At least let me roll back to old software version. I have 4S which is unusable and locked on iOS 9. It's not like it's secure today, so just let me get back to iOS 6 and have at least fast phone.
They can be repaired in the sense that everything in them can be replaced. However they've integrated a lot of components so a lot of things that would traditionally be able to be replaced individually can't be.
You basically have 3 major components in the current Macbook Pro line:
- Logic board - MB/CPU/SSD/RAM
- Top Case - Keyboard/Trackpad/Battery/upper shell
- Display
Then you have minor miscellaneous parts like fans, heatsink, bottom case and wi-fi antenna/vent module.
Surprisingly, the USB-C ports are actually a separate replaceable component, and I believe the 2018s make the headphone jack one as well.
Anyone read about Apple's recent lawsuit[1] for planned obsolescence in iPhones?
Please do not misrepresent this situation. It's a problem, but it's incredibly obvious that this is not "planned obsolescence" and it's dishonest to claim so.
[1] badly misrepresents what happened. Throttling peak performance when the battery can’t deliver enough power for it helps people use the phone longer. It’s almost the opposite of planned obsolescence. The alternative is people’s phone shuts down randomly, which is definitely more likely to push them into replacing it. It also is fixed after the battery is replaced.
Unless you mean that the battery gettin old is planned obsolescence. But that’s not a great arguement either. Batteries are a wear item, and will need to be replaced if you want to use the device more than a couple years.
Throttling performance pushes people into replacing their phone just as much as a worn battery. Probably even more so, since a phone shutting down rapidly and randomly is much more symptomatic of a worn battery, and might entice people to replace the battery instead of the entire phone.
A battery getting old is not planned obsolescence. A hard-to-replace battery is. Apple is a pioneer in that area.
they prevented spontaneous reboots. if you dont think apple was right, and the tech press was engaged in yellow journalism, you are wrong. apple was mitigating a very specific hardware failure.
the solution to the problem was the correct one, they just forgot one important detail.
TELL THE USER!
As a result, plenty of people, (including myself) noticing their two year phone starting to slow down quite a bit, decided to upgrade to the new and shiny model, instead of just replacing the battery, because who would have known that was the problem?!
Yes, there should've been a "your battery has degraded" alert with information on implications and how to fix it. Apple was wrong to do it silently and without warning.
They did issue a mea culpa and free replacement coverage in response to that criticism, but it took a while.
Well, they did, in the software update notes for the version that introduced this change. I do agree that they could (and should) have been quite a bit more prominent though.
That is all very well and I really appreciate Apple's long support for iPhones, but Apple did popularize firmly bonded batteries in its phones and even in notebooks. A battery is a wear part and should be easy to replace. Every thing else leads to more waste.
I do not necessarily disagree about the fact that batteries should be easily replaceable.
On the other hand, I do not think that Apple's motivation was pure greed: if you make the battery an easily replaceable part you also need to encase it in a shell, and make it robust enough that even untrained users can safely handle these.
This means that you have to make it bigger (externally) sacrificing actual internal volume. A softer shell (that will be reached only by qualified personnel who will later properly dispose of the old battery) give you a slightly longer battery life.
So they decided that (battery life+markup in handling replacements+making sure only certified batteries will be used) > (user convenience) which I think is not such a stupid idea: outside HN maybe not everyone is willing to grab the closest screwdriver when having to deal with their phones...
The Galaxy S5 (and previous models) has a removable back (just needs a fingernail) that gives access to the battery (which also requires only a fingernail). These batteries are not so incredibly hazardous that they need a shell - I've opened up other devices with bonded batteries and their battery packs are not so much easier to damage that an "untrained user" is at risk of severe injury.
The battery cells are designed to be fairly robust - punctured a Kindle battery during a screen repair (friends roommate came home drunk, bumped into the table while I was picking away at the glue) and there was a very brief tiny poof of smoke and nothing else. If the battery hadn't been glued, that situation would have been impossible.
I also don't recall seeing any news articles back in the days of near universal user swappable batteries about widespread incidences of users being injured by swapping phone batteries.
It's also less likely you will damage a battery if you just have to undo a couple screws instead of sitting there with a heat gun, from a repair tech perspective - but I've only seen batteries held down by screws in unibody laptops.
> It's also less likely you will damage a battery if you just have to undo a couple screws
Which is exactly how you change an iPhone battery. They're not glued, and even have pull tabs. I don't get where the myth about iPhone batteries being hard to replace comes from (probably conflating the situation with MacBooks).
Are you sure? The differences between say Samsung J3 and iPhone 6 are negligible (iPhone 8 is even slightly fatter). About 1.5mm thickness and that mostly because plastics have to be thick to survive falls and not because of removable battery.
If it were made partly of steel it could be a match.
The size is different (J3 is bigger) and materials are a bit better in the iPhone... But we're comparing a budget phone with a flagship here.
You do not need a shell. A pouch of sufficient strength is good enough. The tricky part is getting it to make contact consistently and to not worsen the cooling too much.
Have you disassembled an iPhone or even watched a video on it? There’s a pull strip which makes the battery pretty simple to release. It’s not like it’s superglued to the case.
I have, which is why I know how poorly those pull strips work. They often break off leaving the battery firmly attached and it needs to be heated/pried off (which can be quite dangerous).
The pull strip was a nice addition, but they need to improve their strength so they cannot break.
Retail employees have to do the same procedure; they're instructed to pry the battery if the strip breaks. So I don't think this is a particularly difficult procedure.
iFixIt are forced to use unofficial parts (Apple won't sell to them), unofficial guides (Apple won't provide the documentation), and no jigs/tools (proprietary). iFixIt aren't a good argument for why Apple's devices are easily repairable, they're an example of overcoming the roadblocks Apple puts between the consumer and repairing their Apple device.
> A battery is a wear part and should be easy to replace
In my experience, the screen is the wear part. As a klutz, I prefer the lighter phone (which impacts with less force) bonded batteries enable to a user-replaceable batter phone whose broken screen forces replacement.
For what it's worth, I replaced the battery in my 2013 Macbook Pro last week, and it was quite easy.
I used dental floss to saw through the adhesive and then adhesive remover to clean up afterwards. I didn't have to remove a single part from the laptop.
I recognize that a phone battery is more difficult, but firmly bonded batteries are really not an insurmountable hurdle.
You can still use a first generation iPad today and do all of the stuff you did with it in 2010. Yes you can also redownload older apps from the store.
No, I can't unfortunately. Too many apps rely on web backends that have been upgraded and are incompatible with the versions that run on iPad 1. For example, the built-in YouTube application on iPad 1 is completely non-functional. Also, the newer iCloud features require you to "update" your iCloud to a version incompatible with the old iPad.
Many older apps have now also been pulled from the store. My iPhone 1 can only reinstall Skype from an old iTunes backup, but not from the store.
The old Nokia phones used another strategy (and so did most other vendors): Every new model used a different battery. Which at the same time obsoleted the battery in the old model, i.e. no new batteries were produced. You could still buy them, but they would have stayed on the shelf for a long time - in other words, they were as old as the battery you replaced. I bought a number of replacement batteries over the years, and without exeception the new battery (originals, mind) were as bad at keeping charge as the old one, after a couple of months. Into the drawer with the phone, buy a newer one, repeat. I'm absolutely certain that this constant change of battery form factor was just that: No point in replacing a battery because you could only find old ones. Buy new phone instead.
This year I emptied a drawer full of old phones going back to around 1997 (the very earliest used NiCd batteries) until recent. Wow there were many. And I never got a new one unless the old one still worked - they all went into the drawer because they couldn't take a charge anymore.
It should be said though that batteries don't die on me as quickly as they used to - the change seems to be from the last few years. They seem to keep better in storage, but charging strategy also matters - old phones used to really deep-discharge batteries before declaring them below 10% charge.
In the 90s when the phones were rapidly evolving and the batteries where huge and often incorporated into the exterior design of the phone. My first Nokia ~1997 was the size of a large TV remote, the second was the size of a king size snickers, the third was smaller than a regular size snickers.
I had the Nokia 8290, and 6590 which were about 2 years apart and they used the same battery. They really didn't have that many batteries across their line after 1999:
After which the product will never be quite the same again. Sure it's usually good enough, but it'll never be quite as good as before, even when it's Apple doing the replacing.
With an actual removable battery that only becomes the case after dozens of battery replacements (see remote controls, torches, older phones etc).
This is only convenient for users who can afford to be without their phone for a day or two, and also those who are anywhere near an Apple store / service centre. Perhaps there is data that supports the statement "this is most users", but as an Apple customer who travels a lot and is not anywhere near an Apple service centre most of the time, this is very inconvenient. I'd rather just be able to order a new battery, receive it in the mail, and do the replacement myself - having to go through hoops to get Apple to do it, even if its free, is a serious hindrance to productivity. Some of us use our phones for work, and the delay of days, for a service cycle, compared to minutes, if I can do it myself, makes a huge difference to that productivity...
Can I ask how often do you replace batteries on your phone that it must be done when you far away and it affects your productivity?
Or is just another example of the strawman in this discussion?
During that time, I'd need to replace the battery at least once, maybe twice.
Its not a straw man argument - but I find your response telling. Perhaps its not clear to a majority of HN users, but not all of us iPhone users live within productive reach of an Apple Store. Getting to one in person can be very inconvenient if you're not an American in a metropolitan city.
This is a very USA-centric point of view, you know.
Having a user-replaceable battery would go a long way towards assuaging the hassle of having to deal with Apple Service. Especially in parts of the world that don't have that luxurious, consumer-friendly, American-style glass facade with its fancy logo and happy green-shirt wearing customer reps ..
On the other hand, the iPad 4 has been supported for 5 years and the newer devices are still supported. So their current direction seems to be supporting the statements made in this talk.
The third generation iPad was unfortunately underpowered right out of the gate, without the processing power to drive its Retina display. I think that's why the fourth generation iPad was released so soon after it.
There were a few "bad Apples" in the iOS lineup, the iPad 1 and 3 and the iPhone 4 were a bit underpowered the day they launched and didn't fare well on iOS 7 (or even 6...).
My iPad 1 aka "the tank" (as we call it in my house) is still (hardware wise) 100% functional. Software is another story. I believe the only thing it's used for is Netflix (which shockingly works). Web browser/Safari is a complete no-go.
You know what helps products last longer and reduces waste at the same time?
Repairability.
The repairability of apple products is so poor that even Apple can't fix most of their own products without replacing surprisingly large portions of any given Apple device. End user repairability has been utterly neglected. Disassembly is frequently impossible without causing damage, and components such as batteries are frequently soldered on.
Are other manufacturers better? They used to be. Apple leads the way, and now the average phone is nearly as difficult to repair as an iPhone.
Hey, it's great that they managed to get iOS 12 to run on a 5S. It probably runs like an absolute dog, but it runs! Just wonderful. How easy is it for end-users to replace the battery in that off-warranty 5S? Oh. I see. Well, running iOS 12 on a 5S isn't so practical then, is it?
Repairability. I'll believe point #2 when Apple stops making every succeeding generation of their products harder for end-users to repair.
Repairability and packaging are always tradeoffs. You can build something where everything is integrated with everything else and you need to throw out half the phone if one component fails or you can build something with more modularity but it will be bigger/heavier for the same performance.
That is an incredibly unfair and ignorant question.
No, of course not, there are more, compute heavy, features and it's not worth it to spend huge amounts of time to support a phone you're no longer selling.
> it's not worth it to spend huge amounts of time to support a phone you're no longer selling
Unfortunately, without the newer versions of the iOS the phone loses functionalities pretty quickly (the apps will require newer versions of iOS), which, quite conveniently for Apple, will make you need to buy a new one. Aka planned obsolescence.
But kudos for getting at least one version of iOS to perform better than the last one (if that's true). That would be awesome if they actually kept this as a long-term trend.
Apple has allowed users to download the “last compatible version” since 2012.
I reset my first generation iPad - last updated 2011 - last year and was able to load and run older versions of most of the apps for streaming services that were available back then - Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, Spotify, Plex, etc.
"Last compatible" means no more security updates, which basically means - we no longer care about the flaws we've made, go ahead and risk your privacy (including for example your life savings if you bank online).
Also, my experience with the last compatible version (for iPhone 4 IIRC) was that IIRC neither Skype nor Hangouts worked anymore. Plus the whole device was incredibly slow.
What security flaws do you expect in older versions of apps that were able to escape the iOS sandbox that were later fixed by updating the applications?
What exploit has there been in an app that let it exfiltrate data from another app or read your web browsing history for any version of iOS?
As far as Google, it’s no surprise that Google abandoned older protocols. That’s kind of their MO....
But what unpatched security flaws have been reported in older versions of iOS that would allow an attacker to install a keylogger or otherwise exfiltrate user data?
> But what unpatched security flaws have been reported in older versions of iOS that would allow an attacker to install a keylogger or otherwise exfiltrate user data?
I don't follow the field of iOS security. I only know that, like everyone whose computing devices handle sensitive data and/or money, I want my system to be patched ASAP if a vulnerability is detected. AFAIK, Apple makes no such guarantees.
The alternative is Android that has a much weaker security model and where the manufacturers don’t offer patches for more than two years if at all.
But as far as iOS, I am not aware of any unpatched security vulnerabilities that have been reported in over ten years that would allow an app to exfiltrate sensitive data from another app on a none jailbroken device.
> But what unpatched security flaws have been reported in older versions of iOS that would allow an attacker to install a keylogger or otherwise exfiltrate user data?
I haven’t been able to find an untethered Jailbreak for iOS 5 - ie a method for an unsuspecting user to have his iOS device compromised.
A “tethered jailbreak” means the user purposefully went through a series of steps to jailbreak thier device or someone else physically got access to thier device.
I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here. The difference between an "untethered" and a "tethered" jailbreak is that an untethered one sticks around after you reboot your phone. So how exactly is this relevant here?
The difference is that an untethered jailbreak takes advantage of a security flaw in the OS that could be theoretically embedded into a website that you visit and your phone could be jail broken without your knowledge.
A tethered jailbreak means that you either intentionally took steps to bypass the security of the OS or someone who had access to your device did.
Wow the downvotes without comments are interesting. I can only guess that they are from people who are so used to getting f*cked by the tech industry that they don't see anything wrong in having to throw away a perfectly-functioning device only because it's 3-5 years old. Now imagine cars were made like that.
Ok not neccesarily throw away then, but, as someone else said, put them in the drawer or give them some non-phone function. For example, my iPhone 4, still perfectly functional but crippled with iOS update that made it too slow to be usable, is now a white noise machine near my bed.
Yes, as hardware improves and the OS and applications take advantage of this hardware, newer applications may run slower on older hardware. I'm not aware of any phone manufacturer or OS for which this isn't true. AFAIK, there is no other system that supports this level of backwards compatibility.
It shows that sustainability is not even an afterthought. Everybody is ok with throwing away perfectly working devices (i.e. devices that were blazing fast just a couple years ago and now, with some crippling os updates, take 10 seconds to open a PDF) just because they're 3-5 years old. Let's see if Apple really does change their policy on this. For premium, very expensive phones, it would be reasonable for them to be fully functional (with no slowdowns) for at least 5 years.
I don't have this information. However, IMO the current Apple's approach suits a vendor of $300 phones, not $1000+ ones. If Apple really wanted to be the technologic leader in this field, the gigantic markup and the billions of dollars that they make on phones should be funneled into engineering excellence (stability, security, performance, device longevity) and not gimmicks (face recognition). Unfortunately, it seems that the market does not demand engineering excellence even from premium products.
I'm pretty sure the parent comment wanted you to talk about Android, where vendors ending software support and updates before the phone is even bought is the norm.
If they’re cheap, then it’s somewhat expected that they are crap. Not so for expensive phones (if what you described is the case for expensive Android phones as well, then of course they’re even worse than Apple).
> Everybody is ok with throwing away
> perfectly working devices
People do that? All the iPhones I ever owned were passed on to someone. The oldest are not in the useable state right now I guess, but I hope they were given for recycling not just thrown away.
You have no idea what you're talking about, or you're maliciously spreading a lie. Apple consistently keeps old devices running, and running well, on old hardware.
Of the competition, only some environments running on Linux/BSD kinda manages to do the same. Android is just laughable in comparison.
Improved performance on even the oldest supported devices was the headline feature of this iOS release.
>Under stress tests, iOS 12 loaded share sheet display up to 2X faster on the iPhone 6 Plus. The keyboard opens 50 percent faster on older devices, while apps launch 40 percent faster and the camera opens 70 percent faster.
> How easy is it for end-users to replace the battery in that off-warranty 5S? Oh. I see.
I did it in about 45 minutes the first time, and could do another in 20-30 minutes pretty easily.
It's now a 5-year old phone. 10 minutes labor per year is OK in my book.
How easy is it for end-users to replace the clutch in that off-warranty Civic? For that matter, how many people even change their own brakes (one of the easiest DIY tasks, IMO)?
The 5 series and SE phones are pretty easy to repair indeed. I've replaced a screen and battery with no experience, a few tools from ifixit and a youtube video without much hassle.
It's gone pretty downhill from there with the iphone 6. Especially because the screens are much more intricate.
I've done the 5s battery replacement and would say that it is not "easy" (I work with electronics HW everyday). It is a pain in the ass and requires tools, a serious chunk of time, a clear desk and the right attitude/patience.
This is something that can become routine for practiced folks, or for people that are motivated to try the challenge, but there's a lot of opportunity for mishaps. In fact one way that many people get new phones is when Genius Bars screw-up the battery replacement-- so even pro's can't get it right 100% of the time.
Replacing the battery in an iPhone 4 requires taking off the back cover, not the screen. And it was really a pleasant process when I did it two weeks ago. I had expected much worse, but I only had to get through three screws (granted, they were a bit small, but still).
Well, that $29 is only a limited offering. I only recently bought iPhone 8, so, I hope, it'll work few years, but then probably it'll require battery replacement.
Yup. Bad memories for sure. That's why I love the makers who put threaded holes in two places on the rotor into which you insert bolts and press the rotor off with the bolts. Honda does it; I can't remember if Mercedes does it consistently or not.
Thanks for the reminder about those! I helped change brakes on a friend's... Accord (I think) and remember being delighted to find those bolt holes. Unfortunately haven't encountered those since then on any of my vehicles.
Now, I am clearly not the avg HN reader, but I did a civic clutch last month. 1st one lasted over 200k, and I am replacing the second. It took me about 4 hours with a floor jack, basic tools and a harbor freight impact. But it also lasted 15 years with constant use, and is literally designed a phisical wear item. My battery I replace every 3 years, as my climate is both extremely cold and hot. Its right up front with 2 easily accesable bolts. I think your metaphor is lacking nuance.
When I did mine recently, I dropped the entire K-frame, box and engine on to the floor in around 45-60minutes, had the head off in another 10 minutes, surfaced both the flywheel and head's mating surfaces within the next 30 minutes (hey-ho flappy disk on the grinder! It's just an EG Civic with a d15b) and had the whole car assembled in an hour. The fact that I have access to a two post hoist cut my time down.
Now compared with the fact that I have destroyed two phones attempting to separate the adhesive rubbish that holds everything together inside them, I actually think changing the clutch on an EG is probably easier for the "average" user than changing a modern phone battery. A decent set of ratcheting spanners, a torque wrench and a Haynes manual is all you need, and you're not going to accidentally break anything.
It should also be noted that almost all cars "back in the day" (i.e. the 30's, 40's, etc) noted in their own user manuals how to check ring gaps etc with the expectations that owners would rebuild their own cars. How far we've come.
>How easy is it for end-users to replace the clutch in that off-warranty Civic? For that matter, how many people even change their own brakes (one of the easiest DIY tasks, IMO)?
You comparing apples and oranges. There is a difference between a task that genuinely requires labor (replacing brakes), and something that is artificially harder solely to discourage people from doing it, but could (and ought) to be a simple task that can be done 15 seconds.
Honda isn't intentionally making it more complex to get to your brake pads and rotors.
Have gaskets really been forgotten for technical reasons or were they quietly smothered when the planned obsolescence benefits of potting entered the industry's consciousness?
There are a dozen gaskets along your car's power train that will set you back multiple times that amount if they fail, yet they don't and you trust them not to.
Of course, if you let your kid reassemble either your power train or your $1500 iPhone without supervision, the results will be exactly as you describe, but also entirely your own damn fault.
> There are a dozen gaskets along your car's power train that will set you back multiple times that amount if they fail, yet they don't and you trust them not to.
For that reason, I maintain precisely zero of them myself.
Regardless of whether or not you do the repairs yourself, you reap the benefits of the design as some combination of longer life, lower repair bills, and higher resale value.
Apple's pricing for a battery replacement - which I've never needed, and I tend to keep my devices for about three years - is about the same as the price of a new battery from a third-party vendor, and it comes from installation. I've had to replace two screens, and Apple's price is the same as the mall kiosk - and it'll be first-party parts, maintain the warranty, and my fingerprint sensor will still work right.
Apple devices (both laptops and phones) have a dramatically higher resale value than others, so that bit of your argument baffles me.
The reason why apple offers those services is because it has competition. If they figure out how to make third party repair intractable, you can expect a full reversion to the "screw you, buy a new device" state of affairs.
"For that matter, how many people even change their own brakes (one of the easiest DIY tasks, IMO)?"
Most poor people, middle class (what's left).
Although rental agreements, and section 8 leases prohibit working on any vechicle on said properties.
The average person should know how to repace at least the front disc brake pads. (Jack, torx, or 12-13 mm socket, c-champ to push fluid back into reservoir, and pads. 2 hour job.)
Yes, a manual clutch is another story, but if you have access to a garage, or lot, it's a weekend job.
Still it's two jacks, socket set, 3/8 torq wrench (most shops don't bother torque), flashlight, jack stands, clutch pack set, with includes plastic clutch alignment tool. It's a long weekend job. It goes quicker if you have a friend who's done one before, or a strong young person who's been under a vechicle at least a few times.
So yes, there are so many of us who just don't have the funds to hire people to do things.
I am one of those people. Hell, I still cut my hair with a vacuume cleaner?
Poor people are in a bind when trying to fix their jalopy because rental housing is so restrictive. (In other parts of the country, I imagine it's not so bad, but in the Bay Area landlords usually have 42 pages of cant's.)
My point is so many Americans just don't have the luxury of having someone else do the work anymore.
In my world, the repairability of a product is of utmost importance.
Then again, I am stumped over anyone spending $1000 for a dumb phone. Giving money to a company who builds their products overseas, and can't figure out what to do with their profits.
I do give them props for security though. I guess if I was important enough, iron clad security would be worth a lot more than a grand?
I will use my three Apple products until they die.
I will then rely on the surplus of perfecly good products discarded by the wealthy, or people whom think things will will always be ok.
Sorry about the rant. There's so many products that are unfeasible, or impossible to fix. It's like the government forgot The Sherman Anti-trust Act? I feel weird about bringing up the Act? Why? Because we are talking about a phone. A dumb phone? It's not so dumb when you can't get schematics on on the electronics in your boiler, or can't get repair codes off your vechicle.
I could not agree more. It is so frustrating to have a device like my iPad Air 2 sitting unused because the screen got cracked. The cost to repair it was higher than replacement cost.
If we care about the environment even one single little bit repairability should be on everyone's priority list.
I'm sure the sleek new $1100 iPhones that came out last week are even worse.
> The cost to repair it was higher than replacement cost.
At the risk of being rude, you haven’t tried very hard then to replace the screen. It’s pretty easily doable under $100, IF you don’t go to Apple to get it repaired that is.
I didn't go to Apple, I took it to a local place and was quoted over $200. Having an electronics background, I have attempted to fix iPhones a couple of times in the past. It never works out--the screens and digitizers you buy are crap, the connectors in the phones are so tiny that they break exceedingly easily, and the whole experience is just bullshit. Honestly, I fix my own cars, I should be able to attach a screen to a phone or tablet, but Apple went out of their way to make it hard. Those connectors could be a little bit bigger, they just chose not to make them that way!
So thanks for the downvotes all you geniuses, but not everyone lives in San Francisco, NYC or wherever there are street corner repair shops!
You know the other simple device that has been engineered to be un-repairable? Headphones. The barrel connectors on my kids' headphones break and every time I try to repair them it turns into this nightmare of trying to solder tiny wires where the ground is wrapped around them--they did this on purpose to thwart repair so that you keep buying new headphones.
Apple have done a great job with iOS 12 on older hardware.
I have an iPhone 5S and it runs much better with iOS 12 than it did with iOS 10 or 11. The UI is faster and smoother, apps load quicker, battery life is still decent. In many ways it makes it feel like a new phone.
The worst of the worst being Microsoft's Surface line where iFixit says a battery replacement is simply impossible on the Surface Laptop.
>According to iFixit, the Surface Laptop isn’t repairable at all. In fact, it got a 0 out of 10 for repairability and was labeled a “glue-filled monstrosity.”
> I'll believe point #2 when Apple stops making every succeeding generation of their products harder for end-users to repair.
Shiftphones[1] can be completely dissembled and repaired by the end-users, and they don't look any different from other smartphone. So, it's certainly possible to do. However, I don't think that's what an average Apple customer prioritizes. "The thinnest and lightest iPhone ever" sells much better in the ad.
As people start keeping their phones longer, they will start preferring phones that are more durable and repairable. Making cars that break after a few thousand miles worked out for GM and Chrysler right up until the Japanese and German competition arrived.
The thing smartphones is, that many people actually do want to replace them every few years for a better camera, a better screen, or for some trending feature-of-the-year, like a fingerprint reader or wireless charging. Aren't most Americans replacing their perfectly working flagship smartphones every 2 years?
I think the second link is correct that 5G might offer some incentive to upgrade, but else wise there's just less reason to constantly upgrade your phones these days. The delta between an iPhone 7 and an iPhone 8 is not that huge versus the delta between an iPhone 3GS and an iPhone 4.
Yes, maturing technologies seem to have longer life cycles. It's the same thing that happened with PCs. Compare the life cycle of a PC made in 1990 compared to one made in 2015.
Americans are a small percentage of the world market, and Americans buying flagship smartphones an even smaller percentage of that market. Of course people with a lot of money can afford to upgrade more often. On HN we tend to forget that not everyone is so lucky, both in terms of job market and in terms of disposable income.
>You know what helps products last longer and reduces waste at the same time? Repairability.
This is understandably a very popular assumption amongst people who like to tinker but it's oversimplified. "Repairability" is only a positive in the absence of any other factors. Devices that are harder to repair can also increase the active matter to dead matter ratio which reduces a whole host of energy and material requirements and be sealed better which increases environmental tolerance. That's ignoring any other user benefits like practical security.
More generally I think it's really, REALLY important to be careful to separate goals vs tools, because humans have a real history of putting the cart before the horse and starting to treat successful tools as values in and of themselves which inevitably leads to misapplication. For most of the population, including amongst the technical set, "repairability" is a tool, not a goal. The goal is something along the lines of "any item I get should last for a reasonable time as a function of its price, including having a good 2-5 year period during which any failures should be Dealt With (meaning a restoration of functionality at reasonable speed) for free (significantly abnormal shipping aside), and for expensive items a longer period after where any issues can be Dealt With for reasonable expense."
Repairability is one possible tool to use are part of a mix to meet that goal. But so is more money put into materials and engineering, better quality control, manufacturer insurance, manufacturer direct or partner support networks, etc. Each has tradeoffs, like any tool, and the right mixture will vary based on people's priorities and budgets. Repairability is not simply a positive.
This is also part of what I hate in all the awful "Right to Repair" legislation attempts, the ones I've read have universally pushed a method rather then a goal which almost always makes for terrible law. Markets are our best tool for figuring out and then dynamically adapting to meeting goals, but of course do not have goals themselves. What legislation should do is mandate the goal and make sure costs are internalized then leave it to everyone else to figure out the best ways to make it happen for different parts of the population.
Repairability as a goal or standard recognizes that no product is perfect, and that if or when something inside it goes wrong or needs servicing, it should be easy to do so. Batteries are a wear item for example, and should be easy to swap out with spares available freely. They aren't. Screens and glass backs are prone to cracking and shattering - not an issue in a desktop monitor or a TV, or even a laptop, but a bigger issue with a daily use item meant to be carried in your pocket.
I'd be happy to see some kind of legislation put easy access to spare parts as a priority.
>and that if or when something inside it goes wrong or needs servicing, it should be easy to do so.
Be careful and precise please. What to you mean by "easy" here in the context of the general public? I think what most people mean by "easy" is "I drop it off/send it away, and I get back something working within a day to a week depending on the product and faster is better, and it costs me nothing for [reasonable amount, minimum 2 years then 1 year per $300 up to 5 years] and then is reasonable for the remaining expected product lifespan" and how that happens matter not one whit. Case in point:
>Batteries are a wear item for example, and should be easy to swap out with spares available freely.
I strongly disagree with you on multiple levels here. I want my mobile device optimized for the general use case, which is when I have it on me by itself and it is working. That means the highest active matter ratio possible while also being as passively environmentally resistant as possible and it being functional for a few years at a time. Exceptional scenarios can be handled with cases. It's always possible to add extra matter for protection or battery, but obviously the base phone defines the minimums. Beyond that I'm perfectly happy to bring it to a service center for an hour dealing with the battery every 2-3 years. "Easy to swap out" is a negative here because it lowers the active matter ratio and effectiveness of the device in the most common scenario in favor of a niche concern [1]. And while I expect batteries to last for their rated lifespan and that to be what most would expect under normal usage (couple of years), I do not expect them to be "available freely" beyond that, they're a complex and critical core component that can expected to be a not-insignificant percentage of device BOM.
>Screens and glass backs are prone to cracking and shattering
No they aren't. They're very resistant to cracking and shattering, but a small percentage of people are prone to dropping them or need to use them in extreme environments. Those people should take advantage of the wide variety of 3rd party products optimized specifically for their individualized use case.
>I'd be happy to see some kind of legislation put easy access to spare parts as a priority.
I have strongly (to the extent I am able) fought such legislation, I think it's awful and wrong headed. What I would very much support is legislation along the lines I've discussed, requiring manufacturers to Deal With non-functional devices of customers for a good 2-5 years are no extra cost beyond perhaps extreme shipping, and requiring them to then 'ensure service is available' at cost of time&parts for some period afterwards. I expect different companies targeting different use cases and different segments of the population would adopt different methods to meet this. Some of them would definitely focus heavily on ease of repairability, particularly at the low end. Others would lean more heavily on engineering/production, QC, and "insurance" (replacement margin built-in to price). Either is fine, it's not a moral question just one of results.
----
1: One which I question anyway, it exclusively applies to someone who needs more then internal battery life and requires specifically the extremely narrow band of a somewhat heavier phone or worse battery life phone but not quite as much as a minimal battery case would be and must use it constantly for hours with only seconds of downtime running around (or else it'd be better to just plug it in to a larger battery for a little bit while grabbing a snack or it's steady or whatever). Frankly I struggle to figure out who exactly this applies to for mobile devices.
Thank you for disclosing that you fight such legislation. I don't know if that means you're a lawyer for Apple or another firm that is fighting Right to Repair. As a consumer, I am for repairability. Maybe my perspective would be different if my annual bonus depended on increasing the number of units sold every year.
>Thank you for disclosing that you fight such legislation. "disclosing"
What's there to hide about doing my duty as a citizen to work to make my country a better place?
>I don't know if that means you're a lawyer for Apple or another firm that is fighting Right to Repair.
I don't know if ignoring all my specific arguments entirely and immediately jumping to conspiracy crap means you're a shill for iFixit or the like but the rules of HN ask that everyone assumes good faith as the default position, and those are good rules for an online discussion. Guessing that perhaps you instead just have a very strong emotional connection to the act of tinkering and "repairing" perhaps, FWIW I strongly empathize with you. I absolutely know the feeling of wanting to mess around with things at a lower level then is "normal" and am both upset and threatened feeling by the idea that might get closed down more and more. Nevertheless each specific case needs to be weighed on its merits and the physical violence of the State is a very big hammer to wield. For those of us living in a democracy it is our duty to question and pick at suggestions to do so every single time, even if ultimately we come to agree.
>As a consumer, I am for repairability.
As a consumer I am for reasonable universal expectations of guaranteed lifespan with that built right into the sticker price so that the market can properly function. I absolutely do not think "repairability" is a goal in and of itself to the exclusion of all else, and think that legislating such would hurt consumers.
>Maybe my perspective would be different if my annual bonus depended on increasing the number of units sold every year.
Or maybe your perspective would be different if you considered opposing arguments with rigor and intellectual honesty rather then slimy insinuations and personal attacks? That is the behavior you just engaged in and frankly it's ridiculous, particularly since we both are (apparently?) in favor of enhanced consumer protection. For root's sake, think about what you are actually saying: I specifically called for a legal requirement of something that'd amount to a full warranty with government mandated performance requirements for a period of a minimum of 2 years and going up to 5 years and then ALSO possibly a paid repair/replace requirement after that. This would essentially nuke the enormously profitable extended warranty market just for starters, force companies to internalize public expectations and costs, and you think that's something big corps would be in favor of?? Really?
> Phone lifetime is bottle necked by performance moving on, not by wear and tear.
We used to think the same about PCs, but now I haven't found an excuse to upgrade in seven years (this is equivalent to the time between the 3dfx Voodoo 1 and the Gforce FX 5x000 series!). I see absolutely no reason why the same isn't happening with phones, it just isn't that visible because of wear and tear replacement (and the various obsolescence tricks).
Repairabiliy is important. But I think durability is more important as it requires no action by the user. iPhones are pretty solid as far as lasting a long time. I’m using a 5S that is 3 years old and it’s my daily driver.
I passed on my old 4 that is still being used as a Netflix/ web browser.
This is contrary to competitor phones that have hardware issues as well as ability to keep getting software updates.
Nexus 5x released sep 2015 and selling used for $85 with original retail [0] compared to 6s released at the same dome that is now selling used for $165 despite an original price of $650 and worse specs [1].
Certainly some of this price difference is due to Apple as a luxury product. But it may also be due to new OS releases not being supported on the 5X, but are on the 6S.
I have an 6 year old cheap Chinese phone which I use as a podcast player now. It has removable battery. I have dropped it many times on cement floor without breaking anything. Old Nokia phones also didn't break so easily and repairable. We still have some working Nokia which were repaired in authorised service centre. So I don't know why people are saying you can only choose one of them.
I’m certainly not saying you can only choose reliability or durability. I don’t think there’s a fundamental exclusivity between them. But practically, I don’t know of a phone that does both.
Certainly some old phones will work. And likely even still work as a phone. My point was that iPhones are more likely to still run and be useful based on their market price. The Nexus 5X price isn’t zero, someone still uses them. But it’s lower.
It’s cool your Nokia works as a podcast player. Does it work as a phone? I loved my old Nokia, but never found them effective enough as a smart phone. But my feature phone from 2004 still boots up and I can play the snake game I bought.
Many still are, although unfortunately many follow the path led by Apple. Here's an educational link for those who think everyone else is as bad as Apple:
I have a HP ProBook myself and as far as laptops it is a joy to work on. Very repair-friendly. I can get to the hard drive, battery, CPU and RAM in minutes with no trouble and no weird tools. The entire bottom of the machine comes off very easily and reveals the exposed and helpfully labeled internals. I upgraded the i3 CPU to an i7 myself in like ten minutes a couple of months ago. I also know for a fact that dust particles have entered the keyboard on more than one occasion yet I am still here, typing away.
Apple has been systematically and consistently working against repairability and upgradability for decades -- pretty much ever since the original Macintosh. If they want to suddenly change now that's great. I'll believe it when I see it.
> Apple has been systematically and consistently working against repairability and upgradability for decades -- pretty much ever since the original Macintosh. If they want to suddenly change now that's great. I'll believe it when I see it.
You say this, but your link shows that the 2011/2012 Macbook Pro is pretty high in the charts with a score of 7/10. Even then the biggest flaw they point out is the use of tri-wing screws.
I agree that currently Apple isn't embracing ease of repairs in its laptop lineup, but to say that they've been working against it for decades is a bit of an overstatement.
I think if you try to extrapolate your or my willingness to repair something to the overall market for the iphone, it would be an error.
What are the tradeoffs for a user replaceable battery? (really, this is something we should all know if we are arguing FOR replaceable batteries - maybe it's not the best idea?
I would wager 99%+ of sales go to people who never want to touch the innards of a phone.
And anecdotally, my SO's father got a cheap battery for his iphone and it ballooned up and almost destroyed his phone.
He also asked me if he should get a 3rd party power adaptor for his macbook (I said no, he ignored me because his wife is cheap), and it was this cheap POS that actually ended up forcing him to doa $600 repair AND get an apple power supply.
I spent years working on consumer PCs - normal people dont have time or inclination to deal with all this crap, just like they don't want to learn to repair their own air conditioner.
Consumers who want/need easily replaceable batteries already don't choose an iPhone, so all this in mind, I suspect the numbers don't add up for this argument.
All of the physical mechanisms required to allow a user replaceable battery are fragile and take up valuable space. It’s not a simple matter of just allowing it. It could actually lead to more repairs due to failure of those parts, and you certainly could no longer make the backs out of glass or other exotic materials. They would all have to be plastic.
Nah, we have decades of experience of doing this. And it doesn't really affect size or price either, that was evident back when you had a choice in the matter. It's just that manufacturers would rather sell you a new phone than a new battery.
Even though I hate things made out of plastic, plastic IS the right material for building a phone. Plastic is hard to scratch, has grip, is lightweight, and is hard to break.
I'm not a materials scientist, but something has happened to consumer plastics in the last 40-60 years-- it's changed for the worse (I'm assuming in an effort to be "green", which happily coincides with undermining durability).
We used to be able to buy Fisher-Price toys that were tough enough to bear the weight of a car, or withstand multiple generations of abuse by children. I've got plastic toolboxes inherited from my grandfather that still hold up.
Take a look at the ratings and user photos for plastic vehicle ramps on Amazon and consider whether you think you could even get the jack stands in before the ramps collapse. Kids' toys are flimsier than ever, yet despite the "cheaper" construction they're also more expensive than ever. I bought my kids the Barbie Dreamhouse (a $100+ marvel of plastic and cardboard) that collapsed under its own weight. The original Nintendo equipment was light-years more rugged than the endless RMA experience that is the Switch.
We have the technology to make plastics that don't feel "cheap" and the products reusable, but for whatever reasons we've clearly steered away from these goals.
Plastics have actually gotten better in the intervening years, but the advances in machining have allowed far more complicated molds than was once economical. This allows designers to use less plastic, and make it "strong enough". I was recently shopping for a gift for my nephew, and was horrendously disappointed in the Fischer price products- for the money, they didn't seem anywhere near the quality I remembered. However, one only needs to examine something like cordless tools or Lego to realize quality products can be made using plastic.
To be fair, Nokia's Windows Phones used plastic which felt rather valuable and high quality. It was an excellent finish that doesn't feel out of a place in a premium device at all.
Taking more space, yes. Being fragile, really not.
If Apple wants to make resilient devices they'd start by using materials not as fragile as glass or thin aluminium. Say, differentially hardened steel (incl. plated) or advanced composites. Just like watches.
Then, the only problem is extra space for the battery connector. They could even sell users a prismatic pouch with no plastic shell as the battery.
The actual tricky part is that integrated battery allows better cooling by use of messy thermal compound. You could have a foam thermal pad instead below the battery cover.
I don't know where all these wrong facts are coming from. Nokia phones were not fragile. I have dropped them many times. The battery gets out and I can insert it back and it works again. Nothing breaks. And they work year after year. I also have a cheap Chinese android phone that behaves like that. I believe mobile companies (and tech reviewers) have spread lies in this regard.
You don't necessarily have to fix it yourself, though. You could get it serviced by a professional, just like people do with a washing machine or a fridge.
And that happens today every day with the iPhone? There are plenty of professionals, both authorized and unauthorized by Apple, that can do nearly any repair necessary on an iPhone.
I agree with Cameron here, people, for whatever reason, just don't use the repairmen. They're out there. They're everywhere, but the repair shops are nowhere even close to being as busy as the Apple store. (Or even the AT&T store for that matter.)
I think people have been successfully conditioned to view phones as disposable/replaceable. It would take an almost Sisyphean marketing and conditioning effort to change that thinking.
I'm not sure it's possible. But, hey, I suppose Apple's free to try. No harm there I suppose.
> people, for whatever reason, just don't use the repairmen. They're out there. They're everywhere,
The reason they're everwhere is that people do take their phones in for repair. Mostly battery replacement and cracked screens. The town I live in manages to support three repair shops that I know of.
Maybe there are regional effects at play, but in almost every country I’ve lived or worked in there are a substantial number of independent iPhone repair stores, usually with cliched names like iRepair or similar, and many of them seem to be doing a roaring trade. If people weren’t using them I can’t imagine these stores would be continuing to exist in such numbers either.
Outside many European Apple stores they even often pay someone to stand and hold a sign advertising cheaper iPhone repairs available around the corner etc.
Anecdotally, a large number of my friends and family have all used these, usually for cracked screens or batteries, and often in preference to an Apple store on the (sometimes incorrect) assumption it will be cheaper than “taking it to Apple” to get fixed.
No, it does not happen with the iPhone or most other Apple products. They are incredibly hostile to 3rd party repairers.
Apple is notoriously draconian about ensuring that 3rd parties are blocked from accessing schematics and repair manuals. I'm talking, they threaten lawsuits to anyone publishing schematics, and there is no legal way to obtain those schematics unless you're an Apple authorized repairer - in which case you'll never need them because your job is just to replace entire logic boards after minimal diagnostics. This creates enormous waste and costs a lot more than an actual repair would. In some cases they don't even do that and just tell the user tough shit, get a new device.
Repairable devices create a market for third-party device repair.
When something on my car breaks, I take it to a person that has no direct affiliation with the company that built my car, and it is always cheaper than taking it to the local repair shop that the manufacturer runs. Always.
I can also replace the parts in it with parts manufactured by yet another third party. Again, the parts of equivalent quality are nearly always cheaper than the original manufacturer's replacement parts. You can also spend more on premium aftermarket parts, if you like.
I don't even want to change the oil in my car. But I can pay someone who wants to service and repair cars all day, as their job, to do it for me, rather than sending the car back to the factory to have its engine replaced every time the oil gets dirty.
If I like tinkering with electronics, I could swap my own iPhone battery, and then I could also do that for other people. The problem is that Apple, Samsung, et al do not wish to share the repairs market, or allow repairs to eat into new sales, and therefore do not sell repair parts at reasonable prices or release part specifications so that third parties may produce repair parts of equivalent quality.
So the only way to get cheaper than an official first-party repair is to get crappy grey-market parts. Proprietary and patented connectors that don't get licensed on reasonable terms make things worse. This stuff doesn't need to be repaired by everyone, but it needs to be repairable by someone that isn't beholden to the original manufacturer. Repairability is the consumer check on planned obsolescence.
You raise a good point about tradeoffs: it probably is true that most people really neither want nor need a replaceable battery.
But here’s another tradeoff: if one is producing phones for the great portion of the market which needs or wants disposable devices, then one doesn’t get to claim that one is designing durable devices.
Replaceable batteries aren't even just about the 3 years later when it stops holding a useful charge, it's about day 1 ownership where I happen to want/need more flexibility.
I loved that with my now rather old G2, I effectively never plugged the actual phone in, I had a wall charger for batteries and just swapped them in and out. Now I just use a powerbank which isn't nearly as convenient. Rapid charge on phones has made running out of battery far less painful however.
Laptops are the one that really drive me nuts and I haven't heard a very compelling argument against a user replaceable battery. Some thinkpads even have a small internal battery that provides enough juice to let you swap out the main battery and not have the computer shut off - that's super cool and practical, i'll take a few mm extra thickness.
Not only are Apple products difficult and expensive to repair, but if you've done something with your device that Apple doesn't approve of and voided the warranty they may even refuse to repair it for you. You're essentially not allowed to perform iMac Pro upgrades on your own -- this voids the warranty. Only authorized third parties can do this. It's kind of ridiculous given that the design of the machine ensures thermal issues long term...and it has to be partially disassembled just to be properly cleaned!
Yes, but generally this is about getting discounted service. In the case of the iMac Pro in particular, Apple wouldn't accept money to do the repair at all with a voided warranty.
And upgradeability! It's infuriating that the only way to get more memory into a MacBook is to buy a new one. And I don't believe Apple has any real technical reasons for the current state.
My phone with a replaceable battery... every time I’d drop it or throw it on my bed, the back pops off and battery flies out. It also made things quite a bit thicker for this feature I never used, except to put the battery back in.
I’d argue that the ability to solder is still repairability, it just requires the service tech to have soldering skills. It’s not like there’s actual restrictions preventing it.
My clothes drier is repairable, but requires electrical skills. Phones are more complicated now. It stands to reason that they’re more complicated to repair.
I agree, Repairability would contribute to the products lasting longer. However, the cost of repair even without Repairability does affect things. I have a 2013 MacBook pro that randomly crashes. I suspect a hardware issue, but the cost to try to repair it is approaching 60-70% of the cost to just buy a new machine.
Imo I think its the opposite. I haven’t had a need to change battery or repair anything in my SE for few years now. Its so “reliable” that i dont even think about it. Reliability is what is more important.
I have a year-old X with a cracked camera lens that Apple wants $450 to fix (under AppleCare+), but some YouTube video says I can fix myself for $7. The third-party repair centers near me say they won't touch it. The only reason my mother-in-law is still using my ancient hand-me-down 5s is because the small repair shops will replace the screen and battery on that one for almost nothing.
Although I also have an Android phone of a similar vintage with a replaceable battery. Nobody sells that battery model anymore. It's a doorstop.
Tell that to Thinkpad users that can upgrade 15 years old second-hand Thinkpads with compatible parts bought from China (also apply to other notebooks).
How easy it is to change the faulty keyboard on a MacBook Pro?
Isn't it possible that replacing parts all the time embraces disposable culture? "Oh I can just get a new battery? Great, I'll get one way more often than I need to, because I can." The old one gets in the garbage, or isn't recycled properly. And believe me, it happens often.
I don't see why improving durability is a bad thing. And also not sure why whenever anything positive gets posted about Apple, so many enter "APPLE MODE: RESIST IMMEDIATELY IN ALL WAYS POSSIBLE."
> And also not sure why whenever anything positive gets posted about Apple, so many enter "APPLE MODE: RESIST IMMEDIATELY IN ALL WAYS POSSIBLE."
There are people here that have both positive and negative opinions about Apple, as there are people that have opinions about nearly every other company. Perhaps with Apple these opinions are a bit more strongly held.
Real talk here : what makes an iPhone slow after 2 years?
- the battery aging?
- the apps using more ressources than before?
- the newer OS version using more ressources than before?
I've started using my old Android phone again after it being unused 3 years (Nexus 4), the apps are extremely slow now, the camera takes forever to open : what's going on? Computers don't age as much
Of course you're missing out one option - perhaps they actually aren't actually that much slower, but you're just used to newer stuff being much faster. The definition of slow changes.
Sadly, the C64 is also quicker than Apple's iCloud website. Frequently, when I type a new note or a reminder, the lag between my pressing a key and character appearing on the screen is in several seconds. This is on a 4-core machine with 16 GB of RAM that's not doing anything else.
It really does perplex me that the iCloud website is as bad as it is. I'd almost think it was abandoned-ware except that Apple continues to update it. Their whole cloud offering (iTunes store, Apple Music, iCloud) needs a MASSIVE overhaul. Everything should be available via the web and on a modern accessible website.
I'd go as far as to say that they need a new point-person in charge of their Cloud Services because whoever is doing it now is completely out of touch. iTunes in particular is embarrassing, and I personally buy less stuff because I don't want to run it (instead use Vudu, Amazon Digital, etc).
iirc, icloud was written in sproutcore. version 2 of sproutcoure became ember which is now in version 3. there was no upgrade path from sproutcore 1 to ember, so likely its a case of needing a rewrite and that not being prioritized.
Optimisation, Apple only ever seems to have optimisation turned on / tested on their latest release of iPhone. So whenever there is a new iOS, it felt insanely great on your latest iPhone, but felt like a step backwards in older iPhone. Although they generally put back whatever optimisation they have in stages of iOS point release.
Having these optimisation and software targeting latest iPhone also means Software aren't as well tested in previous iPhone hardware with less memory. We now have iPhone that spans from 2GB Memory to 4GB.
This is why, as an Android user, I prefer not to update unless I really have to. It would be ideal if there were two channels for updates - one for security and one for features and security. That way you could pick what you as a user wanted. So if you are happy with Android Oreo you don't have to upgrade to Pie to keep receiving security updates.
That is not true. I get regular updates and my phone is not a Pixel but from one of the top 3 smartphone makers in the world. Maybe in the US the situation is different since carriers have a say in the update cadence, which can also be good since there were a few models where the OEM agreed to a certain SLA for updates, so American consumers got updates where the rest of the world got shafted. I believe it was LG.
I don't see why the battery would matter, unless you are forced to use power saving performance throttling.
Flash memory degradation may be a factor, as well as increased expectations.
Also, the perceived value of the product doesn't increase much if the device lasts longer than some average lifespan. For smartphones I believe after 1-2 years most users move onto a newer device, any cost that increases the life of the device past this point is wasted and will result in a more expensive, less competitive product, so market forces push for decisions that may be perceived as planed obsolescence.
Run a benchmark on it and compare the numbers. If they are on par with the results obtained when the device was new, maybe your expectations have changed.
I had iPhone 4S, it was insanely fast and snappy with iOS 6, become a bit sluggish with iOS 7 and very slow with iOS 8 and 9, almost unusable. I jailbroken it and installed iOS 6 and apparently it was fast again, so it's not about battery or anything, it's purely software which expects very fast CPU and huge amounts of memory. Mobile hardware evolved significantly over the last years, so it's understandable that developers wanted to leverage that speed.
Or, some software developers and/or PMs just got lazy with development and optimization, and greedy with the amount of data that could be harvested. A framework here, a library there and it adds up pretty quickly.
I think it's really a combination of all of these. The only thing Apple really has control over is the last one, but even improvements there have measurable advantages as iOS 12 shows.
the newer OS version using more ressources than before?
My iPhone 6 (purchased April 2015) ran great with iOS 10. I stupidly upgraded to iOS 11 and it’s now so slow that I loathe using the thing at all. I know I should have less screen time. The degree to which iOS 11 destroyed my phone’s performance has made the prospect sound delightful rather than a chore. That I’d be gaining something rather than losing something.
That Apple made iOS 11 installable on the iPhone 6 is the definition of a cynical planned-obsolescence money grab. It has single-handedly made me want to use my phone less, and to resent Apple enough that I have no intention of upgrading to a later model iPhone.
Has the iPhone screen durability improved at all? It seems like they are (or were?) extremely susceptible to damage from dropping and I always took that as a sign that Apple wanted to force people to upgrade.
I would argue yes... they keep on improving the materials in every generation. I have a 7+ and my kid has thrown it across the room multiple times and dropped it onto a wooden floor more times than I can remember and even on concrete a couple of times. Each time my heart is in my mouth but each time it comes up without a scratch.
Yikes! Good to know. I just wonder if there has been any official mea culpa announcement or if I (along with many other people) are just suffering from sort of selection bias. Did the screen material change at all?
After reading the headline I thought it was some kind of joke. Now I realize it's just a PR bullshit. Which is also usually a joke, just not a very good one.
Tell that to the person/people in charge of the lightning port and headphone jack on the iPhone.
I know headphone jacks are no longer on Apple's radar, but they always seem to get messed up after a year so that the stock iPhone headphones are not recognised and thus the control buttons don't work.
However, the lightning port drives me mad because the blasted device won't charge up properly without me fiddling with angles and pressure for that goldilocks zone. It just sits there vibrating away in a charging/not-charging loop. One assumes it's the cable but that makes no difference.
Check if there is any debris/lint built up in the port. If so, use a toothpick to remove. The downside of a tab-less female connector is that it picks up more stuff and you have to clean it every once in a while.
I'll believe THAT when it's possible to replace the battery without dealing with microscopic screws, glue, heat guns, and hard-to-source clippy thingamajigs that require super-human dexterity to install.
This is an interestingly a reverse of Europe's (effective) policy and on greening the auto-market. Most European jurisdictions effectively^ tax (and otherwise discourage) old cars wuth a higher rate.
For an example from my country. A 2007 2L Passat is a common old car currently taxed @ €1,000 pa. It quickly escalates to 2,000 as engine size/emissions increase. Passats are decent quality cars with long lived engines, so most of the 10-15 year olds are still alive. For their time, they were average CO2 producers, say 200g/km.
The tax system is designed so that an incremental decrease in emissions substantially decreases annual tax. A 30% carbon saving (say 60g/km saved, in this example) will save you 60% -70% on your annual tax (€600-€800 ish). People buy/drive 12 year old cars for value, and the tax system (by design) takes that value away.
The way to lower your annual tax is to buy a car designed after the new tax regime was designed. The net effect of the policy is that perfectly good old cars are being crushed and replaced with newer, "greener," short lifecycle cars. There's no point building a car that will last more than 8-10 years because tax laws will probably get it off the road by that time. The most economical way to drive is not the old cars, it's cheap new cars.
The real (environmental) question is whether the net effects of building a new car outweigh the case by output of the older car.
Idk what the carbon cost of manufacturing a car is, but the number to beat (for my example, anyway) is about 600 kg co2. My uneducated guess is that it's about even, ie the policy is just another Volkswagen subsidy.
Turns out my SO got her hand on a second hand '06 New Beetle which has a TDI engine with a CO2 production of ~146g/km. The car has 300000km on the clock.
> 600 kg co2
How did you get there? I seem to miss something to make sense of this value.
Over the 12 years the car has been on the road it emitted:
300000 km * 146 g/km => 44 metric tons
The equivalent engine today is the 1.6L BlueMotion and emits ~85g/km. That's 40% less, about 18 tons saved.
But such a churn is quick at first yet soon enough has diminishing returns, as the low hanging fruits get reaped until we reach minimal ICE emissions or even zero emission, then (environmentally) you'll soon want the longest living cars, so this phenomenon should only be temporary.
Its not only about tons of CO2 saved, since that can be fixed by trees. Asthma-causing particulates and other cancer-causing compounds are completely ignored in that calculation, not to mention the opportunity cost of not having that $25k go into something else, like a house.
- the point was about whether changing cars every 5-10 years offsets the cost of building a new car
- whatever the car you can still plant the same trees
- living near a heavily polluted crossroad in a city, I guarantee you I'd rather have less CO/CO2 (as well as all the other NOx/particles crap) right out of the exhaust, not captured over decades
Most of that pollution is coming from diesel engines in the form of particulates. Which the EU happily allowed so as to reduce CO2 emissions. Which they're backtracking heavily on at the moment. Not to mention that cars by themselves are a very small part of overall pollution today, compared to good transportation and factories.
Europe was also all-in on diesels and focussed on reducing CO2 emissions, and look how that worked out for its cities. We have to admit that the EU is no panacea, and much of the legislation it passes is also written by and for self-interest groups and lobbyists. Take the recent copyright law as an example.
Hard to believe, that would be a 180 degree turn. The two iPhones I owned (3G and 4) had shit durability. I'm not sure the fault laid in the hardware (although my mute button broke on the 3G), but software updates made the phone unusable.
Otoh, my Galaxy S4 from 6 years ago stills runs well (if not always cool). I've repeatedly seen Android phones actually get faster when applying updates.
The biggest take away I got from the article was the need to make software last and function even on older devices. They mention ios 12 working on an iphone 5 which really does not impress me. I have an iphone 4s as my daily driver and it can only get ios 9.x. The biggest problem lies in the app store. I can not use many of the apps, some that previously worked because they all want the person to be on the latest ios. Nothing wrong with the phone other then I am slowly being locked out of apps.
> Nothing wrong with the phone other then I am slowly being locked out of apps.
This is the main reason I swore off the iOS ecosystem. Apple encourages developers to target the latest iOS and the latest devices, which is great if you are on the upgrade treadmill. If you aren't, then your apps stop being compatible fairly quickly. If you have bought an app in the past you are allowed to re-download it, but if you haven't, you just get a message saying that you should upgrade your OS.
To me it sounds like Apple wants to be "seen" as building products that last as long as possible to justify the cost of the product. They want you to justify the buy it for life cost, because they want you to believe the marketing that it will last longer than competitors, even while laptop keyboards fail early, the repair process costs over $800, the screens on laptops look like someone sprayed brake cleaner all over them when they've only lived in an office environment, iPhones get "touch disease" etc etc.
You don't have to believe Apple. All you need to do is look at the secondary market and see how prices for used devices hold up and see that it's true.
Phones being disposable isn't going to change, so looking at the annual cost of ownership is really all I care about. If a $1K iphone lasts 5 years vs my $170 android lasting 2 years, its still a better deal to simply spend $170 on the android. Better yet they usually last far more than 2 years, you just don't necessarily have the latest OS, which I mean, seeing as these devices change so little now, who cares?
> Better yet they usually last far more than 2 years, you just don't necessarily have the latest OS, which I mean, seeing as these devices change so little now, who cares?
I had a cheese-grater Mac Pro G5 for 8 years that still worked beautifully when I gave it away. I did upgrade memory at one point. An external display had a power supply problem after a few years. I replaced the graphics card. The ability to replace parts does help but I’ve also had a MBP since 2013 that has no accessible parts that also works fine.
Of course, on the flip side I’m grateful for this reliability because there’s no way I want to replace my 2013 MBP with any current Apple offering. They’ve truly screwed their product line and I figure I can only wait one more generation for them to come up with something sensible.
I'm in the same boat with my circa-2010 Macbook Air. Its still supported as it has an i5, but its ancient by today's standards. Still holds a 3+ hour battery charge on its original cells though, boots in under 20 seconds on SSD (running 10.12 on it, haven't taken the High Sierra plunge), and everything on it works. I'd love to have more RAM and a retina display but tbh, it ain't broke so I'm not replacing it and when/if I do, it will likely be replaced with the 2016 version that just upgraded the RAM and I'll use it for another decade.
Does the 'Ensure that Apple products last as long as possible' assume wrapping new iPhone into one of those cases?
I don't know if I am alone here, but I find it counter intuitive that to protect my new shiny, I would have to cover it with more or less ugly case to avoid it breaking when I eventually drop it? And since I don't [use cases], maybe consequently, I seem to break them at about ~11 month intervals (although last one, iPhone SE, was lost by accidental submersion - with this at least the new Xs's promises to be slightly better).
TL;DR; I am rooting to be able to buy an iPhone someday that will tolerate my 'normal' use as purchased without any covers or other add-on protections.
No offense, but I think the problems you haven't been solved by any phone vendor. They seem to be "you" problems. Protecting an iPhone when you drop it would (with current technology) require a bulky phone–though water resistance has significantly improved since iPhone SE.
The idea with covers is that they can be replaced when you enevitably drop the phone.
Right now a phone+cover won’t survive falls without scratches or breaking. So to make the phone itself tough enough you need something bulkier than a current phone with a cover.
To this point, iPhone performance has grown by first doing their own silicon and then by offering more hardware blocks to do what used to be done purely in SW. Of course, they also rode the wave from 45nm to 7nm.
As you look forward from 7nm, the picture is less exciting. Claims of 2x and 4x improvements will give way to 20% benefits from the hardware alone, and they'll have to work really hard on technologies like Metal to limit the amount of SW layers between an API call and the instructions in the chip.
Making products that last as long as possible is good for the Earth, but without breakthroughs in semiconductor physics, the space is maturing. Software already ate the world, and must now learn to coexist with the remaining resources.
This "should last as long as possible" was already assumed... and frankly kind of insulting after buying apple products for many years. And we do expect to be able to repair... I took my iPhone 6 to apple because the battery was done. They "tested" it and said it was fine. I paid a third party to replace it since apple would not. Phone was fixed... couple weeks later apple admitted there were battery problems and were handing out cheap replacements.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 303 ms ] threadAnyone ever read about Apple's must-shred agreement[0] with recyclers? Is that what "properly" refers to here?
> Ensure that Apple products last as long as possible.
Anyone read about Apple's recent lawsuit[1] for planned obsolescence in iPhones?
[0]: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recy...
[1]: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/01/09/targeting-apple...
> Apple now strives to [...]
It's not really fair to drag in an 8 year old product.
Repairability score of iPhones are not so bad, but the latest MacBooks are unrepairable.
You basically have 3 major components in the current Macbook Pro line:
- Logic board - MB/CPU/SSD/RAM
- Top Case - Keyboard/Trackpad/Battery/upper shell
- Display
Then you have minor miscellaneous parts like fans, heatsink, bottom case and wi-fi antenna/vent module.
Surprisingly, the USB-C ports are actually a separate replaceable component, and I believe the 2018s make the headphone jack one as well.
That's cool, that'll make it easy for them to remove it in 2019 and claim there wasn't enough space for it.
That being said, I will remember to stop criticizing Apple on HN from now on.
Please do not misrepresent this situation. It's a problem, but it's incredibly obvious that this is not "planned obsolescence" and it's dishonest to claim so.
Unless you mean that the battery gettin old is planned obsolescence. But that’s not a great arguement either. Batteries are a wear item, and will need to be replaced if you want to use the device more than a couple years.
A battery getting old is not planned obsolescence. A hard-to-replace battery is. Apple is a pioneer in that area.
the solution to the problem was the correct one, they just forgot one important detail.
TELL THE USER!
As a result, plenty of people, (including myself) noticing their two year phone starting to slow down quite a bit, decided to upgrade to the new and shiny model, instead of just replacing the battery, because who would have known that was the problem?!
They did issue a mea culpa and free replacement coverage in response to that criticism, but it took a while.
The reason why no one "rush[ed] out of the room and call[ed] their broker to sell Apple shares" is because no one believed it!
This means that you have to make it bigger (externally) sacrificing actual internal volume. A softer shell (that will be reached only by qualified personnel who will later properly dispose of the old battery) give you a slightly longer battery life.
So they decided that (battery life+markup in handling replacements+making sure only certified batteries will be used) > (user convenience) which I think is not such a stupid idea: outside HN maybe not everyone is willing to grab the closest screwdriver when having to deal with their phones...
The battery cells are designed to be fairly robust - punctured a Kindle battery during a screen repair (friends roommate came home drunk, bumped into the table while I was picking away at the glue) and there was a very brief tiny poof of smoke and nothing else. If the battery hadn't been glued, that situation would have been impossible.
I also don't recall seeing any news articles back in the days of near universal user swappable batteries about widespread incidences of users being injured by swapping phone batteries.
It's also less likely you will damage a battery if you just have to undo a couple screws instead of sitting there with a heat gun, from a repair tech perspective - but I've only seen batteries held down by screws in unibody laptops.
Which is exactly how you change an iPhone battery. They're not glued, and even have pull tabs. I don't get where the myth about iPhone batteries being hard to replace comes from (probably conflating the situation with MacBooks).
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+X+Teardown/98975#s182...
The size is different (J3 is bigger) and materials are a bit better in the iPhone... But we're comparing a budget phone with a flagship here.
Oh, and the battery is also bigger.
Have you disassembled an iPhone or even watched a video on it? There’s a pull strip which makes the battery pretty simple to release. It’s not like it’s superglued to the case.
The pull strip was a nice addition, but they need to improve their strength so they cannot break.
No one is arguing that Apple's devices are easily reparable; they arguing that they're not as hard to repair as it is being suggested.
In my experience, the screen is the wear part. As a klutz, I prefer the lighter phone (which impacts with less force) bonded batteries enable to a user-replaceable batter phone whose broken screen forces replacement.
I used dental floss to saw through the adhesive and then adhesive remover to clean up afterwards. I didn't have to remove a single part from the laptop.
I recognize that a phone battery is more difficult, but firmly bonded batteries are really not an insurmountable hurdle.
That way, we could continue using old iPads and iPhones, albeit with custom Android builds.
Many older apps have now also been pulled from the store. My iPhone 1 can only reinstall Skype from an old iTunes backup, but not from the store.
I have a first gen iPod Touch running iOS 3.x and a first gen iPad running iOS 5. Of course I have newer devices too.
This year I emptied a drawer full of old phones going back to around 1997 (the very earliest used NiCd batteries) until recent. Wow there were many. And I never got a new one unless the old one still worked - they all went into the drawer because they couldn't take a charge anymore.
It should be said though that batteries don't die on me as quickly as they used to - the change seems to be from the last few years. They seem to keep better in storage, but charging strategy also matters - old phones used to really deep-discharge batteries before declaring them below 10% charge.
In the 90s when the phones were rapidly evolving and the batteries where huge and often incorporated into the exterior design of the phone. My first Nokia ~1997 was the size of a large TV remote, the second was the size of a king size snickers, the third was smaller than a regular size snickers.
I had the Nokia 8290, and 6590 which were about 2 years apart and they used the same battery. They really didn't have that many batteries across their line after 1999:
http://pinoutguide.com/CellularPhones-A-N/nokia_blb_battery_...
The 6110 needed a different battery from the 2140 I had originally, but from there all the way until the 6310i in mid 2000s they were compatible.
Its even spelled out on their Wikipedia entry. "Accessories (such as batteries) can generally be swapped between all these models."
With an actual removable battery that only becomes the case after dozens of battery replacements (see remote controls, torches, older phones etc).
During that time, I'd need to replace the battery at least once, maybe twice.
Its not a straw man argument - but I find your response telling. Perhaps its not clear to a majority of HN users, but not all of us iPhone users live within productive reach of an Apple Store. Getting to one in person can be very inconvenient if you're not an American in a metropolitan city.
This is a very USA-centric point of view, you know.
Having a user-replaceable battery would go a long way towards assuaging the hassle of having to deal with Apple Service. Especially in parts of the world that don't have that luxurious, consumer-friendly, American-style glass facade with its fancy logo and happy green-shirt wearing customer reps ..
Repairability.
The repairability of apple products is so poor that even Apple can't fix most of their own products without replacing surprisingly large portions of any given Apple device. End user repairability has been utterly neglected. Disassembly is frequently impossible without causing damage, and components such as batteries are frequently soldered on.
Are other manufacturers better? They used to be. Apple leads the way, and now the average phone is nearly as difficult to repair as an iPhone.
Hey, it's great that they managed to get iOS 12 to run on a 5S. It probably runs like an absolute dog, but it runs! Just wonderful. How easy is it for end-users to replace the battery in that off-warranty 5S? Oh. I see. Well, running iOS 12 on a 5S isn't so practical then, is it?
Repairability. I'll believe point #2 when Apple stops making every succeeding generation of their products harder for end-users to repair.
People are actually reporting that iOS 12 runs faster than iOS 11.
Does it run faster than iOS 6?
No, of course not, there are more, compute heavy, features and it's not worth it to spend huge amounts of time to support a phone you're no longer selling.
Unfortunately, without the newer versions of the iOS the phone loses functionalities pretty quickly (the apps will require newer versions of iOS), which, quite conveniently for Apple, will make you need to buy a new one. Aka planned obsolescence.
But kudos for getting at least one version of iOS to perform better than the last one (if that's true). That would be awesome if they actually kept this as a long-term trend.
I reset my first generation iPad - last updated 2011 - last year and was able to load and run older versions of most of the apps for streaming services that were available back then - Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, Spotify, Plex, etc.
Also, my experience with the last compatible version (for iPhone 4 IIRC) was that IIRC neither Skype nor Hangouts worked anymore. Plus the whole device was incredibly slow.
What exploit has there been in an app that let it exfiltrate data from another app or read your web browsing history for any version of iOS?
As far as Google, it’s no surprise that Google abandoned older protocols. That’s kind of their MO....
IOS 6.1.2 came out 6 months after iOS 7
But what unpatched security flaws have been reported in older versions of iOS that would allow an attacker to install a keylogger or otherwise exfiltrate user data?
I don't follow the field of iOS security. I only know that, like everyone whose computing devices handle sensitive data and/or money, I want my system to be patched ASAP if a vulnerability is detected. AFAIK, Apple makes no such guarantees.
But as far as iOS, I am not aware of any unpatched security vulnerabilities that have been reported in over ten years that would allow an app to exfiltrate sensitive data from another app on a none jailbroken device.
…a jailbreak?
A “tethered jailbreak” means the user purposefully went through a series of steps to jailbreak thier device or someone else physically got access to thier device.
The difference is that an untethered jailbreak takes advantage of a security flaw in the OS that could be theoretically embedded into a website that you visit and your phone could be jail broken without your knowledge.
A tethered jailbreak means that you either intentionally took steps to bypass the security of the OS or someone who had access to your device did.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90237242/take-apples-advice-dont...
Yes, as hardware improves and the OS and applications take advantage of this hardware, newer applications may run slower on older hardware. I'm not aware of any phone manufacturer or OS for which this isn't true. AFAIK, there is no other system that supports this level of backwards compatibility.
Of the competition, only some environments running on Linux/BSD kinda manages to do the same. Android is just laughable in comparison.
>Under stress tests, iOS 12 loaded share sheet display up to 2X faster on the iPhone 6 Plus. The keyboard opens 50 percent faster on older devices, while apps launch 40 percent faster and the camera opens 70 percent faster.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/articl...
I did it in about 45 minutes the first time, and could do another in 20-30 minutes pretty easily.
It's now a 5-year old phone. 10 minutes labor per year is OK in my book.
How easy is it for end-users to replace the clutch in that off-warranty Civic? For that matter, how many people even change their own brakes (one of the easiest DIY tasks, IMO)?
If an end-user doesn't want to do their 5/5S/SE on their own, there are kiosks in nearly every mall that will do it for you in an hour or so.
This is something that can become routine for practiced folks, or for people that are motivated to try the challenge, but there's a lot of opportunity for mishaps. In fact one way that many people get new phones is when Genius Bars screw-up the battery replacement-- so even pro's can't get it right 100% of the time.
Does it work with recent water-proof phones? I thought that there's some kind of glue to protect from water.
https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-power
Still not a huge amount of money given the cost of the phone.
Air tools, acetone/ATF mix, and a propane torch are your friend at times.
When I did mine recently, I dropped the entire K-frame, box and engine on to the floor in around 45-60minutes, had the head off in another 10 minutes, surfaced both the flywheel and head's mating surfaces within the next 30 minutes (hey-ho flappy disk on the grinder! It's just an EG Civic with a d15b) and had the whole car assembled in an hour. The fact that I have access to a two post hoist cut my time down.
Now compared with the fact that I have destroyed two phones attempting to separate the adhesive rubbish that holds everything together inside them, I actually think changing the clutch on an EG is probably easier for the "average" user than changing a modern phone battery. A decent set of ratcheting spanners, a torque wrench and a Haynes manual is all you need, and you're not going to accidentally break anything.
It should also be noted that almost all cars "back in the day" (i.e. the 30's, 40's, etc) noted in their own user manuals how to check ring gaps etc with the expectations that owners would rebuild their own cars. How far we've come.
You comparing apples and oranges. There is a difference between a task that genuinely requires labor (replacing brakes), and something that is artificially harder solely to discourage people from doing it, but could (and ought) to be a simple task that can be done 15 seconds.
Honda isn't intentionally making it more complex to get to your brake pads and rotors.
When my iPhone's leak, I'm out potentially $1500.
(Obviously telling the user that water proofing is compromised and that they need to retry attaching whatever they tried to attach or replace it.)
Of course, if you let your kid reassemble either your power train or your $1500 iPhone without supervision, the results will be exactly as you describe, but also entirely your own damn fault.
For that reason, I maintain precisely zero of them myself.
Apple devices (both laptops and phones) have a dramatically higher resale value than others, so that bit of your argument baffles me.
The reason why apple offers those services is because it has competition. If they figure out how to make third party repair intractable, you can expect a full reversion to the "screw you, buy a new device" state of affairs.
Most poor people, middle class (what's left).
Although rental agreements, and section 8 leases prohibit working on any vechicle on said properties.
The average person should know how to repace at least the front disc brake pads. (Jack, torx, or 12-13 mm socket, c-champ to push fluid back into reservoir, and pads. 2 hour job.)
Yes, a manual clutch is another story, but if you have access to a garage, or lot, it's a weekend job.
Still it's two jacks, socket set, 3/8 torq wrench (most shops don't bother torque), flashlight, jack stands, clutch pack set, with includes plastic clutch alignment tool. It's a long weekend job. It goes quicker if you have a friend who's done one before, or a strong young person who's been under a vechicle at least a few times.
So yes, there are so many of us who just don't have the funds to hire people to do things.
I am one of those people. Hell, I still cut my hair with a vacuume cleaner?
Poor people are in a bind when trying to fix their jalopy because rental housing is so restrictive. (In other parts of the country, I imagine it's not so bad, but in the Bay Area landlords usually have 42 pages of cant's.)
My point is so many Americans just don't have the luxury of having someone else do the work anymore.
In my world, the repairability of a product is of utmost importance.
Then again, I am stumped over anyone spending $1000 for a dumb phone. Giving money to a company who builds their products overseas, and can't figure out what to do with their profits.
I do give them props for security though. I guess if I was important enough, iron clad security would be worth a lot more than a grand?
I will use my three Apple products until they die.
I will then rely on the surplus of perfecly good products discarded by the wealthy, or people whom think things will will always be ok.
Sorry about the rant. There's so many products that are unfeasible, or impossible to fix. It's like the government forgot The Sherman Anti-trust Act? I feel weird about bringing up the Act? Why? Because we are talking about a phone. A dumb phone? It's not so dumb when you can't get schematics on on the electronics in your boiler, or can't get repair codes off your vechicle.
How do you cut your hair with a vacuum cleaner?
If we care about the environment even one single little bit repairability should be on everyone's priority list.
I'm sure the sleek new $1100 iPhones that came out last week are even worse.
At the risk of being rude, you haven’t tried very hard then to replace the screen. It’s pretty easily doable under $100, IF you don’t go to Apple to get it repaired that is.
So thanks for the downvotes all you geniuses, but not everyone lives in San Francisco, NYC or wherever there are street corner repair shops!
You know the other simple device that has been engineered to be un-repairable? Headphones. The barrel connectors on my kids' headphones break and every time I try to repair them it turns into this nightmare of trying to solder tiny wires where the ground is wrapped around them--they did this on purpose to thwart repair so that you keep buying new headphones.
I have an iPhone 5S and it runs much better with iOS 12 than it did with iOS 10 or 11. The UI is faster and smoother, apps load quicker, battery life is still decent. In many ways it makes it feel like a new phone.
Some phones require heat gunning the screen as a start to open, then the battery is deep inside. Not with iPhones.
>According to iFixit, the Surface Laptop isn’t repairable at all. In fact, it got a 0 out of 10 for repairability and was labeled a “glue-filled monstrosity.”
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/251046-ifixit-labels-s...
Shiftphones[1] can be completely dissembled and repaired by the end-users, and they don't look any different from other smartphone. So, it's certainly possible to do. However, I don't think that's what an average Apple customer prioritizes. "The thinnest and lightest iPhone ever" sells much better in the ad.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scWxjE7IyMo&t=42s
But several articles seem to point out that the upgrade cycle is slowing down -- up to 2 and 3/4 years according to this source (https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/20...) for instance.
I think the second link is correct that 5G might offer some incentive to upgrade, but else wise there's just less reason to constantly upgrade your phones these days. The delta between an iPhone 7 and an iPhone 8 is not that huge versus the delta between an iPhone 3GS and an iPhone 4.
This is understandably a very popular assumption amongst people who like to tinker but it's oversimplified. "Repairability" is only a positive in the absence of any other factors. Devices that are harder to repair can also increase the active matter to dead matter ratio which reduces a whole host of energy and material requirements and be sealed better which increases environmental tolerance. That's ignoring any other user benefits like practical security.
More generally I think it's really, REALLY important to be careful to separate goals vs tools, because humans have a real history of putting the cart before the horse and starting to treat successful tools as values in and of themselves which inevitably leads to misapplication. For most of the population, including amongst the technical set, "repairability" is a tool, not a goal. The goal is something along the lines of "any item I get should last for a reasonable time as a function of its price, including having a good 2-5 year period during which any failures should be Dealt With (meaning a restoration of functionality at reasonable speed) for free (significantly abnormal shipping aside), and for expensive items a longer period after where any issues can be Dealt With for reasonable expense."
Repairability is one possible tool to use are part of a mix to meet that goal. But so is more money put into materials and engineering, better quality control, manufacturer insurance, manufacturer direct or partner support networks, etc. Each has tradeoffs, like any tool, and the right mixture will vary based on people's priorities and budgets. Repairability is not simply a positive.
This is also part of what I hate in all the awful "Right to Repair" legislation attempts, the ones I've read have universally pushed a method rather then a goal which almost always makes for terrible law. Markets are our best tool for figuring out and then dynamically adapting to meeting goals, but of course do not have goals themselves. What legislation should do is mandate the goal and make sure costs are internalized then leave it to everyone else to figure out the best ways to make it happen for different parts of the population.
I'd be happy to see some kind of legislation put easy access to spare parts as a priority.
Be careful and precise please. What to you mean by "easy" here in the context of the general public? I think what most people mean by "easy" is "I drop it off/send it away, and I get back something working within a day to a week depending on the product and faster is better, and it costs me nothing for [reasonable amount, minimum 2 years then 1 year per $300 up to 5 years] and then is reasonable for the remaining expected product lifespan" and how that happens matter not one whit. Case in point:
>Batteries are a wear item for example, and should be easy to swap out with spares available freely.
I strongly disagree with you on multiple levels here. I want my mobile device optimized for the general use case, which is when I have it on me by itself and it is working. That means the highest active matter ratio possible while also being as passively environmentally resistant as possible and it being functional for a few years at a time. Exceptional scenarios can be handled with cases. It's always possible to add extra matter for protection or battery, but obviously the base phone defines the minimums. Beyond that I'm perfectly happy to bring it to a service center for an hour dealing with the battery every 2-3 years. "Easy to swap out" is a negative here because it lowers the active matter ratio and effectiveness of the device in the most common scenario in favor of a niche concern [1]. And while I expect batteries to last for their rated lifespan and that to be what most would expect under normal usage (couple of years), I do not expect them to be "available freely" beyond that, they're a complex and critical core component that can expected to be a not-insignificant percentage of device BOM.
>Screens and glass backs are prone to cracking and shattering
No they aren't. They're very resistant to cracking and shattering, but a small percentage of people are prone to dropping them or need to use them in extreme environments. Those people should take advantage of the wide variety of 3rd party products optimized specifically for their individualized use case.
>I'd be happy to see some kind of legislation put easy access to spare parts as a priority.
I have strongly (to the extent I am able) fought such legislation, I think it's awful and wrong headed. What I would very much support is legislation along the lines I've discussed, requiring manufacturers to Deal With non-functional devices of customers for a good 2-5 years are no extra cost beyond perhaps extreme shipping, and requiring them to then 'ensure service is available' at cost of time&parts for some period afterwards. I expect different companies targeting different use cases and different segments of the population would adopt different methods to meet this. Some of them would definitely focus heavily on ease of repairability, particularly at the low end. Others would lean more heavily on engineering/production, QC, and "insurance" (replacement margin built-in to price). Either is fine, it's not a moral question just one of results.
----
1: One which I question anyway, it exclusively applies to someone who needs more then internal battery life and requires specifically the extremely narrow band of a somewhat heavier phone or worse battery life phone but not quite as much as a minimal battery case would be and must use it constantly for hours with only seconds of downtime running around (or else it'd be better to just plug it in to a larger battery for a little bit while grabbing a snack or it's steady or whatever). Frankly I struggle to figure out who exactly this applies to for mobile devices.
What's there to hide about doing my duty as a citizen to work to make my country a better place?
>I don't know if that means you're a lawyer for Apple or another firm that is fighting Right to Repair.
I don't know if ignoring all my specific arguments entirely and immediately jumping to conspiracy crap means you're a shill for iFixit or the like but the rules of HN ask that everyone assumes good faith as the default position, and those are good rules for an online discussion. Guessing that perhaps you instead just have a very strong emotional connection to the act of tinkering and "repairing" perhaps, FWIW I strongly empathize with you. I absolutely know the feeling of wanting to mess around with things at a lower level then is "normal" and am both upset and threatened feeling by the idea that might get closed down more and more. Nevertheless each specific case needs to be weighed on its merits and the physical violence of the State is a very big hammer to wield. For those of us living in a democracy it is our duty to question and pick at suggestions to do so every single time, even if ultimately we come to agree.
>As a consumer, I am for repairability.
As a consumer I am for reasonable universal expectations of guaranteed lifespan with that built right into the sticker price so that the market can properly function. I absolutely do not think "repairability" is a goal in and of itself to the exclusion of all else, and think that legislating such would hurt consumers.
>Maybe my perspective would be different if my annual bonus depended on increasing the number of units sold every year.
Or maybe your perspective would be different if you considered opposing arguments with rigor and intellectual honesty rather then slimy insinuations and personal attacks? That is the behavior you just engaged in and frankly it's ridiculous, particularly since we both are (apparently?) in favor of enhanced consumer protection. For root's sake, think about what you are actually saying: I specifically called for a legal requirement of something that'd amount to a full warranty with government mandated performance requirements for a period of a minimum of 2 years and going up to 5 years and then ALSO possibly a paid repair/replace requirement after that. This would essentially nuke the enormously profitable extended warranty market just for starters, force companies to internalize public expectations and costs, and you think that's something big corps would be in favor of?? Really?
Even so holes in the wall fix the common hardware issues for like $100.
We used to think the same about PCs, but now I haven't found an excuse to upgrade in seven years (this is equivalent to the time between the 3dfx Voodoo 1 and the Gforce FX 5x000 series!). I see absolutely no reason why the same isn't happening with phones, it just isn't that visible because of wear and tear replacement (and the various obsolescence tricks).
I passed on my old 4 that is still being used as a Netflix/ web browser.
This is contrary to competitor phones that have hardware issues as well as ability to keep getting software updates.
Nexus 5x released sep 2015 and selling used for $85 with original retail [0] compared to 6s released at the same dome that is now selling used for $165 despite an original price of $650 and worse specs [1].
Certainly some of this price difference is due to Apple as a luxury product. But it may also be due to new OS releases not being supported on the 5X, but are on the 6S.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0178GEA04/ref=mw_dp... [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B015E8TYHW/ref=mw_dp...
https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-12/
Certainly some old phones will work. And likely even still work as a phone. My point was that iPhones are more likely to still run and be useful based on their market price. The Nexus 5X price isn’t zero, someone still uses them. But it’s lower.
It’s cool your Nokia works as a podcast player. Does it work as a phone? I loved my old Nokia, but never found them effective enough as a smart phone. But my feature phone from 2004 still boots up and I can play the snake game I bought.
Many still are, although unfortunately many follow the path led by Apple. Here's an educational link for those who think everyone else is as bad as Apple:
https://www.ifixit.com/laptop-repairability
I have a HP ProBook myself and as far as laptops it is a joy to work on. Very repair-friendly. I can get to the hard drive, battery, CPU and RAM in minutes with no trouble and no weird tools. The entire bottom of the machine comes off very easily and reveals the exposed and helpfully labeled internals. I upgraded the i3 CPU to an i7 myself in like ten minutes a couple of months ago. I also know for a fact that dust particles have entered the keyboard on more than one occasion yet I am still here, typing away.
Apple has been systematically and consistently working against repairability and upgradability for decades -- pretty much ever since the original Macintosh. If they want to suddenly change now that's great. I'll believe it when I see it.
You say this, but your link shows that the 2011/2012 Macbook Pro is pretty high in the charts with a score of 7/10. Even then the biggest flaw they point out is the use of tri-wing screws.
I agree that currently Apple isn't embracing ease of repairs in its laptop lineup, but to say that they've been working against it for decades is a bit of an overstatement.
What are the tradeoffs for a user replaceable battery? (really, this is something we should all know if we are arguing FOR replaceable batteries - maybe it's not the best idea?
I would wager 99%+ of sales go to people who never want to touch the innards of a phone.
And anecdotally, my SO's father got a cheap battery for his iphone and it ballooned up and almost destroyed his phone.
He also asked me if he should get a 3rd party power adaptor for his macbook (I said no, he ignored me because his wife is cheap), and it was this cheap POS that actually ended up forcing him to doa $600 repair AND get an apple power supply.
I spent years working on consumer PCs - normal people dont have time or inclination to deal with all this crap, just like they don't want to learn to repair their own air conditioner.
Consumers who want/need easily replaceable batteries already don't choose an iPhone, so all this in mind, I suspect the numbers don't add up for this argument.
The first thing you do when you take them out of the box is to put the battery in.
Even if the person at the store does this for you, just by watching you can easly do it yourself.
And since iphones are a huge role model, if they implement it others will follow along.
Shocking, I know...
We used to be able to buy Fisher-Price toys that were tough enough to bear the weight of a car, or withstand multiple generations of abuse by children. I've got plastic toolboxes inherited from my grandfather that still hold up.
Take a look at the ratings and user photos for plastic vehicle ramps on Amazon and consider whether you think you could even get the jack stands in before the ramps collapse. Kids' toys are flimsier than ever, yet despite the "cheaper" construction they're also more expensive than ever. I bought my kids the Barbie Dreamhouse (a $100+ marvel of plastic and cardboard) that collapsed under its own weight. The original Nintendo equipment was light-years more rugged than the endless RMA experience that is the Switch.
We have the technology to make plastics that don't feel "cheap" and the products reusable, but for whatever reasons we've clearly steered away from these goals.
If Apple wants to make resilient devices they'd start by using materials not as fragile as glass or thin aluminium. Say, differentially hardened steel (incl. plated) or advanced composites. Just like watches.
Then, the only problem is extra space for the battery connector. They could even sell users a prismatic pouch with no plastic shell as the battery.
The actual tricky part is that integrated battery allows better cooling by use of messy thermal compound. You could have a foam thermal pad instead below the battery cover.
I think people have been successfully conditioned to view phones as disposable/replaceable. It would take an almost Sisyphean marketing and conditioning effort to change that thinking.
I'm not sure it's possible. But, hey, I suppose Apple's free to try. No harm there I suppose.
The reason they're everwhere is that people do take their phones in for repair. Mostly battery replacement and cracked screens. The town I live in manages to support three repair shops that I know of.
Outside many European Apple stores they even often pay someone to stand and hold a sign advertising cheaper iPhone repairs available around the corner etc.
Anecdotally, a large number of my friends and family have all used these, usually for cracked screens or batteries, and often in preference to an Apple store on the (sometimes incorrect) assumption it will be cheaper than “taking it to Apple” to get fixed.
Apple is notoriously draconian about ensuring that 3rd parties are blocked from accessing schematics and repair manuals. I'm talking, they threaten lawsuits to anyone publishing schematics, and there is no legal way to obtain those schematics unless you're an Apple authorized repairer - in which case you'll never need them because your job is just to replace entire logic boards after minimal diagnostics. This creates enormous waste and costs a lot more than an actual repair would. In some cases they don't even do that and just tell the user tough shit, get a new device.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-NU7yOSElE
Clearly you have not been to Asia. Plenty of 3rd party iPhone repair shops. Very easy to get batteries and cracked screens replaced.
When something on my car breaks, I take it to a person that has no direct affiliation with the company that built my car, and it is always cheaper than taking it to the local repair shop that the manufacturer runs. Always.
I can also replace the parts in it with parts manufactured by yet another third party. Again, the parts of equivalent quality are nearly always cheaper than the original manufacturer's replacement parts. You can also spend more on premium aftermarket parts, if you like.
I don't even want to change the oil in my car. But I can pay someone who wants to service and repair cars all day, as their job, to do it for me, rather than sending the car back to the factory to have its engine replaced every time the oil gets dirty.
If I like tinkering with electronics, I could swap my own iPhone battery, and then I could also do that for other people. The problem is that Apple, Samsung, et al do not wish to share the repairs market, or allow repairs to eat into new sales, and therefore do not sell repair parts at reasonable prices or release part specifications so that third parties may produce repair parts of equivalent quality.
So the only way to get cheaper than an official first-party repair is to get crappy grey-market parts. Proprietary and patented connectors that don't get licensed on reasonable terms make things worse. This stuff doesn't need to be repaired by everyone, but it needs to be repairable by someone that isn't beholden to the original manufacturer. Repairability is the consumer check on planned obsolescence.
But here’s another tradeoff: if one is producing phones for the great portion of the market which needs or wants disposable devices, then one doesn’t get to claim that one is designing durable devices.
I loved that with my now rather old G2, I effectively never plugged the actual phone in, I had a wall charger for batteries and just swapped them in and out. Now I just use a powerbank which isn't nearly as convenient. Rapid charge on phones has made running out of battery far less painful however.
Laptops are the one that really drive me nuts and I haven't heard a very compelling argument against a user replaceable battery. Some thinkpads even have a small internal battery that provides enough juice to let you swap out the main battery and not have the computer shut off - that's super cool and practical, i'll take a few mm extra thickness.
That's how warranties work.
I’d argue that the ability to solder is still repairability, it just requires the service tech to have soldering skills. It’s not like there’s actual restrictions preventing it.
My clothes drier is repairable, but requires electrical skills. Phones are more complicated now. It stands to reason that they’re more complicated to repair.
But it runs well. That's the whole point of iOS 12: make iOS run well on older devices.
I have a year-old X with a cracked camera lens that Apple wants $450 to fix (under AppleCare+), but some YouTube video says I can fix myself for $7. The third-party repair centers near me say they won't touch it. The only reason my mother-in-law is still using my ancient hand-me-down 5s is because the small repair shops will replace the screen and battery on that one for almost nothing.
Although I also have an Android phone of a similar vintage with a replaceable battery. Nobody sells that battery model anymore. It's a doorstop.
How easy it is to change the faulty keyboard on a MacBook Pro?
I don't see why improving durability is a bad thing. And also not sure why whenever anything positive gets posted about Apple, so many enter "APPLE MODE: RESIST IMMEDIATELY IN ALL WAYS POSSIBLE."
There are people here that have both positive and negative opinions about Apple, as there are people that have opinions about nearly every other company. Perhaps with Apple these opinions are a bit more strongly held.
It's just best to ignore it - the conversations offer no value.
- the battery aging?
- the apps using more ressources than before?
- the newer OS version using more ressources than before?
I've started using my old Android phone again after it being unused 3 years (Nexus 4), the apps are extremely slow now, the camera takes forever to open : what's going on? Computers don't age as much
I'd go as far as to say that they need a new point-person in charge of their Cloud Services because whoever is doing it now is completely out of touch. iTunes in particular is embarrassing, and I personally buy less stuff because I don't want to run it (instead use Vudu, Amazon Digital, etc).
Having these optimisation and software targeting latest iPhone also means Software aren't as well tested in previous iPhone hardware with less memory. We now have iPhone that spans from 2GB Memory to 4GB.
Apps are also increasingly more resources hog.
Of course there is: just buy a phone from a company that's not Google, and you'll never get an OS update every again /s
Flash memory degradation may be a factor, as well as increased expectations.
Also, the perceived value of the product doesn't increase much if the device lasts longer than some average lifespan. For smartphones I believe after 1-2 years most users move onto a newer device, any cost that increases the life of the device past this point is wasted and will result in a more expensive, less competitive product, so market forces push for decisions that may be perceived as planed obsolescence.
My iPhone 6 (purchased April 2015) ran great with iOS 10. I stupidly upgraded to iOS 11 and it’s now so slow that I loathe using the thing at all. I know I should have less screen time. The degree to which iOS 11 destroyed my phone’s performance has made the prospect sound delightful rather than a chore. That I’d be gaining something rather than losing something.
That Apple made iOS 11 installable on the iPhone 6 is the definition of a cynical planned-obsolescence money grab. It has single-handedly made me want to use my phone less, and to resent Apple enough that I have no intention of upgrading to a later model iPhone.
Maybe iOS 12 fixes this.
Edit: Here's a link discussing the issue: https://www.fastcompany.com/3063238/why-wont-apple-fix-the-i...
I know headphone jacks are no longer on Apple's radar, but they always seem to get messed up after a year so that the stock iPhone headphones are not recognised and thus the control buttons don't work.
However, the lightning port drives me mad because the blasted device won't charge up properly without me fiddling with angles and pressure for that goldilocks zone. It just sits there vibrating away in a charging/not-charging loop. One assumes it's the cable but that makes no difference.
I'll believe THAT when it's possible to replace the battery without dealing with microscopic screws, glue, heat guns, and hard-to-source clippy thingamajigs that require super-human dexterity to install.
For an example from my country. A 2007 2L Passat is a common old car currently taxed @ €1,000 pa. It quickly escalates to 2,000 as engine size/emissions increase. Passats are decent quality cars with long lived engines, so most of the 10-15 year olds are still alive. For their time, they were average CO2 producers, say 200g/km.
The tax system is designed so that an incremental decrease in emissions substantially decreases annual tax. A 30% carbon saving (say 60g/km saved, in this example) will save you 60% -70% on your annual tax (€600-€800 ish). People buy/drive 12 year old cars for value, and the tax system (by design) takes that value away.
The way to lower your annual tax is to buy a car designed after the new tax regime was designed. The net effect of the policy is that perfectly good old cars are being crushed and replaced with newer, "greener," short lifecycle cars. There's no point building a car that will last more than 8-10 years because tax laws will probably get it off the road by that time. The most economical way to drive is not the old cars, it's cheap new cars.
The real (environmental) question is whether the net effects of building a new car outweigh the case by output of the older car.
Idk what the carbon cost of manufacturing a car is, but the number to beat (for my example, anyway) is about 600 kg co2. My uneducated guess is that it's about even, ie the policy is just another Volkswagen subsidy.
Turns out my SO got her hand on a second hand '06 New Beetle which has a TDI engine with a CO2 production of ~146g/km. The car has 300000km on the clock.
> 600 kg co2
How did you get there? I seem to miss something to make sense of this value.
Over the 12 years the car has been on the road it emitted:
The equivalent engine today is the 1.6L BlueMotion and emits ~85g/km. That's 40% less, about 18 tons saved.But such a churn is quick at first yet soon enough has diminishing returns, as the low hanging fruits get reaped until we reach minimal ICE emissions or even zero emission, then (environmentally) you'll soon want the longest living cars, so this phenomenon should only be temporary.
- the point was about whether changing cars every 5-10 years offsets the cost of building a new car
- whatever the car you can still plant the same trees
- living near a heavily polluted crossroad in a city, I guarantee you I'd rather have less CO/CO2 (as well as all the other NOx/particles crap) right out of the exhaust, not captured over decades
Otoh, my Galaxy S4 from 6 years ago stills runs well (if not always cool). I've repeatedly seen Android phones actually get faster when applying updates.
IF the get updates. My Android phone managed to get slower even without getting any OS updates...
This is the main reason I swore off the iOS ecosystem. Apple encourages developers to target the latest iOS and the latest devices, which is great if you are on the upgrade treadmill. If you aren't, then your apps stop being compatible fairly quickly. If you have bought an app in the past you are allowed to re-download it, but if you haven't, you just get a message saying that you should upgrade your OS.
{Looks at unrepairable phone}
{Looks at unrepairable laptop}
{Looks at cord with no strain relief}
I don't believe you.
Security holes care.
Of course, on the flip side I’m grateful for this reliability because there’s no way I want to replace my 2013 MBP with any current Apple offering. They’ve truly screwed their product line and I figure I can only wait one more generation for them to come up with something sensible.
It's a 2009 Mac Pro. I don't notice any slowness or issues. Have not needed to replace anything. Have not upgraded beyond the original 8GB of RAM.
I just loaded El Cap on it this past year (latest OSX release it will take without a firmware upgrade) and plan to continue using it for years ...
I don't know if I am alone here, but I find it counter intuitive that to protect my new shiny, I would have to cover it with more or less ugly case to avoid it breaking when I eventually drop it? And since I don't [use cases], maybe consequently, I seem to break them at about ~11 month intervals (although last one, iPhone SE, was lost by accidental submersion - with this at least the new Xs's promises to be slightly better).
TL;DR; I am rooting to be able to buy an iPhone someday that will tolerate my 'normal' use as purchased without any covers or other add-on protections.
As you look forward from 7nm, the picture is less exciting. Claims of 2x and 4x improvements will give way to 20% benefits from the hardware alone, and they'll have to work really hard on technologies like Metal to limit the amount of SW layers between an API call and the instructions in the chip.
Making products that last as long as possible is good for the Earth, but without breakthroughs in semiconductor physics, the space is maturing. Software already ate the world, and must now learn to coexist with the remaining resources.