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by temporaryvector 2505 days ago
>Would you want to know if the home you were buying was wired by a licensed electrician

No, not really. I'd want it inspected, of course, but that's about it. Same with buying used cars. If the house wiring or my used car fucks ups, I'm safe in the knowledge that I can just hire someone to fix it for a reasonable price, and I can be reasonably confident that they'll do a decent job because the knowledge and the parts to fix it are freely available to anyone.

>designed by a licensed engineer, etc?

Maybe, but then designing a product is different than repairing an already designed product. We also have regulations for that kind of thing, so even if I have no idea who designed the house, I can be fairly confident that it's going to be fine because the house was built in the first place, and as before, I can also have it inspected and repaired if something is wrong.

Nothing of this is new, people have been going through the same shit for a couple of centuries now, we went through it with cars and appliances earlier in the last century. Don't let Apple and other electronic manufactures convince you that they're somehow special or different. It's not arcane magic and these problems are not unsolvable. They're just not willing to solve them in a way that's not user-hostile because they have not real incentive to do so.

1 comments

I think you miss my point. The average person just wants their phone fixed, not to be able to fix it themselves. And they want to have confidence it was done right.

Also, a fun fact: an iPhone XR replacement battery is $80USD from iFixit (the only vendor I'd trust) vs $69 for out-of-warranty replacement from Apple themselves, labor included.

I specifically avoided mentioning anything about people doing repairs themselves because that's not the most important consequence of right-to-repair.

Also, good luck finding an Apple store or getting your battery replaced in reasonable time anywhere outside the major cities, and especially anywhere outside the US.

> Also, good luck finding an Apple store or getting your battery replaced in reasonable time anywhere outside the major cities, and especially anywhere outside the US.

No need! That's why Apple has certified third-party affiliates, including Best Buy in the US [1]. Prices are identical to service from the Apple Store.

[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/06/apple-partners-with-b...

Being able to fix a battery used to be as simple as popping it open and putting in a new battery, rather than having an Apple "Genius" hold my hand and whisper sweet nothings while they charge me an exorbitant amount for the most basic of fixes.
The bigger issue is when Ford put the motor inside the car. Now I need a mechanic to replace the motor. Horrible. Use to be anyone could just switch it out.
Yes but almost no one needs an xr battery yet. They are still all new and under warranty. In two years when people actually need new batteries they will be much cheaper, as are the older iPhone batteries today.