[jgibson]

From an engineering standpoint, Apples devices became hard to repair because they optimized for weight and size over maintainability. Would Tesla do the same? Size isn't going to be something they care about because cars are all the same size and thats what people want. From a business standpoint it doesn't make much sense either. Tesla offers very long warranties (I believe is 4/8 years for vehicle/drivetrain), so making things hard to repair would likely be costing them money. For the next 10-20 years, assuming they survive, there will be more new Teslas under warranty than older models as the production rate keeps increasing.

Electric cars are so much easier to repair in my opinion because of their simplicity, with the exception of the high voltage stuff, which I won't touch. Replacing the drive unit in most electric cars is like 2 sets of wires and 4-8 bolts. Ever tried replacing the camshaft in an internal combustion vehicle? I'd say the difference is, the aftermarket car parts business is very good at making camshafts, bearings and pistons, but not so good at making high power inverters and charging systems. But that'll change as electric vehicles become more common.

[simion314]

>From an engineering standpoint, Apples devices became hard to repair because they optimized for weight and size

This is FALSE, small size do not explain Apple not publishing schematics, not selling parts, attempting to stop third parties to repair Apple products by sending them to justice etc.

I think you need to research more this subject and if you are honest with yourself you will stop excusing Apple for this.

[murukesh_s]

It's amazing that people keep supporting Apple despite it being so obvious that they are not doing it in the best interest of the customers. Think why wouldn't Apple keep a pro lineup that offers upgradable parts for the cost of little more weight and size(that theory itself is bs but anyway)? My MacBook Pro would work perfectly fine for another 5 years if I can upgrade the ram and replace my battery(which I can but have to give to service centre or risk myself with a complex diy procedure). The retina MBP have reached a pinnacle of laptop if you ask me with very minimal upgrades happening over the years. The CPU performance have improved but for most of the tasks I do it's going good and probably will hold itself for another 4-5 years provided I can upgrade the ram so that it can accommodate apps built by developers with modern computers with lavish ram.

[oneplane]

This is FALSE as well, Apple doesn't publish them for the same reason many other companies doesn't publish them: IP/Lawyer departments. This is also why the other stuff happens.

Basically, whenever a company says: we don't want third party X to do Y because of user experience, it mostly boils down to 10% user experience, 10% PR & Marketing, and 80% legal crap.

[simion314]

This is FALSE again, they go against people or sites that publish schematics or instructions on how to fix things, they go against people that want to buy replacement parts, they say is for keeping the brand standards but is for the money.

Imagine your side mirror of your car is broken(say a Ford). Now imagine Ford is not allowing you to buy any other brand of mirror to replace it, you can't even buy the Ford mirror to replace it yourself either, you must go to a Ford shop pay 10x more for the mirror replacement but in some cases the guys there say that is to expensive to try replace only the mirror and they will change the entire car body but all is fine if you bought the extra insurgence package, if not you will pay 25%-50% the original full car price to have it fixed.

Again, inform yourself, this thread has many references and be honest with yourself, you can like Apple for the things that they do right and don't try to excuse them for the things they do wrong.

[oneplane]

How is that false? They (as in, Apple's legal department) enforce their rules (such as, the schematics are copyrighted and publishing them is just as not-allowed as uploading a movie or ebook), that is hardly different from another company enforcing their rules. Comparing it with Ford doesn't help either, and neither does telling me to 'inform myself', I have been in this business since 1998 and haven't heard anything from Apple, ever. I'm not an APSP or AASP, but board-level repairs aren't new, and doing it without schematic's isn't new either.

If you read what I wrote, you should be able to understand that:

> they say is for keeping the brand standards but is for the money.

is exactly this:

> whenever a company says: we don't want third party X to do Y because of user experience, it mostly boils down to 10% user experience, 10% PR & Marketing, and 80% legal crap.

But without assuming malice or planned obsolescence. It doesn't make sense for a company to create a workflow, train people and build up logistics for an integrated product if there is no money to be made off of it. You can argue that you don't like that, but assuming that they (Apple as a company) makes tons of extra money because of that is a bit unfounded. It's not likely that a company would retain a client base if they actively practice such rules against incentives. If you turn it around, would you be able to say: "the company (Apple) would make more money if they sold spare parts and repair guides to anyone"? I think not. I don't agree with it, but it doesn't mean it's going to make a difference. A law would make a difference, and since this isn't an Apple discussion but a repair discussion based on Tesla, I'd think you would be more interested in a structural solution than trying to assign malice and speak emotions all day long.

The discussion should be about whether we agree with the rules, and if the rules are lawful (and if we can change the law to enforce a better set of rules). Not the personification of a company and assigning malice, that doesn't get anyone anywhere.

[syshum]

See I have the opposite opinion to you.

I think one of the biggest problems with business today is that fact that we in society have removed "personification" from the company, companies are made of people, and allowing companies whole to act as if they are amoral automatons with their only goal profit seeking removes the ethical obligations of the people that make up said corporations. Allows management to hide behind phrases like "it is not personal it is just business".

So no a company may not be a person, but people are in charge of it, people make the choices and policies of the companies, and as such those people though be personified and held to an ethical standard and foundation on behalf of the company.

Explaining away all of Apples anti-consumer policies simply because "Well the damn lawyers" as you have done here is a massive evasion and redirection of responsibility that the management, engineers and really every employee of apple as to their customers

[oneplane]

I think you have to know the inside to know where you can change them from the outside. As an engineer or logistics expert, you have no leverage inside a company to modify those policies. When you say a company is made up of people, and try to personify it, you, and many others also try to vilify the same people. Imagine working somewhere and championing an internal policy reform (which takes ages), and reading some unknown person writing angry crap about you, that's not a very nice thing. Responsibility is an equally useless word here, as you can't expect all 'responsible' parties in one company to have the same opinions. Say you have 100.000 employees working at Apple, do you really think they all share your views? Even if they all have a responsibility to make your life easier for you, you can't expect them all to believe in the exact same way or route to accomplish that. Put 10 people in a room and you'll have enough opinions and methods to give you a headache, let alone over a ton of them. This is why they have some sort of chain of command that removes some responsibility and capabilities down the chain. That also means that you can be mad at the engineers all you want, but it doesn't mean it's their fault or that they are 'out to get you'.

Business scholars devise calculations where you can put in the laws and requirements of your business and out comes the way forward, often not in favor of the consumers. If you want that to change, well, then capitalism gets in the way and that's when you need laws or shareholder/board-level influence if consumers want that to change.

Your opinion is based on the idea that you can make overall structural changes based on the same principles as making changes to government; but the difference is that there is no way to reach the business part of a company short of changing a law or simply not buying the product.

The scale of operations often doesn't allow for certain changes due to the cost involved, especially when it comes to catering to an insignificant amount of people (such as independent repair shops or consumers that want low level access to everything).

When I write about where the policies come from and why things are in a certain way, that is not opinion but a reflection of current operations. My opinion and the reality don't match, but that doesn't mean I'm going to declare my opinion as fact or yell on a social media platform that "personified company X is malicious". It doesn't help, it doesn't change and it is far from constructive.

On top of that, most policies in larger corporations are in place because they were implemented buy lawyers by directive of business management driven by the wishes of boards and shareholders. Unless you can communicate to, and convince the shareholders, boards and other actual decision makers, all the screaming and opinions are worthless. Especially when it's 1000 people yelling and 100 million people not yelling but being consumers all the same (and paying for products).

In my opinion, all devices should be completely open and manageable by whoever owns them, but that has yet to become reality. Even basic stuff such as parameters for the ECU in almost all cars isn't freely available. Plenty of good & bad reasons for that, but still a bummer when you simply wanted to change a bit in a register to enable or disable a function that suits you.

[simion314]

You can't blame the IP laws for the fact that Apple is bullying people that fix and refurbish Apple products, hopefully there will be laws around the world to require electronics manufacturers to supply parts similar and repair schematics similar as for cars.

I do not see other manufacturers doing same as Apple, so it is FALSE that laws are the ones causing Apple to behaive like this, that would mean that all the rest are operating illegally and let the users open and repair the products, some of them even DARE to sell the parts.

[oneplane]

I do see other manufacturers do it, and I do see even non-hardware manufacturers do it, hell, even Sony did it with a bunch of hackers that reverse engineered the PS3 and PS4 to run their own software -- and they weren't running a business off of it.

Also, I'm not blaming IP laws, luckily, we don't have the USA IP laws in the rest of the world.

I think most of the pitchforking at Apple is just happening because it's an easy target, not because it's a good example or the first step to fix a structural problem. That USA bill for the right to repair (or was it a state? or county? who knows...), that's the right kind of thing.

Also, have you ever tried to get spare parts from Microsoft for your Xbox, or schematics? Or perhaps for your PlayStation? It's not new or different what Apple does, and it's not going to fix anything by picking the easy target.

[simion314]

My point was not that the Apple is the only or the biggest offender, my initial comment was about excusing Apple and blaming the laws or the layers, Apple has no excuse,also MS,Sony or Tesla are on the offenders list.

Again my point is that there is no excuse for Apple, some parts can be replaced, Apple should sell me parts(like car manufacturers have to provide parts) and I should have the right to replace or fix the parts or give it to a third party to repair.

I agree the world needs laws similar that there are for cars in some countries to prevent abuse.

[freerobby]

> From an engineering standpoint, Apples devices became hard to repair because they optimized for weight and size over maintainability. Would Tesla do the same?

> Tesla offers very long warranties (I believe is 4/8 years for vehicle/drivetrain), so making things hard to repair would likely be costing them money.

The Apple analogy is a good one. Tesla makes similar tradeoffs, but instead of optimizing for size and weight, they are optimizing for safety, performance, and ease-of-manufacturing.

Sometimes, there is no conflict. For instance, Tesla's battery is designed to be super low to the ground to lower the center of gravity, reduce rollovers, and improve turning. They managed to achieve this via a bolt-on assembly that is easy to install and and just as easy to replace. Hurrah!

But in other places, the tension is very much felt. Replacing the front radar (even on pre-facelift cars, before it was hidden) requires removing the entire front bumper cover. Replacing a broken paddle gear in a rear door handle often requires removing the door's window.

If modularity were a first-order goal, these procedures would be a lot simpler, and major hardware upgrades (like Autopilot hardware or the 2nd gen MCU) would be reasonably feasible. But to the extent that modularity comes at even the slightest structural cost, or unnecessary weight, or any difficulty in robotic assembly, Tesla has erred away from it.

I assume their calculus is:

* Safety and performance are what they compete on

* Ease of manufacturing is their competitive advantage

* Modularity and cheap repair costs are "nice to have", but less important than the previous two.

[fib]

> Safety and performance are what they compete on

The original iPad was rendered unsupported after 2 years on the market. At that point, the lack of software updates combined with inevitable unknown security vulnerabilities mean that Apple's model actually generates a safety hazard.

It's common for Android hardware to become unsupported after 2 years, but the degree of success of cyanogenmod and postmarketos (and now project treble) demonstrate that there is a better way.

As time passes, an iPad's unknown vulnerabilities become known. Similarly, the scenarios and environs in which a Tesla is driven also change unpredictably.

Apple and Tesla can't support their designs indefinitely and remain profitable. The ethical solution is either don't sell the product (rent it out instead) or simply allow owners to accept the maintenance burden.

[freerobby]

> Apple and Tesla can't support their designs indefinitely and remain profitable.

I don't see any indication of this. The support windows for all Apple and Tesla products are in line with consumer expectations. The two-year shelf life for iOS devices is driven more by market demand and the way that phone contracts (used to) work than anything else. You don't see that problem with Macbook Pros or iMacs, where consumers expect a longer lifespan.

The expectations for a car are even longer, which is why Tesla still supports its earliest vehicles, and says it will continue to do so moving forward. I don't see any reason to disbelieve this, nor evidence that the company can't sustain it.

[akira2501]

> so making things hard to repair would likely be costing them money.

It's easier for them to repair because they have access to the manuals and diagnostic software necessary to quickly identify the issue.

> Electric cars are so much easier to repair in my opinion because of their simplicity

Parts of them, but the highest cost repairs on Tesla's are by far the body work; which is somehow an order of magnitude more expensive than other cars.

> Replacing the drive unit in most electric cars is like 2 sets of wires and 4-8 bolts.

That's a gross oversimplification and completely ignores the necessary reprogramming to make the replacement actually function in the new vehicle, which is precisely the problem with their repair model; you _can't_ actually do this yourself due to software barriers.

> But that'll change as electric vehicles become more common.

And as soon as the manufacturers release the necessary information to make them functional on their platform.

[neya]

> Apples devices became hard to repair because they optimized for weight and size over maintainability.

This is incorrect, there are way smaller, lighter and thinner devices than Apple's laptops and phones that are far more service friendly. Case in point - Checkout Huawei's premium laptop lines.

[oneplane]

Apple's devices became harder to repair because of Secure Elements, Asymmetric encryption and DFM. Not because of malice as so many people keep thinking. Not releasing parts and schematics is probably something the lawyer department wanted and since there is very little business incentive to do it anyway, they simply don't do it.

[biaachmonkie]

None of the reasons you list require that the RAM and SSD be soldered to the mainboard! They solder them to the mainboard so that you can't buy the low spec'd config from them and then add 3rd party components at reasonable/competitive-market based prices. They force you to pay 2X+ the market rate for for RAM and storage when up-specing a system.

They have the highest margins, by far, in the whole industry, and well they are raking in money so it's working for them, as far as revenue/income is concerned.

[specialist]

File under "believe, but cannot prove":

"...hard to repair because they optimized for weight and size over maintainability."

How did Apple achieve those goals? Through greater integration and reduced modularity.

I often face two challenges when repairing my own stuff (cars, phones, appliances) these days:

tightly coupled designs

finding replacement parts

The book "Design Rules: The Power of Modularity" deeply influenced how I look at architecture and design.

Since I'm an Apple fanboy, I'm clearly okay with their choices, priorities. But I'm also fully aware of what I'm forfeiting.

I watched the Sandy Munro videos about their Tesla teardowns. The same forces are at work. Fascinating. (Since I'll never be able to afford a Tesla, I won't have to determine if their reduced repairability is an issue for me.)