REASON to lockdown a computer and deny users the ability to either service it themselves (and accept the consequences if they blow it up) or deny them the ability to got to a different source for repairs. In the car industry, the manufacturers have been trying to lockdown their repair profits with custom attachments to read the code in their inboard computers. John Deere has got to restricting all service information on their products to dealers, denying farmers and consumers the ability to repair their Deere products themselves. Others have followed down that dark hallway.
If users can't get them to change, and support their customers, then legislative means need to be employed, and the industry will fight that as hard as they can. They will shower money on politicians to get them to stop Right To Repair actions. And, no, the movement isn't saying people will have to fix their own devices, that's a lazy rhetorical dead fish, they are saying that people that WANT TO, people that CAN, SHOULD be able to fix their own devices.
I had to laugh when the power supply on a Cisco device died. I had the exact same power supply, same manufacturer, same specs, slightly different lable, and without that 'Cisco kiss', and the iOS ratted me out! I was not using a 'certified Cisco power supply'. OH HEAVENS ABOVE!!! The Cisco power supply was nearly triple the cost too! (Of course) That is the heinous industry crap that really ticks me off. There was NO DIFFERENCE, and yet I was 'risking my life', according to the text in the links I found online, by denying Cisco the insane profit for their overpriced 'kissed' power supply.
"According to a recent EU survey of public opinion, 77 percent of EU citizens would rather repair their devices than replace them and 79 percent think that manufacturers should be legally obliged to facilitate the repair of digital devices or the replacement of their individual parts."
(and, yes, IMHO, this suggests 77 percent of EU citizens may have an inflated opinion of their mechanical prowess)
I was the guy with an iPhone 3Gs next to my corporate device at BlackBerry for a year and a half to try to get our leadership to start making sexier competitive devices. (longer story, obviously)
I was also the "go-to" guy for a lot of the peeps at BB that you could go to outside of the plant to get your device fixed (I've always been the guy that takes things apart to see how they work - I thank my parents for getting me Lego and Mechano sets when I was a youngster)
I've also been the one that my friends have turned to as electronics have become more tightly packed, less serviceable. Much like how cramped the mechanical and electronic components are under the hood of our modern automobiles.
Does the EU also expect the car makers to provide free training, equipment and manuals for their citizens so they can work on their own cars? (and then hold these same car makers at fault when the failed maintenance causes injuries and fatalities on their roadways?)
We need to remember a few things:
1) We have a disproportionate amount of technology people here that are actually capable of repairing a lot of things.
2) Sites like ifixit, while a valuable resource for the people noted above, also has the disservice of making John Q Public think that some of these things are within their capability if they just follow along. (sometimes that's true, but many repairs require dexterity and finesse that most people lack).
3) "Fat fingered" people that attempt repairs and cause needless damage cost the manufacturers of these items millions a year in needless support calls, travels to the store, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Some of it's nostalgia...people longing for a time when things were simpler and you could fix them yourself. That ship has sailed. You want a hobby where you can enjoy being good with your hands? Take up sculpting or wood-working.
Yes, all of us mechanically adept people would love it if Apple made everything user serviceable...but this isn't realistic at all...and we certainly don't want the bloated size, inefficiencies and added complexities that would be required to do so (which, btw, would also make the devices more expensive) - because, you know, we're not paying enough for our Apple toys already.
(and, yes, IMHO, this suggests 77 percent of EU citizens may have an inflated opinion of their mechanical prowess)
I was the guy with an iPhone 3Gs next to my corporate device at BlackBerry for a year and a half to try to get our leadership to start making sexier competitive devices. (longer story, obviously)
I was also the "go-to" guy for a lot of the peeps at BB that you could go to outside of the plant to get your device fixed (I've always been the guy that takes things apart to see how they work - I thank my parents for getting me Lego and Mechano sets when I was a youngster)
I've also been the one that my friends have turned to as electronics have become more tightly packed, less serviceable. Much like how cramped the mechanical and electronic components are under the hood of our modern automobiles.
Does the EU also expect the car makers to provide free training, equipment and manuals for their citizens so they can work on their own cars? (and then hold these same car makers at fault when the failed maintenance causes injuries and fatalities on their roadways?)
We need to remember a few things:
1) We have a disproportionate amount of technology people here that are actually capable of repairing a lot of things.
2) Sites like ifixit, while a valuable resource for the people noted above, also has the disservice of making John Q Public think that some of these things are within their capability if they just follow along. (sometimes that's true, but many repairs require dexterity and finesse that most people lack).
3) "Fat fingered" people that attempt repairs and cause needless damage cost the manufacturers of these items millions a year in needless support calls, travels to the store, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Some of it's nostalgia...people longing for a time when things were simpler and you could fix them yourself. That ship has sailed. You want a hobby where you can enjoy being good with your hands? Take up sculpting or wood-working.
Yes, all of us mechanically adept people would love it if Apple made everything user serviceable...but this isn't realistic at all...and we certainly don't want the bloated size, inefficiencies and added complexities that would be required to do so (which, btw, would also make the devices more expensive) - because, you know, we're not paying enough for our Apple toys already.
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So where is the argument? If it quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, is it not a duck? Arguing that it's 'not a warranty' seems pointlessly pedantic. The real question is why it's not mandated in America too!
If industry is required to cover products for a longer amount of time, that seems to me to lead in one direction: Better designed products!!! Where is the 'harm' in that? The death of 'Designed To Fail' would be a win-win. Corporations wouldn't have to face massive repairs on their poorly designed crap (I've heard some manufacturers actually have special versions of their products for sale in the EU, BECAUSE of the longer warranty laws) and users wouldn't have cheap crap pushed on them and have it mysteriously die just after the warranty expires.
Where is the argument against longer coverage? All I see is profit at the expense of customers. Corporations preying on their customers.
I agree that it would be nice if parts were more repairable. Your example aside, sometimes the time and effort to troubleshoot at the component level would cost more than simply replacing the part.
Depends on the warranty. Some exclude labor, which often is more than the part itself.
Having grown up around the auto industry and as an engineer who still works on his own cars, I regularly curse the design decisions that result in making it harder to repair in the name of some unknown design decision.
Those do exist, but in many cases the time and effort needed to do some repairs makes them cost prohibitive vs repalcing the item or moduule instead of repairing it.
The problem is, IMHO, people buy on price which results in a rush to the bottom and the cheapest possible parts in the product. As a result, things fail at a higher rate; and it is cheaper to replace than repair. I am happy to pay for quality; and those productsd are often easier to fix. I had a cord go bad on a high end vacum and I could order just the cord, or the entire retract mechanism. I went for the mechanism because it was a simople bolt on repair versus trying to get a retract spring properly aligned. Now if I could just convince people that cords are unplugged by pulling on the plug, not by yanking on the cord.
So have I, but if someone were to have to pay me to do it the cost would be prohibitive for most devices. I am fortunate to have accumulated a lot of test gear over the years so I can run an ODBC code diagnostic and have helped neighbors and friends save money by not needing to run to a mechanic; but then again I am not trying to make a living at it.
I second that. I'd add in soldered in bulbs instead of socketed.
Likewise.
It’s simply not the same as it involves different parties as explained. Treating it like the manufacturers warranty is ignorant at best. You also don’t call your income your savings even if you manage both at the same bank.
Fairphone:
www.fairphone.com
Developed by some engineers with 1/10,000 (probably less) resources than Apple. Why does Apple not provide a second line of phones where consumers who want to can trade off SOTA thinness and design for something that minimized the impact on the environment ??
Here is why... Tim and Lisa want to burnish the brand with an environmental halo. They and Apple are complete hypocrites. The small impact a second line of phones the "Apple Fairphone" would minimally diminish revenue, and profits. IMHO it would actually improve the brand, but I doubt Apple C-Level execs can get their minds around real environmental responsibility.
So Tim, Lisa, Eddie, Craig, et. al. jump on a private jet every once in a while and have an offsite at Jackson Hole WY (or some other suitably enviro-inspiring location), and talk with Marketing and PR about how to build Apple's environmental message).
How about jetting to, and having that off site at:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth
Fairphone | The phone that cares about people and planet
At Fairphone we believe a fairer electronics industry is possible. By making change from the inside, we're giving a voice to people who care.
Developed by some engineers with 1/10,000 (probably less) resources than Apple. Why does Apple not provide a second line of phones where consumers who want to can trade off SOTA thinness and design for something that minimized the impact on the environment ??
Here is why... Tim and Lisa want to burnish the brand with an environmental halo. They and Apple are complete hypocrites. The small impact a second line of phones the "Apple Fairphone" would minimally diminish revenue, and profits. IMHO it would actually improve the brand, but I doubt Apple C-Level execs can get their minds around real environmental responsibility.
So Tim, Lisa, Eddie, Craig, et. al. jump on a private jet every once in a while and have an offsite at Jackson Hole WY (or some other suitably enviro-inspiring location), and talk with Marketing and PR about how to build Apple's environmental message).
How about jetting to, and having that off site at:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth
Have you heard the phrase "there's no such thing as a free lunch"?
Sure, you can mandate longer warranty periods - forcing manufacturers to create products with a longer MTBF. But, there's a cost for this. (and, in the case of phones, you would likely replace the batteries annually).
So, more expensive products. In the case of water resistance, yep, that would likely became an enhancement of the past, because these same groups will also legislate that it's unfair for the OEM's to be the only ones doing the repairs, so fat-fingered Joe's repair shop on the corner, which couldn't replace a gasket/seal to save their lives is also doing your battery replacements.
So, now you force the phone makers to have 5 years of product life / warranty. So, how many phone refreshes / generations should the software support? Apple's been doing about 5 years currently? So, let's say you make it 3 generations...that means that 15 years worth of devices need to be supported by your current version of iOS.
Yep...innovation would be awesome in such circumstances.
Possible, or simply higher prices to cover the added costs. Last time I checked, the pre Tax (VAT or Sales) prices of Apple products in the EU is higher than the US, part of which may be due to the costs of extra years of warranty.
I don't think it would result in a material change in how products are designed and manufactured. Most last a reasonable amount of time (Which is why the added warranties are a waste of money); so there would be no incentive to change the design but one to raise the oprice and blame it on the law.
Possibly, but another explanation is they simply use different model numbers to limit gray market products from being eligible for warranty work outside of the region they were sold. You still have a warranty, it just must be serviced in the region sold.
Apple is somewhat unique in having a worldwide warranty; of course their prices no doubt reflect that cost. Even so, if you buy a Mac in the US the EU's protections do not apply, IIRC.
The "Different model number" was a standard ploy to prevent price matching. Even though the device was exactly the same, excpet for the model number, stores could refuse a price match because "It's not the same model."
Price. Companies could simply raise their price to account for additional anticipated warranty costs without changing anything about the product.
Not necessarilly. As long as the phone functions as designed when sold it still would be have x years of product life. You just wouldn't be able to take advantage of new features; but it is unreasoable to expect a manufacturer to keep upgrading old tech, even if it is still under warranty.
Fairphone:
Fairphone | The phone that cares about people and planet
At Fairphone we believe a fairer electronics industry is possible. By making change from the inside, we're giving a voice to people who care.
Developed by some engineers with 1/10,000 (probably less) resources than Apple. Why does Apple not provide a second line of phones where consumers who want to can trade off SOTA thinness and design for something that minimized the impact on the environment ??
Becasue most customers don't want that and won't pay extra for it. If they did, they'd be mad when Apple fails to make an update module for their 5 year old phone and scream about suing.
Even with modularity, you still have to dispose of the replaced modules.
Nah, they'd jsut have to proce it to amortize costs over a smaller user base and thus probably charge more for it than a regualr iPhine.
A better solution, is to build for recyclability. If you design a product so at EOL it can be easily recycled and the materials reused you are also minimizing impact on the environment.
Hmm. Then the manufacturers would be much more likely that each hardware revision would be a . release (eg. 13.0, 14.0) - so major revision on new hardware. And, not testing the software on the old hardware would make these jumps harder on the application developers as well (ie. more painful). You will have people running older devices - you're always going to have people trying to wring out as much utility out of their purchase as they can. These people will, of course, also expect the app makers to keep making revisions for their antiquated devices.
Me, I think having 5(?) generations of iPhones supported by the current software is best for all concerned. People that want the latest and greatest upgrade every year. It's less jarring for the users and easier to support for the software companies.
You're going to slow innovation by increasing the lifespan of tech with legislation. People upgrading less often slows the revenue stream. Less $ in will reduce the R&D budget.
The fairphone is hardly something to aspire to unless. It's 2x the price of comparable spec budget phone and it will STILL be outdated in the same, or shorter amount of time.Fairphone:
Fairphone | The phone that cares about people and planet
At Fairphone we believe a fairer electronics industry is possible. By making change from the inside, we're giving a voice to people who care.
Developed by some engineers with 1/10,000 (probably less) resources than Apple. Why does Apple not provide a second line of phones where consumers who want to can trade off SOTA thinness and design for something that minimized the impact on the environment ??
Here is why... Tim and Lisa want to burnish the brand with an environmental halo. They and Apple are complete hypocrites. The small impact a second line of phones the "Apple Fairphone" would minimally diminish revenue, and profits. IMHO it would actually improve the brand, but I doubt Apple C-Level execs can get their minds around real environmental responsibility.
So Tim, Lisa, Eddie, Craig, et. al. jump on a private jet every once in a while and have an offsite at Jackson Hole WY (or some other suitably enviro-inspiring location), and talk with Marketing and PR about how to build Apple's environmental message).
How about jetting to, and having that off site at:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth
Having replaceable parts is a nice gimmick .. but given that its not waterproof by any means which means you will probably more than likely NEED to repair it (and the parts aren't exactly "that" cheap).
Having a more recyclable device IMHO more impactful on the environment than this turd (which is on version 3, so users obviously DO need to upgrade when new OS's arrive like any other phone).
Could Apple make a 100% repairable phone, probably, but at the cost of reliability and form factor, which are the two things that are basically what Apple is all about.
my mbp keyboard crapped out 2 weeks into purchase, so that debunk your "look after them they will last many, many more years"
This to me is the bigger problem. It’s one thing for repairability to suffer because of design decisions that have some other benefits. It’s another thing entirely to intentionally lockdown the phone to disallow what would otherwise be a simple repair.
Apple's making it more difficult to swap out components to keep the less mechanically inclined from doing so (as, when they mess it up, they end up costing them support $). Likewise, allowing third party shops to do warranty repairs (eg battery swaps) on phones is undesirable, as if they mess it up, then Apple's on the nut to replace under warranty.
(read: water resistance compromised by poor seal replacement, phone is fried when you get it wet).
It's a sacrifice those of us with ability to repair ourselves need to suck up and grudgingly accept.
Apple constantly picks third parties to help with their servicing needs in various countries.
Apple doesn’t want any party they don’t make business with to work on their devices and I’m pretty sure like most manufacturers these days if they find alterations and modifications inside a device the warranty is void.
Did you carefully read what I wrote. Apple Fairphone would be a second phone line sold only to those who are willing to make the tradeoff of price and features for an upgradeable, long-lived device. It is not a perfect solution, but vastly, vastly better than what is available from Apple today, and from the recyclability stream available from mobile phones (e.g. read the article link). HTH.
Yes and no. Macs, certainly - that's one of the "carrots" of being an authorized Apple reseller - getting the opportunity for service revenue (just like car dealers). For items such as iPhones and iPads, pretty much a given Apple would rather not have any 3rd party involvement - only in locales where it's been legislated that they have to.
Did you carefully read what I wrote. Apple Fairphone would be a second phone line sold only to those who are willing to make the tradeoff of price and features for an upgradeable, long-lived device. It is not a perfect solution, but vastly, vastly better than what is available from Apple today, and from the recyclability stream available from mobile phones (e.g. read the article link). HTH.
Re: your assumptions about how bad an Apple Fairphone would be given the current Fairphone. The latter is not that bad, and AGAIN was developed by a couple of concerned folks with resources probably tens of thousands of times less that what Apple has.
If you noticed I said I doubt there would be enough of a market to price it at a point where it is a vaiable product; something you alluded to as well when you said "The small impact a second line of phones..." So unless Apple manages to greatly increase market share a Fairphone would be a non starter comercially and thus not a smart thing to do.
I did; and it's really no different than Apple recycling used iPhones in terms of taking back no longer desired device; just as they have to deal with recycling outdated modules.
I simply do not see such a device to be a commercially viable mainstream product; and thus not of interest to the major manufacturers. It's not really a new idea, though none have really caught on; so it remains a niche product.
HAND
Everything the EU does is to make Apple want to abandon that market more and more.
I’ve heard of multiple EU countries where Apple iPhones are services by third parties, for example Poland. I’m not sure if they legally have to in these locations, but the service providers and resellers probably cannot handle the iOS devices everywhere, based on their sheer popularity.