The grave insult of being sent the proper tools to perform a complicated task

https://daringfireball.net/2022/05/grave_insult

by Isamu • 4 years ago

41 30 4 years ago

ouid4• 4 years ago

One possible explanation for the complexity and heft of Apple’s self repair toolkit is that iPhones are intricate devices, ... There is nothing Apple can do to make such repairs quick or easy.

ESH, The tools are not to fix the phone, they are to open the phone. Replacing a battery is not an academically challenging proposition. I'm not altering the hardware, I'm playing with legos.

The difficulty arises because Apple has glued the legos together, and John Gruber thinks that this is an absolutely mandatory feature of the device for, as far as I can tell, the reason of being having paid to argue this, or worse, parroting someone who was paid to argue it.

jdlshore3• 4 years ago

I don’t always agree with Gruber, but I do this time. I also think you’re doing him a disservice with your “paid shill” implication. He stated very clearly why he thinks it’s mandatory:

If it were possible for iPhones to be more easily repairable, without sacrificing their appearance, dimensions, performance, water-and-dust resistance, and cost, Apple would make them more easily repairable. That iPhones are not easily repairable is of no benefit to Apple whatsoever. What’s the theory otherwise? That $69 in-store battery replacements are highly profitable?

Engineering is about tradeoffs, and Apple has made the exact same tradeoffs decisions every other premium phone brand has: they’ve sacrificed repairability in favor of the features Gruber made above.

You can choose to make that tradeoff differently—and a few niche brands have—but I don’t think that’s what the market wants.

Ultimately, complaints about repairability come down to “ why doesn’t everyone else value the same things I do?” The answer: because they value other things more. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

danaris• 4 years ago

Just to add a bit more nuance into this...

Personally, I am an Apple fan, and I generally agree with Gruber. However, I think he's being slightly disingenuous here. It's certainly true that all the mainstream phone makers are prioritizing the same features, but what he leaves out is that Apple led the way.

Since 2007, Apple's choices for the design of the modern smartphone have been what every other smartphone maker has imitated. Yes, occasionally individual features have gone the other way, but the overall design and philosophy behind them has absolutely been guided by Apple's decisions.

So yes, they are doing the same as most other phone makers, but these absolutely are Apple's choices, and Apple's priorities, and they get to take full responsibility for that.

ouid4• 4 years ago

If it were possible for iPhones to be more easily repairable, without sacrificing their appearance, dimensions, performance, water-and-dust resistance, and cost, Apple would make them more easily repairable. That iPhones are not easily repairable is of no benefit to Apple whatsoever. What’s the theory otherwise? That $69 in-store battery replacements are highly profitable?

This is manifestly absurd. Apple has measured that it can sell an iphone for $1200 that costs them $600 to produce, to each person who buys iphones, about once every 2 years. They have also measured that humans are very bad at recognizing slow degradation of battery life and OS compatibility. Consumers regularly "update" their devices, and deplete the lifetimes of their batteries.

In actual fact, restoring a phone to like new condition, through a cheap replacement of a battery, and rolling back software manifestly incompatible with its hardware, results in an experience that is essentially indistinguishable to the experience of obtaining a new phone. It should be notable to you, then, that these are exactly the operations that Apple disallows, either through extremely locked down software, or with literal glue, but it is possible to simulate the experience by buying up, say, an old iphone 5s that has had its battery replaces, and mercifully been prevented from upgrading to newer OSes. I can tell you from experience that this phone feels good and works well. It has a headphone jack, even, providing a superior experience to having to charge and keep track of an extra 3 pieces.

In fact, Apple's business model can be concisely described as creating problems with old hardware after you have bought it. This is a crime.

The right to repair is one half of this story, of course. The right to downgrade would be the other half, which could easily be amended to the right to root access, which is manifestly a form of the right to repair.

You can choose to make that tradeoff differently—and a few niche brands have—but I don’t think that’s what the market wants.

I think you are starting from an assumption that what the market wants is defined exclusively by what consumers want. There are two types of actor in "the market", one of whom is the producer. What the market wants is an amalgam of what the consumer wants and what the producer wants, and a rather simple analysis indicates that the status quo is much better described by what the producer wants in the case of Apple products. This is not a degenerate case of market economics unless your idea of market economics is hilariously idealized. Apple has done many things to increase their customer inertia in legal, but obviously immoral ways (that we should be in the business of making illegal).

How frustrating is it to you, as an obvious iphone user, that iMessage has no port to non-apple devices? I can text with apple phones from my computer, but only if that computer has an illuminated apple with a bite taken out of it on its back monitor panel.

It would require cooperation between the major businesses with messaging apps to have a peering agreement for messages, benefiting the consumer over the companies cooperating. There is no "competitive free market" solution to this problem, because it intrinsically requires cooperation. This is what the producers want, but not what the consumers want. It is therefore what the market wants, but it is clearly antisocial.

stereoabuse• 4 years ago

The NYT review[0] of the tools included this funny bit:

The process was then so unforgiving that I destroyed my iPhone screen in a split second with an irreversible error

Which translates to "I forgot to remove the screws holding in the screen before I tried to pry off the glass".

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/technology/personaltech/a...

agentwiggles• 4 years ago

That really is funny, something about the phrasing of it. "The process is unforgiving." Like... How much allowance for careless people applying force to glass can you really "design into the process"?

chmaynard• 4 years ago

The tone of Gruber's article is unusually angry and defensive. Perhaps he should have waited 24 hours before clicking Send.

leephillips• 4 years ago

Not that unusual: https://lee-phillips.org/music/whoIsTheDick/

fargle• 4 years ago

I'll give some answers to the author's question: "What exactly does he think Apple should do differently?"

Stop DRM'ing all the parts of the phone to shut out 3rd parties (if they want original, then let them decide). Stop telling the owners what parts they are allowed to swap and how they are allowed to do it.

It's no mistake that the price point of the parts are set to make it economically and practically infeasible. To, essentially plant (with or without the author's cooperation), a story like the original "Apple shipped me a 79 pound.." that neatly showcases how complicated it is to repair your own phone is no mistake. Nor is the inevitable conclusion. But nor is this author's "iPhones are intricate devices, which require numerous special tools and machines to open and operate upon, along with expert instructions" either. Why the PR blitz?

UTTER BULLSHIT! Apparently you can fix Android phones with guitar picks and blow-driers because what, they aren't made of glass and glued together too? They aren't IP rated? Right, because they are inferior to Apple products, got it.

"What exactly does he think Apple should do differently?"

Stop playing us for idiots. There are no boogie men that will jump out and pwn your phone because you installed a Chinese battery or decide to risk a DIY repair or load an app of your choice. Embrace your community; stop treating them like naughty children.

kadoban• 4 years ago

Stop DRM'ing all the parts of the phone to shut out 3rd parties (if they want original, then let them decide). Stop telling the owners what parts they are allowed to swap and how they are allowed to do it.

Those are great, but they are not the major complaints of the Verge article and are thus not what _this_ article is asking about either, with that question you're answering.

_carbyau_2• 4 years ago

"There is nothing Apple can do to make such repairs quick or easy."

Uh. Apple literally designs every part of the product in excruciating detail. Pretty sure they can make such repairs quick and easy if they wanted to.

We're talking about a battery replacement, not a replacement laser for a shark.

Phones used to have batteries replaceable in moments without tools. Now it requires 79 pounds of tools. That does seem like a backwards step, though IP water resistance ratings are all the rage now.

However, Apple made the currently existing phones without self repair in mind. Maybe their next generation will do better.

rendall6• 4 years ago

Not a fan of Apple, but the sleek silhouette of their devices is accomplished only by packing everything in tight and clever. So, sure, they could give DIYers more room and robust components, but that would make the devices bulky and heavy. So, while I think Apple can be criticized on multiple levels, does not provide excellent self-repair experience is not on my list of grievances.

woojoo6662• 4 years ago

I think it's possible to make it sleek and still repairable, Apple just doesn't have much incentive to spend time trying to make it so

_carbyau_2• 4 years ago

Everything is a trade off, you are correct that something like screws/tabs etc would indeed make things bulkier - but how much bulkier would be determined by the design.

I am confident that the designers at Apple could figure out a compromise to make self repair much easier - not necessarily tool-less! - while keeping the phone pretty damn close to current proportions.

rendall6• 4 years ago

Just, to close this out, being "confident" or "sure" that "it is possible" Apple industrial designers could do this or that, is not an argument. Demostrating that it is possible is.

Those arguing here that they are confident iDevices could have the same sleek, lightweight design; keep the price point; and in addition have them be easily user-repairable should demonstrate how, not just assert that it is possible.

DannyBee• 4 years ago

I actually (for once) agree with Gruber that Apple is doing the right thing by sending the proper tools to do the job.

However, i am also really tired of watching the "waterproofing is hard" argument trotted out as a reason to make these things so hard and glued together.

O-rings and other simple gaskets protect things exposed to much harsher environments, and last much longer. You don't have to literally glue everything together to make it waterproof. Nor does the fact that it has a a port or two (literally one most of the time) change that.

To give an example: Dive computers and other devices are waterproofed to hundreds of meters (IE at invasive positive water pressure/immersion many times what the iphone is subject to), contain usb ports, and are waterproofed successfully using o-rings and other replaceable gaskets.

They contain multitudes of sensitive sensors these days (though often not cameras)

Heck, some of them even now run android with high-quality oled screens, and run plenty of apps :)

Most are literally built to be disassembled by home folks and dive shops so they can be serviced and repaired. They are rarely sent to the manufacturer for repair.

This is just one product example. There are plenty of others.

We know how to do this. It is possible to do this. Let's not pretend it's about function.

There may be other reasons (aesthetics, cost, etc) that they want to glue them like this, and make them non-serviceable. But it's definitely not because it's the only way to waterproof them.

dnissley• 4 years ago

To be fair he invokes water-proofness as just one of many properties that when combined make repairability difficult: "If it were possible for iPhones to be more easily repairable, without sacrificing their appearance, dimensions, performance, water-and-dust resistance, and cost, Apple would make them more easily repairable."

rendall6• 4 years ago

Back when iPods were a thing I bought iFixit's kit to replace the battery, and the experience was absolutely harrowing. There were so many wires and delicate ribbon cables just asking to get ripped out or torn, that I decided the savings by DIY was definitely not worth the risk and anxiety, and resolved in future to have Apple repair everything.

rendall6• 4 years ago

Another perspective from NYT's Brian X Cheng, who broke his phone using the DIY kit: https://archive.ph/QngdR

kurupt213• 4 years ago

One of the problems with a DIY kit is it gives false confidence to people who have no business repairing their own electronics

rendall6• 4 years ago

Once upon a time I repaired computers for a living, and even I have no business repairing iStuff. It's harrowing. Leave it to the professionals, who can freely replace whatever they break.

hallero• 4 years ago

First steps out of planned obsolescence. Painful, yes, but at least they are taking the steps.

The grave insult of being sent the proper tools to perform a complicated task

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