TechStuff Tidbits: An Update on Right to Repair

And I've talked about this a few times on this show, so this is really more of a kind of a state of the right to repair movement in the United States. One of the stories I mentioned in yesterday's news episodes

was about this very topic. So the basic idea behind right to repair is this, when a consumer buys something a product, that product should be reparable by the consumer, or the consumer should be reasonably able to make their own repairs, perform maintenance, or even change it something about the product because they bought it, right, they bought the thing, they should be able to repair the thing or change the thing because the product at that point is no

longer the property of the manufacturer or the retailer or anything like that. It belongs to the consumer. It is there thing the transaction has concluded, and if the product requires some TLC down the line, the consumers should be able to do it themselves or choose whomever they want to do the work, because it's theirs. But that's not how a lot of tech product companies have evolved. Especially in recent years. Many companies have embraced the idea of

an entire ecosystem, from product to maintenance to repair. Capturing a customer in such an go system creates an ongoing source of revenue, and you can see how that would be attractive from a business perspective. In fact, we're gonna break it down just for funzies. Let's say we've got a company that makes widgets and it has two broad strategies it could choose between. Strategy Number one is to make the best gosh darn widgets in the world and

to sell them to customers with pride. And every person walking into your widget store represents an opportunity for a sale, and each sale represents the one and only revenue point with that customer, unless, of course, the customer decides to come back to you for their future widget needs. It's not easy work, but by golly, it sure is wholesome and rewarding. If that customer's widget breaks, well, the customer has every right to fix it themselves, or to take

it to an independent repair shop. Or maybe they'll come back to you and buy a brand new widget with the latest features. But your business lies on sales, and that's pretty much it. Strategy number two. You have set up an entire widget ecosystem. You own the means of production. Maybe you own retail establishments that sell finished products. Maybe there's a widget store in every major city, including flagship widget stores in places like New York or San Francisco.

Inside those stores, you've also created customer service departments. Let's call them the bar of smarty pants is. And if a customer buys a widget and something goes wrong with it, well, you create a policy that discourages the customer from trying to fix the widget themselves. Maybe you indicate that any such attempt will avoid the warranty, and that will leave the customer high and dry if something else happens that

they are not able to address themselves. Maybe you make the widget with special kinds of fasteners and you're the only one who has the appropriate tools to remove them. Using some other tool is likely to damn the widget further, and so your customers desperate to have a working widget come crawling to your store, lining up at the bar of smartie pants is for their turn to have someone who actually does have access to the proper tools to

make the changes, and the customers pay for this privilege. Heck, maybe you even set up a program where the customer can pay in advance for services that they may never need, and maybe you even call it something really ironic like widget cares. Now, with strategy one, you make money from a customer once or to be generous once per sale, since if the customers happy, they might come back to buy another one of your widgets later on. But each

transaction is isolated and finite. But with strategy too, you've looped that customer into a system where you can potentially make money off them multiple times, all from one purchase. So of course a lot of company these are going to go in that direction. It helps the company, but it can be potentially harmful or at the very least

inconvenient to the customer. And for independent repair shops, it's really bad news because in order to be part of this ecosystem, they would likely have to pay a hefty licensing fee to be welcomed into the fold. So either your your options then as an independent repair service person are to either pay money so that you can be part of this world or not pay the money, but then you miss out on a lot of repairs because of that. And in a big way, technology is facilitating

this trend. It's not just a business practice. The technology itself is making this easier to do because as technology gets more complex, you know, as products get more computerized, it gets more challenging for the average person or even some smaller repair shops to work on products effectively. Some products but come what we call black boxes, and by that we mean there is a lack of transparency. You cannot see how the device actually works. You could say

a lot of modern cars fall into this category. Now where even to get a diagnosis of whatever the problem is, you need to have a specialized computer to connect to your vehicle, as well as a knowledge of what all those error codes mean. And stuff like repair manuals can be well kept secrets in tech, meaning you might not be able to access the documents you would need to see how to go about making a repair in the

first place. The only folks who have access to these documents and the tools and the parts are the people who are already part of this ecosystem. Now, in some cases, customers can still attempt to do their own maintenance and repair, though they might have to jump through some arguably unnecessary hoops to do it. But in other cases, as I mentioned earlier, even attempting to do anything like that will

violate the warranty on a product. Companies say they do this to discourage folks from causing further damage to their devices by also to avoid sidestepping safety features that could bring harm to people anything that might be bad that could come as a result of tampering with a device. But the right to repair advocates argue that really this policy isn't to protect the consumer, it's a threat the companies hold over customers to keep them within these closed

ecosystems so that they can continue to exploit their customer base. Now, I'm not sure if you picked up on my subtle hints in my example earlier, but I was firing some shots at Apple and I know I'm a master of the veiled reference right. Anyway, Apple for a long time had a reputation for locking people into an ecosystem in multiple ways. They actually did it in a few different approaches.

So in one way, it was that whole maintenance and repair strategy in which for many years Apple did it's best to discourage or outright prevent customers from accessing and

changing Apple products that they purchased. But it also extended to the interoperability of Apple products, where in order to get the most out Apple product A, you also needed Apple product B. So, for example, when the iPod first came out, initially you really needed a Mac in order to set up the iPod and transfer music from your computer to the iPod because you couldn't do it just from the iPod itself. It wasn't, you know, uh, wireless. You couldn't connect it to WiFi or anything like that.

You had to pair it with a computer, and that computer initially had to be a Mac. Now, over time, Apple created ways for folks who had Windows based PCs to do the same sort of thing, though in my experience, the PC version of Apple products always felt clunky and bloated. And you might think, well, was this just a way for Apple to try and nudge people to purchase a Mac as their next computer. Because within the ecosystem things worked great. It only started to really get cumbersome once

you were starting to step outside that ecosystem. Now, I don't know if Apple was purposefully trying to make Windows based software worse on purpose, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were true. It's it's entirely possible that it was just that's just how it developed and it wasn't intentional, But I also wouldn't be shocked if it were intentional. Anyway, that's getting off track a little bit. It's related to

what we're talking about, but not directly about it. So Apple as a company was really looking at ways to extend revenue generation through hardware because that's what the company was primarily. It was a hardware company, and it made computers and B three players and smartphones and tablets. So most of its revenue generation strategies related to the production, the selling, the maintenance and the repair of those pieces

of hardware. But last year Apple launched a self service repair store, and through this store, Apple customers can access repair manuals, they can order genuine Apple tools and parts, and they can make their own repairs to their own purchases. The company gradually rolled out support for various Apple products, starting with the Iphoe twelve and thirteen lineups, So it doesn't cover everything Apple makes, but it is gradually covering

more and more products that Apple has produced. All Right, we're gonna talk more about why Apple did this and how it works when we come back from this quick break. We're back. So before the break, I mentioned that Apple had rolled out a self service repair store last year, and you might think, well, why would Apple do that?

There are a couple of different reasons. One reason is that there has been this rise in the right to repair movement, and it's it's a tide that's slowly gaining some ground in the industry, and some companies like Apple might be trying to get ahead of that to make sure that they're not caught unawares when or if this ends up becoming you know, law in various places. So

they're getting ahead of the game. But another one is that for the last several years, Tim Cook has really been pivoting Apple to become more of a service oriented company.

So it still makes hardware and still sells it obviously, but Tim Cook has really focused on making services a major part this major source of revenue for the company, and the company has done very well as a result of that, although there has been more recent resistance to that approach to but you could argue, well, one reason Apple can ease off on the whole ecosystem thing is because it has found a different avenue for generating money,

so it's not like it's taking an enormous hit. Another reason is that the self service repair store it's not exactly something that the average person is going to take advantage of. So a customer wanting to repair their own, say iPhone twelve, can use the self service repair store to get access to the repair manual, they can identify the parts and tools they'll need to perform the specific repair they're interested in. Then they can order those tools

and parts from Apple itself. And Apple promises that it will send out the same quality parts and tools that it would provide to officially licensed Apple repair providers. So it's not like the self repair folks are going to get, you know, cheap knockoffs. They're going to get the real thing. And this was a pretty darn darn big change for the company. Uh and I think the reason why they feel comfortable doing it is they really don't expect most

customers to actually go the self repair route. It turns out the specialized tools that Apple has developed do not come cheap, and unless you are running your own repair business, it starts to get hard to justify the expense. So, for example, Apple has a display press. It looks a bit like a major printing press, and it's, as the name would indicate, its purpose is to help install a

display in an iPhone. This is a tricky and delicate job, so the press on its own, which is just one tool you would need to do a display replacement within an iPhone, costs more than two dollars. So when you start looking at the cost of repairs, it can get to a point where it would make more sense financially to bring the device into an Apple store and have it repaired there, or to bring it to a licensed Apple repair shop, because you'd be likely to spend less

money going through Apple's ecosystem anyway. Then if you try to sidestep it. Now, Apple does allow customers to rent a toolkit that contains most of the tools you would need, but apparently not all of them according to at least some of the reviews I've read, and that would cost forty nine dollars each time you rented the toolkit. So for some repairs, the rental plus the cost of replacement parts might squeak in under the amount that you would

spend at a repair shop. But then you start asking yourself if it makes more sense to just go with the experts and spend a little bit more without having to worry about doing the whole thing yourself, because there's also the investment of time and effort, and if you've never done it before, there's a really good chance that you're not going to get it exactly right first time out the gate. So that's a lot of trial and

error as well, and a lot of frustrations. You started asking yourself, well, is it worth it or should I just go to the Apple store anyway. On top of that, I've read some articles in which journalists attempted to use the self repair system to do some work on their own devices, and they found it really difficult to do. The jobs can be really delicate and precise and complicated, and sometimes you have to do stuff like use a certain amount of force to open a case, but if

you use too much, you could break the thing. So it's tricky and a lot of articles I've read had headlines that were similar to I tried to repair my own iPhone and it was a disaster. But still Apples change means you aren't reliant solely upon the Apple Genius bar or Apple service stores to get your Apple products repaired. You could take it to an independent shop that could handle it for you, and that's where you might end

up saving money. If the independent shop has invested in the parts and the tools, because over time they're gonna do enough repair jobs to pay off that investment, then that might be the best bet. So you do still have more options if you find a good independent repair store that is not an official Apple store. That is an improvement. Now, yesterday I talked about a company that has long had a history of locking down products, and this time it's John Deer. This is the company that's

best known for stuff like lawn mowers and farm equipment. Now, over the years, John Deer has made their products more difficult to access and repair, urging farmers to take equipment to licensed John Deer Service centers. They do this through

lots of different means. A lot of them are software related, because there actually are lots of sophisticated geter systems on John Deer equipment, and the software has meant both to enable features and to kind of lock stuff behind John dear proprietary software so that you have to go to one of these licensed service centers in order to get

any maintenance or repair performed on your equipment. Now, that's not necessarily the most convenient or cost effective option for farmers, assuming that they had the chance to go somewhere else. If you lock them into a system that could require them to travel further and spend more money just to get their equipment to a service center, that's pretty brutal. But recently, John Deer signed a memorandum of Understanding or MoU with an organization representing American farmers that will loosen

these restrictions a bit. Now, farmers and independent repair shops will be allowed to access repair manuals, they'll be able to get proper to rules and replacement parts, but there are some restrictions here. One of those is that farmers and repair shops are not supposed to reveal any John

dear trade secrets. So if the repair involves accessing materials that would reveal such things, they may not be able to get access to that, and they may still have to go to a John Deer service center, or they are obligated not to reveal any proprietary information. I don't

know how you enforce that. Another more insidious requirement is that the m OU calls for the farming organization to tell farmers to quote refrain from introducing, promoting, or supporting federal or state right to repair legislation that imposes obligations beyond the commitments in this m OU end quote. So that is a big red flag, right. They're saying, hey, this should be good enough, and if it's not good enough, you need to tell farmers don't ask for something better,

because we don't want to deal with that. Like the John Deer is essentially saying, knock it off with the right to repair stuff. We don't want it to become law. And this this is what has critics saying that the m O you isn't really significant progress, that John Deer might hold back on stuff by arguing that it falls under trade secrets, and that the company is also trying to hamstring any efforts for right to repair advocates to get laws passed that would require companies like John Dear

to knock that kind of stuff off. And yeah, that does look pretty bad. Okay, when we come back, I'm gonna talk briefly about a recent law past in New York that ostensibly extends the right to repair, but in reality there are a lot of problems with it. But first,

let's take this quick break. Okay, we're back. So while all this stuff is going on, late last year, we had New York passed a right to repair law sort of, and I say sort of because by the time the law actually was passed, it had been neutered quite a bit. It had been whittled back. So on December two thousand twenty two, the Governor of New York signed into law the Digital Fair Repair Act. And this act was intended to give consumers more options when repairing the tech stuff

they had purchased. By that, I mean tech stuff as in like gadgets and whatnot. Not this podcast. It's not for sale, though I do have reasonable rates. However, as the bill was making its way to the finish line, in swept some amendments that effectively took the strength out of the legislation. So, for example, one amendment says that original equipment manufacturers or o e m s will not be required to hand over anything that would allow someone

to bypass security features on a product. But sometimes that's exactly what you need to perform a repair, right, Like if you have a device that's locked but otherwise would work fine, the one thing you need to do is bypass the security feature. But the amendment means that companies are not obligated to share that information at all, and so customers might find that they still have to go

through the ecosystem to get stuff done. Now, on the one hand, you can understand why security features should not be bypassed. Right If you know how to bypass a device is security, then arguably you could use that knowledge to do it on devices that you don't own, and that you're compromising other people's privacy and security as a process. So in that regard, it is understandable, right you want

that security to be preserved. Apple has long tried to preserve security against agencies like the FBI that have been arguing that they need a way to bypass security features in order to access the contents of devices they have uh taken from suspects of crimes and such. So yeah, you can understand why there is a need to preserve security.

On the flip side, the worry is that o e M s could use this argument to cover stuff that maybe is only slightly related to security or privacy, just to prevent a larger number of self repair or independent repair shop jobs that otherwise could be done. The bill also allows o e M s to offer collections of parts rather than specific individual parts. So if you need to make a repair and you need some official part, you're not likely to be able to get just the

thing you need. So let's say like you've got a cracked screen on a tablet and you want to order a new screen for this specific tablet. But everything else is fine, You've checked it out everything else, there's no

other problems. However, the o e M only offers a collection of parts that includes the screen but also includes other stuff, and you can't order just the screen itself, so you have to spend more money because you've got to buy the whole collection, and then you've got all these spare parts cluttering up the place because you didn't need them. So In other words, this amendment can allow O e M s to make self repairs inconvenient and costly.

The bill also has a bunch of exemptions on the types of tech that are covered by the right to repair law. For example, home appliances those are not covered by this right to repair legislation. So if you have a home appliance and it breaks, you're likely still going to have to go to the manufacturer for help because

this law does not guarantee you any of or choice. Also, motor vehicles, those are not covered by this right to repair legislation, so if your car breaks down, well, you may have very little choice but to go to that extremely expensive service station at your local dealership. Also not covered are enterprise devices. I was sad to learn that enterprise devices are not things like transporters and photon torpedoes

and replicators. No, an enterprise devices equipment that's intended for businesses, and the Verge reports that specifically enterprise devices used by organizations like data centers and hospitals and schools will not be covered by this legislation either. Now, the bill does show that there continues to be the steady push for

right to repair in the United States. But the getting true sweeping legislation in place is proving to be a significant challenge, and there's no surprise there because tech companies tend to spend a lot of money on lobbying, and lobbyists can be really influential when it comes to politicians shaping policy. So if you're the cynical type, you might come to the conclusion that until you get leaders in place who actually value the people they represent over their

own position. In other words, it's more important to act on behalf of your constituents than it is for you to preserve your place of power, then we're gonna kind of be stuck in this halfhearted limbo of right to repair because there's so many lobbyists that target politicians who are willing to have concessions to the industry and thus weaken or in some cases, invalidate legislation that would otherwise give people the right to repair the stuff they bought.

This is an ongoing thing. We've seen large protests in various parts of the nation about this kind of stuff, and I don't see it coming to an end anytime soon. But that's kind of where we are right now in the United States. Now, I think we're going to continue to see more movement to to support right to repair legislation. I think we're gonna see people calling for better bills

with fewer loopholes. But I think we're also going to see continued resistance on the part of companies that have made lucrative business out of making the thing and then

making the shop that repairs the thing. And yes, it does get complicated because when you have very sophisticated products that have hardware and software elements to them, and there are security concerns or safety concerns, there are some legitimate reasons why you don't want all the information just to get out there, because you don't want to cause more

problems in the long run than you're actually solving. But you can't get around the fact that for the most part, this approach, this closed ecosystem approach, disproportionately benefits the companies and disproportionately puts a burden on consumers. And it's just hard to get past this idea of if I went to the store and I picked up a box that has a tech gadget in it, and I go to the cash register and I spend my hard earned money to buy this thing and I take it home. That

thing now belongs to me. It is mine, it is no longer the domain of the company that made it, and then I should be able to make changes to it. This is, by the way, a big part of the hacker ethos, because originally hackers referred to people who would take tech and then mess with it to see if they can make it do other stuff, or make it work better, or all sorts of things, or just learn how it works. That was kind of like the hacker ethos. But in the world of the closed ecosystem, it's very

anti hacker mentality. It's it's that it has to fit in this very bureaucratic system, and if you try to deviate from that, you are disadvantaged, you're punished for it. So yeah, it's a complicated subject. I'm pro right to repair, not that I would ever try to repair stuff myself. If I did, I'm pretty sure I would just make it worse. I'm much more likely to take it to a repair service center, maybe an independent one, if that's

an option for me, I would probably do that. For one, I like to support local business, and two I could probably save some money because it's no longer the only game in town kind of thing if you have to go to the official store. So I'm very much in that that camp. And also I don't like tech becoming more and more like a black box. I think that is a dangerous path to go down. Whether you're talking about farming equipment or motor vehicles or computers or appliances.

Anytime the technology becomes less transparent, I get increasingly concerned. So anyway, that's the update on the right to repair a situation here in the United States. Obviously, there are other parts of the world where there are kind of similar issues going on, but I wanted to focus on the US because it is started to become a bigger deal here in the States than it had been, say, ten years ago, So I wanted to to kind of

do a catch up. If you have any suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of Tech Stuff, whether it's a full episode or an update, or maybe there's a person in tech you think I should cover a specific technology, a trend, anything like that. Let me know. One way you can do that is you can download the I Heart Radio app. It is free to download. You can download it on Android or I OS devices, and you can access all the different programming on my

Heart that way, including tech Stuff. You can just put tech Stuff in the little search field and pop on over to the show page. You'll see there's a little microphone icon that we've enabled on our page. If you click on that, you can leave a voice message up to thirty seconds in length. Or heck, just download the

I Heart Radio app and and explore. Because I listened to the I Heart Radio Broadway station a lot like that's I mean, I'd be doing that even if I didn't work for the company, because that's a great station if you like musicals. If you don't like musicals, it's a great way to drive yourself insane. And then the other way to get in touch with the show, of course, is to use Twitter. The hand over the show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you

again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.