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A comment on One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks. Parent comment

Re:One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks by fors on Sunday May 23, 2021 @04:25PM (#27258277)
>> "for many if not most new PC laptops"

Curious how we are going to determine most here but Lenovo and Dell make their service manuals easily available with the service tag/serial. HP has service manuals available with some Google fu (eg. http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06148960.pdf). There are a lot of manufacturers who could do better but saying "my parents 500$ HP laptop had no repair manual available so it's not so bad that a 2000$ Apple machine does not have one either" just sounds weird to me. If I have to disassemble an Apple laptop I have to check iFixit, I also need to own weird screwdrivers and if I had the repair schematics (they do exist) I may be violating a copyright or at least a ToU.

But this is all fine, it could be worse.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks by gjsman-1000 on Sunday May 23, 2021 @04:30PM (#27258319)
Like I said earlier, one thing that bugs me about Louis Rossmann is that he never examines possible ulterior motives for Apple's decision making other than that they are evil.

For example, a MacBook. Perhaps it's because China clones everything and would happily clone a MacBook board and sell that to unsuspecting people, so Apple doesn't want to share info on where they got parts or the schematics. You might disagree, and I do wish Apple would share this info, but Louis could at least examine this possible argument.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks by LegitShady on Sunday May 23, 2021 @05:55PM (#27258977)
Louis' biggest issue is he can't buy parts because apple stops their suppliers from selling parts to other people, and apple now designs devices so even authentic screens/etc from other devices will cause errors.

The schematics are already out there. The issue is its impossible to find parts. You can't take your 2 year old apple to him to get its screen replaced, because there are no screens available to buy for him to replace it with. Apple doesn't let the manufacturers sell them, apple doesn't sell them, and there aren't enough 'donor' screens from devices broken in other ways to satisfy demand.

Louis has done more examining than you give him credit for, while you ignore a lot of the real issues at hand.

Locking down car repair to protect car IP and having no parts available because your car manufacturer wants you to buy a new car or pay for a refurbished car directly...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks by fors on Sunday May 23, 2021 @05:02PM (#27258563)
Ah, so it's about board schematics and your parents HP was just a sidenote. Yes, it would be nice if every manufacturer would publish board schematics so performing component level repairs would be easier.

Louis runs an Apple repair shop, so he complains about the availability of Apple schematics. Seems reasonable. It's not like the schematics aren't available, it's mostly the hoops you/he has to jump through to get them and even if he/you has them he might not be legally allowed to use them.

And this all ignores the aspect of you complaining about not having a service manual for a 500$ machine and Louis complaining about not being able to service a 1700$ logic board (which, if he can't repair it, might mean you have to pay full price to replace a 3000$ laptop).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks by CRConrad on Monday May 24, 2021 @04:35PM (#27269377)
> Perhaps it's because China clones everything and would happily clone a MacBook board and sell that to unsuspecting people

Isn't it "China" that makes those MacBook boards already? They wouldn't need to clone anything, just make some more of them.

[ Parent | on HN ]