[StavrosK]

> Yes, there is an enormeous amount of technology integrated into a smartphone or compact laptop, but my wristwatch contains over 100 moving parts in a tiny volume

I'm not sure what the point here is, a CPU contains 50 billion parts in a tiny volume, it's impossible to fix things this small if they break.

If a capacitor or resistor burns, you can probably open up your PC, look at the motherboard, find the faulty component visually (it'll usually be black), desolder it and solder a new one. It's just that they're so small that it's really hard.

Many manufacturers (looking at you, Apple) are designing things so they're hard to repair, but it won't be easy to repair electronics, no matter how much you plan for it. The best compromise is to design them so the user has to replace small modules rather than the entire thing.

[_ph_]

Your comparison misses the point. A modern smartphone or laptop consists of dozens of parts. Of course, no one can fix an error on a CPU. I don't even ask to fix proplems on a PCB. But a laptop should not consist of a single PCB, but be split into CPU/GPU, memory, storage, battery. At least these components should be replaceable for a skilled worker, especially those which age with time, as the battery and ssd-storage. And of course any fan built into the device, as the clog and wear out.

[xxs]

many (incl. myself) people have no issues with the pcb and soldering on them, provided the entire thing is not potted in epoxy.

Soldering SSD and RAM is another issue, which makes standard components useless (mostly on purpose)

[_ph_]

And at least with SSD there is the risk of the drive wearing out. One should not have to throw away the CPU and GPU just to fix a broken drive.

[xxs]

I'd bet the some capacitors would go into fail mode way earlier than a moderate quality SSD would wear off.

Saying that: home, we've got 3 laptops - all of them have removable drives and 2 drive bays (3 if counting SATA2 optical drive). All of them have replaceable and upgradable ram. All of them have replaceable cpu (one has been upgraded as well). Replaceable keyboards, trackpads... and batteries too.

It's kind of new trend to make anorexic laptops with everything soldered straight to the PCB, and if you're Apple apply no conformal coating either.

[sagarm]

Worse, it means you can't pull the drive out of a dead or to-be-resold laptop to salvage or secure the data on it.

[rini17]

Maybe the watch analogy isn't the best one. But you are probably aware that the display, battery and storage break down more often than CPU? And that noone is proposing to replace individual bad transistors or pixels, but these parts which are manufactured separately and don't have to be glued together.

[StavrosK]

I was arguing specifically that comparing tech products to mechanical wristwatches is a bit ridiculous. Obviously tech products could be much more repairable than they are.

[rini17]

Actually, comparing exchangeable mechanical gears to a transistors on silicon die or pixels is a bit ridiculous.

[smichel17]

I'd look at the comparison more like: a gear is a component (eg, cpu). If it breaks, it breaks and is not expected to be repairable, but that component should be replaceable; you shouldn't have to throw away the whole watch just because one gear broke.

[jameshart]

But a replacement gear can be manufactured out of commodity materials using standard tools and a bunch of esoteric skills. A replacement LCD display is never going to be something a skilled worker can recreate from scratch. Your best case is that you are able to salvage matching parts from another instance of the same device - so if you have one laptop with a broken screen and another with a busted CPU you can cannibalize parts to make a single working machine.

[_ph_]

I hope the clarification I posted shows in what sense it clearly is not ridiculous. Of course you would need spare parts, but the access to be able to exchange parts in the first place ist the essential part.

[dx034]

But pretty much all smartphone manufacturers glue parts together. Watchmakers show that it is possible to use screws even with tiny cases that must be waterproof. I believe Apple would be able to create an iPhone with identical specs with no glue used. But it's likely much more expensive to manufacture.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

This is the bit that people keep skirting around. No one is intentionally making items hard to repair (at least I have never seen any evidence to suggest it); they're making them easy and cheap to manufacture. And cheap to manufacture often means hard to repair as a side effect.

To anyone working with complex industrial devices this isn't a surprise. A good manufacturer will involve their Service people in Manufacturability reviews because what makes things easy for the Manufacturing guys and what makes the device cheap and so makes Sales & Marketing's jobs easier, often makes the Service people's job harder. For a product that costs $5,000 and that is expected to have a few repair cycles, getting input from Service is important. In that case, adding $1,000 to the selling price can be worth it to the customer if it means it can be repaired easily.

But when the product costs $500 and and has a predicted lifetime of less than 5 years and it isn't expected to be repaired by any but a tiny fraction of customers, it makes sense to ignore the repairability issues in favor of lower cost. Making that $500 device more repairable might add $100 to the selling cost, and that can be the difference between a hit that flies off the shelves and a total dud.

[MikusR]

Apple is intentionally making things harder to repair. They already have added drm checks to batteries and screens.

[dx034]

Fake batteries can cause explosions and exploding iPhones are bad for Apples reputation. Furthermore, iPhones are by now stolen pretty much only for parts as the iPhone itself is already protected. Sure, it'd be better if they offered replacement parts. But DRM is actually good for product safety and theft protection.

[stunt]

But replacing parts is still great.

Manufacturers are slowly pushing toward making those replacements impossible.

Just people in my family have replaced camera lenses, body, LCD, and battery. Just imagine how much waste it was if they couldn't repair those issue and had to buy a new device.

Same goes with other devices. Just a simple upgrade on old Macbook Pros gave them at least 5 extra years of life. That's now nearly impossible with new Macbook Pros.

[adrianN]

Watchmakers don't repair broken cogs either, they replace them with spare parts.