Apple solve this by making spares super expensive and only available from partners.

The legislation needs to stipulate what a "component" or "part" is, i.e. not the entire motherboard.

> Apple solve this by making spares super expensive and only available from partners.

This is even more hilarious: they sell you a "spare part" which is the logic board, for nearly the price of the laptop.

But they (1) do provide spare parts and (2) sell them at a ""reasonable price""

In my province, landlords cannot terminate a periodic tenancy except for a small number of causes, but they are free to change the rent price to whatever they want once a year. Result: if the landlord wants you gone, they just tell you your 2k per month rent is increasing to 20k per month and voilà, gone!

No user protection is effective unless it comes with some sort of price cap. This is why GPL requires the source code to be made available "for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source". Otherwise, a company could use GPL'd code in their product and say they are more than happy to give you a copy of the source code for 100 billion dollars.

NJ statewide has is no cap on increases in rent, but there is a requirement for good cause to terminate a lease. An unconscionable or unreasonablerent increase is illegal

That's a sensible approach. My province does not have a cap, period.

In my experience with Apple parts they are roughly in line with my expectations based on a) the price of the computer, and b) not being designed for any part to be replaced independently. These aren't great factors of course, but I'm not sure the problem is expensive parts.

I've usually found logic boards to be ~1/3-1/2 of the price of the machine, which considering they have the RAM/SSD soldered on, feels like ~1/3-1/2 of the value of the machine to me. Similarly, screens are often in the same sort of ballpark and I'd say that matches my expectations.

If you start from "how much does a motherboard cost" or "how much does a screen cost", that's going to miss a lot of the legit costs of additional components, higher quality components, or laptop form factor costing more.

Yeah, but if the only problem with your motherboard is a $3 IC that got fried and everything else is fine does it make sense to have to buy an entire new motherboard?

Having a price even if ridiculous allows researches to write papers like "What brand has the most affordable repairs".

Dear god that's a stretch of the word "researcher" if ever I've seen one. Yes, that article would take some "research" (as in, finding stuff) but nope, the person writing it wouldn't be a "researcher" for it. They'd be a journalist. At 9to5 or such probably.

I’m not sure it is. What verb does someone do when they collect and collate data about products at consumer reports, tom’s hardware, or even the low bar of linus tech tips?

I’d say while the primary role may be journalist at most of these types of orgs, there is definitely a role for people who focus on the research side of things, and if you’re actively running experiments and benchmarks, you are definitely moving out of the realm of simple observation. I certainly would like to benefit from the data of which phone is cheapest to repair. iFixit already does the research to grade repairability of devices.

What you describe sounds like the role of an analyst e.g. like the famous Patrick Moorhead

I think the role of an analyst is to draw conclusions from an existing dataset whereas research is the act of creating a new dataset.

also even if the price is really expensive, I would pay it if it meant recovering my lost data on a phone.

Indeed, though effective regulations requiring phone manufacturers and app developers to stop trying to lock your data into their device or software wouldn't be a bad thing either. The ability to back up your own data on your own terms would be a good start. Some recent legal changes, such as the GDPR in Europe, have attempted to guarantee this access when services have your data. But apparently having your own device lock you in is still OK for some reason.

That's okay - if people care about this they will stop buying Apple products.

Only in case there is a reasonable alternative.

Apple isn't the only manufacturer doing this. It's also quite common among PC manufacturers. And consumers aren't exactly provided this information openly to weigh this as a factor. The market cannot currently solve this problem because there's not enough transparency.

By that logic, we shouldn't bother recalling cars either since people will just stop buying the broken ones.

Another problem solved!

Do they? I think most consumers assume if a 40 cent part breaks on their computer they will pay 40 cents plus labor plus some part markup - the same way car, HVAC, and other repairs work.

That's why when people's computers break they take them to get repaired in the first place. Otherwise, consumers would just be tossing their broken devices and buying a new one.

If you're fairly well-heeled you certainly have the privilege of forgoing repairs and just buying new ones. Lots of tech enthusiasts who cycle through devices every year probably aren't bothered. But normal people who don't get excited at the prospect of purchasing a new 3 or 4 figure device appreciate being able to get their machine back in working order for a few hundred max.

Is that a problem? Should customers care?

I don't know for a fact if in isolation this is a problem or not a problem.

But from the perspective of the compound problem of getting repairability on track, this is an element within that compound that is lacking the drive of customer attention.

Given the awful environmental cost of "disposable tech", everyone should care about reducing waste and extending the working life of our hardware if only for that reason.

Of course it's also bad for society that we have so little effective competition in tech markets now that users think substandard products and user-hostile behaviours are normal. The race to the bottom is bad for everyone, and everyone being sold those products is being abused in the name of profit, whether or not any given individual is aware of how much it is happening to them or understands that better alternatives exist.

That's exactly my point. If customers don't care then who's this regulation serving?

Just because you don't care that the environment is suffering, and resources are being wasted, because instead of fixing things people throw them away doesn't mean that helping to mitigate those problems doesn't benefit you.

Or to use a crude analogy: just because babies don't care about having their nappy (ie diaper) changed doesn't mean it doesn't help them.

Look up tragedy of the commons. It is for the end-user, they just don't know it yet, believing that it is 'not their problem'.

As a practical matter some motherboards are now so tightly integrated that component level repair is no longer feasible.

Even if they are overpriced, I still want them available. If for no other reason, to ensure that battery replacement is possible. My last two phones were fine when I retired them, except for the battery. In the laptop world, I have kept some of my old devices in service for a long, long time by getting cheap battery replacements on ebay.

China makes spares of EVERYTHING for pennies.

which is gonna be useless if the part require write-only firmware which you cannot extract from the original part, eg. macbook's SMC.