undefined | Better HN

0 pointsJoshTriplett5y ago0 comments

This has the same problem I've seen with other such proposals: it joins together "you should have the legal right to repair" with "manufacturers should be forced to make only devices with modular replaceable parts". The latter sounds good in theory, except if it means thicker, heavier, less optimized devices. By all means offer such devices, but don't take away the option of devices at a different point on the tradeoff between modularity and thin/light/optimized.

You should absolutely have the legal right to open, tinker with, repair, or otherwise mod any device you own. That doesn't mean prohibiting the legal right to manufacture, sell, purchase, or use devices whose design trades off simplicity of repair for some other property that people purchasing it want more.

0 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

AriaMinaei5y ago· 2 in thread

> except if it means thicker, heavier, less optimized devices

Speaking specifically of my MBP Retina, and looking inside, I fail to see how eg. a soldered NVME would make the laptop any thinner. There is plenty of space created by the much thicker heat sink, leaving room for a bunch of components to be modular.

The reason all these components are soldered in is to make it hard for users or small shops to do quick repairs and cheap upgrades.

You must buy a new laptop for a RAM upgrade.

Apple negotiates with component suppliers as a single buyer, drives the price of components down, keeps all the savings to itself, and re-sells the components at an exorbitant markup.

It is ridiculous for anyone to think this has got anything to do with quality.

JoshTriplettOP5y ago

A modular battery would make the laptop bulkier. If a modular NVMe drive wouldn't, it's because other components have already have. And beyond that, you should be comparing to an Air or MacBook, if we're talking about devices that have been optimized at the expense of modularity.

Also, soldering down RAM means you don't have to include support for negotiating the properties and quality of arbitrary RAM sticks, which you'd have to do with socketed RAM; that can mean booting faster and providing more performance.

There are good reasons to design components to work specifically with other components. There are also good reasons to make devices more modular. Both have value, to different users with different use cases.

AriaMinaei5y ago

> There are good reasons to design components to work specifically with other components. There are also good reasons to make devices more modular. Both have value, to different users with different use cases.

If your point is that there is a trade-off to modularity, I'm not sure who it is in response to. It's obvious that modularity has a tradeoff. And I don't see any significant group in this conversation contending that. Nobody is asking for a user-replaceable RAM on an iPhone.

My own point (and R2R's I think) is that Apple, in most cases makes hard to repair products not as a tradeoff in favor of simplicity/compactness/robustness, but to increase profit.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse