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0 pointsDubiousPusher7y ago0 comments

I don't normally give salty replies on HN but I have to say no. This is incorrect.

> Issue is that they are lacking on employees for what they want to do.

That is not the problem. The problem is many of us do not accept the world in which everything, down to the hardware we touch is just licensed to us.

Some of us live to hack, crack and diy. We are jealous of the right to repair, tinker and transform.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

bionoid7y ago· 1 in thread

> Some of us live to hack, crack and diy. We are jealous of the right to repair, tinker and transform.

Completely off topic, but here in Norway we also have a right to reverse-engineer software if the vendor can't or won't provide what you need to complete an integration. This has been the case since the 1960s if I remember correctly, and it's still in there after revising the law this year.

Ref: Åndsverkloven of 2018 §42 [0] (in Norwegian), https://lovdata.no/lov/2018-06-15-40/§42

nojvek7y ago

The way I see it US govt won’t enact a law that makes their big businesses worse off (at-least) the current ones.

They brag about how well off the top companies are, valued at trillions and that’s their measuring stick.

But as a consumer, the govt is not for you. If you want repairability, don’t buy from Apple. There is a reason why Apple as a brand is not popular in places where they don’t have Apple stores and good support.

consp7y ago· 1 in thread

> That is not the problem. The problem is many of us do not accept the world in which everything, down to the hardware we touch is just licensed to us.

As far as I know, this is not allowed in most of the EU if you bought the device outright.

On the other hand: The customer probably bought the phone with a O2 combination contract in which case it is a phone-on-a-loan (as in banking). In that case the provider is responsible as seller and loan provider, and the Apple store employee is correct to refuse unless O2 has a direct servicing agreement with the Apple store.

If he bought it outright (even through O2) and O2 doesn't provide reasonable service (missing your phone for three weeks isn't reasonable) he can request repair within warranty at the factory but will most likely have to pay for it himself and then send the repair cost to O2 (which they will argue against doing in order to avoid paying). The "factory" can refuse to do so and send the customer back to the seller in which case he/she should argue for a quick repair or stop the contract with reimbursement.

It's a complicated problem, but the Apple store was most likely correct in this case.

DubiousPusherOP7y ago

I'm not commenting on the story the OP was sharing here. I'm commenting on the first broad observation they made. They implied that the main issue with Apple locking out repairs on their devices was that Apple themselves could not service all potential necessary repairs because they did not have the scale to do so.

But I say there's a problem way before we get to whether or not Apple can meet the demand for repairs worldwide. I don't like companies that intentionally attempt to prevent people from repairing, hacking or modifying things.

I don't like the term "Right to Repair" because it sounds kind of silly. But I recognize that the industrial revolution, the electronics boom, the invention of the personal computer, desktop software boom and the rise internet were all driven in part by people who tore other people's stuff apart, hacked it, modified it and reinvented it.

Art gets so much credit in terms of being an uplifting passtime but we massively overlook the joy of learning how things work, changing them and sharing them. Anyone who stands in the way of that has lost the love of that. They've lost their passion and I don't really want to pay for their products.

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