[kepler1]

No specialized equipment? So an iPhone / Mac has to be repairable with a consumer Phillips head screwdriver? Full size? Or is a T6 screw allowed? How about glue?

Who is to make the call about what specialized equipment and level of expense is ok enough by you? If people are buying the phones for the features they offer and the way they're constructed, and they offer a repair path, what do you suggest we do now, to satisfy your criteria?

[pzo]

For starter they could use 0.1mm thicker glue pads so that they won’t break so easy. If anyone tried to change battery on iPhone then knows how easy they are to break then you have to resort to using dental floss or fishing line as an improvised saw to remove the battery.

Seriously there is enough space to make it just 0.1mm thicker

[bradleybuda]

You can buy that phone. I don't want to, I'll keep buying the one they sell.

[andy_ppp]

Exactly, they glue is that thick for a reason, they very carefully design everything to be a perfectly integrated device. If everyone got their 0.1mm we are looking at a phone that feels substantially thicker.

Apple know better than random people on hacker news about what makes their phones sell, they don’t make them thinner for no reason.

[kepler1]

So, that's one part out of thousands. You're going to write up the 100 page list of all the considerations for how it has to be done, just for the iPhone? And that's going to be enacted into law/regulation?

[munk-a]

Why is Apple unable to make sane decisions about their product to make it legitimately repairable? Do we need to result to specific laws for every common sense thing?

[kepler1]

If common sense ruled us, we wouldn't need any laws. Maybe you're not thinking about how laws and regulations work, but they usually require specific wording and criteria to be laid out so that companies/people/governments know what is ok to do, and what is not ok to do. What criteria are they to be held in legal jeopardy for not following?

So are you proposing that you simply tell companies to use "good design principles and sane decisions" and leave it at that? It's up to their interpretation? How does that get us something different from what we have today, and how could you say they didn't follow that regulation then? "We did use good and sane design principles that are repairable."

If you can't say what rules (words and details) govern what you want to happen, how can you pass a law that gets people to do what you want?

[threeseed]

It is legitimately repairable now since they and third parties are doing it en masse.

[josephcsible]

No pentalobe screws that they own the patent to and use to prohibit third parties from making screwdrivers for.

[r3012]

You can buy one here:

https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/P2-Pentalobe-Screwdriver-...

[munk-a]

Cool - philips head would also just be nice since pretty much everyone has one of those.

Also - it might be nice if Apple allowed competitors to manufacture pentalobe screwdrivers themselves.

[threeseed]

Phillips head are genuinely terrible. Pentalobe and similar are far less likely to have stripped heads.

And maybe check Amazon before saying Apple is preventing third party screwdrivers. There are hundreds there.

[kepler1]

So, no technology that others own the patent/license to is allowed to be incorporated into any product?

[munk-a]

I don't think you're arguing from a good place - specific concerns have been called out about pretty specific design flaws from Apple. Instantly upgrading those criticisms to a full generalization about all components in the phone doesn't feel particularly constructive.

Do I think that Apple shouldn't use some proprietary thermal paste to mount their heatsinks? I don't really care and I don't think anyone here does either - but the tools to get general access to the device body are a different matter... they're necessary for a wide range of relatively simple repair operations.