Must people do not even live near a beach, let alone regularly go to one.
And even then, I went to a beach yesterday and used my phone. I didn’t get it damaged at all.
For people who went to take their expensive gadget to areas where it might get damaged, there are cases and bags that allow that.
Or just take a cheaper device. I don’t take my Fold rock climbing.
100% agree with that and unfortunately I see far too much of that type of effect and unearned influence especially from the bigger blogs like the Verge that even the big OEMs seem to bow to, far too often.
Love him, hate him, or somewhere in between one thing I always respected about Steve Jobs was his singular vision and the willingness to push forward with it regardless. And as much as I respect Tim Cooks absolute mastery of operations, I don’t see any of the vision that Jobs or Woz had.
And I have come to the conclusion reluctantly, but so far Apple seems to be far from leading in this larger topic space and not driving the discussion regardless of outcome in anyway, where by dint of their presence could significantly shape the market.
In other words, if Apple did something similar to what MS just did with the Surface line with availability of at least some common repair parts, they would drive the rest of the industry as well.
Framework seem be doing quite well for their size and the length of their existence.
I think people are prepared to pay a bit more for individual components, if it means they can work on it themselves or have a repair shop do it easily for them.
Each component would be more expensive on its own, but more regular smaller outlays are more palatable than less regular larger ones.
It might even be more profitable.
I don’t buy new cars often (well, really ever). I like to keep as much as possible and repair or upgrade as and when I can, or must in rare cases. Obviously there does become a point where a one way trip to the junkers is required, but that can be after decades.
I’m fortunate by living in a city where there’s a huge number of (unlicensed) repair shop who had a long experience of opening up thin, tightly sealed electronic to fix things for a very affordable price. They are unlicensed but when a device battery is dying, nothing can really make it worse.
My biggest problem though is that the replacement battery are usually of lower quality and drop charge very fast. It works, but usually one replacement only last over a year ( most of the replacement battery are taken as part from other broken same model devices and their life is varied).
Now if there’s actually, official repair part being sold with warranty, battery replacement would have been much more reliable even if it would cost a bit more.
Agree to a limited extent. Much as I like some aspects of what they are doing, they have yet to show a profit, though they aren’t hemorrhaging money at the rate they were initially.
I also am suspect of any company that openly states that they are “out to disrupt” an industry. Disruption occurs due to genuine innovation and while I see some good ideas, I also don’t see anything truly innovative.
That being said, I do hope they succeed and can be a force for positive change in the market
Here in the US, most of the most populous cities are near beaches, and those beaches tend to be visited every day. It may not be that large of a population overall that visits them regularly, but it is a sizable amount.
But aside from that, buying a second cheap device is still an extra expense. And the cases or bags are more problematic and a hassle than they are worth most often as well.
But, having a waterproof phone that you can take on ride at the waterpark and take pictures is super fun. We took ours to the waterpark last year and took lots of fun pictures going through the rapids that were really unique. And, I accidentally dropped my wife’s phone in said rapids, and it tumbled through along with us to the calm part of the ride where we recovered it no worse for wear.
Regardless, it’s definitely a bigger demand from the market than replaceable batteries are right now, though I wish we had more differentiation because I think there is a market for both overall.
A recent Army Corps study calculated that 180,000,000 US residents annually make 2 billion (with a “b”) visits to the beaches located on the Atlantc, Pacific and Gulf coasts. When they do, they spend $320,000,000,000.00 dollars in the coastal communities.
If anyone was wondering about the level of complexity for a complete system replacement (for a product designed for serviceability), I thought this video gives a nice overview:
Some notes of interest:
Framework even provides hinge replacements (@3:50), so repairability extends even to the mechanical parts, which I think is good practice.
The bezel uses magnetic attachment (@4:10), providing a convenient method to access screws. Magnetic attachment has been tried previously by HP on their ElitePad series back in the Windows 8 era. I expect this type of design will make a revival for its general ease.
The actual motherboard replacement (@6:30) is the most involved disassembly process, but as the reviewer notes, the number of screws is actually quite minimal; I was surprised myself how readily he was able to access every component for transfer to the new board.
There were also nice touches like pull tabs on the ribbon connectors, 3 spare screws (center-top), and very clean routing for the speakers and wifi antenna wires. He even mentions (@8:40) how the board is designed to be serviced with the battery plugged in, which surprised me, but I think is important precaution for the general user.
Overall, I think Framework gives us a glimpse into how OEMs will adapt their board designs and how much work will be involved in servicing future devices.
He certainly can have some hot takes, but the basic arguments are sound.
So this is just bizarre. I’m not going to get in to the whole Scientology discussion, but it serves as a very good reminder that as with most things, almost everyone advocating for or against something has an agenda behind it.
Right to repair’s unlikely new adversary: Scientologists | Ars Technica