Re:Internal Documents Show Apple Is Capable of Implementing ...
by Dylan16807 on Friday March 29, 2019 @06:59PM
(#19526353)
> I'm in favor of independent voluntary certifications (and testing labs, and similar) that encompass a large number of associated features and properties.
Got any suggestions to make that actually happen? The benefit per sale is small enough that it's really hard to get the demand together on a per-product basis. Consumers don't have the time to learn every minor certification body either. But making the decision in bulk, as a society, is a lot more feasible.
Also, there isn't an infinite variety of products. The more dimensions you have to filter by, the worse your result gets per dollar. The free market can't solve everything at the same time.
> I don't want to prohibit the equivalent of "This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY".
That is again not a sale. And you can have triple your $0 back if it breaks.
> I'm also talking about "crowdfunded, we made 6,473 of them, but we're not a big company". Or "here are some schematics to build a piece of hardware, I'm not making any promises about the result". Or any number of other situations in which the choice is not "write and provide a repair manual or not", it's "develop the product or not".
A small crowdfunded operation can do this more easily than a big company. They can have a designer spend two days getting the final schematics together and writing a short document. It's such a miniscule cost that it will almost never be the difference between producing and not producing, and that tiny risk is worth the benefits.
And a schematic documents itself pretty well. But if you really don't want to make any promises then maybe don't charge money for the design.
Got any suggestions to make that actually happen? The benefit per sale is small enough that it's really hard to get the demand together on a per-product basis. Consumers don't have the time to learn every minor certification body either. But making the decision in bulk, as a society, is a lot more feasible.
Also, there isn't an infinite variety of products. The more dimensions you have to filter by, the worse your result gets per dollar. The free market can't solve everything at the same time.
> I don't want to prohibit the equivalent of "This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY".
That is again not a sale. And you can have triple your $0 back if it breaks.
> I'm also talking about "crowdfunded, we made 6,473 of them, but we're not a big company". Or "here are some schematics to build a piece of hardware, I'm not making any promises about the result". Or any number of other situations in which the choice is not "write and provide a repair manual or not", it's "develop the product or not".
A small crowdfunded operation can do this more easily than a big company. They can have a designer spend two days getting the final schematics together and writing a short document. It's such a miniscule cost that it will almost never be the difference between producing and not producing, and that tiny risk is worth the benefits.
And a schematic documents itself pretty well. But if you really don't want to make any promises then maybe don't charge money for the design.