The bill is not asking for things to be redesigned to be more repairable. It is more focused on being able to get the spare parts, chips, tools and docs that make more repairs of the devices to be viable. Many places can already do component level repairs of boards. It might not be worth it if the SOC dies, but a board has many other components on it that are far more likely to fail and much easier to replace than the SOC. If a power regulator fails why should you have to buy whole new board? Or if a few resisters/caps get burned out/shorted they can be replaced without needing a whole new device.
No not everyone can do these repairs - but why should those that can be blocked from doing so? Why should companies be able to deny chip manufacturers from selling a 12c chip that can fix a several hundred dollar board? Why should chips be serialised so that you cannot swap them out with working chips from donor boards? Why cannot tools be made available to calibrate sensors after they have been replaced? Why should any company be able to stop you getting the parts and tools needed to fix the stuff you own? Or be able to go to someone else to fix it?
Not every device will be fixable - but why stop any device from being fixable just because a few cannot be?
Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Because, as time goes on, more and more devices fundamentally are not repairable. We all know someone who (… ten or twenty years ago. Jesus Christ) bought the equivalent of an ifixit kit and did cell phone repair on a dining room table. And… most of them knew almost nothing and had horrible ethics.
A phone with a battery that discharges too rapidly or a broken audio jack? Not good, but likely not a huge issue. Something that is powered on for 18 hours a day with a big chonky power supply? We are looking at fire hazards. And a short that would take out an audio jack is a short that will take out the GPU and render the entire SOC as scrap anyway.
Providing tools to open things up more easily: I am fine with that but I also don’t really think it is necessary considering that those tools do exist and the professionals have them. And the rest of us buy them from ifixit.
Serialized parts? I dislike that on principle. But I also remember how many people burned out their Nintendo Switch because they didn’t realize that the official dock more or less pissed on the USB C standard and that the charger needed to handle that for you. And when the lifespan of a video game console is generally 6-8 years+ and has gone through multiple revisions and different part sets? I am not at all convinced that the effort to indicate specifically which wifi module IC can be bought as a replacement on which specific model. Especially since people will likely buy those from AliExpress (awesome website, by the way) and have no idea how to test if that is actually what they bought.
And, again, that assumes that whatever burned out the wifi module ONLY burned out the wifi module and there are no underlying damages that can cause future damage or become a fire hazard.
Which gets to the idea of selling replacement SOCs. Which… is what apple has increasingly begun to do. And that is not a solution in the slightest and is mostly a way to nickle and dime people when they don’t apply the heat spreader correctly or whatever else.
In a perfect world? This legislature would actually be based on knowledge and feasibility. That isn’t how the legal system works. So… yeah.
So focus on the fixable devices. But don’t try to shoehorn in lip service responses that mostly serve to undermine the bill itself. Because the end result would not be that Sony and MS and Nintendo provide detailed schematics and only well intentioned techs with x-ray machines do maintenance. The result would be that Hoover solders a few capacitors in place and argues that they are also an SOC and can only ship people new vacuums.
CaptainAniki@lemmy.flight-crew.org 1 year ago
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s not necessarily the point.
The point may be to make everyone else stop reading the topic / conversation and move on to read something else, to “pollute the waters”.
To shape and steer the narrative away from being able to repair devices freely, to sow doubt that devices can and should be repaired by regular people. To plant the seed of doubt, and then prevent others from removing that seed.
CaptainAniki@lemmy.flight-crew.org 1 year ago