Getting rude and disrespectful in arguments seems to be a common theme with the left these days.
I don’t think you guys are doing yourself a any favors with it.
But by all means, keep it up.
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Elizabeth Warren Outlines Right-To-Repair Legislation That Could Affect Apple's Products
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Getting rude and disrespectful in arguments seems to be a common theme with the left these days.
I don’t think you guys are doing yourself a any favors with it.
But by all means, keep it up.
This kind of reasoning begs too many questions and fails to offer any real insight.
“Government interference” is a deceiving pejorative. And claiming it hasn’t worked begs the question.
The US is a “beacon of personal and entrepreneurial freedom”? This calls for more question begging - because for some reason you haven’t read about how our big tech companies have continuously violated anti-trust and privacy laws in the EU.
I find your reply a little hard to read.
The US was the beacon of freedom that helped serve as an example of incredible economic development and spread capitalism to many more countries. Europe always had a tendency for leftist policies. Just look at the stock market from 2008 to today, USA is outperforming is almost 2x. And Germany is a String Economy in Europe, i don’t even wanna talk about most other countries.
If the US didn’t spent so much money on war and military, the standard of living would be way above Europe.
That's an oddly simplistic conclusion. Regulation absolutely does "work" in some areas.
I'm curious, how is this supposed to work on practice? While I am all in for making repairs cheaper and fairer to the consumer, there also has to be some sort of schooling/certification system for training technicians. I really don't understand this adversity to "Apple Certified Repair Centers" for example. Pretty much any established shop can become such center. And anyone with skill and aptitude can become certified as Apple Technician by taking an exam.
So how would right to repair change it? Does it mean that Apple (for example) would be obliged to sell diagnostic equipment and parts to shops without certification? What does it mean for warranty? One big purpose for certification is to have enforceable warranty claim; if you let anyone repair the hardware, its not reasonable to demand warranty coverage from the original manufacturer.
So how would right to repair change it? Does it mean that Apple (for example) would be obliged to sell diagnostic equipment and parts to shops without certification? What does it mean for warranty? One big purpose for certification is to have enforceable warranty claim; if you let anyone repair the hardware, its not reasonable to demand warranty coverage from the original manufacturer.
So the option is:
Let the "Right to repair" be controlled by the corporations who have vested interest in not allowing you to repair devices purely out of profit motivation.
or
Let the "right to repair" be initiated by the government, who is not motivated by profit but consumer protection.
This is a bit of a no-brainer.
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Right to repair legislation has nothing tod o with the costs of repair, but provisioning for that repairs (even paid) are available.
the issue right now, without such leglislation, is that you could buy (as an example) a new MacBook Pro. within 1 year, that device fails for whatever reason.
currently, without a right to repair law, apple could very well just say "this is out of warranty, we refuse to repair it. you must either buy a new one or nothing".
the "right to repair" legislation would enforce that Apple must at least offer a paid service for a specific period of time (TBD based on legislation) that repairs would be made available, either 1st party or 3rd party.
Nothing to do with actual costs of those repairs. You can still very well be charged for them.
Let the "Right to repair" be controlled by the corporations who have vested interest in not allowing you to repair devices purely out of profit motivation.
or
Let the "right to repair" be initiated by the government, who is not motivated by profit but consumer protection.
This is a bit of a no-brainer.
[doublepost=1553710981][/doublepost]
Right to repair legislation has nothing tod o with the costs of repair, but provisioning for that repairs (even paid) are available.
the issue right now, without such leglislation, is that you could buy (as an example) a new MacBook Pro. within 1 year, that device fails for whatever reason.
currently, without a right to repair law, apple could very well just say "this is out of warranty, we refuse to repair it. you must either buy a new one or nothing".
the "right to repair" legislation would enforce that Apple must at least offer a paid service for a specific period of time (TBD based on legislation) that repairs would be made available, either 1st party or 3rd party.
Nothing to do with actual costs of those repairs. You can still very well be charged for them.
Breaking up monopolies and curtailing monopolistic behavior may sound "leftist" to you, but it certainly isn't anti-free market. When a corporation gets monopoly power, the principles that make the free market effective and efficient erode. And frequently, these big monopolistic companies raise barriers to entry that work against the small innovative companies that provide the true spirit of entrepreneurship.
Surely, you can't be arguing that John Deere's rules to limit third-party repair are either "entrepreneurial" or 'free market"?
You are right to worry about the possibility of the government having too much power. But you are myopic if you are not equally worried about power being accumulated by ultra-large private corporations.
woudl you be surprised than to know that free market enterprise ahs always been the subject of oversite and regulation? Because if you take your binary position like you have claimed up above, than no, we do not have free business. And never have.
Smart Regulation has always been a part of the free market. This is always been the case and has always been in place to try and prevent monopolistic practices that disrupt free market enterpreneuralship.
Great point.
I work in bioscience, where we have a lot of expensive instrumentation that may need repairs. The instrument manufacturers refused to sell certain replacement parts to anyone. This was based largely on a shift in how the service dept had to fund itself.
20 years ago, sales would subsidize the service dept. Makes sense, as happy customers will return to buy again. Today, service departments are required to fund themselves, and the price for service from the vendor has increased 5-10x. The increased cost (and other factors) led to a network of third party service providers popping up around the world. Skilled engineers who had worked for these companies in the past. Great option for the customers. One problem: instrument manufacturers didn’t want to lose those service contracts.
In response, manufacturers refused to sell certain parts to anyone. This left customers at the mercy of the manufacturers, forced to pay whatever price they deemed appropriate. In most cases, this meant an annual service contract, typically costing 10-20% of the instrument’s initial price. So a $1M piece of equipment would also require $200k per year for the guarantee of timely service. If you’re a research university with hundreds of pieces of equipment, that adds up very quickly and siphons off a huge percentage of your annual operating costs.
In the end, legislation was passed that required companies to sell components to customers and third party service providers. The result is that customers have options for repairing out-of-warranty equipment, and that equipment can be kept functional for a longer period of time. Much like having your car serviced at the dealership vs the local mechanic.
Fewer things heading to the landfill is better for everyone.
I don't think it would fundamentally change how Apple currently does business with it's 3rd party repair centres, training etc. It would only change that Apple would have to provide parts to those repair centres if they're willing to pay.
one of the issues that arises with some of these 3rd party repair centres, is that Apple will withold replacement parts that they have deemed they don't want those centres to be able to repair. There are numerous stories where a individual, who is trained by Apple to repair and licensed, requests parts from Apple, and Apple rejects the parts replacements for various reasons. Even if the technician is capable of doing the repair. That technician cannot go to 3rd party vendor for those parts because they would risk losing their Apple certification. This winds up in a position where for many repairable devices, Apple is taking a "you must replace it" stancei instead of letting repairs happen.
A couple examples:
1: Battery throttling. There were many users who went to Apple stores when their phones got slow. Apple technicians used the wrong test to see battery life. Because the wrong test showed the battery was OK, Apple rejected battery replacements. EVEN if the user was willing to pay. Right to repair would guarantee that the user could get that battery replacement if they want. even if the battery was 100%. They have the right to request (paid) repairs. Right now, Apple can literally (for out of warranty) say no and outright reject repairing for whatever reason they deem.
2: LinusTechTips self destruction of their Mac Pro. LTT admitted they broke their own display unit. They were 100% admission of fault and 100% willing to pay for repair. Apple claimed warranty violation and not only refused to repair it. Refused to sell replacement parts for LTT to do their own repairs. They also refused a 3rd party technician the replacement parts as well, with the instructions that LTT would need to buy a new device. Even if they were technically capable of doing it themselves. Right to repair would mean that Apple could not refuse to sell the parts that are necessary to repair.
I think you are underestimating the historical factors a bit. Europe was hit by a number of terrible disasters in the early XIX century, which took a very long time to reviser from, while USA has capitalised very strongly on the same disasters. They not only got a lot of intellectual personell who were fleeing revolution and war-ravaged countries (and lets not forget operation paper clip here, I mean, you know that the guy who made Vergeltungswaffe 2 was later of the leading NASA scientists, right?) but also incredible opportunity to influence the market and the global politics. One example: the US government of West Berlin has deliberately shunned the development of public transit so that people buy cars.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for free entrepreneurship and free market economy. However, market is not really an open system. Resources are finite (I am not talking just about materials) and unrestricted egoistic capitalism can create imbalanced structures with destructive consequences (e.g. monopoly effects). Besides, the only true factor for capitalism is cost: you want to make products cheaply and sell them more expensive. Which is great, since it's a powerful self-regulating systems, but its also fairly dumb. To give a stupid example (which illustrates the entire problematic however), a food manufacturer could produce much more addictive food at a much lower cost — but its not something we'd want, since it would lead to massive health issues and population degeneration. A more complex example is privacy — modern system are getting scary good at reading people's attitude, which in turn allows to manipulate their mood and then to scary stuff as public opinion manipulation.
Thats why governments IMO are important as regulators: to make sure that the game is fair for everyone and that imbalances can be prevented as much as possible. I don't think that many governments do a very good job. My personal preference is Switzerland, but even there they did some weird stuff (like diverting public money to save private banks etc.).
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Ah, ok, I understand. That would make sense to me. Of course, a slight remaining problem is that this kind of violates the principle of contracts as voluntary agreements... e.g. should a company be forced to take a job that it simply doesn't want to do (for whatever reason?).
Wasn't the story a bit different though? Didn't Apple refuse the repair with the explanation that they didn't have enough spare parts to prioritise these kind of case at the moment?
Why? Requiring them to repair all devices regardless of prior repair attempts would give companies motivation to make repairs easy.
Obviously with any change such as this, there might be some finer details to work out about such things.
in a case like you mention, i would think that part of the regulation could be that they are allowed to then recommend 3rd party repair centres that can perform the repair. That wouldn't violate a "right to repair" legislation, but also not force Apple to be contractually obligated directly to the person. This is similar to how they would do it now. With the only difference is they can't refuse parts requested by the 3rd party service centre (licensed), which is something they currently do.
Nope. LTT even said they'd be willing to buy the parts from their repair workshops (which they had) and do all the work themselves. Apple outright refused both Paid repair, and parts repair. And when LTT went to Louis rossman, a reputable licensed repair person, Apple even refused to sell him the parts. Apple legitimately took the stance "if you want a working Mac Pro, because you broke it yourself, you can just buy a brand new one". A very consumer hostile position to take.
IIRC, Linus basically went on ebay and bought a broken MacPro to cannibalize to fix his.
How can you prioritize a part request? My need to replace a defective part is equally as important as someone wanting that part as a spare.
Also, I think the issue was they wouldn’t send the part to Canada because none of the repair centers in Canada were trained on iMac Pro repairs because Apple hadn’t rolled the iMac Pro repair training to Canada yet.
What if there is no reasonable way to repair it or the repair would be too costly? I mean, what if I as a technician tell you: I will charge you $10000 for an attempt repair but I can't guarantee the result? Forcing manufacturers to "make repairs easy" just doesn't work. Not only it would kill innovation but it's simply not realistic. Sometimes the defect is such, that repairing doesn't make much sense.
Than markup the product to cover potential repair costs. Innovate until you can find a way to lower prices. I assume the tech is the person who purchased the product.
Well, for example, if I have limited supply of certain parts, as a manufacturer, my priority is definitely serving warranty repairs.
That makes more sense.
In America a cell phone is considered a necessity. Think about that. Just as transportation is. We have bus and trains and other means aside from personally owning a car.
It must be because my grandmother received a cell phone from a government program. An “Obama-phone”.
So now that society has reached this point and view I agree the next logical step would be this proposed law. You have the right to fix your car yourself or take to a personal mechanic.
As long as they are licensed and no modification are made that deviate the original design for fit or function and don’t void the warranty it’s fine. Same should apply for phones.
It must be because my grandmother received a cell phone from a government program. An “Obama-phone”.
So now that society has reached this point and view I agree the next logical step would be this proposed law. You have the right to fix your car yourself or take to a personal mechanic.
As long as they are licensed and no modification are made that deviate the original design for fit or function and don’t void the warranty it’s fine. Same should apply for phones.
Consumer power, as you describe, works great for breakfast cereals, where you have hundreds to choose from, and it only takes a couple of million bucks (or less!) for a new entrant to come into the market with a new product. It works not at all when there are only two or three competitors, and would cost $20B for a new entrant to equal the product offerings already in the market.
You seem to lack an understanding of what is going on. These tractors are now mobile computers on wheels. They are using the same tactics that Apple and others are using. This forces users to go to Authorized service centers/Technicians. Even for the most simple repair. Apple is also not being Green with this train of thought. Check out Louis Rossman YouTube videos on repairing MacBooks. He can repair the MacBook motherboard by replacing some of the bad chips while Apple will charge you for replacing the whole motherboard.
Check out Linus Tech Tips. They took apart a iMac Pro. When they went to put it back together they dropped the screen.
The took it to Apple to be repaired. Apple refused to repair it. They never tried to claim warranty and were going to pay for the cost to repair it. Apple wouldn't even let them buy the panel from a Authorized Service center. This whole thing was a mess. They finally got it repaired.
All of us that want the right to repair don't want Apple to pay for our mistakes. We don't want Apple( or any manufacture) to stop us from repairing our stuff that we own. They need to make OEM parts available to everyone.
Actually in the US you don't void the warranty if you open a item (within reason). Those void if open stickers are meaningless and should be outlawed.
This is one thing China is kicking out ass in. Check out Shenshen, China. Strange Parts YouTube channel built his own iPhone. It cost more than buying one. But he also upgrade the storage on his iPhone for cheaper than Apple charges. Any you can do it after you buy the phone were with Apple you have to do it when you select your phone.
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According to the article it states that the materials for repair must be made available to anyone. I don’t see where it mentions repair vs replacement.