Is Repair As Important As Innovation? (economist.com) 171
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from The Economist: Events about making new things are ten a penny. Less common are events about keeping things as good as new. Maintenance lacks the glamour of innovation. It is mostly noticed in its absence -- the tear in a shirt, the mould on a ceiling, the spluttering of an engine. Not long ago David Edgerton of Imperial College London, who also spoke at the festival, drove across the bridge in Genoa that collapsed in August, killing 43 people (pictured). 'We're encouraged to pride ourselves on all being innovators and entrepreneurs,' he said. Maintenance is often dismissed as mere drudgery. But in fact, as he pointed out, repairing things is often trickier than making them.
It is also more difficult for economists to measure. The discipline's most prominent statistic, GDP, is gross (as opposed to net) because it leaves out the cost of wear and tear. To calculate these costs, statisticians must estimate the lifespan of a country's assets and make assumptions about the way they deteriorate. [...] And how much do economies spend fighting decay? No one knows, partly because most maintenance is performed in-house, not purchased on the market. The best numbers are collected by Canada, where firms spent 3.3% of GDP on repairs in 2016, more than twice as much as the country spends on research and development. In closing, the report mentions the tyrannies of the ancient East where people were forced to maintain fragile irrigation systems. "In those societies, to repair was to repress," the report says. "But some people today have the opposite concern. They see maintenance and repair as a right they are in danger of losing to companies that hoard spare parts and information too jealously."
It is also more difficult for economists to measure. The discipline's most prominent statistic, GDP, is gross (as opposed to net) because it leaves out the cost of wear and tear. To calculate these costs, statisticians must estimate the lifespan of a country's assets and make assumptions about the way they deteriorate. [...] And how much do economies spend fighting decay? No one knows, partly because most maintenance is performed in-house, not purchased on the market. The best numbers are collected by Canada, where firms spent 3.3% of GDP on repairs in 2016, more than twice as much as the country spends on research and development. In closing, the report mentions the tyrannies of the ancient East where people were forced to maintain fragile irrigation systems. "In those societies, to repair was to repress," the report says. "But some people today have the opposite concern. They see maintenance and repair as a right they are in danger of losing to companies that hoard spare parts and information too jealously."
medical (Score:2)
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As someone who had both I can tell you, getting a tooth restored beats getting an implant.
According to Asimov... (Score:5, Insightful)
In Asimov's Empire books, when a society no longer recalls how to repair something, it is a sign of societal collapse.
Re:According to Asimov... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not being able to repair something makes your society totally dependent on whoever delivers the crap you use. It's almost as bad as not being able to grow your own food anymore. It makes your society as a whole very susceptible to any kind of disturbance in trade, and it makes you susceptible to blackmail: Either you let us do $shady_business_practice or you get to explain to your people why they can't have $our_junk anymore.
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The vast majority of "techies" know nothing about technology. Even the majority of people who build, design, program, and maintain technology don't really understand it except for their own tiny subset.
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asimovs empire was just rome in space
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Can't they shut shut if off, wait a bit, then turn it back on?
Is it clever to design the unrepairable? (Score:3)
I say no. Business analysts want clean revenue cycles. They like planned obsolescence. Or they build only a few spares, moving on, because the design said that only a fraction of people would complain that there are no spares/replacement parts/people trained to fix them.
This behavior, however, is praised by the corporate hegemony. They like clean numbers, campaigns, so they can shift quickly in a highly competitive world. The consumers get the shaft, and not very much justice from bad equipment. Quality counts, but so does the supply chain for post-sale equipment support. The general public isn't taught to look for post-sale support, only to buy the shiny new object with easy third party financing.
Most every laptop I buy these days croaks early. Looking at you, Apple, Lenovo, Asus. Disposable electronics is a bad concept. And that's what happens when you can't fix it or get it fixed (or for a reasonable cost).
To my fellow engineers that design short lifecycle drek: you're evil.
Re:Is it clever to design the unrepairable? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the engineers. Blame the business-school types who manage them, who went through the US b-school system and learned how to be better sociopaths.
As far as laptops, business-grade Dells and Lenovos (7000 series and X series) work fine, are repairable, and last long. Yeah, Apple is junk.
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Re: Is it clever to design the unrepairable? (Score:2)
Re: Is it clever to design the unrepairable? (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm not convinced that style, in and of itself, needs the engineering changes that Apple's made since ca late 2012, which is my Mac mini. Perhaps it's the verticality that they're trying to protect / enhance. Less that gets outside of Apple's control, more the dependance on the Company. No matter how we feel about Apple the company, they've done a brilliant job marketing their products and making money. They have been so successful that they've engendered a lot of hostility from those who have not been able
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It's not the engineers. Blame the business-school types who manage them
Nope wrong target. Business school types get taught to deliver what consumers want. Your laptops wouldn't be paper thin and completely unmaintainable if it weren't for the consumers who queue (literally in Apple's case) to buy the sleek shiny unopenable devices.
Maybe put some blame on marketing types for swaying consumer opinion, but ultimately if repairability were such a big key requirement for people the business-school types would be bending over backwards to provide just that.
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Re:Is it clever to design the unrepairable? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Is it clever to design the unrepairable? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have industrial machines. If manufacturers designed equipment where I could no longer repair them by myself, I'm not going to purchase their machine. I'm quite capable of designing and building my own if I have too.
And believe me, I've already met some manufacturers attempting to do so under the guise of "Litigation", "Liability", "Proprietary". They lock down their devices, do not want to give me electrical or control schematics and insist this is the way the industry always was (By the way, access is required under all our standards in both Europe and the US for industrial machines, including schematics, so go F*** yourselves). Imagine the whole debacle with locked down phones being placed on multi-million dollar machines where you're required to somehow dispose of it after 2-3 years (Or of course they'll buy it off of you for pennies and resell it for another million). A lot of equipment is designed with standard replaceable parts, the moment they try to veer from that path, I'm no longer interested.
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Amen.
But you're not using the current consumer trope of being interested in something shiny and new, and of course, socially acceptable. That mentality varies from an engineer's mindset.
Instilling a mentality requires showing the money wasted (res-pent) and is obfuscated until it becomes a disposal/recycling problem. I think GM started it all when they introduced model years. Somehow, older is never as good as new/newer/new new new.
Yes, entropy is a law, but cutting the scope of repair, supply chain stock o
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I'm in a similar boat: when a manufacturer charges too much for a replacement bit for their equipment that was incredibly expensive to begin with, I tell them, as an example, "too bad, you lost the sale by asking for $200 for a spare battery because I'll have my staff make one up from $10 in bits in about 1/2 an hour; had you priced it at a reasonable amount, you'd neither have lost this sale, nor have lost the goodwill of my laboratory; since I work for a Big Name University, people copy my techniques, and
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I have industrial machines. If manufacturers designed equipment where I could no longer repair them by myself, I'm not going to purchase their machine. I'm quite capable of designing and building my own if I have too.
And as a result of that kind of thinking in the wider market there are still plenty of manufacturers who are happy to offer you what you want.
Ultimately you hit the point of how the market forces work: Repairability for consumer gear is not high on nearly everyone's (saying "most" would understate this) priority.
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The cost of disposal/devolution/recycling ought to be in the price of everything. The landfills are filled with junk, some benign, most of it not. No one wants to take out the trash, deal with it, or allow discussion of it.
When I take long walks in the forests, what do I find? Plastic grocery bags, brought by the breeze. I take a kayak out onto a lake far away from humanity, and there are pop bottles from decades ago... and more plastic. Tires litter the backroads along with landscaping brush.
I work in elec
Maintenance lacks the glamour of innovation? (Score:2)
Maintenance lacks the glamour of innovation
Maybe, but there's something pretty fantastic about something like this: Commodore 64 left outside for over a decade! Could it still work?? [youtube.com]
Why the premise that they are mutually exclusive? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's a lot of assumptions, too. If it's cheaper to make something that lasts 10 years and then gets replaced, then do that.
Think of it this way: humans build machines, produce electricity and energy storage, mine and recycle materials, refine things, build components, assemble products, and ship and retail them. That's a lot of human labor, and it's reflected in the price of products--yeah, it's not that the mining equipment is expensive, but that the labor to create it, maintain it, and fuel it is exp
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You're going to spend $2,400 on high-quality oil changes for your engine, and another $100 on spark plugs, every 100,000 miles. You might spend $800 for an engine rebuild around 200k-300k. If you don't maintain that engine, you're spending $6,000 for a remanufactured engine swap somewhere around the 80,000-100,000 mark, if not closer to the 50,000 mark. Which is cheaper?
You must buy dome awesome spark plugs.
And you raise one interesting aspect that is true.
There is another aspect out there though, and that is at what point do we decide that it is time for the technology to stop?
When do we become technological Amish?
The right to repair concept includes a decision process enforced by law that will force interesting things like a return to discrete components, highly accessible design, and the death of a lot of the innovation we take for granted today. I could envisi
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I think we're already headed that way. Most people change their computers a lot less than in the early days of home computing. Even tablets sales have been slowing down and people don't feel the need to buy a new one. The closer we get to "peak computing capacity per watt", the more the need to upgrade goes down.
My main computer is a Mac mini relea
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My main computer is a Mac mini released in 2010. I "repaired" it three times by upgrading the RAM, swapping the HDD by a low-end SSD and replacing the fan.
You lucky bastard! I can't do that on my new Mac :*(
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And I'm scared to the bones about what Apple is going to unveil on the 30th.
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"I think we're already headed that way. Most people change their computers a lot less than in the early days of home computing."
I dunno. Other than this year or next year's games, I can't think of much that can't be done on a 5 year old machine. Sure, add some RAM, maybe swap in a bigger or faster hard drive or go SSD, but I think what has driven consumer average non-geek computer purchases have iether been hardware failure, a new OS is released, or a new CPU is released.
In the past 5 years though the cap
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There is another aspect out there though, and that is at what point do we decide that it is time for the technology to stop?
Hey look, I'm rich; I can spend $50,000 on a brand new car, and in 5 years I'll buy another one.
You lot don't get that luxury. You can buy my nice, shiny Audi S5 for $12,000 when it's 10 years old and have a nice car with 70,000 miles on it. That's efficient. Your econoshitbox of today isn't on-par with a nice Audi luxury car from last decade.
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There is another aspect out there though, and that is at what point do we decide that it is time for the technology to stop?
Hey look, I'm rich; I can spend $50,000 on a brand new car, and in 5 years I'll buy another one.
You lot don't get that luxury. You can buy my nice, shiny Audi S5 for $12,000 when it's 10 years old and have a nice car with 70,000 miles on it. That's efficient. Your econoshitbox of today isn't on-par with a nice Audi luxury car from last decade.
Audi S5? That is so cute.
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All this is nice and correct, except it only take labor costs into account. Mining raw materials and throwing waste are not zero-cost. They cause a big impact, but economists, specially those promoting free market, prefer to ignore it.
One word: modularity. (Score:5, Informative)
There's an easy solution to all those problems - modularity. You can streamline the process even further by spending a few extra cents per unit installing well-considered diagnostic elements so that it's easy to determine what's wrong.
Dead toaster? Test the coils. Test the cord. Test the switch. If one of them has a problem, replace it. If none does, replace the electronics board (which is not "the toaster" - in fact it's probably one of the cheaper components in it). Total diagnostic time - 5min. Total repair time, 10min. After all, all you need to do is remove a few screws, unplug the faulty module, and install a new one.
If a device takes hours to diagnose, and more hours to repair, it's because it wasn't designed for easy diagnostics and repair. That's a failure of design, not an argument against the value of repair.
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So, here's the thing. You ever wonder what it costs to make a sound card? Let's go with OPL-3. You're going to need a $0.86 YMF-262 and a $1.03 YMF-512 DAC.
Well, hold on. You also need a temperature-stable clock source, so you need a crystal oscillator. You need to set the clock, so you need an RC circuit. You need to couple the clocks between the two chips, which requires more than just a wire. Your ground needs a noise filter, basically just a polypropylene pf capacitor.
In the end, just to mak
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You ever wonder why most microwaves have keypads and digital interfaces rather than the old fashioned timer knob? It's not because it's "cool" and "modern" - it's because the knob is more expensive than the keypad, display, and electronics combined. Electronics are *very* rarely the expensive part in an appliance. In part because high precision and noise exclusion is vary rarely required.
In fact, audio (particularly digital-to-analog audio) is probably one of the more demanding endeavors in that regard -
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Digital electronics require those kinds of timers. Audio is pretty demanding, but not as much as you'd think: that's pretty vanilla digital IC stuff.
You suggested a diagnostic circuit built into a toaster. That's going to require some circuitry, several inputs, and a microcontroller with a clock. You're not looking at 3-4 pennies here to add a self-diagnostics port to a toaster; you're looking at $3-4 dollars just to get started, before connecting up any input sources to the diagnostics module. For
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There's an easy solution to all those problems - modularity. You can streamline the process even further by spending a few extra cents per unit installing well-considered diagnostic elements so that it's easy to determine what's wrong. Dead toaster? Test the coils. Test the cord. Test the switch. If one of them has a problem, replace it. If none does, replace the electronics board (which is not "the toaster" - in fact it's probably one of the cheaper components in it). Total diagnostic time - 5min. Total repair time, 10min. After all, all you need to do is remove a few screws, unplug the faulty module, and install a new one. If a device takes hours to diagnose, and more hours to repair, it's because it wasn't designed for easy diagnostics and repair. That's a failure of design, not an argument against the value of repair.
You're ignoring one of the big problems and that's logistics. Chains buy something in bulk, sell it in bulk through stores and discontinue it. Unless it's a name brand the manufacturer doesn't want to sit on parts and neither does the chain. And even if they do the demand is too thin and sporadic to have it anywhere but a big central warehouse. Years down the road maybe neither of them are in business anymore or they're out of stock. All of this amount to risk, shipping cost and the need for a parts store,
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Ok so lets say you now have a $10+$1 toaster. But you now need to maintain a logistics chain + inventory buffers for each of those parts. And for recycling/trashing the older "pieces". Your toaster may have the global sales volume to setup & run a set of factories for two weeks, but what about these parts? How do you forecast their demand? Huge centralized operations have a hard time factoring in the cost of replacement parts to meet a laptop model's 3 year warranty requirements. Many will just re
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We already have the disposal chain for the old parts - same as we use for the whole toaster - the rubbish bin. Sure, there's lots of room for improvement - but that's a completely separate issue from repair - other than the fact that repair can reduce it dramatically - tossing a dead part is a lot less waste than tossing the whole thing.
As for your production-line forecasting issues. Yes - you have a point. There's a solution there too though, sort of the natural partner to modularity - standardization.
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I was wondering the same, what do they have to do with each other at all?
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There really needs to be both. We tend to get caught up in Consumer Technology and how hard it it is to repair. This is akin to the ancient pottery shards, archeologist dig up. Our ancient ancestors rich or poor. Probably had acquired some pottery, then it broke, from a fall, or just from a lot of use. In theory they could repair them, but after it became unusable they got themselves a new one. Because the cost of getting/making a new one is less then trying to repair it.
However for these same people clot
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Where are you seeing exclusivity? I see "is A as important as B? Because right now B gets all the attention"
That's the diametric opposite of a mutually exclusive statement.
No (Score:2)
That was easy one.
That depends... (Score:5, Interesting)
On a lot of things. One of those things is a side-effect of the rate of change of computer systems.
Sure, my Tandy 2000 from 30 (or so) years back should be repairable. But that would require that the maker continue making parts for 30 or so years. Which would make sense if nothing much had changed in 30 or so years.
Alas, a smartphone today has more computing power than my Tandy 2000 did. Making parts for the Tandy 2000 today makes about as much sense as making parts for a stagecoach does.
As is, for the most part, spare parts are made as long as it's profitable to do so. And no, the fact that seventeen people in Maryland want to be able to repair their Tandy 2000's doesn't mean that it's worth the bother of maintaining archaic machine tools, training operators for same, and distributing parts to stores for display on strictly limited shelf-space....
Of course, there are other considerations sometimes. For instance, pollution control laws exist. Allowing the owner of a vehicle to bypass the pollution controls on his vehicle (or just to muck them up by accident) is generally considered a bad thing.
And on and on.
Short form: yes, you should be able to repair your stuff. Except when you shouldn't....
Re:That depends... (Score:5, Informative)
But those Tandy 2000's aren't glued shut. The owners can try to find other Tandy 2000's to scavenge working parts from them to repair their own Tandy 2000.
The right to repair should be separate from the right to be able to buy parts for the repair. That would at least mean smartphones with easy to replace batteries, displays, PCBs, casings, buttons, etc.
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The point being made is that while philosophically it is great that something is repairable, it seems unjustified. Only a handful of gray beards even want a Tandy 2000, and zero of them actually use it for "real work".
Let's take an original iPhone for a second, how many people today would be daily users on an iPhone 1 today if Apple put a bin of them out front in original condition for free, contingent on actual daily usage? By current standards the network speed is awful, then screen is crude and small,
Ease of repair is a function of design (Score:2)
But in fact, as he pointed out, repairing things is often trickier than making them.
That's usually a result of shitty design. Designing something so that it can be repaired easily costs money and is (usually) more difficult so unsurprisingly people/companies prefer not to bother if they don't have to. If something is difficult to repair it is usually because they didn't adequately consider repair during the design of the product. Once in a while you run into a product that is made intentionally hard to repair (Apple I'm looking at you) but most of the time it's just benign neglect and/o
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But in fact, as he pointed out, repairing things is often trickier than making them.
That's usually a result of shitty design. Designing something so that it can be repaired easily costs money and is (usually) more difficult so unsurprisingly people/companies prefer not to bother if they don't have to. If something is difficult to repair it is usually because they didn't adequately consider repair during the design of the product. Once in a while you run into a product that is made intentionally hard to repair (Apple I'm looking at you) but most of the time it's just benign neglect and/or economics.
Okay, let's play the game.
You are designing an electronic device. You have been tasked with making it repairable.
How many years do you design it to be repairable for? To make it easy, choose between 5 and 250.
Do you design it to be repairable at the discrete or board level? Taking your length of repairability number in mind, how do you assure that the parts needed are available for that entire time. Include recalls up to 100 percent.
note: sourcing parts has become a bit of a headache for produce
Prisoner's dilemma (Score:2)
How many years do you design it to be repairable for?
That's a decision that has to be made and there will be trade offs as a result both in economics and performance. I did not argue that everything should be made as easy to repair as possible so you are putting up something of a strawman here. I merely pointed out that repairability is almost always a function of product design and that many companies these days are electing to design products that are hard to repair because it is in their (usually short term) financial interest to do so even when it negat
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1. Primarily use common, standard parts instead of custom ones unless there is a really good reason not to.
2. Make the firmware available for download, so the MCU or the flash chip can be replaced and then flashed.
3. Use standard li-ion batteries, there are various flat li-ion batteries available if one is needed.
4. Whatever custom parts used, make them available to buy or make specifications/drawings available so that others can make those custom parts.
And yes, it may make the device slightly bigger etc. H
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Sometimes it's not the designers that get the blame. It's the retail outlets. Anecdote:
I have a nice Milwaukee battery powered hammer drill. Bought it years ago with a couple of NiCad battery packs. As time went by, the packs failed to take a charge, so I'd buy new ones. Several years ago, needing a new pack, the local big box hardware store said they no longer carried them. 'Why not buy a brand new drill?' Screw that. A bit of searching turned up the fact that Milwaukee sells replacement, plug-compatible
At this point, repair IS innovation (Score:3, Interesting)
"Innovation" is not making new things--that would be "invention". Innovation is bringing things to market that weren't available before.
Innovation can be as simple as offering the same car, but with financing that wasn't available before. Simple change, "innovation". (Peter Drucker, the late management writer, gives this exact example involving cars. Make of that what you will.)
Repair hasn't been a credible option in a long time for a lot of things. Make repair affordably available, and you're innovating.
Repair is Innovation (Score:2)
As repair encompasses the ability to update out of stock and/or out of date units. Innovation isn't contained to wholly new things but also in repurposing and updating the still functional.
Silly business paper.
Love the new slashdot (Score:2)
Repair is difficult (Score:2)
But in fact, as he pointed out, repairing things is often trickier than making them
Most people don't have a clue how to repair anything lets take your average mechanic. How many times have you had your car fixed only to have the problem return soon afterwards. Of course when the school dropout goes to mechanics class he is taught a few things however most lack investigative thinking. you walk in say you hear a rattle. after several hours (they said it took them that long) they found a bolt that was loose and tightened it. Very few of them question how or what caused the bolt to get loose
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How many times have you had your car fixed only to have the problem return soon afterwards.
Maybe it's because I know competent mechanics, very rarely - pretty much only if the problem is very intermittent and the mechanic was not able to reproduce it at all.
Or it maybe that my cars are old and not very complicated. OTOH it takes a bit more competent mechanic to diagnose the problem as there is no port to connect the scan tool.
It also may be that I do some of the repairs myself, especially for the intermittent problems (as I can be there when the problem occurs to try things out instead of going t
Freakonomics (Score:3)
This was discussed on the Freakonomics podcast several years ago - In Praise of Maintenance [freakonomics.com]. He had been doing a series on innovation and then did a counterpoint on how maybe maintenance was as much if not more important than innovation. It's a good podcast and goes into more detail than the short Economist piece.
Canada! (Score:2)
Me: Canada, woo-hoo!
You: Don't you want to know what numbers they're talking abo -
Me: Nope! Canada is number one! Woo-hoo!
Yes! (Score:2)
Fast Evolution (Score:2)
Products(and other things) evolve fastest if you can just replace the old ones. That's not just the case for living beings. It's a high-metabolic process, very wasteful but it allows to adapt quickly. Once you start to recycle and repair it slows down product evolution. Not just of the things you use longer but of all things connected to it somehow in higher orders.
We live in the anthropocene. We have large impact on many aspects of the planet and that includes the climate. You can disagree about how damagi
This outcome was planned. (Score:2)
Relative Importance Doesn't Matter (Score:2)
Repair's importance relative to innovation's importance is irrelevant unless they're mutually exclusive concepts-- which they're not. One can enhance/improve/maintain device repairability while furthering technological development. Repairability is simply be a constraint like weight, power consumption, dimensions, water resistance, etc. All of those factors are important and part of design. In certain applications, you may need to focus more on power consumption than maintaining water tightness, but for mas
Maintenance can be harder (Score:2)
There is an old joke about software. "Do you know why God was able to create the world in seven days? He didn't have an installed user base."
For software, maintenance is usually harder than writing new code. I assume that is also true for most products. I also agree that we need to spend more money on maintenance, especially on infrastructure. The infrastructure in the U.S. is in a deplorable state.
Glued Battery (Score:2)
How is glueing in the battery so you can't replace it "Innovation"?
That is like making a car with epoxy tire attachment.
Tires are bald time to throw away the whole damn car!
Tragedy of the commons (Score:3)
The lack of the ability to repair is a tragedy of the commons. People are willing to pay more for a sealed phone at the expense of the environment when they throw it away. The commons is the environment that nobody owns but everyone benefits from. This is exactly the sort of thing that regulation is for.
Without Repair There IS Not Innovation (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't affect me (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a step further, I eliminated the need of throwing the junk away by not buying it.
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I'm a step behind, I still need to buy a trashcan.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Interesting)
If anything, it would be in the best interest of politics to enforce that things have to be repairable. If politicians put their money where their mouth is, making things repairable IS where "taking jobs home to the US" is.
That would take care of all the thinks currently done. First, repairing locally is cheaper than sending stuff halfway around the globe. Repair shops would pop up quickly where people with the skill to repair sell that skill to those that need it. It's also one of the best kinds of industries you can possibly have, because you're selling raw work force with a minimum of investment. This would be American as all hell, something where someone who has little money but lots of skill and talent can start a business. And it would instantly also take care of the postal bickering with China, because that is only a problem because sending stuff from China to the US is cheap and nothing moves the other way. China would either have to accept that fewer things get shipped over here, because the stuff isn't thrown away but repaired, or they have to accept that they, too, have to uphold their part of the deal and deliver the returns for free, too. Which they won't.
So if our politicians really were about getting jobs back, they wouldn't try to bribe large corporations into building plants here. All they really had to do is to force them to make their shit repairable. But, of course, where's the kickback in that?
Re: Politics (Score:2)
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(...) it would be in the best interest of politics to enforce that things have to be repairable (...)
With rules like that, it would have been quite difficult to introduce the IC. How do you repair an IC?! The primary reason these days that things are becoming increasingly difficult to repair, is further integration and minimization. While in some very specific cases (I'm thinking about batteries or exposed/vulnerable parts like cameras and screens), it may make sense to be able to repair things, in general it does not make sense; repairability makes things more expensive to make, it makes parts larger and
Re: Politics (Score:2)
An individual IC might not be "repairable" in any meaningful way, but there are also very few modes of failure where a literal single IC fails independently of nearly everything around it. Unlike, say, the screen on a phone, tablet, or laptop (which can break, suffer cable or interconnect failure, etc), batteries (which can, do, and are 100% EXPECTED to degrade over time), mechanical switches & fans, anything directly exposed to 100-240v AC or involving electrolytic capacitors, etc.
If a vendor wants to
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Does the term "spare parts" mean anything to you? By your logic, I can't repair my car because I cannot repair my oil filter but have to replace it when it fails.
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Is the IC something I can go and buy at an electronics store, like a capacitor? No problem then.
If the IC is something that cannot be bought in a store, for example, a microcontroller with firmware, then the manufacturer should be forced to sell them to anyone who has bought the complete product. The manufacturer should also be forced to make service manuals available to anyone who has bought that product.
But if the product then lasts much longer, then it is better for the environment. If a cell phone can b
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There would obviously be "things" that are simply not repairable, such as smaller components, like ICs, of some larger "thing". The point is making the larger "thing" repairable by being able to replace its non-repairable components, like ICs, rather than having to discard the entire larger "thing" when it breaks.
But where do draw the line between "repairable" and "non-repairable"?
An iPad has some repairable components and some non-repairable components. The glass, chassis, and battery are replaceable, and if you break one of those components you may currently have them replaced by Apple or a local vendor of your choice.
All the other major components are embedded into a small PCB with a few chips doing everything. If one of chips cracks or burns out, the most expensive part of the iPad is toast. The PCB cannot
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Taken to the illogical extreme, if we declare that SoC's and IC's are not allowed because they're not "repairable" we'll have to go back to room-sized computers that require dedicated power plants to operate.
How about this:
Manufacturer has to publish the service manual for the device, available to anyone who has bought said device.
Manufacturer has to sell custom parts for the device (parts that cannot be bought from another store, including programmed microcontrollers if you do not want to publish the firmware) for at least 10 years after release of the device.
If one of chips cracks or burns out, the most expensive part of the iPad is toast. The PCB cannot be unsoldered and repaired for a reasonable cost, you may as well buy a new iPad.
It depends, even BGA chips can be replaced by someone who knows what he's doing and has the right equipment.
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Component size has nothing to do with this; it's about component integration. Repairability requires components that can be replaced independently from each other. ICs are the primary example of grouping components. A reasonable level of repairability requires limiting integration of components and often even requires the introduction of mechanical connectors over plain old soldering or glue. I think considering ICs different is super arbitrary; they're just components effectively glued together for economi
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I don't think a repair economy would work. How much of a $50 item would you pay to repair it? How much would you charge to repair stuff? Would that be enough to live off of and also provide value back to the repaired item? Even if you were to assume the part acquisition cost was close to the original raw part cost and ignored all the inventory holding costs in the supply chain, just labor wise, it would still be expensive.
Each part would have its own supply chain linkup (of course most would be shared with the whole product). So there would be multiple supply chain links for the same product; which lowers predictability. The labor units in all those links also have a cost. The defect rate within those links would actually increase the cumulative defect rate & cost of the repaired product. Then there is a forecasting of the demands of various parts. In today's tech, you would actually end up with more waste. But lets assume we have the Walmart logistics system of 2050 and those are all automated and highly reliable and forecasting of parts requirements is better or equal to just the product.
An economy that has high labor cost like US, doesn't mean people just cost more. It also means that people must produce more too. Either through automation, or specialized skills (ie: a forklift driver costs more than 50 people in around country, but produces more results). Repair positions need to bring in enough revenue to sustain the "average lifestyle" of that community. Unless we have double digit unemployment where that average is low enough; a repair position just won't be worth it.
Example: for a $25000 car, you don't need to do your own oil change. There is a sustainable industry for that, and it wouldn't exist if that is all they did. It is actually subsidized by all the other services that shop provides. But for your $250 lawn mower, there is no industry to replace the oil. Even for the expensive car, there is no workforce to pump fuel. Because the revenue for those services will be less than the societal necessitated labor cost.
I am not saying a repair system won't work or we shouldn't encourage it. We all change our own vacuum bags, residential air filters, usb cables, AA batteries, etc. So if the product was built to be easily repaired many would use their own "free labor" to do so. I just don't think it would sustain a segment of commerce and solve the labor problems in our society. Or the labor problem will go away, but societal advancement would take a hit.
BTW, there are LARGE parts of our economy that are repair based. Big equipment like AC Units, farm/mining/construction/industrial machines, hospital systems, airplanes, ships, cars, etc. But these are all big ticket items and we are talking about more commodity level stuff here... like your laptop, cell phone, water bottles, microwaves, furniture, toaster, milk/juice/egg cartons, etc. And these are actually repaired and/or reused in more developing economies.
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We certainly won't get a repair economy for dollar-shop items. But it is by far not dollar-store items anymore that are the only thing that cannot be repaired. We carry around electronic gadgets costing hundreds to thousands of USD constantly, with the constant danger of breaking due to accidents and neglect. And facing the choice between having it repaired for 100 or buying a new one for 1000, you're looking at an industry waiting to start.
All that's needed is that this phone can be repaired. And not just
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How much of a $50 item would you pay to repair it?
Depends on what's broken, probably $25.
I have actually repaired a couple of broken PC power supplies where I paid about the same for the new parts as I did for the PSU itself. The reason is that now the PSU has a fan with ball bearings and proper capacitors.A PSU like that would cost more compared to the original or the cost of the new parts.
I have noticed a consumer mindset in some people though. "My $x is broken, it would cost $40 to repair it, I might as well add $300 more and buy a new one for $340".
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I'd say $49.95 to repair would work for many. The point of fixing is the convenience because you don't have to learn the newer model and get to keep what you're familiar with, plus the huge benefit of not dumping stuff into landfill (not directly seen by consumers trained to not noticethis).
But practically, 10% of the price is quite reasonable. It was not that long ago that the television repair shop was common. Similar for major appliances. The costs of a new model might not be terribly high but was al
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First, repairing locally is cheaper than sending stuff halfway around the globe. Repair shops would pop up quickly where people with the skill to repair sell that skill to those that need it.
Depends entirely on what's being repaired. Let's imagine I want to open a repair shop in San Francisco. To pay the shop's rent, taxes, utilities, a salary for myself and everything else I discover I need to charge $150 / hour + parts.
So someone brings in a TV for repair with a power supply problem, and you tell t
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Well, we're getting back to this level with our cell phones, so...
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Also, not everywhere was San Francisco, and that place is an anomaly. In the past a town might have a rich section, a middle class section, and a poor section, and setting up a repair shop in the poor section would get you customers from the entire town. Also the television or appliance repair person would have a van and would be able to drive all over the place to fix things.
People were also much less wasteful in the past. Possibly because we had generations that remembered the depression or the rationi
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Would you rather repair a politician or throw one out?
Unfortunately, the comparison is between repairing a politician and getting a new one.
I'm not sure there's an upside.
Re: Politics (Score:2)
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If we throw out the politicians, will they stick around stinking up the dump and seeping into the water table?
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The real issue is that for most people, health care is paid for either by employers or by medicare if you're retired. Everyone else in comparison is an outlier, and yet that's where all the political angst is.
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If your employer paid for DMV services in the same way that they pay for health care, it wouldn't necessarily get better. We might be on the phone on hold for 8 hours instead of standing in line for 8 hours, and when we got a person on the other end of the phone it would be someone outsourced in a differen country. Private services have not yet proven themselves better than public services.
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Yeah but one is more important than the other.
"Enjoy your food is this vacuum chamber, moron!
I'm outside with plenty of air so I'm going to starve to death in a few weeks instead of seconds!"
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preserve the environment
I wonder how much environment I've saved by keeping a couple of 40 year old cars on the road.
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How do you know nothing possessing a camera has not been hijacked
Are you the person who e-mails me for Bitcoin because he has hijacked my webcam and threatens to release the pictures?
I would have sent the payment. But I'm so poor, I can't even afford a laptop with a webcam.
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That's because the phone is not designed to be repairable. There's usually 3-4 major chips in a cell phone, and there's absolutely no reason those chips couldn't be socketed rather than soldered. The device is already inherently modular, it's only the *choice* of interconnections that makes it monolithic and difficult to repair.
Yeah, at some point it stops making sense to make things more modular - your phone probably has RAM,CPU, and video all integrated into the same $5 chip, and it would drastically
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In point of fact, while pin-counts for, e.g. standalone CPUs are often quite high, most of those pins are usually for the memory bus, something that is internalized in the same SoC package in most consumer modern electronics. The remaining pins are generally used to interface with electronics orders of magnitude slower - high-def video feeds being the primary exception. Modem? Audio? That stuff's positively glacial in comparison. Even video isn't actually much trouble - it gets transmitted through press