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https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/hell-freezes-over-as-apple-supports-right-to-repair-bill/
Somewhere, ol' Beelzebub is putting on his thickest coat because Apple has endorsed a right-to-repair bill, suggesting hell has frozen over. In a letter dated August 22, Apple showed its support for California's right-to-repair bill, SB 244, after spending years combatting DIY repair efforts.
As reported by TechCrunch, the letter, written to California state Senator Susan Eggman, declared that Apple supports SB 244 and urged the legislature to pass it.
[...] The bill has been praised by right-to-repair activists like iFixit, who says the bill goes further than right-to-repair laws passed in Minnesota and New York. Minnesota's law was considered the most all-encompassing right-to-repair legislation yet. Some activists, though, lamented that companies aren't required to sell parts and tools for devices not actively sold. California's bill, however, keeps vendors on the hook for three years after the last date of manufacture if the product is $50 to $99.99 and seven years if it's over $99.99.
The bill also allows a city, county, or state to bring a related case to superior court rather than only a state attorney general, as noted by iFixit's blog post Wednesday.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday August 26 2023, @04:51PM (5 children)
The Right to Repair is about more than reducing e-waste (and waste) and consumer expense. It's about the right to be more self-sufficient, the right to explore, the right to learn from others. Without this right, corporations can make us more dependent than ever, more vulnerable to price gouging, and most damaging of all, more passive. Trying to dumb us all down.
l have disliked Apple for years, for this very reason. Their whole "ease of use" selling point was too much mere infantilization. I don't trust this report that seems to suggest Apple has had a huge change of heart. And reading the article more closely, they've loaded their agreement with all kinds of conditions, such as, the "genuine parts" crap that auto manufacturers have been pulling for years.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday August 26 2023, @08:52PM
If it's about decreasing e-waste down the road, it could be Apple noticing the European Union putting down spike strips [europa.eu] near the next exit. So they're preemptively, er, "slowing their roll".
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 27 2023, @12:37PM (3 children)
>It's about the right to be more self-sufficient,
That plays well in Peoria, but it's the opposite of business interests. Have you checked who owns your legislators, lately?
>the right to explore,
O.K. - now, you're getting into fringe territory. I'd wager that the majority of voters don't even want their fellow citizens having "the right to explore," since they feel, deep down, that a lot of those people are a lot smarter than them and if those smarty pants upstarts are let run loose they're gonna mess up everything for us conservative types and we're gonna fall behind. Can't keep up with the Joneses if the Joneses are profiting from disruptive innovation and you're not smart enough to copy them.
>the right to learn from others.
That part about not smart enough to copy them... also, have you seen the direction DeSantis is taking indoctrination (PC label: education) in Florida? He's minority, but he's not fringe - there's a good 1/3 of the U.S. that actually wants to go in that direction.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday August 27 2023, @01:49PM (2 children)
Ditch self-reliance in every matter that it can be ditched, in favor of avuncular care from the biggest and baddest, out of deep insecurity of not only not being capable of self-reliance, but also projecting, wrongly, that neither is anyone else nearby, does not increase security it merely shifts from one risk to a different and arguably bigger risk-- the risk of being horribly exploited.
There's good reason why farmers are among the biggest and first proponents of the Right to Repair. Farmers learned to be self-reliant and inventive. Some of my ancestors were among the first Europeans to settle on farms in the Midwest. The nearest general stores, doctors, dentists, and so forth were in a riverboat community on the Mississippi River, a week away, by wagon, on dirt trails. (You needed the wagon to haul back the supplies and goods you purchased that were intended to last for months or even years.) With help being that far away, you had to deal with with your problems yourself. That severe a test of self-reliance was soon eased as professionals soon followed, giving a small community a blacksmith, a doctor, law and justice, religious services, and finally, the railroad. Today of course, you could hop on the Interstate and reach the Mississippi in a couple of hours, if you needed to, which you wouldn't because services are far closer and more numerous. You also had to deal with grass fires, and though the army had quelled the natives, there was still the possibility of them attacking. Any wuss, moron, or layabout with that attitude of helplessness who couldn't cut it as a pioneer could stay in the east and take the scraps that fell from the tables there.
Be a real shame to lose that spirit of self-reliance that the frontier fostered. Among other things, would set us way back on the quest to one day colonize Mars.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 27 2023, @02:36PM
The entire GP was watermarked with a giant /s, Incase that didn't come through.
The current state of the world is already shamefully interdependent, with massive indoctrination to make people terrified of doing things themselves. It is good for world peace, and that's not a small consideration, but not much else, and it leaves the masses just as ripe for exploitation by the ruling classes as they always have been.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 27 2023, @02:51PM
>Farmers learned to be self-reliant and inventive.
That started dying with the advent of the steam powered tractor (and train) and has been vanishing into oblivion ever since. Modern farming for profit is no longer an independent venture where the farmer simply grows stuff and sells it. Maybe 0.2% of agricultural output in the USA could be characterized that way today. The rest is reliant on market forecasts, futures contracts, land leases, and a host of equipment and technology far beyond the financial means of most tractor drivers.
My ancestors immigrated to Tennessee in the early 1800s as indentured servants, and worked their way up to landowning farmers, but a couple of generations with 4 to 9 children divided that land to a point where my grandfathers migrated to Florida following World War II. When asked why he left the family farm my grandad would answer: "because I didn't like following a mule's ass around all day."
These days nobody bothers growing much for profit in Tennessee anymore, not like they used to at least. Over half the former farm land isn't farmed anymore, and that which is tends to be bigger operations than my family's old 400 acre plots.
Back East is now everywhere.
🌻🌻 [google.com]