[sjwright]

Nobody is feeling bad for Apple, but I do think it's ridiculous how we talk about what Apple does as if the majority of their competitors aren't doing exactly the same things. Looked inside a Microsoft Surface product recently?

It's just like with the criticisms of working conditions at the Chinese/Foxconn iPhone factories. The same factories make Xboxes, Playstations and thousands of other devices that we all buy without such consideration.

But because Apple is an effective punching bag, they bear the brunt of the industry's collective sins.

[temporaryvector]

I agree that Apple is not the only culprit and their competitors should be equally derided, and in fact they often are. The Surface Laptop is the only laptop on ifixit with a repairability score of 0, after all.

But it's still pretty clear that Apple should get a lot of flak because they are frequently the first one to market with anti-repair features, they're pioneers in pushing design features that make repair harder, they sell products at a premium price but their first party support is often pretty bad and expensive and they have a lot of mind-share and they use that mind-share to push the "electronics are hard to repair" myth.

When it comes to bad repairability, Apple leads the way and the rest of the manufacturers follow after seeing what Apple can get away with. In general this is true for a lot of user-hostile design. On the flip-side, their position as leader does allow them to push some aspects of the industry forward, but they haven't been doing much of that lately, and when they do it's usually flawed in some way (their early push for USB-C comes to mind).

So I don't think its unfair for Apple to be the punching bag in this case. They put themselves in that position by grabbing so much mind-share and positioning themselves as leaders to be emulated by their competitors.

[sjwright]

How was Apple's push to USB-C flawed?

Isn't the drop in repairability of electronics being pushed more by the shrinking of components than by the assumption of corporate greed?

Why are competitors removing their headphone jacks?

Why are competitors copying Apple's "anti-features" as you'd describe them? Are you sure it's because they actually hate repairability? Are you sure their competitors covet the relative unrepairability of Apple devices?

There are far more variables at play here than we're ever likely to be able to canvas in short online comments.

[temporaryvector]

Corporations are optimization machines, they optimize for short-term profits, greed is no the correct term to use here.

There are two ways competitors are incentivized to copy Apple, the first one is because of Apple's mind-share and "fashionable" status, they might be convinced that by copying some of the features they will be able to ride on coattails of Apple's success to get some success of their own. Combined with the fact that purchasing decisions are not entirely rational and there's a lot of emotion involved, Apple and other large corporations are in a position to convince people to accept compromises that have larger effects (sacrifice repairability for slimness, sacrifice freedom for "security", sacrifice gas mileage for a bigger, more comfortable SUV, etc.). The second way is that Apple, by virtue of their mind-share and position as leader, can get away with changes that other companies would want to make but couldn't. If Apple hadn't removed the headphone jack from their iPhones, there's no way Samsung or Google would be able to get away with removing the headphone jack from their flagship phones, even if all three companies want to remove the headphone jack equally, but once Apple moves the overton window, the competitors can jump onboard with the change and implement it into their own product line. Apple has earned themselves enough of a reputation and enough of a fanatical userbase that they're able to get away with these changes because by-and-large their bad changes were balanced out by their good changes, the question is whether this reputation will last for the current Apple.

>Isn't the drop in repairability of electronics being pushed more by the shrinking of components than by the assumption of corporate greed?

Absolutely not. Shrinking components have made it possible to make more integrated ICs, but those were never user serviceable, but replacing a monolithic IC with a spare part, even with unfriendly packages like BGA, is not impossible to do for a decently equipped repair shop, and the cost of that equipment is going to likely be less than whatever car mechanics or small machine shops spend on their equipment.

For what it's worth, I don't think Apple or any other company are sitting in their board rooms wringing their hands and coming up with dastardly plans to fuck over the third-party repair shop. Third-party repair is simply not a priority for them, thus when the time comes to cut costs or to optimize the design for sleekness or profit, repairability goes out the window first. Contrast that with more professional equipment where servicing is an important consideration and you'll see design optimization producing different results.

[sjwright]

Many of Apple's customers are also fans of Apple, therefore Apple must be held to a higher standard than everyone else?

Competitors secretly really want to implement user-hostile features but Apple must jump first so they can follow like lemmings?

None of what you wrote makes any sense to me.

[viraptor]

They do price themselves higher and praise their design though. I'm all for exposing every device/company doing anti-repair stuff. But I'm also happy to start with those having most expensive devices. (if a $1200 professional laptop is not repairable, we have a problem)

[sjwright]

Apple devices are rarely more than 10-20% more expensive than its like-for-like competitors.

And it's not like they're entirely the same cheap OEM plastic crap with a different logo silkscreened on the front. Apple's investments in mobile CPU design. Apple's laptop chassis engineering. These aren't products that are ever going to compete in the budget space.

Meanwhile if you think Samsung and Microsoft and Google and Xiaomi don't praise their own designs with exactly the same level of fervour, you haven't been paying attention. The only difference is that people tend to take Apple seriously when they speak about it.

[viraptor]

You're bringing up how much Apple already spend on custom engineering. I agree - and that's why they should be called out as one of the first. And if people think Apple praises their design more - same. Repairability should be connected to good design.

Also, if I'm in the PC environment, I can get a different repairable PC. If I'm in Mac environment... ?

[sjwright]

Google is the most popular smartphone platform. That's why they should be called out first.

Samsung makes the most number of handsets. That's why they should be called out first.

Apple likes their products to look pretty. That's why they should be called out first.

Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. That's why they should be called out first.

Xiaomi are evil Chinese copycats. That's why they should be called out first.

We could do this all day.

[viraptor]

Then please do. Instead of doing this in comments about one company releasing anti-repair tech, post your information about the others. List their issues. Summarise why their products are hostile to third party support. Help people make informed decisions.

"There are other companies just as bad" is whataboutism, not informative.

[sjwright]

> "There are other companies just as bad" is whataboutism

As someone who specifically polices whataboutism in a fairly large online community, I plead for you to not dilute the importance of that word. Asserting a double standard is not whataboutism.

It would have been whataboutism if I was saying "Stop criticising Apple because Company X is just as bad!" Rather I'm suggesting we be more aware of inconsistencies in dishing out criticism where it is warranted.

Apple didn't invent unrepairable electronics and they're not even the best at it—they just so happened to combine their weak efforts with aggressive miniturisation, giving the appearance of being more repair-hostile than they really are. Meanwhile Nintendo's use of the tri-wing predates Apple's pentalobe by decades. And the latest iPhones get a repairability score of 6 out of 10 by iFixit.

To be clear Apple is repair-hostile, but it's because of their non-existent parts supply chain—not because of "purposefully repair-hostile" engineering.

[pjmlp]

Just like there are things that people punch Microsoft, Oracle or IBM for, yet everyone else on the same league dances to the same music.