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- Sep 11, 2015
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I agree, but I argue there's a point to how reparable and upgradable you want to make everything. There is no such thing as making every single product out there easily repairable. So where do you draw the line? I argue that you don't need it for most modern electronics because they have very high reliability. If you have to literally smack the s**t out of it with a hammer or throw it into the river to break it, then you have solved a problem that you shouldn't even have had in the first place, if you just didn't do these things.
You have to weigh out the amount of extra material you'll have to use to make everything extremely repairable and upgradable against the actual benefit. Most people are somehow conditioned to be way more paranoid about their electronics breaking all of a sudden for no reason at all. This is quite ludicrous and doesn't happen nearly as often as people fear.
I can't even remember the last time some electronic product just stopped working for no reason since 2003 or something and that was an old CRT TV that got discolored and was probably made way before 2000. All my old LCD monitors still work that I have been buying since 2004 or so. I only threw my 15" and 17" LCD monitor away since they just go that old, not because they were broken. This is almost always how it works these days, you throw it away because it gets too old, not because it breaks. My first smartphone I bought still works just fine, it just has a 3" screen and is stuck on Android Gingerbread, so I would rather just throw it away. It sucks, but what do you suggest there? Macs for all their hate have an amazing track record for being used sometimes 10+ years, resold and bought second hand very frequently and continue to hold their value many more years than most laptops. I bet if you go to any big garbage pile you'll find many more cheapo notebooks that are way more repairable than MacBooks, but people just don't bother with them because maybe they are just garbage products in the first place like those old monitors I didn't want to use anymore. Even if they still worked just fine. Have you thought about that? At least Apple doesn't make their phones and tablets suddenly obsolete through software like everybody else does. Some others maybe are learning this right now but Apple has been supplying even their oldest products consistently with updates for years. That's every Android user's wet dream right there. Apple also makes products that you want to almost cherish and collect, that's how much the design is like a work of art. There's a totally different connection people can have with Apple products to the point where I would have no problem hanging them on my wall after they get too old. But at that point we really just need to advance recycling technology and use highly recyclable materials to really make some difference for the planet. We don't need a grand illusion about some "right to repair" that will suddenly solve everything. It really might just make things even worse coupled with a nice, warm feeling that you're doing something for the planet. Perfect!
TL;DR
That's the real problem that needs solving. How do we recycle these things, not how to make everything repairable that doesn't even break all that often. Again, think about all the EXTRA materials you have to put into all the things just to make everything repairable.
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