Do customers care though? Perhaps customer advocates do. And that's probably the best place for it, since it's such a niche and wonky idea.

And that's why "free markets" will never solve this. (And that's whether the "free" in free markets means freedom from regulations, or freedom for people to participate in the market).

IMHO this is why the European system of strong regulatory bodies tends to work better than the US system of "wait for a customer to experience damages, then recoup through the courts, and then the companies learn their lesson."

And yet here we are; despite the 446e6 strong market place the EU supposedly represents their regulatory power has not delivered what we see here. No, instead we have an American company motivated by only the belief that their product will succeed in the market kicking open the door.

Well the question is do you want every laptop to have the customizability of Framework's laptops, or should there instead be a minimum bar set for warranty/repairability? I think the second is probably what's needed, and the EU has been better both at imposing standards and ensuring warranties and repairability.

The answer is I want a competitive market filled with options that range from a completely sealed, disposable monoliths to machines like this Framework product where components are easily replaced and/or upgraded by me or any qualified or unqualified person I choose. And I want that _without_ the easily circumvented bureaucratic hellscape of lobbyists and captured regulators incestuously welding down the status quo in perpetuity.

Have you considered that the current landscape is a product of a competitive market? Historically laptops were never as repairable as desktops. Most parts of those bulky 1990s Powerbooks, Latitudes, and Compaqs were hard to access due to proprietary screws. Every laptop manufacturer had non-standard components and non-standard ports and those components and ports would evolve every 6 months. If you wanted replacement parts and you weren't a corporate repair shop, you were shit out luck before Ebay existed. The adhesive-sealed laptop that you resent is a product of the standardization that corporations and suppliers eventually sought after going through the Wild West phase of the mass market PC.

A competitive market isn't a marry-go-round where every idea gets its turn under the sun for all eternity. It's an arena where some rise and many perish. In the '90s and '00s, many ideas fell through, many companies collapsed, and many technologies become outmoded. What has come out of that is the sealed computer of today.

"Have you considered that the current landscape is a product of a competitive market?"

I have. I note that large numbers of people build PCs from components and that this market is large enough to be a primary concern for a constellation of manufacturers and has been for decades. You can buy an IC with 1200 contacts and install it yourself on the kitchen table. There is no other segment of the microelectronics world were this level of commoditization exists and yet it has stood the test of time. Transferring this behavior to mobile machines seems like an inevitable and long overdue step to me.

"Historically laptops were never as repairable as desktops."

History is a poor yardstick here. A number of forces have emerged that change the landscape. Among these are amazing design tools that enable a startup to go from zero to a complete, shipping modular design in 18 months (establishing a defacto standard, btw), tooling that delivers rapid fabrication in small volume, standardized, high performance serial busses that enable simple yet powerful architectures, robust solid state storage devices and the integration of some difficult components into CPUs. It used to require the resources of major manufacturers and their proprietary knowledge and capabilities to pull off marketable mobile designs. That era has passed and the commodity era is here.

"The adhesive-sealed laptop that you resent"

I do not resent monolithic products. I own several. I will buy more. I resent the lack of a choice. I expect that modular mobile machines will take their place among the equipment I acquire, and that these will become the major focus of my concern, whereas the monoliths will be relegated to ancillary tasks.

"What has come out of that is the sealed computer."

And they won't go away. The question is how much room is there for modular systems. I believe there is a lot. I imagine a Newegg filled with commodity mix and match mobile components from a vast number of vendors.

Time will tell.

Exactly. And in particular, I want companies showing the absolute limit of what's possible if you don't worry about modularity, and other companies like Framework showing how much of that they can provide while also using modular components. That's two different directions of innovation that both need pushing, as useful competitive forces that people care about.

Ideally I would agree with you, but reality demonstrates that markets tend to converge on one standard rather than let two coexist. CISC vs RISC, Firewire vs USB, Floppy vs Zip, IrDA vs Bluetooth, etc. Now it's modular vs integrated.

That happens with technologies where there's a strong benefit to standardization. Standardizing on USB and Bluetooth means your devices can interoperate.

There's already no "standard" laptop design, just a set of desirable properties people want. And there's already no push to converge; there are many laptop vendors. There's plenty of room for a new vendor with different priorities (like modularity); there's more room for such a vendor than there is for one more undifferentiated vendor.

The minimum bar is a theoretical idea. The reality is yet more audits and auditors and internal regulatory staff to produce more documentation that "proves" compliance. It's a huge weight, not lightly welcomed.

If we increase the warranty requirements for companies, the repairability will necessarily increase as well.

However, people do keep in mind this still may not result in better third-party repairability - it may be things like easier reclaiming of components off of boards by the manufacturer to put into refurbished swap-out units.

Except that regulatory burdens are the kinds of barriers to entry that prevent a company like Framework from existing in the first place.

That just leaves you with entrenched companies doing the bare minimum for compliance, and lobbying for loopholes to protect their own market positions.

Here in the U.S. any kind of basic regulation == communism, but I when I imagine "right to repair", I imagine a free market where Apple is allowed to sell glued-in batteries and Framework is allowed to sell repairable products, but all companies must publish the private internal repair documentation they already have and sell the replacement parts they already have, if available. Apple may legitimately not be able to sell replacement batteries, if even Apple themselves can't replace them, but at least there's transparency for the consumer. Eventually I imagine Apple could no longer get away with this practice, not because they are legally forbidden, but because people would become aware of it.

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." - Henry Ford

Build it and they will come.

> Do customers care though?

Maybe they think they don't until one piece of their MBP fails and they have to pay Apple to replace 90% of their laptop.

> and then the companies learn their lesson.

* analysts consider whether the cost > profit, if not then continue doing the same thing as before.

All those companies want to hold out for the idea that they can monopolize some corner of the industry - none of them want to be turned into purveyors of commodity products in the face of heavy competition. But the future likely lies down that path.