The pressure from consumers is in the favor of slimmer, sleeker gadgets. This causes manufacturers to use production techniques that make repairing impossible.
So even if companies made every little detail about the internals of the product public, it's gonna be of not much use to repair today's cellphones that are held together essentially by glue.
I understand what the EFF is trying to say, but frankly, consumers have chosen with their wallets on this one.
> consumers have chosen with their wallets on this one.
There are plenty of situations where we do not simply let the default selection made by consumers stand, because often that choice is suboptimal or intensely shortsighted. Particularly when economies of scale often push the preferences of a small number of early-adopter consumers onto the rest of the market, whether they have the same preferences or not.
More generally, expecting a consumer operating with very limited information, limited time, and limited interest and incentives, to make a purchasing decision that may have substantial unaccounted (and unpriced!) externalities is foolish.
We should stop treating the consumer's off-the-cuff decision of what to purchase as holy writ, given the many examples of consumers happily trading away the "right" to purchase shitty products in an unregulated market for higher quality products in a regulated one.
Hmm, I think it's more that the companies drive a view of "thinner" and "high resolution" as more fashionable, they laud it and advertise it. It's something they can use to "inform" consumers that what the people already own is now "deficient", they can advertise to show how much people would love and accept us if only we had a slight higher resolution, slightly slimmer phone ...
Once they've spent $100M convincing us that we'll be pariahs without their new items then people "want" those items.
If the companies advertised how we could save the planet if we bought more conscientiously and didn't throw away working electronics, etc., then all of a sudden people wouldn't "want" those other phones.
Your version only works if you can show advertising/media doesn't work.
So once they've convinced us to buy what they can make, to force us towards buying again every year, then they make sure it will break and be unrepairable and blame the consumer fashion - the very fashion they spent so much money creating.
> The pressure from consumers is in the favor of slimmer, sleeker gadgets. This causes manufacturers to use production techniques that make repairing impossible.
How does that apply to the John Deere tractors or your next car?
> The pressure from consumers is in the favor of slimmer, sleeker gadgets. This causes manufacturers to use production techniques that make repairing impossible.
Is anyone actually crying out for thinner devices? Or do we just keep getting them foist upon us as the result of some pointless thin-ness arms race manufacturers have gotten themselves into.
I strongly suspect it's the latter: we keep buying thinner (and this is wrongly perceived as demand for thinner devices) because the only options we get are for thinner devices.
>Is anyone actually crying out for thinner devices? Or do we just keep getting them foist upon us as the result of some pointless thin-ness arms race manufacturers have gotten themselves into.
Yes, they are. There have always been bulkier alternatives for every device on offer (smartphones, laptops etc) -- the thinner ones sell better. Not to mention whole categories where being small and thin is part of their main purpose (ultrabooks, wearables).
And here's a certain Linus Torvalds:
I’m have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to
have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air – even several years
after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push
those ugly and *clunky* things. Yes, there are vendors that have
tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly.
I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and
light.
(...) I’m personally just hoping that I’m ahead of the curve in my
strict requirement for “small and silent”. (...) A notebook that
weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing.
"The pressure from consumers is in the favor of slimmer, sleeker gadgets. This causes manufacturers to use production techniques that make repairing impossible."
I am not sure: we can only choose from what the manufacturers decide to build. At some point, Apple seem to have become obsessive about trying to make every model of device thinner than the previous generation, and it sometimes seems like executives in other companies are fixated on Apple. AFAIK, no manufacturer tried to buck the trend and ship a relatively "fatter" device marketed as having longer battery life, replaceable batteries etc. as features.
Thinner is a visually marketable change, such things are easier to sell as fashion and so enable a short product re-purchase cycle.
Apple's controlling influencers, et al., don't care two shits if we Earthlings destroy the planet - if they can drive our greed and desire to present ourselves as better than others to make themselves a hefty profit then they're doing it. That's Capitalism.
So even if companies made every little detail about the internals of the product public, it's gonna be of not much use to repair today's cellphones that are held together essentially by glue.
I understand what the EFF is trying to say, but frankly, consumers have chosen with their wallets on this one.