It’s a shame to see this downvoted because even if it’s against what many people believe (we all have “hero’s” and “villains” I suppose, and our hero’s do no wrong) it’s something I also see.

I used to watch a lot of Rossman and glossed over his Apple hate because ultimately Apple are putting him and people like him out of a job, so it’s fair to be salty.

But a large portion of his content (a few years ago at least) is just hour long rants which are unsubstantiated opinion, he does not see nuance or doesn’t want to try steel-manning the things he disagrees with. Which is something Linus Sebastian is incredibly good at.

It does come off almost narcissistic at times, to me at least.

But at the end of the day explaining how computers are constructed is great content.

This is an amazing remark.

The entire hour is nothing BUT substantiating the opinion.

...in excruciating exhaustive detail that covers every possible excuse and addresses every possible disingenuous argument, exactly because people will try anything to avoid recognizing something they don't want to think about or admit or deal with.

He doesn't say "I don't like Apple because I don't know why, I just don't like their face." He says Apple did X, and here is the evidence that Ape did X, and here is exactly why X is bad. Exactly specifically and explicitly so that no one can possibly even try to say that the statement is just subjective and open to be disregarded.

And here you are proving how even such exhaustive extremes of thoroughness and correctness and see-for-yourselfness don't matter. That is incredibly disheartening to see. It proves once again that right and wrong don't matter. People use the words to suit their own opinions and wants, but they don't actaully matter.

You don't have to like his style or personality, but to say his statements are unsubstantiated opinion is just incredible.

It's funny to see this analysis, because in my mind Rossman is simply being a New Yorker and doing things exactly as I'd expect a New Yorker to do them. The mentality that city forces on people to survive produces a narrow personality outcome and Rossman's personality is one of those.

I don't think being a New Yorker means you are destined to be as asshole. I'm from Jersey and generally don't care for people that meet the NY/NJ stereotypes. Maybe that's why guys like Rossman don't impress me.

There’s a line between being frank/brash and being an asshole - and often what side of the line someone falls on depends on how well you know/trust that the person has your best interests at heart.

I don't understand what his being a NYer has to do with anything.

Which statement has he made that was either a lie or an error?

What else matters than that?

I understand not finding the videoes enjoyable 3 hours of entertainment. That's hardly anyone's cup or tea. I mean finding his arguments questionable.

Is it somehow NYer of me to demand this explaination that if you're going to say someone's wrong, they actually have to be wrong?

Well said. I certainly liked him for a while, but eventually he just went too far. I understand he has a "base" that loves his schtick, but it's not for me.

Some alternatives:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeHILuUwWmHDQqbocxUvVoA

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfOrKQtC1tDfGf_fFVb8pYw

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRBWJ9JeJ3Q8ssn_ibii-Cg

Completely agree. He spews contempt, anger and vile, brings out the worst of people and this is what makes him very appealing. It’s a reality show. Same way how Reddit hooks people in to outrage and justice gifs.

With regards to arrogance, it’s difficult to see his arguments for R2R while he is showing off his desoldering skills for a 170 pin BGA.

If you want to promote R2R, look at iFixit and EFFs efforts. If HN thinks Rossmann is the hero we should be looking upto, I think we’ve stooped really far down.

Textbook ad hominem attack.

I’ve learned more about commercial real estate from Louis than I would have from other sources. There are disincentives for commercial real estate owners to lower their leasing rates, as it can drive a re-evaluation of loan criteria by the banks, forcing the owner to immediately increase equity. Banks don’t want this to happen, as it makes their books look bad.

Watching his business struggle through Covid fills me with great respect for the small business owner and the difficult choices which must be made. Did NY have it out for him? They were far from business friendly with their Covid restrictions. Recently, his shop was fined for not registering used laptops that his customers had abandoned for repair. Sure, NYC is attempting to prevent stolen laptops from being resold, but the level of bureaucratic idiocy turns Rossman’s channel into a Shakespearen comedy.

As for his specific gripes about repeated Apple design failures, he makes a good argument. Two stand out. First, liquid intolerance. Thinkpads from years ago used to tolerate coffee spilt on the keyboard. It flowed right through. From the number of water damaged MacBooks Louis repairs, it appears Apples can’t take a drop. If Apple is upset with Rossman’s criticism, they can easily apply board level coating to solve the problem.

Second, he’s critical of the connectors being soldered directly to the motherboard instead of going into a daughterboard and connecting via a flex connector.

And, yes, the above design decisions are made by Apple for a number of different, possibly valid reasons. To hit a price point, to fit within a form factor, to deliver in a required timeframe. But Louis brings up the point that Apple may be making these decisions for less than consumer friendly reasons. Planned obsolescence? Could Apple change the design of their connectors so they won’t break? Yes, but maybe they didn’t because they expect 5.8% of the connectors to fail and not be economical to repair in the Apple store, driving 5.8% greater revenue.

All that being said, yes, Louis takes the above points, which can be read in a minute, and rehashes them 50 different ways.

I've had three 12" Macbook main boards, two screens, and two keyboards replaced free under Australian Consumer Law because of broken components. Connectors that should have been replaceable onsite in seconds instead requiring depot maintenance and hundreds of dollars in couriers and staff interactions. 10c LVDS cables soldered on instead of replaceable, unrepairable even to Apple, have sent two high quality display panels straight to landfill.

Not a great way to run a business.

Building things to a certain price is always going to yield accusations of doing that to make it more breakable. But it's probably one of those cases where you can spend thousands of dollars for only 1% more reliability. Stuff that you bend open, throw in your backpack twice a day, touch for 14 hours a day, eat your meals over, etc. is going to break no matter how expensive the components are. I used to work on embedded systems and was always impressed by the quality of eval boards we got. Name brand components all over -- Coilcraft inductors, Vishay resistors, etc. They still flaked out, had bugs, broke, and required manual rework. The performance of the $10,000 reference board was the same as the $100 production units with decidedly non-name-brand components.

We'll never know for sure if Apple is making the right trade-offs, because you can't buy any other machines that run OS X to compare to, but they probably are. People who just spilled coffee on their keyboard really want a laptop that weighs 3x as much to have a keyboard drainage system. The 99% of users that don't spill coffee on their keyboard but do carry their laptop to and from work twice a day probably appreciate the weight savings. (You can kind of infer whether or not Apple is making the right decisions by looking at the PC market. Not a lot of laptops with roll cages and keyboard drainage anymore. People want specs per dollar, not the ability to run their laptop over with a car. When they do run their laptop over with a car or drop it into a pool, they're sad. But if those parts were standard issue, they wouldn't be able to afford a laptop to begin with. Such is the way of the market, I suppose.)

Apple probably doesn't have any good reason to make repairing their laptops so painful for skilled professionals. As far as I can tell, even their own repair service is garbage. That is probably a conscious decision -- paying someone to write repair guides, train technicians, and maintain a fulfillment network for spare parts cuts into new computer sales, so it's spending money to lose money, which nobody will ever do. Maybe government intervention is the right answer, but it's probably a cost the market can't bear. PC manufacturers compete ruthlessly, and all the laptops are junk too. There is probably a maximum amount of money consumers will pay for a certain amount of specs, and it isn't enough to make a reliable mobile computer. The downside is that you'll never have a computer you can spill coffee on. The upside is that even someone without a lot of money can afford a personal computer. That's the tradeoff.

I use a desktop and keep it where I can't spill my coffee on it. Works well.

This is the number one thing that fails for me I hate these ribbon cables. Don't blame him for soldering though the connectors can be 5 to $6 a piece ugh hirose...

> Recently, his shop was fined for not registering used laptops that his customers had abandoned for repair. Sure, NYC is attempting to prevent stolen laptops from being resold, but the level of bureaucratic idiocy turns Rossman’s channel into a Shakespearen comedy.

I saw this complaint and didn't follow what NYC did wrong. If one isn't allowed to sell "unregistered" laptops or whatever, why would abandoned customer laptops get a pass? Did the law state they should? I gather he is still allowed to repair them for people, even potentially thieves, just never "launder" them.

He actually tried calling the city to ask what he should do with abandoned laptops. He was transferred multiple times, told to call multiple numbers, and tried leaving voicemail messages to find an answer. He got nowhere, and the closest he got was "That's a good question".

The law explicitly states purchased laptops, which he did not. Now we can say "But that's not the purpose of the law, just the letter!" But the purpose of the law is to make selling stolen laptops non-profitable to thieves - and abandoning them does not turn a profit. Meaning Louis runs afoul of neither letter nor spirit of the law.

And so I'm legitimately asking, if you think he's in the wrong: what is he to do, when he can't properly fill out LEADS online without a purchase price? He tried calling the city, he tried calling would-be customers to collect their things. The former couldn't tell him, and the latter told him it wasn't worth their time.

But can't every thief claim the laptop they picked up was "abandoned" too? I mean it was there on the table and no one was around at the moment..

If the customer owes him money and he is selling the laptop to get that money because the customer is choosing that outcome, then in a sense he is selling the laptop on behalf of the customer. For this option to be available to the customer, it seems they should still need to prove it was properly purchased. It still seems like this creates a loophole otherwise. What happens if a theft victim spots their laptop being used by someone who purchased it legitimately from a shop like this?

He should recycle them. These machines are usually pawned off on seniors in very shady "deal of the century" sales schticks. My 72 year old father in law bought a complete pos laptop for $200 that was an abandoned machine from a repair shop. It didn't have any drivers installed, it was running Vista and it could not connect to the internet.

Rossman may not be selling under such shady circumstances, but this is how most of these machines are moved. I don't think any good comes out of selling these machines.

So what should he do to computers he spent time and money to fix and clients abandoned? Throw them into the bin?

I think you make clients pay a deposit, and if they don't pick up the laptops, send them to the state's lost property department. If that isn't possible, I guess you buy the laptop from the customer for some token small amount of money, and then sell it back to them when they come to pick it up. If they don't show up, it's legally your laptop.

> If they don't show up, it's legally your laptop.

That's the whole problem. He tries for a couple of months to contact them (calls, emails, etc) and if they don't even respond, after around 9 months they get put into the resale bin.

His policy is "no fix, no fee" so I would presume there's no deposit. If there is no transfer of money it seems difficult to make even a weak legal argument that the laptops were "purchased". That is why Rossmann found the whole situation ridiculous.

When you can’t attack their arguments, resort to personal attacks.

The amount of childish personal attacks about Rossman in this thread I think is a good indicator of how right he is. Makes me feel good about that money I donated to his Gofundme.

I'm not sure why you would say that. Some critics on this thread have given pretty good reasons for why they "dislike" Rossman. while it may seem like some (not most) of those points are attacking Rossmans character, I don't see how some of his character doesn't have a direct impact on his arguments. If he always goes for clickbait titles, has a tendency to exaggerate, prefers to perpetually rant/glorify himself or likes to talk about things that he clearly does not know a lot about that can obviously taint the core of his message to some.

FWIW, personally I've watched Louis since the very beginning and he knows a lot about repairing electronics. But I also think the way he kept getting more and more attention as he ranted about Apple really changed the channel and his character at least on video.

Also, I honestly think it's more childish to use the "if x is getting criticized it means it's probably right" trope here than it is to criticize the personality of a public figure.

Bob says "2 plus 2 is 4"

> Look, I think Bob is a smart person and knows a lot about math, but personally I don't like him. He's balding, he collects plastic folding chairs in his garage, and he has a Youtube channel with clickbaity titles.

Why does that matter? He's right, `2 + 2 == 4`. Why are you posting personal attacks instead of debating his argument? It's impossible to have a productive discussion like that, and it's childish.

> I'm not sure why you would say that. Some critics on this thread have given pretty good reasons for why they "dislike" Bob. while it may seem like some (not most) of those points are attacking Bob's character, I don't see how some of his character doesn't have a direct impact on his arguments. If he always goes for clickbait titles, has a tendency to exaggerate, prefers to perpetually rant/glorify himself or likes to talk about things that he clearly does not know a lot about that can obviously taint the core of his message to some.

> FWIW, personally I've watched Bob since the very beginning and he knows a lot about repairing electronics. But I also think the way he kept getting more and more attention as he ranted about Apple really changed the channel and his character at least on video.

> Also, I honestly think it's more childish to use the "if x is getting criticized it means it's probably right" trope here than it is to criticize the personality of a public figure.

Even in this situation, a lot of people don't like Bob, and want to express that. The main post doesn't dismiss right to repair because of rossman's character, they simply state " I can get a deeper understanding of repairing tech without the hyperbolic commentary". They're upset that this guy is who's pushing right to repair instead of someone more grounded and polite.

Reducing a complicated situation to a mathematical fact is basically strawman argument. If a an expert is talking about a complicated area with a lot of nuance and no concrete right answer, then that expert's credibility matters.

> I agree in principle to "right to repair", but Rossman's motives are purely financial and self promoting.

It’s pretty clear he had built a business on repairing electronics. But that doesn’t invalidate his points. If you own something, you should be able to get it repaired to a reasonable degree. Apple goes out of their way to frustrate even consumables like batteries from being swapped, and I say that as someone that still uses apple products.

For him, it makes sense hes more passionate than most, not only is it a passion for him to do this type of work (repairing electronics, not youtubing) but its also his livelyhood, so it makes sense that he would call out companies that make design changes that serve little other purpose than to frustrate repairs and decrease longevity to bolster their sales (and increase e-waste in the process)

> I've watched over 100 hours of his content and realized that his audience is primarily made up of anti-apple PC Master Race fanatics that just want to hear Louis troll apple for an hour.

Gonna disagree. Regardless of the type of people attracted to his content. It doesn’t invalidate the points he makes there. I don't watch his stuff religiously, and probably haven't viewed as much as you purport to have, but he has a clear schtick (which is basically mandatory for youtubers) but is definitely less negative than many I have seen. The good seems to outweigh the bad.

The article starts out saying this was a way for him to vent in a healthy and cathartic way, as a direct substitute to therapy. And it seems to work for him and he has said it before and it shows in the stuff he posts. I wont judge him solely on that just as I wouldn't judge other others who prefer something different, like fishing or hunting and escaping people (myself), or hobbies like music (also myself) or maintaining a garden or yard to work out frustrations. Some even go on the internet to criticize others I guess.

What other YouTube channels are showing people to cleanup or swap individual chips, or what part of a board does what? [1][2] I haven’t seen one that compares. It’s pretty neat and a display of a skill set definately don't posses. Even though I work with tech on a daily basis in my own right.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr13FEBRzjM [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUWmqucOkZk

I could not have said it better. This apple employee (BTW - making $20/hr) didn't detect this weird thing I did to scrw up this laptop and so was going to send it to Apple tech people.

Dude, if you can find folks to work for $20 / hr with the people skills to fix stuff day in and day out for while dealing with insane repair volume - you could manage your own apple store.

Here's the bottom line as an actual customer. I have NEVER been disappointed in the reliability of my iphone. The one time I broke it I walked in an AppleCare had me out same day with a new device. They are also surprisingly waterproof (I know, just resistant supposedly).

Does any of this have to do with gluing everything down? How do I know. But my phone has kept on going through some rediculous stuff, so I don't care. Solder everything, glue on top. And USB-C on my laptop keeps on flaking out while lightning seems to seat more reliably.

AND my "non repairable" junk iphone seems to have INCREDIBLE re-sale value in comparison to whatever else is out there. So apple IS designing for the long haul, and market rewards that. My wife has an old iphone still getting updates for some reason (in android land this is crazy talk).

And I've had motherboards replaced by Toshiba, Fujitsu and just about everyone else whenever there's a major problem with an electronic device under warranty. Seems like the default "nuclear option" they use whenever the problem is non-obvious. And it didn't fix the problem more often than not.

Also I have a few ancient apple devices that work fine as ever. Though my wife does have a solid track record in destroying them (or any other brand).

Rossman's complaints didn't really bother me though. It's like a car mechanic griping at the manufacturer for making their life difficult, or a patent lawyer bashing the USPTO. Just the kind of thing you'd expect.

I think he just understood how YouTube and social media works. New content is more rant and less repair. Anyone can enjoy a good rant troubleshooting motherboards and soldering components is less accessible.

Makes me think of Thunderf00t. This guy is a massive troll with, from time to time, great scientific content. He has a lot of followers just here to enjoy the trolling, as evidenced by the fact he is never questioned by his fans even though it is what his channel is supposed to teach.

I do not understand how or why people prefer spending time listening or watching people talk to each other. Is it not much quicker to read transcripts? And why would I want all the noise that happens in the conversation? Reading a summary of the meat and pickles is far more efficient.

“YouTube culture” puzzles me. I love it for instructional videos though.

Intonation, body language, etc... Generally transcripts don't make good reads. Well written articles/stories are a different thing.

As for summaries, long form / short form is an endless debate. Some people say summaries are worthless because you don't get the context and nuances. Others say long form articles (and videos) are a waste of time. Most people are somewhere between these two extremes.

I am not sure why people are assuming that Rossmann is some kind of savy youtuber looking to pump up views.

If your largest problem is "negativity" and not about wether it's true the problem is somewhere between your chair and the keyboard. People can have very good reasons to be negative.

He makes very valid arguments, how is this "financial and self promoting"? Dont lie about someone's intentions just because you don't agree with their reasoning.

It is fair that you might not like his personality and sometimes he presents things like the Apple engineers are idiots to design such fragile stuff(probably the fragility is by design) BUT all the facts he presents are true and you can confirm by googling things like all the class action lawsuit that were required to force Apple to admit mistakes, or how Apple "geniuses" are incompetent and will not correctly diagnose your issue but instead offer you a new product or just replace the entire motherboard etc.

Though I think it would be best to have more people leading the right to repair just for this reason of avoiding people that hate someone personality then opposing this movement.

I agree with your characterization but don’t think that it makes him insufferable or have questionable motives. He’s authentic to himself and shows it on YouTube warts and all. Have to respect that. Take his videos as 50-75% opinion and it’s all good.

I remember the time I noticed how insufferable he is (to me).

He had a video where he was trashing a new MacBook. The largest reason why he liked his current Lenovo over the MacBook was the Lenovo's battery bump.

He used the battery bump as a handle when editing videos standing up on the subway. Oof.

The sleek MacBook didn't have a convenient handle in the back for him to do his stand-up video editing, thus it was a piece of shit.

From the videos I’ve seen there are very few where he doesn’t come off as insufferable. My favourite one is when he starts trashing the Genius Bar for not being able to diagnose an issue with a specific component on the motherboard like he does, and instead they recommend replacing the whole board. I don’t think Dell/HP/Lenovo support is going to bother inspecting a mobo with a microscope and checking voltage levels either.

Yea, he seems to be willfully oblivious to the fact that it's not in any way feasible to have every Apple Store staffed with people who have the skills to reflow surface mount components and debug issues with oscilloscopes.

It's orders of magnitude easier to just swap whole boards and ship the broken ones to a central place to be either recycled or repaired.

> I agree in principle to "right to repair", but Rossman's motives are purely financial and self promoting.

Self-promoting maybe but if Apple made better products how Rossman would benefit? Isn't it currently the opposite? Rossman does well due to Apple refusing to fix the smallest of issues with their products. And fighting anyone who does whether a customer or repairman.

> Rossman's motives are purely financial and self promoting.

How does he benefit by teaching others on how to repair stuff for free. You can start your own repair business by watching and learning from his videos.

It's not paranoia if you are right.