His livelihood does depend on it (although he has acknowledged that, as electronics get more disposable, he will inevitably end up having to shift into something like software or hardware design), but he has made a really admirable effort of actually going boots-on-the-ground and lobbying at political hearings.

All of this electronics churn is environmentally terrible, and it's frustrating that, as with carbon energy products, the entire world is forced to pay for the environmental externalities rather than the actual tech users.

You can make an accelerationist argument about not discouraging tech development and dealing with the problems using more efficient tech in the future, I guess. But I'd honestly rather have electronics cost a bit more and know that manufacturers had a financial interest in maintaining rather than replacing.

Does not seem too much like Science Fiction nowadays...

EDIT: I wonder if anyone might remember the name of the story: The basic plot is a business man living in a throwaway society manages to convince a dying man to sell him his personally developed car. A car that has been built to last for decades. The business man eventually succeeds by promising to respect the philosophy of the dying man and the manufacturing of machines built to last. As he is driving the magnificent car away he starts thinking of the "improvements" he will make. That loud analogue clock on the dashboard could be replaced by a digital clock and that gear lever knob that could be made from a modern plastic....

I replaced my smartphone earpiece, following an ifixit.com guide. Was initially daunted, given the expense of the handset, but it just took a set of mini screwdrivers and a wedge, 20 minutes, and has been working good as new for the last 3 months. Very satisfying experience.

Like not paying 10s of thousands for a Tesla that has a clause against using autopilot with ride sharing services other than Tesla.

I still remember how my macbook pro started to be slow and unusable after OSX updates.

My real wish is that one day, computer or smartphone hardware might last at least 5 or even 10 years. I know software is evolving quickly, but there comes a point where I don't think you need to upgrade your hardware, the hardware is just fast enough to do certain things with today's software. At one point, software should stop changing so often. Then maybe we won't need to toss hardware anymore.

I don't like Apple products, but it surely is funny that they realized they were making durable products and started to see it as a problem.

There are some downsides, such as that usage of the service outside the contract becomes impossible, so contracts should be sufficiently broad (and not targeting just the average people). And you don't "own" your product (which could be a psychological problem). But I guess that's about it.

Gee, I wonder who started that trend?

[0]https://www.baratza.com

So, for example, a family would go to their local technology artisan to put together a smart home system tailored specifically to their needs. Or perhaps a local band would commision some custom-made Raspberry Pi-based synthesizer with fancy lights for a show (https://youtu.be/_nBK8sAl9nw)

To the consumer, it would mean not only devices tailored to their needs, but also ones that are cheap and simple to get repaired and extended, because they would be based on open standards. No lock-ins, no secret surveilance.

What makes me think this is possible is how big the hobby space is around all these hackable technologies (raspberry pi / arduino, 3D printing, electronics)... people are already building home media centres and farm bots in their back yard just for fun. Hacker spaces are already a thing -- make them a service!

What you should really want, if you like reparability, is a market for reparable goods. In general, it will be more costly than mass-produced integrated goods, but foisting repair opportunities onto every consumer product will ultimately make people less satisfied with the products on the market, and it will make those products less accessible (and more expensive).

As for cars, I think there's a real market opportunity to make your cars exceptionally open to repair, but I don't think mandating it is a good idea. Especially as powertrain designs become more and more complex, the likelihood that you will be able to correctly reassemble them dwindles. The onus must remain on the customers and technicians to meet the technical demands of repair.

A line in the sand must be drawn between "difficult to repair" and "illegal to repair". The first is at the hands of the customer, the second, the legislature.

As for software, sure, the DMCA is unfair, it should have been struck down long ago. It is being abused constantly, and serves little or no practical purpose except to enable abuse.

Recently my smartphone battery died and I could order a new one for less than $10 and replace it in 20 seconds.

Both devices are more that four years old but I am not going to replace them with something, that does not have at least this amount of repairability.

Smartphones and laptops with soldered batteries, RAM or SSD? Come on, these things are not throwaway devices - even if this is what marketing wants you to believe.

I'd hope this scheme would be good for the consumer as they'd find it easier to budget (spread out regular payments), good for the environment as manufacturers would no longer have any incentive to make things hard to repair (forced upgrade cycles, ecosystem lock-in), and good for the manufacturer as they could focus less on forced upgrade cycles and more on a quality product to keep the consumer subscribed.

He cracks gear open before he's ever turned it on to look for build quality and/or any janky crap, then reassembles and runs it after. (No, he's not batting 1.000, but he's good.)

Classic teardown here of some sweet gear from the <hint> fourth smallest country (area) in Europe (0m37s, 1m06s & 1m21s are +1 moments, btw.)

URL, https://youtu.be/Yt2z6hEnQBs

I'm behind on the comments but I hope someone linked back to the "It Should Last Fifty Years" thread from the past ~12 mo or so: highly relevant to the topic at hand.

Then I look over at my Kitchenaid mixer. You know the iconic one that would look right at home in the kitchen of the 1960s. It's constructed durably, it's repairable, and people go out of their way to spend more to get it. I can get it repaired if it breaks. Why can't all appliances be like my Kitchenaid mixer?

Slightly industrial grade hardware is often field repairable. I go for new or refurbed durable low depreciation tools worth mastering. Emacs, weather sealed camera gear or even cookware are examples.

Otherwise I use low power almost disposable Chromebook, Chromecast and Moto-G away from a Linux box with cheap reasonable dumb screens and bluetooth speakers.

The haptics of consumer tools are churned far too easily for business models. Windows XP showed how too slowly depreciating good enough assets in the field upset vendors. Constant maintenance and futzing are taxes outside actually advancing any state of the art. I don't drive living in a midstory DC building together saving about +50% of typical American transport and HVAC power budgets. And I don't sport shop or even eat energy intensive packaged food mysteries.

Good and operationally efficient habits can go well enough with software and city living.

Also, I also think we should have a carbon recapture tax added to gasoline, but no one I know really wants to pay an additional tax of 7-10$/gallon.

I want a new car with no software, no computers, no GPS, no radio, no power windows, no keyless entry, no thermostat. Where do I find it? Realistically I can only chose between crap I don't want.

And if I buy an older car, not only I have to deal with problems that would otherwise be avoidable if I bought a new car, but the government doesn't want me to use old cars. Great freedom of choice. What a life.

He seems to love what he does, but we need people like him in politics.

It's too bad just being honest is so rare these days.

I'm just not seening the evidence of this "planned obsolescence". I would put it on the level of a conspiracy theory. Little hard evidence in favour, but anecdoes accepted as fact by those inclined to believe them.

As a counter-anecdote, as it happens I'm typing this on my 2011 Mac mini, my main work machine, which is still going strong. Just upgraded to High Sierra - the seventh major OS version this machine has seen. It's working well and and no sign of Apple trying to force me to buy anything new.

It isn’t your story, but I am reminded of Philip K. Dick’s Pay for the Printer from 1956: https://web.archive.org/web/20150509063736/http://www.americ...

Still, they tend to have highly modular, easy-to-swap-out parts. Hard drives, wireless cards, RAM, keyboards, battery, it's usually all removable and they sell spares for custom parts like the keyboards. Many of their devices even have a full CPU socket on the motherboard, so you could keep a good one running for a very long time.

If you luck out and get a good one.

Try looking at ifixit for repairability scores. They take the laptops apart and show you the internals on the reviews they do. https://www.ifixit.com/laptop-repairability

Of course, cross reference the repairability score with your desired performance and price. Pick any one.

Do you want to be dependant on an idea of a corporation that they will treat you fair?

Are you OK to give away your washing machine and oven just because you had troubles with finances and you missed one payment?

You can say that again. Just look at the John Deere debacle that's been happening for an exceptionally good example of why this is a terrible idea. Physical good = ownership = full end-user control. Anything less is dangerous for consumers.

A short answer is "everything Stallman has ever warned us about (most of which has already come to pass)."

A longer answer contains many, many reasons, so I'll just throw out some paragraphs.

Ownership is more than psychological, it's about your right and ability to do what you want with your stuff. It's also about whether your stuff is designed to help you or to work against you. "Do what you want" includes modifications, repair, and any usage that you might want even if not officially sanctioned by the company. If you don't own your stuff, you can't control whether it's tracking you and sending back data about you. You can't control whether one day the company goes out of business, or gets bought by a new owner, or decides for liability reasons or whatever that they should remotely disable or recall the product (maybe at the moment you need it most).

There's also a reason that "rents" are a hugely important concept in economics. In general, the renter is open to exploitation by the rentee who continually makes money not by creating additional new welfare/value but due to a historical circumstance, i.e. being the one who originally owned the thing being rented.

More issues: paying for services actually accentuates the problem of planned obsolescence, because it gives the service-provider the ability to terminate or alter terms of the deal at intervals (or immediately via software update) thus virtually forcing an upgrade.

When products are built to actually last, buying is perfectly environmentally-friendly. If you look at a mid-20th-century family's home, almost everything in it was built to last for decades -- furniture, appliances, vehicles, even clothing (with appropriate repairs). That was a result of the purchasing equilibrium. Many people have had to move toward the renting equilibrium where they don't expect to own things permanently, and the stuff they own is crap.

I'll stop there, but reiterate that the number 1 issue is ownership and control. I suggest you try the thought experiment of placing goods on a scale from "most ownership" (purchased for long-term reasons, customizable, repairable) to "least ownership" (comes with terms and conditions, may be updated or changed by the company at any time), and evaluate each good by how long it lasts, environmental-friendliness, how much it respects the rights of the user versus the wishes of the producer, and how much it is subject to planned obsolescence. (Starter: the iPhone is on the far end in all categories.)

They are coming out with an "anniversary edition" Thinkpad that looks like it's a refresh of a T400 series chassis. It seems promising.

Even though I'm a programmer and not really a hardware guy, I find watching him repairing stuff very interesting and oddly satisfying. He often even does all this on a live stream.

PS. For some reason most of his videos get a "do you want a website" preroll ad, which is already a running joke on his streams.

Just wait, somebody is going to try it with consumer devices sooner or later.

Having started to use a safety razor recently, I'm starting to think that the impetus for moving to cartridge razors was just to make the refills harder to interchange and less of a commodity.

I just sold a 4.5 year old 15" MacBook Pro for A$1550, it was originally A$3500. That makes the TCO equation look very nice indeed. And we only replaced it because my wife got a 12" for travel.

I have the next model along 15" MBP (still 2013) and I'll keep it until it is a year out of macOS updates, then sell it. It's done pro-level photo and video editing, still plays Starcraft etc just fine, and is a great dev machine.

I just repaired a 2009 iMac (hard drive failure), and it's also still supported by the latest macOS.

Just got a 4 year old iPad repaired for $A90. It's stuck on iOS 9, and slow for web browsing, but still works fine as a PDF reader, note taker, and a few games for the kids.

I can see a day coming where the same will be true of phones. But I get new iPhones now: to play with the newest tech, it's my primary camera for documenting family life. The "newest hardware" in iOS devices is supporting stuff like running neural net image recognition over entire photo libraries, doing 4K video capture and editing, and of course running whatever latest web monstrosity is out. People who don't want those features are fine to stick with older phones; I know quite a few family members still on iPhones 4S and 5.

You can read it thru google translate if you are brave enough :) https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://...

TLDR: Someone invents a catalyst able to revert any product back to dust after precisely set lifetime, every country adopts it to ensure steady employment across whole planet. Pants? 3 monts, wrist watch? 1 year, car? 2 years, etc. Can you guess what could and did go wrong? ;)

So, I borrowed my buddy's pentalobe driver set and about an hour later had pulled the logic board out, replaced the antenna, and buttoned it all back up. That's been about a year ago and it's still working perfectly. And the new antenna was something like $6 on Amazon...

Being able to work on a machine you own sounds much more like a "right" than an "opportunity" to me.