../righttorepair

Ownership, technology, and convenience -- highlighting the issue through laptops

We live in a world where ownership of technology seems to be stripped away every day. It's not just being able to crack open your laptop and replace the storage, it's as bad as physical games being in their sunset period due to a bunch of technical and profit-driven reasons. It's really bad if you happen to be someone that is concerned with what they do and do NOT own in this current age. I don't like this trend and think for the most part it's anti-consumer.

However, it's important to understand that digital ownership and repairability are not something most consumers actually care about.

And I get it. The reason most consumers do not care whether or not their MacBook has SODIMM slots for replaceable memory and an M.2 slot for storage is because that's not something anyone does on a device they've spent more than a grand on.

People use their computers as a tool for an end. People will buy obtuse, difficult to buy cars because they offer the features and value they're looking for, and their work computer is no different.

It's not even necessarily people that aren't technically inclined. It needs to be made incredibly apparent that in a world where time is money, nobody wants to waste it on a computer. It makes a lot more sense to hand it over to a professional and have Genius Bar or the equivalent for the vendor they bought their computer from to figure it out.

Mobile hardware (laptops, phones, and tablets) have all become less modular, less repairable, and frustratingly, more functional. They're packed in smaller form factors with proprietary arrangements of components that might as well be a black box to normal consumers. Gone are the days of easily being able to pop off the back of your phone's battery and slip in another -- replacing screens and battery can mean removing the waterproof seal off your phone and navigating through tiny, hard to track cables and pieces. In a world where no one outside of a small minority is repairing computers, and where hardware vendors have realized this fact and capitalized on it, what's the best way to discourage waste and create a somewhat sustainable ecosystem for consumers?

Robust recycling programs are what the industry SHOULD be pointing towards. Unfortunately, as much as Apple, Lenovo, Dell, and others pride themselves on being eco-friendly, they're all notorious for wasting tons and tons of damaged hardware. This needs to be something strong-armed by the government -- sustainability is just too important.

Framework offers incredibly modular laptops at a premium, and it's cool that there's hardware out there that you can repair just like your modest Japanese car. Some people really, really want to be able to own and understand everything about the tools they need all day, and it's understandable.

Repairable devices can be treated like an extension of your body -- you can have a well-oiled machine just like a a healthy body.

The problem is Framework's offerings make no sense to most people. Repairability is cool, but who cares about that when it ships with a pretty standard IPS panel, loud fans, weak battery life, little to no vertical integration in the same vein as a Dell XPS or MacBook, and a bunch of other caveats? It's a cool novelty, but not something that actually makes sense for your average consumer.

Old ThinkPads are in the same camp here. This isn't coming from a hater, most of my history with laptops consists of Reddit golden child ThinkPads from yesteryear, fitted with RAM and screen upgrades, Wi-Fi chip replacements, and everything in between.

The T430 is widely loved because despite its bulky build, almost everything on the device can be repaired or replaced.* Let's take a look:

You can get a pretty solid laptop from 2013 to maybe... 2018 if you upgrade everything here. It's a heavy, massive brick that thermal throttles, doesn't support modern video codecs like VP9 or AV1 (have fun on YouTube and most of the modern web), and subpar 6 hour or less battery life even with that massive ass battery. It's incredibly fucking cool how it reaches PC-level upgradeability, but genuinely who cares? I have literally owned one and got through my first year of college with an upgraded T430 like this, so I'm speaking from experience.

There's no HDMI, no USB-C/Thunderbolt, only two USB 3 ports, mini-DP and VGA. It's packed with a ton of obsolete ports.

Okay, but what about something more modern? A T480, perhaps?

The T480 actually isn't too bad of an older laptop. I've used one for a decent amount of time and it's currently a daily driver while I wait to get a newer MacBook for myself. Let's look at its upgradability:

It's got two Thunderbolt 3 ports, solid build quality, and everything seems pretty appealing. You get a more pragmatic configurable laptop, and it might be a great daily driver for your Linux distro of choice or a Windows install.

So what's the problem? The severe thermal throttling (see a pattern?). Intel laptops have gotten worse and worse about this. The fans ramp up almost immediately if you even charge the damn thing, not to mention doing any kind of mildly intensive work. Aggressive undervolts are needed to not have an unbearably loud, hot computer.

The T480 style of more fresh, modern repairability seems incredibly awesome, but it's a real challenge to have an experience on par with what consumers expect nowadays.

Modern ThinkPads are often fitted with much more efficient Ryzen CPUs, and sip away at power quietly in comparison. While Lenovo's build quality has fallen off, they're still generally a better investment if you're the average consumer that values certain things more than being able to hypothetically upgrade their laptop.

The approach that works better for most consumers is buying all the hardware they need AT purchase and sticking with that machine until it gets old. It works for phones, and so laptops are literally no different in this regard.

Apple Silicon is the ultimate spit in the face to the entire hobbyist repairable laptop space.

It's incredibly frustrating knowing the reality is hyper-efficient, proprietary SoCs blow the entire laptop industry out of the water and have made everything else look silly. When you can squeeze 18-20 hours of battery life off current-gen offerings from Apple, when the integrated, unified, and impossible to replace memory and storage offer performance benefits, you start to realize that the tradeoff of it becoming a complete black box for consumers just does not matter.

It's not even that these kinds of proprietary components have to be entirely locked down -- Apple could easily introduce an ecosystem of proprietary modular components. They just don't care, and they KNOW their audience doesn't either. It's a smug "fuck you" that would only come from this company being on top for once after shipping garbage laptops from like 2016 all the way to 2019.

Apple will try to skirt around their general locked-down nature with half-assed programs like their self-service repair shit, but at the end of the day they know their customers are NOT opening up their computers. And honestly, neither am I.

Praying for a world where we can strike a better balance between convenience, repairability, and environmental sustainability.

M.

/mac/ /linux/ /windows/ /tech/