[tcbawo]

I believe that car manufacturers in the US are required by law to produce spare parts for 10 years after a model rolls off the assembly line. A similar law for electronics would be useful, but where do you draw the line? Maybe the FCC could be setting those guidelines for mobile phones.

[zapnuk]

> A similar law for electronics would be useful, but where do you draw the line?

Doesn't matter. Just draw it and adjust it later on. At some point environmentalism is more important than profits and some reasonable support timespan of ~3-8 years is fairly obvious.

[ginko]

> A similar law for electronics would be useful, but where do you draw the line?

Does there need to be a line? Arguably small custom electronics manufacturers may not be able to do that, but surely something similar would apply to custom car makers.

Arguably small electronics manufacturers would have an easier job fulfilling this since they usually use off-the-shelf parts anyways.

[greedo]

I'm pretty sure that Apple doesn't just use off the shelf parts in the iPhone etc.

[Brian_K_White]

"but then where do you draw the line?" wasn't asked out of concern for Apple or anyone like Apple. They obviously can afford to make their parts available. You can't draw a line anywhere that would be unsustainable for them.

The question was asked out of worry that some agressive rule targeted at a big guy, might have unintended consequences that hurt the little guys.

To which question I agree with "doesn't matter, draw it anywhere and adjust as needed" because there are easily identifiable reasonable ranges, and not knowing the final perfect answer is not a good enough excuse for not doing anything at all, and what we have now is already worse than a line that was drawn a bit off the mark. Waht we have now is a defacto line drawn 100% off the MAP.

[ogre_codes]

> I believe that car manufacturers in the US are required by law to produce spare parts for 10 years after a model rolls off the assembly line.

With a car your spare parts are typically a small fraction of the value of the vehicle even used. With an iPhone, an official replacement screen will cost more than the 4 year old device is worth. Likewise the mainboard.

Really what I'd like to see is Apple doing a re-use campaign where they recover working parts from their own recycle chain, certify and resell them.

[Brian_K_White]

Then again, why is the device worth so little? Did it actually degrade that much? Or is it largely the product of the fact that it isn't supported any more, in both software and hardware? And, is that lack of support, in either the software or hardware domains, a fact of nature, or something under some interested parties conscious control?

[erichocean]

> A similar law for electronics would be useful, but where do you draw the line?

I dunno, how about we start with 10 years?

[theshrike79]

There wouldn't be any $5 digital thermometers or $200 55" TVs after that.

Producing and storing spare parts for a widget that costs less than a Starbucks coffee will never be feasible. Neither is storing an unknown quantity of said widget in a warehouse somewhere for 10 years to provide people with replacements.

Also, making things serviceable is hard and requires planning and forethought on component placement etc. This incurs even more costs.

I'm all for repairability and long lived devices, but I'm in a privileged position and can afford the premium price. But is this a viable solution for the world?