[Swenrekcah]

In terms of providing value to Apple shareholders I think Steve Jobs clearly made the right decision.

I terms of providing value to the world at large they should have gone with Wozniak.

Of course Apple has provided a lot of value to users and the world but much more limited than if everything was hackable and repairable.

I guess my point is that I suspect, if you could add up the additional value of an 'open Apple' for every individual, you would end up with a considerably larger amount than the current market cap of Apple.

Let's do some math. Apple market cap is $2.4T right now. Let's say a third of the world could use their products in some form, that's $2,4T divided by 2.7B people or $900 per potential user.

If I could extend the life of my iPhone by 4 years with repairs I've already recouped "my share". And that's without mentioning any other product or the added value of being able to customize and repurpose old stuff.

Of course some of Apple's achievments wouldn't have been possible without their business model, but I think there should be a pressure on companies to open source technology after a certain period of time. It would be to the benefit of society.

[traveler01]

I love how hypocritical these companies are. Environment friendly they say: - Force people to buy a part separately that could easily be included in the box (wasting less packaging in the process). - Force people to replace unnecessary parts when repairing their products (my gfs MacBook broke the screen internally, without applying much strenght to it, and Apple repair solution is to replace the entire top end of the laptop for 600€) - Make stupid expensive for people to repair their products, and almost impossible for third party shops to repair them.

And this isn't just Apple, most brands are going the same route. Meanwhile world its sinking in garbage, but shareholders are happy I guess.

[misnome]

> Force people to buy a part separately that could easily be included in the box (wasting less packaging in the process).

A part that 90% of people probably already own 10 of? Sounds like 10% more packaging and 90% less e-waste?

I mean I get the whole "non repairable is bad" argument but Apple stuff has great lifespan and good resale value, thereby being reused instead of junked when upgrading. And they accept devices for recycling, don't they?

Of course it could be better, but there are legitimate ways of looking at these things that aren't as unambiguously "Hypocritical" as you are asserting.

[chrisweekly]

Gluing or soldering what should be user-upgradeable, commodity components in laptops still really bothers me.

[least]

Commoditization is almost always a big compromise to form factor, which, given that laptops are by their very nature a compromise of power for form factor, isn't exactly desirable by everyone. Stacking PCBs, which is exactly what you're doing when you're adding slots and sockets to your motherboard is absolutely a compromise on form factor.

If you don't like glued on or soldered on parts, then don't buy a computer that has them. There's still a ton of options that have the features that you want. Why be bothered when manufacturers are making things that other people want?

[chrisweekly]

When I bought my 2012 macbook pro 15 retina, the retina screen's high dpr was non-negotiable, and there were no other comparable options without glue + solder.

[least]

That means that you made a choice of what matters most to you. In any buying decision unless you're manufacturing it exactly to your specifications (and even then), you're probably going to be compromising on something. In this case you prioritized the screen over anything else, which is perfectly valid.

It's also perfectly valid to pine for a macbook pro with a socketed CPU, dimm slots, and a standard nvme drive. That doesn't mean that things should be that way just because you want them to be, though, which is the point that you made.

[tlavoie]

My 2013 MBP was the same, and eventually crapped out (power/charging circuit on main board. I couldn't upgrade to one with more RAM, due to some Apple like-for-like policy.

So I did vote with my wallet, and got a beefy ThinkPad running Linux. I wasn't that wedded to the Mac ecosystem, and this thing is a tank. If it needs upgrades or repairs, I can do them myself. So there are choices out there, if you're looking.

[emteycz]

Are you sure they could? I can't imagine how could you possibly fit a connector within my great (and its thinness is a principal component of that greatness) Macbook, and having multiple ways of doing one thing doesn't seem like good business or good for the nature - especially if phones and tablets are the major product of the company.

[nickflood]

Yes, they could. Look at Dell XPS 13 9310. It has the battery that's not glued in (using screws) which you can get a replacement for 70-150 bucks and change youself. It has trackpad and keyboard that are replaceable separately. And the SSD is slotted so you can upgrade the drive or recover data when stuff happens and your motherboard dies. Meanwhile, it has great screen, is very light (1.1kg) and thin. The battery life is on par with Intel macs as well.

In 15" laptops you additionally now get a slot for a second hard drive and upgradeable RAM without sacrificing much in terms of thickness (look at XPS 15 9500).

[emteycz]

I had XPS 15 before I had the current M1 Macbook, and before that I had the previous gen XPS13 for a very short while - I had to return that, I couldn't work on it at all due to overheating/thermal throttling. XPS laptops are incomparably worse machines and opting for that instead of a Macbook was my greatest mistake that I'll never repeat (I also really tried to like Lenovo machines, but that ship has sailed too - I'm going Apple only since this Dell experiment).

I never lose any stuff on my Mac thanks to the seamless integration of iCloud. And the motherboard fire that happened to my XPS15 destroyed the SSD anyways...

About the screen... Don't even talk about that. I was so angry when I first saw it - I paid big bucks for the best screen Dell offers and yet it's so much worse than the screen on cheapest Macbooks (I moved to the XPS from Macbook 2015 - even that old machine has a much better screen). It was flickering when I enabled dark mode in my editor (not a faulty machine, I tried to return it and they have shown me that every machine does it)!!!

And no, the battery life is nowhere near the 2015 Macbook Pro, and absolutely nowhere near the M1 Macbook. The ads say so, but it's totally not true - my MBP2015 still can sustain 6 hours of work with the original battery, while the XPS was dead after 6 hours of not doing anything.

And to top it all off, the whole XPS was creaking even if I just put my hand on it, and raising it into the air made sounds so terrible people around me were having amused looks! None of my Macbooks ever made any sound like that - or any other unpleasant sound whatsoever.

[rcxdude]

Especially those components which are likely to wear out and need replacing long before the lifetime of the rest of the product is up.

[traveler01]

> A part that 90% of people probably already own 10 of? Sounds like 10% more packaging and 90% less e-waste?

No, not everyone has those parts since they purposedly changed the way the part works. I mean, look at Apple, chargers used to be USB Type-A -> Lightning and they the included cable from USB Type-C -> Lightning.

Move also made no sense since these chargers usually may not even outlast the person's device. In the end of the day you're causing more waste.

And yes, they do accept devices for recycling, what they do with them its unknown.

[read_if_gay_]

> USB Type-A -> Lightning and they the included cable from USB Type-C -> Lightning.

If you have a bunch of old USB A charger chances are you also have a suitable cable. Really it makes less sense giving people yet another USB A cable, considering the Mac lineup is now all USB C and so you don’t have to buy a cable to charge from/connect to your Mac.

[traveler01]

Well since Apple cables don't last very long you probably don't have a good one either...

[gugagore]

What part are you both talking about? Surely you're talking past each other to some degree.

[jalk]

Charger

[gostsamo]

charger

[anothernewdude]

Sure, the resale value of broken apple equipment is through the roof.

[foobar33333]

I and everyone I know already has plenty of USB-A and USB-C bricks laying around. The things last forever and build up. So its more like every other company gives you a bit of junk you will not use.

[eldaisfish]

Do apple or any other company offer you a discount for not including cables and chargers with the phones you buy?

[blowfish721]

Apple lowered the price on the new 20W charger to $19 instead of $29 as for the old 18W charger, not a huge amount. https://www.macrumors.com/2020/10/13/apple-selling-20w-usb-c...

[foobar33333]

Yes, they ask you if you need one at the time of purchase and if you don't ask for one you don't pay the $19 for one.

Trying to account for what the original BoM would have been with one in the box is an impossible effort and not very useful. At the end of the day all you need to do is decide if the value provided by the product matches the price the company sells it at. If not, don't buy it. For me the brick adds no extra value so I don't have to account for it.

If I needed the brick and the extra $19 pushed me over the edge to not worth it then I would consider another phone.

[fsflover]

Fairphone is the answer here.

[Antipode]

I really wish they had US support. They'll work if you can get one, but they don't ship to the US so you have to use a third party re-shipper (both for the phone and for replacement parts). Even then their frequency bands aren't optimized for the US so you're likely to have reception issues.

[fsflover]

Have a look at Librem 5 as an alternative.

[bnajdecki]

Haven't heard about them - good to know!

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

I could tell it was bullshit by the sheer length of this page:

https://www.apple.com/environment/

[GavinMcG]

"Hypocritical" seems like the wrong word to describe caring about multiple things that are sometimes incompatible.

[traveler01]

I don't think they care about the environment at all. It's plain marketing as all others LGBT things they "support". It goes well with the consumer so obviously they act as they supported those causes. Only thing companies want it's profit. It's wrong? No. But don't think they care about anything else.

[Abishek_Muthian]

At least rest of us can be less hypocritical, If we have decided to call out companies for their lackluster climate action then contributing to the e-waste disaster by selling blackboxes should be on the list.

[antris]

It's a bit disingenuous to lay blame on companies for hypocrisy, when they have to play by the system set up by politicians.

Capitalism doesn't give you any extra points for being sustainable. If anything, it can interfere or be in direct opposition to making profits. You win at capitalism by making profits. A non-sustainable competitor will eat you, if you start worrying about the environment too much. So greenwashing is the way to go for most companies, in order to avoid boycotts, and people are ready to believe it because these problems are complex and people don't want to think that the stuff they buy are hurting the environment. This is a very foreseeable result, given the incentives.

Don't hate the player, hate the game. Demand change from the politicians.

[zmix]

You mean the politicians, that get sponsored by the companies? Those, who get influenced by professional lobbyists?

[antris]

Yes.

The efficacy of different kinds of action is highly dependent on the existing structures, of course. That's not to say that nothing can be done, it's just a matter of choosing the right tool for the job and gathering up people to join the cause.

You can vote, run for office, participate in demonstrations, strikes or any kind of direct action. The possibilities are endless. No single method guarantees success for a movement and nobody knows what will happen in advance, but in general the bigger the mass of people participating, the higher the likelihood of success. But sitting on your ass and blaming companies is guaranteed to fail, if meaningful change to the system is what you want.

[syshum]

>>Don't hate the player, hate the game.

No, that is a stupid saying and people need to stop using. Unethical actions are unethical even if the "game" allows for it.

>> Demand change from the politicians.

No again, the solution to this problem is not some authoritarian government response, or even (which is implied by your indirect blame of capitalism for all the problems in the world) socialist economic model

>Capitalism doesn't give you any extra points for being sustainable.

Capitalism does not care about about sustainability or non-sustainable , non-sustainable companies are NOT givin a "competitive advantage" by capitalism.

In reality is current government regulations like provide non-sustainable companies with that advantage in the form of liability shields, and various other government programs written by big business for big business to ensure the status quo

You appeal to government authority is as misplaced as your blame of capitalism for all the problems

[bccdee]

> Unethical actions are unethical even if the "game" allows for it.

Yeah, but nobody cares what you think is unethical. If the game allows unethical moves to be made, they will be made, because people play to win. And you can cry and complain all you want, but people strive to play optimally, and unless you change the rules of the game, people will continue to play in ways that upset you if it suits them to.

> non-sustainable companies are NOT givin a "competitive advantage" by capitalism.

Yes they are. Or rather, companies that care one way or another are at a disadvantage relative to companies who will make the optimal choice independent of whether or not it is sustainable. If we want to encourage sustainability, we have to use legislation to re-align incentives such that sustainability is the optimal choice. Otherwise, corporations will continue to be unsustainable whenever it suits them.

> government programs written by big business for big business to ensure the status quo

xD

Dominant corporations don't need the government to help them stay on top. All they need is for the government to get out of the way. When you have money, you can use it to influence the market to make more money. That's how advertising works. That's how vertical integration and walled gardens like Apple's app store work. That's how mergers and corporate consolidation work. Money is power, and market share is power. The state is the only thing powerful enough to compete with corporations, which is why corporations spend so much money lobbying the government to de-regulate and back down.

[antris]

>Unethical actions are unethical even if the "game" allows for it.

Nobody says what Apple is doing is ethical, at least I sure didn't. The point is, the problem runs deeper than one company. The system has an incentive structure where companies benefit by doing as Apple does. It's like blaming a ball for rolling down a hill. If you don't want the ball to roll, go play on a level field.

>You appeal to government authority

You make this sound like I'm for some kind of dictatorship.

I firmly believe in a government democratically elected by the people. Even if the system is capitalist in nature, it should always be subservient to the will of the people. The governments should be tied to the will and interest of the people. Especially in the US it seems that the government acts for the corporate special interests. In that case, the solution is more democracy, not less.

>non-sustainable companies are NOT givin a "competitive advantage" by capitalism

So why are all the big companies ruining our climate then? What's the explanation? Random chance?

[syshum]

Democracy is 2 wolves and a Lamb voting on what to have for dinner.

I firmly believe in individualism and individual rights, governments are insulted by people to guard individuals rights nothing more. Governments just power and authority comes from that defense of rights, not from majority rule

If 51% agree that the other 49% should be enslaved does not make it ethical or right, but in your worldview that democratic government would be "tied to the will of the people"

No, government like fire is a useful tool but a dangerous leader and should never be left whims of the "majority"

[antris]

>If 51% agree that the other 49% should be enslaved does not make it ethical or right, but in your worldview that democratic government would be "tied to the will of the people"

Of course democracy requires a constitution and a stable society to work. If there is no constitution that protects human rights and a majority thinks enslavement is okay, democracy isn't the right tool anymore. That's a description of a failed society at war against each other. I'm not suggesting that all problems can be solved by vote, just that it's much better to solve problems by vote than by bloodshed or by who has the most money, if you have that option. In a failed society, such option does not exist. That doesn't mean that democracy doesn't work. It clearly does in several countries.

[anoncake]

Anything else is one wolf deciding to eat two lambs. Also, if you enslave almost half the population you definitely don't have a democracy anymore -- unless your slaves are allowed and able to vote and participate in public discourse like anyone else, which likely would not quite be slavery anymore.

[bccdee]

What a perfect analogy — wolves and lambs voting on what to have for dinner. In the absence of democratic governance, the wolves will just eat the lambs because nobody's stopping them.

The wolf here is Apple. I can't make my own phone. Neither can you. And most users are substantially less tech-savvy from us, to the point where all they can really do is configure the settings on the factory-installed OS. The technology we use is overwhelmingly under the control of tech giants; there is no viable phone OS other than iOS (Apple-controlled) and Android + Play store (Google-controlled).

What do we do? Let ourselves get eaten? Or do we, the lambs (who are the overwhelmingly in the majority in our society) exert democratic power to counterbalance the capitalist power which controls the tech in our lives?

> If 51% agree that the other 49% should be enslaved does not make it ethical or right

Right, which is why the constitution exists: to protect certain individual rights from state overreach. But it absolutely does not follow that, since it is desirable that the government be constrained in some ways, it is always better for the government to do less.

[NewLogic]

Tim is a bean counter at heart and everything Apple has been marketing spin for decades.

[eitland]

> everything Apple has been marketing spin for decades.

After using Android since around 2010 getting a midrange iPhone around 18 or so months ago was almost a revelation for me, so no, it is clearly not all marketing spin.

(Why? Even on a Note II or S7 Edge something as trivial as opening the camera would have me waiting. On my iPhone XR pressing the camera button brings up the camera more or less instantaneously. And there are also a number of small conveniences that are hard to really pinpoint like actually understanding when it is in my pocket and then not turn on and burn out my battery.)

[tsherr]

On my ancient and overloaded S8, the camera loads in under a second after double tapping power.

Battery lasts all day (and it's 4 years old). Doesn't turn on when it's in my pocket.

These anecdotal "I switched to x and its waaay better" things always reek of bias.

That a 2017 phone is slower than a 2018 phone is obvious - plus you'd need to reset the s7 to factory defaults for fair(er) comparison.

I do support on iPhones (not an Apple employee) and I've never experienced the the vaunted "this is so much better" moment.

[eitland]

> On my ancient and overloaded S8, the camera loads in under a second after double tapping power.

Lucky you.

> These anecdotal "I switched to x and its waaay better" things always reek of bias.

Well, here I am. I don't think I touched an apple product from 2012 to summer 2018 because I disliked OS X so intensely. So not exactly the biggest Apple fan.

> That a 2017 phone is slower than a 2018 phone is obvious - plus you'd need to reset the s7 to factory defaults for fair(er) comparison.

I talk about normal steady state usage after a month or two. My iPhone is still smooth. My Androids were hardly ever smooth even shortly after installation. YMMW. If it works for you, more power to you.

Edit: I know Android devices can be good. My Samsung S II was amazing for its time.

[eldaisfish]

your phone is the exception, not the norm. Apple are well known for choosing hardware that delivers a great user experience. Their choices may not cater to your specific requirements but their sales figures strongly indicate that the majority of people disagree with you.

If you want to see how much value there is in Apple's phones, look at the used phone market. The competition isn't even close and iphones hold their value much better than the vast majority of android phones.

[falcrist]

Are you sure its really the exception? I had an S6 that still functions really well with minimal battery degredation. I used it really heavily until I upgraded to an S9+, which is still going strong with pretty heavy use.

I've used apple products too, but it sounds to me like the differences in quality are deeply exaggerated. I happen to like android mostly because I have access to the filesystem and like to tinker with settings (and I like using my headphone jack).

As far as aftermarket value, I'm not convinced the used marked is completely rational... Or rather, there are plenty of confounding factors that make that a poor argument for which phone is built better.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Android hardware isn't at fault. It's the bloated software stack written by Google devs only working on flagship phones.

[christophilus]

It’s been a minute since I used Android, but I definitely felt the same when I switched to the iPhone. I found it a much more refined experience over all.

That said, if there was a decent Linux phone, I’d hop on it, warts and all. Pinephone or Librem are getting close.

[deregulateMed]

I wonder if you got a garbage Android. Samsung is the Apple of Android. Big marketing budget, medium quality.

[WesleyHale]

The Note II was released in 2012, and the S7 was released in 2016.

To be fair, transitioning from any phone around the S7 era to an iPhone XR bought in 2020 would probably give you the same feeling of revelation.

The longest I've held on to a phone was the iPhone 7 Plus for ~4 years, but even after 2 and a 1/2 years it was starting to show it's age. By the time I got rid of it, a charge would last me a little over half a day from moderate use.

[usrusr]

Apple has a camera button?

(asking for an Xperia owner)

[eitland]

Sorry, soft buttons. One on the lock screen and one in the home screen.

And yes, as far as I remember Xperia was good, it just failed physically (later realized it was my fault as I used it as alarm clock and ended up applying force to the charging cable each morning.) Also they lost me as a customer when they included Amazon ads in a OS upgrade.

[taylodl]

You can set it up in the Control Center. That's how I access my camera.

[deregulateMed]

I went the other way. I got an iPhone in 2016 and was shocked at how poor the quality of hardware, os, and software was. Admittedly opening the box and giving Apple my personal information was fun.

Maybe it was a bad time for Apple, but it was almost traumatic for me. They really did just use marketing to sell phones.

[onethought]

Which iPhone was 2016 and what was the quality issue of the hardware, os and software?

Consistently Apple have been the leaders in all of the above. Even now, superior chip, camera, battery life, pixel density... it's hard to find better.

I've used Pixels since they became a thing and Apple iPhones. Other than quirky App Store bugs the quality issues almost always occur on the Pixel phones. ("Ok google" just stopping, gestures just stopping, ringing phone not responding to touch etc).

[deregulateMed]

Hardware might be related to software. The swiping from screen to screen was slow. I posted about this and people said to turn off animations. Annoyingly this was not straightforward and it didn't solve the problem. Not to mention having a unique charger meant an extra device to pack on trips.

The os annoyance was the relentless "type in your apple id password", and multiple times per week updates. A few users have spun the narrative that updates are good, but these were annoying and didn't have any front facing benefits. No widgets really sucked, it was regressive not to have my next alarm time on my home screen.

Finally Apple maps sucked, the podcast app was buggy, I'd hit play and nothing would happen. I'd then hit play a few times and nothing would happen. Then finally something would happen. I can't remember other software bugs, it's been years.

Sure these might be fixed today, but I wonder what other things are bad today. I have ad blocking and a few other non play store apps on my phone, given the App Store, I'm not sure Apple would let such apps through.

[OJFord]

At least Apple actually makes stuff, so many companies really are just marketing companies, 'their products' being complete commodity items.

[philliphaydon]

> I terms of providing value to the world at large they should have gone with Wozniak.

In theory yes, but it also could have tanked Apple resulting in Jobs/Woz going elsewhere and Apple never becoming what it's become, never pushing Mobile, Music, thinner / better quality laptops, etc.

I think in the ideal world we would have a balance between Job's vision and Woz's vision. Having that highly profitable company but the hackable open world.

(if that makes sense)

[christophilus]

We don’t know what we would have had. I could imagine Apple having solved the aesthetics while also keeping it hackable. My guess is they’d have come up with a LEGO-like approach to internals, using crazy materials science to find some way to get the blocks thin and strong.

[sokoloff]

I can just as easily imagine Apple failing to remain an independent going concern through some of its trough periods in the inevitable cycles that companies go through. As a user and an engineer, I’m 100% Woz, but I think Woz without Jobs probably doesn’t give us the Apple of today (just as much as the converse is also true).

[kmeisthax]

...so like the 2019 Mac Pro?

[elevaet]

The move towards mobile, music, thinner seems an inevitable progression in this vein of technology - analogous to transistor miniaturization that occurs no matter who the players are.

The build quality is something we have to credit Apple for though, not to be taken for granted.

It does seem like there's a sweet spot in a balance towards Woz's vision of hackability.

[philliphaydon]

> The move towards mobile, music, thinner seems an inevitable progression in this vein of technology - analogous to transistor miniaturization that occurs no matter who the players are.

iPhone was a first of it's kind. We had smart phones, we had touch screens, but Apple pushed the boundary. Everyone followed.

We had mp3 players, we had mp3 players that played video, (I had a Creative Zen), but Apple pushed the boundary with iPod's high capacity and ease of use. Everyone... Apple stole the market on this one.

We had laptops, decent looking ones, thin...ish... ones, etc, but Apple pushed the boundary with the Macbook Air. Everyone followed.

Apple is great at Marketing, Build Quality, and User Experience. (doesn't matter who disagrees with the last one, its a fact when a non-tech savvy person can pick up an iPhone and use it, but struggles with Android)

I don't think Apple is much of an 'inventor' company, but they do take existing things and make them better or push them in ways others can't or didn't think were possible.

----

In terms of the laptop market, I feel Lenovo is the /only/ company thats close to Right to Repair. Pretty much all of their laptops can be opened up and you can swap ram, memory, and ssd's. Their much older laptops back around like T440 you could replace the CPU.

But if any part of the laptop breaks, you can order any part.

I bought a Lenovo Legion 5 Pro for my wife, but in Singapore we can't get the keyboard with Traditional Chinese, can only get it in Taiwan or Hong Kong...

No worries

https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/sg/en/products/laptops-and-netb...

Navigate to Lenovo website, find the part number, contact the local distributor in Singapore, they have ordered the part for me and just waiting for it to arrive.

Bought a 4k screen and think damn I wish I had the 1080p screen instead...

https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/sg/en/products/laptops-and-netb...

Can find the 1080p screen for my thinkpad and replace it myself...

----

I do wish we lived in a more Woz world where more companies had parts you can buy and fix yourself etc.

[elevaet]

> iPhone was a first of it's kind. We had smart phones, we had touch screens, but Apple pushed the boundary. Everyone followed.

I agree that Apple took the lead, pushed the boundary, and that everyone else followed. But I think it was an inevitable evolution in the tech. In the absence of Apple, another company would have carried the torch, maybe 6 months later, maybe a couple of years later. But it was going to happen regardless.

[II2II]

> I terms of providing value to the world at large they should have gone with Wozniak.

As a personality, I like Wozniak more. If I ever had a chance to meet Jobs and Wozniak in person, I suspect that I would find Wozniak to be a much better person than Jobs. That being said, I think that Jobs provided much more value to the world.

Wozniak's chief contribution to the world is the Apple II. It is a wonderful computer with fun stories behind its development, but the computer industry would have gone on without it. Apple's early years are culturally significant since it was one of the few success stories that wasn't corporate (in contrast to the Commodore PET and Tandy TRS-80), but that story is probably the most significant part about the company.

Contrast that to Jobs. As a minimum, the Apple II and Macintosh can be contributed to him. Without his drive, the Apple II would likely be remembered as one of the multitude of personal computers that didn't make it in the marketplace. Without his drive, the GUI as a consumer product would have been set back years and would probably have looked very different. As expensive as the original Macintosh was, it was far less expensive than many of its contemporaries. As crude as the original Macintosh user interface was, it did provide a model for later products. Perhaps his antagonistic attitude towards user serviceability takes away from that, but it isn't all that different from how appliances were treated in the mid-1980's.

Edit: expanded a couple of sentences for clarity.

[willyt]

The catch is that in this hypothetical scenario most people would have had to decide that they wanted a big clunky hackable computer for apple to have been successful enough to have all this money... Judging by what people chose to buy, this doesn't seem to be the case. Personally, I buy raspberry pis for hacking and an iPhone for reliable, secure and frictionless pocket internet. YMMV

[wila]

Repairable does not equate to "big clunky".

[2pEXgD0fZ5cF]

Arguments like these are used pretty often to defend the practices of corporations and it implies that manufacturers would have to adapt their devices to make them repairable. It is also false for the majority of cases.

Reasons many devices are not repairable include: DRM built into parts to prevent replacements, no repair manuals (see Thinkpads compared to macbooks). Also measures to prevent people from flashing the firmware or updating the software once a company decides to drop support despite the hardware being still functional, or easy to put back up to speed by changing a battery.

Forcing companies to stop these anti-consumer strategies has 0 impact on the designs while making electronics far more repairable.

I find the "right to repair will make my devices big and ugly and appeasing to the evil tinkerers and hackers" angle really dishonest.

[sokoloff]

I’m pro-repair (and a regular purchaser of 18-36 month old iPhones and 2-4 year old [often just off-lease] computers).

Even given that, I don’t see how “end users must be able to change batteries in a practical way” would not negatively impact the quality of the iPhone I’m holding in my hand right now.

From a water-resistance standpoint alone, I think my phone would suffer in at least one dimension that matters to me. (It’s an Xs Max and yes, I bought used, confident that the water resistance was intact. If I sold it now, the next buyer has that same assurance.) Phones get wet at some low (but not insignificant) rate; it’s hard to avoid that across the entire population.

[taylodl]

The "right to repair" doesn't say anything about "ability to repair" or "easy to repair." What's at issue is people making modifications to firmware and then getting sued by the manufacturers. This is what's going on between John Deere and American Farmers, which was the original impetus of the "right to repair" movement. What "right to repair" is addressing is when you purchase a device then that device is yours - you can make any modification to it without fear of reprisal from the manufacturer. What "right to repair" does not mean is that you'll be able to repair your device, that it will be easy to repair, or that your warranty won't be voided if repairs are made by an unauthorized repairer.

[dagmx]

I think the biggest issue here is there's not a colloquially accepted understanding of what Right to Repair is.

What you're describing, and I agree with you, is what many legal right to repair advocates are fighting for.

However you'll see many people conflate it with easy to repair and easy to get parts, or repair without voiding warranty. Which IMHO should be separate talking points, but alas, they're all jumbled up when these discussions happen.

It's also why I don't think right to repair will please most people. Because the scenarios you described are limited and outside what most people are thinking e.g home repairs of cell phones

[themaninthedark]

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-06C https://phonedb.net/index.php?m=device&id=2871&c=nec_medias_...

NEC Medias smartphone from 2011, removable battery and IPX7 which is waterproof up to 1m deep. It is 8.2mm thick.

The Iphone 4S was released that year @ 9.3mm thick.

It is possible to make phones that do it, the companies don't want to.

[chapium]

The reason I doubt this is that Apple has gone to many lengths to make their phone as sleek as possible. How hard would it be to have batteries slide into the side of the phone or have a removable panel on the back? If any device company could find an innovative solution to this problem its Apple.

[kiba]

I don't have an issue with making certain design changes to make water resistance possible. Specialist repair services for these devices will always be in demand. I just don't want these companies to go out of their way to make things harder for me.

[willyt]

Oh yes I completely agree with being able to work with the hardware and software without getting sued. I was thinking of it purely from the hardware design for repairability and adaptability point of view. My point was that the original all in one mac was competing with all kinds of weird and clunky computers when it came out and it was successful because it streamlined the complexity of using a computer and, despite the bad period in the late 90’s, apple have shown that people want this streamlined experience. I want this streamlined experience most of the time but I would like to be able to unlock an advanced mode on my iphone so I can hack on it. E.g Years ago I wanted to write some software for my phone to communicate with my laser measure over Bluetooth and I couldn’t because there was no way to communicate with a Bluetooth device that was not approved, without signing up for some special hardware developer program, which I would never get access to. I was pissed off by this arbitrary limitation.

[mschuster91]

The problem is, "repairable" can have different meanings.

One is the availability of original spare parts like screens and backside covers (aka the stuff that breaks very often) for ordinary people and repair centers. A phone that's glued together and absolutely waterproof as a result can still be called "repairable" under that definition as long as there is non-discriminatory (aka external customers get charged the same as manufacturer repair centers) access to spare parts.

Another is the accessibility of repair without special tools (cough Pentalobe) or the need to discard a fully functional component to access a defective one, e.g. when the screen is to be replaced you need to remove the glued in back cover first, a step that risks permanently damaging it by bending or breaking it. Most waterproof designs have a really hard time here as it's hard to make a waterproof design that is still easily disassemblable and slim/optically pleasing.

The third definition of repairable is if an end-user can replace a common wear item on their own: batteries most obviously, but also outward-facing connectors for headsets and charging/USB.

The fourth definition of repairable is the firmware side - aka, can people repair defects in the firmware like security flaws on their own after the manufacturer has ceased support, without risking to lose functionality. Apple is the worst offender of them all with not allowing "rooting" at all, but in most of the Android world the situation isn't much better - root your device and you'll lose KnoxGuard/TrustZone functionality (sometimes breaking apps relying on it, half the apps on my rooted Samsung don't do fingerprint auth anymore since rooting), and SafetyNet attestation will also fail, leading to apps either stopping to work entirely (banking apps, just f..k off, I know what I'm doing) or offering reduced functionality (Netflix).

And with all of the various definitions of repairability in mind, you will always have some trade-offs to make.

[tinus_hn]

> In terms of providing value to the world at large they should have gone with Wozniak.

Wozniak would have gotten them nowhere, especially in no position to create products worth opening up.

[wheresmycraisin]

> Let's say a third of the world could use their products in some form

Third of California, maybe. The world? I don't think so.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

> Of course some of Apple's achievments wouldn't have been possible without their business model

It's better to be more fine grained here. Apple's highest profits wouldn't be possible without creating walled gardens. It's entirely possible, though, that their gains would diminish very little if they hadn't made the decision to glue everything and make their after-2012 computing devices non-upgradeable.

[binarybanana]

Screw Apple, but the only time I was glad my phone came with a cable was when the phone had an USB-C port. I have more than enough cables in place anywhere I need. I also don't see the need for another fucking USB charger. Seriously, I have way too many already and don't know what to do with them other than throw away. Also the earphones that often come in the package are worse than useless.

I'd be very happy if phones and other devices didn't include already ubiquitous extra stuff. It creates more extra waste than the extra packaging for something you buy only once, anyway. It's different if you buy a printer because you need it to be plugged in and replugging cables behind the desk would be a hassle, but phones only use the cable for charging (sometimes data) and don't need it to be usable. So if you have a cable and a charger that will work for any other phone just as well, just not at the same time if you have multiple.

If you have incompatible plugs there are adapters, too. At least for micro USB to USB-C, which I use instead of buying more new cables. Dunno if you can do that with the connector iPhones use. If not, fuck them, but Apple is right that bundling too much crap is a waste, even if they really just wanted to decrease their costs. Ironically, those two things actually mean the same thing! Or at least they should if all externalities were factored in. So they definitely did the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons. But that's capitalism and at least the incentive points in the right direction.

[nathancahill]

"For a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders."

[qaq]

this assumes "open Apple" would have actually survived

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

How was Apple hurt by the openness of the Apple II?