It’s not a protection plan – it’s a protection racket.
Why we need(ed, it's too late now) Right To Repair
This was written December 4th 2023
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Right to repair is right to maintain. Tech companies systematically prevent consumers from repairing (and upgrading!) A myriad of ways, both in their product designs and their business models. Apple is an easy example of this. They contractually prevent their manufacturers from creating the parts for any other company, as well as releasing any of the schematics. This ensures the only company that can get replacement parts is Apple, so they control the supply.
Apple has always made their devices notoriously complicated to fix, and part of that is the complete lack of instruction manuals. There was a time when most manufacturers released service manuals – schematics for how to disassemble your computer so that if something broke, you could fix it. If you wanted to upgrade to more memory or a larger drive, you could upgrade it. Laptops used to have service panels. You used to be able to remove a macbook battery with a quarter – machines were designed to be upgradable. Now drives and memory are often part of the motherboard, so when either fails you need to throw the whole thing out and you lose your data – if you weren’t paying for their backup service.
Apple recognizes that for these devices to be used for their intended purpose – for them to be portable – they need a functional battery, and they took steps to mitigate that.
For a few generation of MacBooks after they took away the “removable battery” every screw was a Philips head except the three holding in the battery. Those were “triwing” screws that were /just/ too wide for any flathead and just too small for any Philips. Over the past Apple has started using adhesive to hold some components in place, and they’ve moved away from household tools to five pointed “pentalobe” screws.
Again, using Apple specifically as an example here, and their AppleCare so called Protection Plan – They tout under a page for “Support products”
“ Service and support from the people who know your Apple products best. Because Apple makes the hardware, the operating system, and many applications, Apple products are truly integrated systems. And only AppleCare products give you one-stop service and support from Apple experts, so most issues can be resolved in a single call.”
Right above listing their monthly price options. Instead of having reliable or repairable products customers can pay between $3.50 and $50/month to insure their devices against the lack of service and parts that Apple has manufactured.
Why would they give us expandable removable storage when they charge us monthly for cloud storage they automatically back everything up to?
Why would they sell us reliable or repairable products when instead they can sell us peace of mind and call it a protection plan?
It’s not a protection plan – it’s a protection racket.
Support is a product that people will happily pay a monthly subscription to if it’s their only choice.
And it’s one we’re seeing a growing industry in. If you buy anything on Amazon or EBay, you get offered a plan. The self checkout at Target Lowes and Staples offers you a so-called protection plan.
We’re trapped in two year replacement cycles – a concept initially pushed by phone carriers to get people to renew service contracts because these companies would rather sell us disposable products and profit off our reliance than sell us reliable products, and because they set our expectations up.
Of course we buy the protection plan – we know the product might die at any moment and only we know the manufacturer has access to parts and schematics that we don’t.
Right to repair is the legislative movement to require manufacturers to provide the consumers access to these parts and schematics. With access to those parts and schematics we wouldn’t need protection plans.
In a perfect world, my shop won’t be in business because no one needs me – all computers would be modular and upgradable by everyone’s teen. Instead we’re going the opposite direction, everything is subscription based and simple as possible and replacing devices every few years is accepted as commonplace and necessary.
It’s sorta like how Valentine’s Day candy and Wedding Rings are the result of marketing – this didn’t have to be the reality we have, but it’s what makes the most sense/cents for manufacturers. I think about the lobbyists against right to repair every time I hear someone say “capitalism breeds innovation” because no it has not.
So many customers want to repair their machines – and are upset when we can’t get the parts.
Sometimes we have to explain that even if we do get a replacement part the issue will happen again anyways because it’s just a bad design.
We get many customers who used to build computer parts in factories years ago and they get it because they remember how it used to be. Appliances had access panels that came off easily, and schematics so you knew what was where if it stopped working.
We haven’t had many customers asking about rebuilding their computers from scratch.
The batteries in Tesla power walls are **18650**, a specific cell that’s pretty commonly used and one of the applications for a very long time was Laptop batteries. If your laptop was a “six cell“, it had six of these. They also came in 3 and 9 cell configurations. And when one of the cells died – it caused the computer to not accept the battery anymore. Like with older screw-in Christmas lights if one in the chain went bad it would stop working – or at least start giving an error. So in answer to how dead batteries can be used to create a power source I’m not actually using the dead cells – there’s usually still three or four good cells in most batteries. At previous repair shops I’d worked at I had seen techs open these batteries up and swap the cells, but it was a dangerous process that only saved a few bucks.
Extracting/testing the cells is a time consuming process. The batteries need to be “shucked” taking off the plastic and metal tabs connecting them, which is a high risk of injury process. Then the cells need to be tested to see how much charge they hold and how fast they deplete which requires recharging them and keeping an eye on various meters, or using dedicated testing equipment.
I had a friend in high school who solder-chained a bunch of these batteries together to create a power bank and used it to power a tesla coil in their mom’s attic – that was sorta the coolest thing ever to me for a while and it stuck with me. We’ve always set these lithium batteries aside at my shop, and I used to sell them to friends who used them for various home projects – one person was working on a solar power motorcycle, these were getting put into effectively saddle bags. I have no clue how that project is going. Eventually I just started holding onto them myself, and decided I would build a wall with them. Currently, they’re sitting in a bin in my shop basement. Unfortunately, modern batteries are designed to be sleek and fit a form factor, not to be longer lasting or efficient so we’re not adding to the bin as often these day. My main concern long term with this battery is insulating it – It won’t last winters in Maine, so it I may be building it into a wheeled plastic bin (but probably not an igloo cooler) and brought back up to Massachusetts for winters. The yurt they’re going to be powering is currently disassembled in Massachusetts, and should be erected early next Spring.
I don’t actually have the skills or knowledge to turn those batteries into a larger one, but it’s a well documented process online and I know many technicians with the skillsets to do it. That’s part of so great about the right to repair, and a culture of repairability – it brings people together and someone with parts in one place can work with knowledge in another and create something from it!
When we have that – we don’t need them. We don’t need protection plans.
Companies are so scared of of right to repair because of how many of their revenue streams are dependent on our lack of it.
The thought of us being able to fix our own technology scares companies because if we didn’t have to pay them for it – we wouldn’t. Which is why they’ve created a situation where it makes sense to pay them for it.
Planned obsolescence is the logical outcome of capitalism.
It’s the way to profit off of us again and again – not just profit off the sale of the device, and the interest on sale of the device, not just monthly fees for the use of the device, but also for the peace of mind that support for the the device will be available if it does not continue working.
It’s part of a larger problem
This is getting automatically amplified so instead of phones being made cheaper and cheaper by younger and younger people paid less and less it’s by a smarter AI on a faster server offering us services at a percentage less than the other AI on the other server in a competition to maximize how much companies can extract from people. As we see software as a service, cloud backup, and protection plans for disposable products becoming an everyday part of life landfills get filled and people’s cost of living goes up and we get technology designed to profit.
As we’re seeing with the loss of physical media and a societal dependency on streaming services it’s more clear than ever that most companies give you a free trial because they know once you have an account set up and information you lose by not maintaining a relationship with them you need to hold onto that.
Companies focus on keeping people with data retention practices instead of offering quality products.
Data retention practices are allowed by encouraging people not to keep physical copies, by people not having drives they can upgrade or replace.
Just like how people don’t have DVDs or VHS copies of anything, they also no longer have a phone or computer if they haven’t subscribed to backup support.
Repair is now a subscription service offered by most manufacturers.
They should have given us reliable products instead, but without our right to repair they have no incentive to.
People want to be able to repair their own devices so they can continue using them whether or not the manufacturer continues supporting the device. Unfortunately, that’s no longer a reality – all current OS, windows chromeOS and Mac all automatically update and most websites require a secure connection which requires continuing to receive those updates – that’s why it wss so huge when Google extended support for Chromebooks for two years – that means another two years of people not having to purchase another device.
Like with other “rights” if they’re being fought for it’s because we don’t currently have them.
It’s also worth noting that these capitalistic practices affect people who are already struggling to survive more than everyone else. It makes sense to get a $250 Chromebook and $700 iPhone every two years, paying $70-140/month for cloud storage backup media and protection plans when the option that doesn’t cost $30/month costs $2000 to get. Terry Pratchett has something about a boot for this.
Photo credit to Mike Hendrickson