One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

Living in Shenzhen, it’s shocking how easy it is to go out and repair stuff. Living in Palo Alto, it’s frustrating how hard it is.<p>I’m thinking maybe, just maybe, introducing repairability laws won’t solve the problem.<p>I am perfectly happy upgrading the memory on my MacBook Air with a reflow air station rather than swapping out some dims if it means my laptop is half as thick and twice as rugged. I’m also just as happy dropping my phone off at a corner shop to replace the glass (while preserving the same electronics) using an industrial laminating machine.<p>My problem today is not that repairability laws impede my progress here (they certainly don’t exist in China either).<p>My problem is I can only get the chips and schematics I need to effect the repair on the Chinese Internet (WeChat&#x2F;Taobao) or find someone to do the repair for me for $40 on the Chinese street markets (Huaqiangnan in Shenzhen). When I go to a corner store in the US the “solution” to swap the whole sub-assembly (glass+electronics) not just glass in case of a screen repair for $100+

Apple&#x27;s fight against right to repair while pushing materials to the public that state they are trying to reduce their carbon footprint is the absolute peak of hypocrisy. I understand the closed off design of their products is a result of the Steve Jobs era, but why can&#x27;t the current leadership make a change?<p>Why can&#x27;t Apple make their products easily repairable while making them aesthetically pleasing? The typical &quot;private companies must satisfy the shareholders&quot; answer is just a scapegoat. Truly innovative companies (and companies of Apple&#x27;s size and worth) should be able to solve these problems. Doing anything else is just fucking laziness.

I genuinely do not want repairability anywhere near the top of the list of performance and design trade offs.<p>Ruggedness, longevity, sure. Avoiding need to repair, definitely. Repairability? Other concerns, things that change the day-to-day use of the device, should weigh more.<p>Spent too many years as a full service PC network support small business to <i>ever</i> again want to deal with parts that aren’t actually attached to each other. Connection issues (especially on heating and cooling, so intermittent) were essentially <i>all</i> the problems except a vanishingly small proportion that were components.<p>The thing is, the repair shops get what’s left after the design is iterated until other problems are gone. So maybe only these component failures are left. Reverting to the old methods of replaceable components would likely re-introduce a massive class of problems that have by and large been eliminated.<p>Only the remaining problems have a voice, who is advocating on behalf of all the problems that the last 20 years of more solid design eliminated?<p>&#x2F;&#x2F; Apologies for the HN trope, but see also Chesterson’s Fence, a tech version of “get off my lawn”.

How much of this, I&#x27;m curious, is changing now that Jony Ive is gone?<p>Think about it. Since he left, Apple is bringing color back to their designs, bringing back ports other than Thunderbolt, abandoned the Butterfly keyboard, made the MacBook Pro 16&quot; <i>thicker</i> to improve battery life and cooling, added the discounted business rate to the App Store...<p>Now, this doesn&#x27;t mean Apple will continue improving or will make Right to Repair happen. However, I think that with Jony&#x27;s departure, something may have, just may have, snapped within the company, and they seem to be looking at changing their ways just a little bit.

I wrote a book for O&#x27;Reilly that did really poorly in sales.<p>I added content to show the places I made mistakes in my assumptions about the process, and put in sections in chapters that showed how I troubleshot those errors, and corrected the code.<p>My editors asked me to remove that code. O&#x27;Reilly&#x27;s brand, IMHO, is having the smartest people in the room talking to you. They don&#x27;t want content that shows the author making mistakes. I felt like there was an audience for people who want a different voice, but who was I to argue with O&#x27;Reilly&#x27;s success?<p>Rossman seems like he is talking to that audience, people who aren&#x27;t experts, and still courageous enough to get something fixed on their own.<p>YouTube permits him to monetize that audience. I still think there is a huge gap in talking to people who are not experts and intimidated by the experts. There is a massive market for publishing there.

I just did my first surface mount repair this morning and it 100% happened because of Rossmann&#x27;s channel. It was so easy that I feel like I should have been doing it much sooner. The things I&#x27;ve thrown away over the years..

Tip: if you&#x27;re curious enough to watch a video of Rossmann&#x27;s, do that in the incognito mode. Otherwise you&#x27;ll be pestered with recommendations of the other two thousand of his videos, until the end of your days. Perhaps you&#x27;ll even be able to follow the epic of his fight by the titles of new videos.

Rossmann is seriously a national treasure. Along with Lex Fridman the two Youtube personalities irrefutably prove fair mindedness, humility &amp; sincerity is valued. My fears that content online would eventually consist of nothing but selfies, food pics &amp; competitive victimhood are somewhat reduced. I&#x27;d like to see Rossmann on Fridman&#x27;s podcast.

Apple silicon repair: do you want an new device or just a new mobo. Costs the same

&gt;Apple contractually forces recycling partners to shred old devices

Right to repair needs to be preserved if we want to have the next generation of hackers and engineers. A good chunk of learning happens when you break apart devices and put them back together, or fix them yourself. You screw up, and learn during the entire process.<p>It would be God awful if the next Tesla can&#x27;t buy some chips he wants to solder onto his broken Mac because Apple prevents chip manufacturers from selling them.

France is pushing a law targeting a similar issue with Apple phones and laptops<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;2&#x2F;26&#x2F;22302664&#x2F;apple-france-repairability-scores-index-law-right-to-repair" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;2&#x2F;26&#x2F;22302664&#x2F;apple-france-rep...</a>

Ivan Illich talks about this in his book &quot;Tools of Conviviality&quot;. That book inspired Lee Felsenstein to make the first PC mod-able.

I am in the market for a new laptop. The new M1 MacBook Air appeals to me so much but the lack of any ability to repair&#x2F;upgrade it over time is just no longer acceptable to me.<p>Instead I&#x27;ll be going with the Framework laptop: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;frame.work&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;frame.work&#x2F;</a><p>I expect to replace the RAM, Battery, and maybe even the processor over time. I really value this optionality and it will be much better for the environment as well.

I feel like a lot of the comments here are strawmanning a bit (or a lot). Apple and most big manufacturers (in all sectors and industries) who see what they can get away with are purposely abusing copyright law and making deliberate choices in their design and policy that do nothing except hinder the repair of their devices. The right-to-repair people like Luis Rossmann want legislation to stop these practices. Some people in the comments are extending that to mean that they want manufacturers to only create modular and bulky devices with yesterdays technology when it seems clear (at least to me) that what they actually want is the ability to legitimately purchase replacement parts from OEMs and legitimate access to the sort of manuals and schematics that are available to their internal refurbishers and technicians.<p>I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s reasonable to require that manufacturers design their devices to be repairable at the cost of other considerations that are more important to the end user.<p>I do think it&#x27;s reasonable to require manufacturers to stop these practices that don&#x27;t benefit the end user or even harm their experience in order to keep a tight grip on the device that they supposedly purchased and should own completely.

There are still people having 7+ years old Macbooks with easily replaceable HDD and sometimes RAM. And people buying new devices every release. Maybe attitude of society towards right to repair and Apple fanaticism will change over time as their pile of irreparable, damaged beyond economic repair, lost screws and parts over time garbage will start taking significant space in their homes.

More accurate title, just in interest of facts:<p>&gt; One Mac repair shop&#x27;s fight to repair Macs.<p>Apple can do a lot to make their hardware more repairable. But also I&#x27;ve seen Rossman outright demand their hardware changes just so it&#x27;s easier to repair, without regard to things like weight, water resistance, and overall UX.

&quot;The Mać Shop&quot; in Wilmington DE thought it had the right to repair macbooks too. They also believed they had a right to recycle personal data on hard drives that got replaced whereas apple would have likely just tossed it in the shredder. Be careful about who you trust with valuable things.

It&#x27;s absurd how difficult it&#x27;s to repair a MacBook. I have a 2009 MacBook that needed to have its keyboard replaced after my mother dropped coffee on it. Not only I had to disassemble the ENTIRE MacBook to reach the keyboard, the keyboard itself is covered by a plastic sheet that is super glued to both the MacBook and the keyboard. It took an enormous amount of time to remove the glue, and not only the keyboard was completely destroyed in the process, the case itself cracked a little bit due to the amount of force needed to remove said plastic sheet. And that&#x27;s without even mentioning that there was at least 3 different types of security screws before even reaching this point.

I don&#x27;t understand why people are so hostile to the idea of reparability with electronics while we have enjoyed just that with cars forever. Much of what Apple and every other electronics company does with their products would be explicitly illegal it they were selling cars instead of gadgets. Why should those be any different?<p>For example, requiring repair&#x2F;replacement at authorized repair centers is considered &quot;tying&quot; and illegal in the automotive industry. Same with denying warranty coverage for opening your devices. This is actually illegal already for electronic devices but its rarely enforced because who wants to go to court for a $500 phone for $1500 laptop?

I bought the domain applesupportfails.com out of anger at getting poor customer service from apple but have so far failed to get it off the ground. Perhaps I need to reach out to Rossmann to get some support....

This is another symptom of the sickness in our current implementation of Intellectual Property law. IP is being allowed to eat all other forms of ownership, even as whatever is left is being eroded away.<p>I&#x27;m not sure where I heard &quot;In 50 years nobody will own anything, and everyone will be happy about it.&quot; to which I respond with two possibilities: 1. We are happy; great. 2. We are unhappy; and able to do fuck all about it because we own nothing.<p>Maybe we should sacrifice option 1 to dodge option 2.

My guess is that companies are opposed to the right to repair less for the loss of revenue which is likely relatively minor but more for the constraints it puts on design and manufacture. Regulating how something is made to make repair a priority will require more lawyers to interpret the mountains of regulations thst will sure to follow, severely cramping design and the pace of development.

Related: There&#x27;s a startup with a laptop focused on repairability, without sacrificing much thinness or style: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;frame.work&#x2F;about" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;frame.work&#x2F;about</a>

I&#x27;m all for right to repair, but Rossman rubs me the wrong way. He&#x27;s too much of a Youtube celeb right now for me to still take seriously. They always become caricatures of themselves because their popularity depends on them doing what people know them for: In his case anger at Apple. It makes a balanced discussion impossible.<p>I don&#x27;t like what Apple do, I think current Macs are very poor in terms of hardware (ports&#x2F;keyboards). And in fact I have stopped buying Macs for this reason. But he&#x27;s a bit too extreme sometimes IMO. Like he&#x27;s looking for things to complain about, just because that&#x27;s what &#x27;his thing&#x27; is.

With the amount of publicity Rossmann gets how is he not a multi-millionaire already? It&#x27;s interesting that he is literally still fixing Macbooks, one Macbook at a time.

It sounds like people would love open source devices they can build&#x2F;customize.<p>This reminds my of the MySpace wall vs Facebook wall problem.<p>There should be a market for both in hardware.

For me I have boiled down my computing to a set of easily repeatable steps to get going again if anything ever happens to my device. All my most important data is in the cloud, so if a device is stolen, I can log back into everything and continue my computing. I just buy a new device and log back into everything, which takes 30 mins tops. This actually works out cheaper than getting it repaired!

What an interesting guy. So, YouTubing for therapy? Good one!

I just had the most astonishing moment. My mac air audio has been broken for a while. I looked up this guy&#x27;s channel for audio fixes.<p>It took a few seconds to realise that the sound was playing! I usually have to use bluetooth.<p>So thank you Louis!

Sadly, you and I watch a different YouTube than probably 95% of people. Almost nobody I&#x27;ve talked to has heard of Lex or Louis, or Bret Weinstein, or Sean Carroll, and so forth. Just open youtube.com in a private window and you&#x27;ll understand.<p>Even if the average person watched some of Louis Rossmann&#x27;s videos on the right to repair, I just don&#x27;t think the importance of the issue would compute with them. Almost nobody my age fixes any of their own things, whether they&#x27;re electronics or other household items. The concept of repair may be totally antiquated in another 20 years.<p>EDIT: By the way, I sent my Macbook to Louis for repair last year. His team did a great job! Easy to communicate with too. I got it back in the mail really fast once the repair was complete.

Rossmann is an important voice in the right to repair, however I do feel like he <i>leaned into</i> a certain audience, pandering to them a bit as a reliable target for ad impressions, and it has undermined his credibility. I hear about Rossmann most now when some vicious Apple detractor uses him as an authority on things having nothing to do with repair.<p>For instance Rossmann did a video titled &quot;Apple watching &amp; logging EVERY APP YOU OPEN with new OS.&quot; (which is interesting given that another of his videos is &quot;Why I don&#x27;t use Apple products&quot;, &quot;The horrible truth about Apple&#x27;s repeated engineering failures&quot;, &quot;Is Apple using sweatshop labor in the US&quot;, etc -- there are dozens of these things) This is so ridiculously outside of his wheelhouse or expertise, but it panders to an audience that lines up to get fed that anti-Apple pablum.<p>When you see someone posting a Rossmann video, 9 times out 10 if you look at their history it isn&#x27;t some guy concerned about repairing his iPhone or MacBook. Instead you&#x27;ll find someone who has spent years calling Apple users sheep and boasting about their Windows Phone.<p>The guy is monetizing a certain base. Probably doing pretty well out of it.

&quot;But Rossmann hopes to raise it. As a repair technician slash right to repair advocate slash YouTube personality, he has expertise and clout that he’s looking to leverage in his latest endeavor: trying to put the right to repair for consumer electronics on the ballot in Massachusetts.<p>To do so, Rossmann started the Repair Group Preservation Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, and launched a fundraiser on March 30. So far, he has raised more than $700,000 toward his $6 million goal, which by all accounts isn’t nearly enough, given his potential opponents could be tech and telecom giants like Apple, Verizon and T-Mobile.<p>“It’s not that we’re against it,” said Gordon-Byrne. “God bless him for trying. But I think our ability to sponsor that is very limited. We gotta find some friendly billionaires.”<p>The move is risky, even if Rossmann can raise $6 million.<p>“If you lose on the ballot, that really makes it tough to get other people to pick it up again, because it’s kind of like you’ve lost your proof of concept,” said Nathan Proctor, director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s right to repair campaign.5&quot;<p>1. I hope Louis succeeds for his state&#x27;s sake.<p>2. My fear is what the big companies did CA. A few legislators introduced bills aimed at ending E-waste, or Right to Repair. The big boys used their money to squash the bills, and succeeded stupendously. All it took was a few scare commercials.<p>3. The big pocketed companies made these rediculious commercials. They featured a thief, or rapist, gaining access to your vechicle in a dark parking lot. This was supposedly due to the bad guy having access to schematics.<p>California has had 2, or 3 bills over (E-waste) Right to Repair Bills; and they all failed.<p>Failed-----------. This is beyond frustrating to me.<p>Corporations own Sacramento. Be it tech, insurance, or Realator&#x27;s, they are making our lives more expensive. I won&#x27;t even get started on the Insurance industry Lobbiests. (My blood pressure is climbing)<p>We Californians need to smarten up.<p>If we get another shot at Right to Repair, I guarantee you won&#x27;t be raped in a parking garage because someone reverse engineered a gadget to take over your vechicle, or you.<p>If you main concern is someone taking control of your vehicle I would allow all security schematics exempt from Right to Repair.<p>Now let&#x27;s the next bill passed.<p>I would like a Proposition, but they would Uber us?<p>(I&#x27;m not angry over just Right to Repair. It a lot. It mandatory vechicle insurance, smog checks that are pricey, and too frequent, Insurance rates that I guarantee are price colluded, outrageous traffic fines for infractions, driving past 10 pm, and being pulled over for no reason. Cops think we all get hammered like they do?, harassing homeless for sleeping, etc.)

We need to fix this problem (pun intended)