232. Repair vs. Design

Apple has built their brand on a fanatical commitment to design, but their devices can be straight-up hostile when it comes to repair & maintenance. Maybe one leads to the other.

-Links for the Curious-

[Infantry]

One thought that I heard some years ago put a fine lens on the Reduce-Reuse-Recycle mantra, that too much focus was on Recycling, spending time and money on facilities and education around enabling recycling plastic. The suggestion of an alternative was to essentially read that list in priority order: it's much easier to reduce our impact on the environment if we consume less, and using what we have to its utmost before replacing (along with recycling) also decreases usage.

I only have so much interest in repairing electronics personally (lots of failures and it's still pretty cheap, should look into a club though), but I've taken the angle elsewhere, and enjoyed my time with it. For instance, lots of clothes are poorly made and don't last, but I kind of enjoy the aesthetics of patches anyway, and it means I buy clothes way less often. I also could buy some proper furniture for work space, but re-using an old multi-part desk gets me what I need. For furniture in particular, since I'm less concerned with it being a particular way than I am about it serving its function, I've found lots of success in screwing part into it where I needed them to be to provide a tie point or leverage or what have you.

I think I started a love for these aesthetics from the original Matrix movie, the Nebuchadnezzar, with its many random screens and thrown together pipes and old seats, humanity doing everything they can to survive, not having a choice but to fit everything into a personalized space on each ship. I guess that's where my feelings come to, when considering right to repair and its space in our future fighting against climate control. I think we realistically can't re-buy stuff as much as we are now, and these kinds of attitudes are going to need to become some amount more prevalent.

Another great video, thanks once again for your hard work :)

[charizard]

I'm still hoping to see a modular phone someday. I miss the phones of 7+ years ago that were really repairable, like Nexus 5, my mom, grandma, and myself used these phones for 5 years, couple battery swaps, screen swaps, even managed to teach my mom how to do fixes herself, and she did some.

I built a super powerful portable battery pack years ago which was under 20 lbs in weight but spit out serious power, it could ouptput >2 kW AC 120V (16Ah 12.8V LiFePO4 cells), just as much as a standard 15-20 amp USA circuit. The pack was built encased in a fully serviceable all wood housing which looks pretty cool, and it performs great with circular saws and other power tools I've used it with. Fast forward to now and I just recently bought enough cells to make 10 more packs, and my carpenter friend is working up some well polished wood housings for the packs. The values that I am putting into this design are... zero-plastic design (well except for a few zip ties and insulators but you get the idea).

[adversary]

We're in the middle of what I like to think of as "garbage dump economics". The goal of companies is actually to get their product out of your hands and into the dump as fast as possible. It's a sickness inherent to the system, the demand for infinite upward growth.

[yevgeniygorbachev]

It's a bit odd to me how the "just don't hold it that way" scandal didn't clue a lot of Apple users into the fact that this is universal to everything Apple makes

[ferulebezel]

My favorite piece of furniture is my 65 year old Steelcase tanker desk that I got for $20.00 before I knew they were trendy. I'm still kicking myself for not getting the second one that was offered with it.

Of course this isn't just

One thing you forgot to mention is upgradability. Phones should be titanium bezel with a sapphire screen with the requisite buttons on the sides and connectors on the sides. If a watch stem can be made watertight to 300 meters surely a usb C, sim card, and SD card connectors, and the leads for the antennas, both xmitting and charging, can be. Buying a new phone should just be a new circuit board that is slapped in the old case that is held closed with screws. Batteries could be easily changeable through this scheme as well.

I'm not facing the problem with my shaver. I had to break several seals to get to the battery. I don't know if I;ll be able to repair them when I get the new one. But I have to give it a shot since I stocked up on replacement screens, knowing they would discontinue them in order to force me to buy a new shaver.

[alan]

Any discussion on Right to Repair is incomplete without discussing planned obselescence

[TheGemsbok]

I found myself struck by a surprising resonance when you started talking about the efforts of designers to instill particular values in their designs---a resonance with literary theory. People also casually speak of art objects as being expressions of 'designer' intentions, although in both cases the designer is mute when the object is in the hands or mind of the consumer. The creator has done their best at an act of communication, but their direct participation in that act is over when the object is in use. At that point, within the range of what is possible with the details that are in the work, the consumer does with it what they like.

[jonzo_]

Great timing. I've been contemplating a new MBP, or something like the Framework laptop.

[alan]

Love the reference to the "99% Invisible" podcast in 7:41

[PetersonSilva]

Amazing content as always. I might cite it in a metaphorical discussion in politics - not only the thing about designing social structures x imbuing them with new meaning by tinkering with them is powerful, there's a lot of feminist discourse about how capital-letter Production in classical Marxist accounts evoke muscular men in forgeries - and how most human work is in fact maintenance, especially of the social kind (care work). You produce a cup once but wash it a thousand times. Anyway, my brain has been tickled :)

[landspide]

I would be an Apple customer if they allowed sideloading apps. I understand why they can't though and also why Android has an edge on them there.

[passingthetorch]

Now I want a kintsugi Mac ... and I don't even like Apple

[paradox_]

Why dont people just switch to an Android if they people dont like the design of Apple? A design philosophy is not separate from the design itself, design is the manifestation of the philosophy behind it. If some dont like it, let them switch to Android or any number of other phones. Why demand that apple needs to change its design through activism?

[cazegner]

Stunning! You really need "PromoSM"!