Say you buy an appliance, it lasts through the warranty period, but then a little while afterward it breaks. Happens all the time, right? So you call the company you bought it from, and they say, "Of course we'll fix it! But since it's out of warranty, there will be a significant repair charge..." and then name a gigantic figure.
"Feh!" you say. "I'll just fix it myself." So you go to buy parts and... can't, because the manufacturer controls production of repair parts and will only sell to their licensed techs. So you go to a junkyard, find a suitably similar model, strip out the parts you need, and go to repair the appliance -- only to discover, after you've installed the replacement parts, that you can't reset the equipment to operate with the new parts without a password encoded into the electronics by the manufacturer. Will they give it to you? No, but you're still free to bring the appliance in to be serviced -- for the original extravagant quote.
That's what this article is about.
Failing this, I wonder if there would be a sufficient market for manufacturers of goods that didn't do these things. I like being able to fix my own cars, motorcycles, stoves, and things like that. Partially, I just like to maximize my independence as a human being. Increasingly, though, that means sticking to really old objects. My truck is twenty years old, but I can fix most things on it if they break. I can also modify it if I want it to work a little differently.
For a certain percentage of people, that's a major thing we really want from a product. If I buy it, I want to own it. I don't want to lease use of it, with an obligation to return to you for repairs and a prohibition against modifying it. I don't want to find out that it has some secret components in it designed to make sure the seller retains ownership over some core critical function. I want to own the things I buy.
These days, that mostly means buying old stuff that was made before the current craze at retaining hidden control over end-users. I wonder if there's enough demand that there would be a market for manufacturers to cater to us.
16 comments:
I think this is a great idea. A few years back I briefly thought about seeing if I could start a new car company that promised that the owner would be able to fix or replace everything. You could still keep the electronic diagnostic tools current cars have, just include a smart phone app to read and interpret them. I thought about including a tool kit with every car purchase.
I think if you made small, fuel-efficient cars like this, you could easily appeal to the green, organic gardener market. Keep it simple and cheap, and the student market would probably be good as well. Then, you could get into motorcycles and light pickups, for the more traditional do-it-yourself market.
I never did anything with it. The startup hassle was daunting, and if you were too successful the big companies would crush you with their own fix-it-yourself lines. But I still really like the idea.
And there's no reason it couldn't work with appliances, etc.
Honestly I don't think the "fix it" market is big enough anymore, and it is probably already saturated with "old stuff". And for the hardcore kids, they probably just hack their way past all the built in restrictions.
This is in general- but for specialty applications, there may be some exceptions- like a build it yourself motorcycle. Certainly it is a standard in the homebuilt aircraft market.
My bikes both have carbs, minimum electronics. I like simple stuff that works.
I feel exactly the same way, especially wrt computers. It irks me to no end when I buy a new computer and I have to spend hours removing programs that are completely useless (to me anyway) or are some of the worst on the market - I'm lookin' at you Norton and MacAfee.
My Durango just passed the 12 yr mark this month, and my 300 is 10 with only 65,000 miles on her, and while I can do most maintenance and repairs on them, there are still plenty of computers and electronics for which I must pay someone else to repair when something goes wrong. This is completely anathema to me as I enjoy getting dirt and grease under my fingernails. There used to be a stigma of pride that came with being able to take a machine that wasn't working and bring it back to life. However, in todays' "throw it away" society, it's all about who has the newest, neatest, bestest technology.
Pheh. Give me a couple of wrenches, a screwdriver, duct tape and a can of WD-40 - I'll get 'er going again.
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I believe there is also a market in jail breaking your goods. Essentially you trick the electronics into thinking it is getting the proper code.
"Honestly I don't think the "fix it" market is big enough anymore ..."
Well, that may be because manufacturers have made it such a pain in the butt to do. However, do-it-yourself stuff is surging: robots, guitars, beer, wine, whisky, games, all kinds of stuff.
"There used to be a stigma of pride that came with being able to take a machine that wasn't working and bring it back to life. However, in todays' "throw it away" society, it's all about who has the newest, neatest, bestest technology."
When lamenting the dearth of well made simple stuff a few years ago, I came across a survey showing "consumers" (how I hate that use)wanted innovation, novelty, etc- as their primary concern. Reliability and longevity was dead last, as they apparently figured they would get the latest version of whatever long before the original wore out.
It is true there seems to be a resurgence of sorts in the "maker" area, maybe folks are getting tired of the "no user serviceable parts inside". More power to them! I always figured after the collapse of western civilization I will run a fixit shop, trading repair jobs for a chicken or something.
They tried using government power to hold a monopoly, but GE and various other companies got too big and thus too inefficient. So now they use hardware controls instead. A dystopian science fiction novel once postulated that secure hardware encryption would enable an Augmented Reality interface for people, but also control them via that same process.
This issue arose recently with Ford and John Deere claiming 'ownership' of various in-vehicle systems' software. (You can Google it.) I think it was a Patent or Copyright Office matter, which was resolved in favor of consumers/owners of the equipment in question.
I was going to say it sounds like a made to order class action suit.
I'm really feeling this article right now as our four year old tv just died. My folks still have their tube tv from the eighties... As the saying goes, don't make 'em like they used to.
Microsoft reportedly is moving toward a new "Office" suite that can be used only through the Cloud and is essentially rented. Not my favorite approach, especially since my internet connection is not what you would call robust. We're still waiting for that Rural Internetification Administration program to reach us.
They tried that approach with their newest Xbox platform, I understand, and it occasioned a revolt. Of course, that's the cheap way to do these things: if you are interested in modifying games, you need a much more expensive set of hardware so you can run the "PC" rather than the "console" versions. But then you can change it to do whatever you want, so I hear. When I was in my 20s I had time for such things, but not recently. :)
Top down authoritarian hierarchies vs de centralized bottom up hierarchies. Same old story.
I have several thoughts about this. I reserve the right to expand on this later, but for now, I will attempt to be brief (which I acknowledge, I am bad at). One, I'd have more sympathy for the manufacturers if they didn't try to have it both ways. Apple is notorious for this. They absolutely hold a monopoly on replacement parts (as best they can), and service on their devices. And your only option out of said monopoly is to jailbreak your device. A practice they tried their level best to say was a copyright violation, and had to actually have a US court tell them that the customers had a right to swap the OS without any say from Apple (who still tried their level best to make this as difficult as possible). As mentioned, Ford and John Deere are doing much the same thing while making their software next to impossible to replace (because legal precedent now says they must allow users to jailbreak their products, their response is just to make it as difficult as possible so as to make that unfeasible for the average user/repairman.
And second, I came up against this some myself recently. I bought a refurbished computer (which was an excellent deal, so I didn't just build it myself as I usually do) and was mostly happy with it. I decided to do some customization on it. Adding in an SSD hard drive, slaving in my old HD so I could have all my files, etc. And that's when I discovered it. They had locked down the BIOS behind a password (which they would not give me) and I could not enable the additional hard drives without getting into the BIOS. By the way, did you know that if your BIOS is password protected, you cannot flash the BIOS? Yeah. Their option was for me to pay them to "service" the device. This is literally my day job. I don't need someone else to help me enable additional hard drives within the BIOS. But they didn't want to let me have that option.
Now thankfully, because I know what I am doing, I reset the jumper on the motherboard which removed the BIOS password. But had I not known about that, my sole recourse would have been to get them to service it. Because you see, once I opened the case, it was no longer under warranty to return it. Now, my position is, I bought it under good faith that I would fully own it. They agreed, but only insofar as use of the device. Any upgrades or service, they believed they had sole rights to. But right to service, in my opinion, comes with ownership. I dislike this trend among companies to attempt to monopolize service, knowing your only other option is to discard it and purchase another.
*important note, I did not buy this refurbished computer from the manufacturer, but from a third party business. So they can't even claim to be protecting their intellectual property, just their monopoly on service.
One, I'd have more sympathy for the manufacturers if they didn't try to have it both ways. Apple is notorious for this. They absolutely hold a monopoly on replacement parts (as best they can), and service on their devices.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'both ways' in this section. I don't think we disagree, but it sounds like just one way: they are completely guilty of doing this.
They had locked down the BIOS behind a password (which they would not give me) and I could not enable the additional hard drives without getting into the BIOS. By the way, did you know that if your BIOS is password protected, you cannot flash the BIOS?
Yikes. I used to exclusively run Linux machines, but when I got to grad school my laptop died (the screen actually broke off) and my advisor was big into a bunch of Mac software for course work, so I bought a Mac and have stuck with it for some years now. However, I don't like Apple and I have been thinking about moving back to Linux for my main machine and just using the Mac when it's essential. Thanks for the warning.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'both ways' in this section. I don't think we disagree, but it sounds like just one way: they are completely guilty of doing this.
Sorry for being unclear. If the manufacturers held that you can replace the software on their device completely without interference or punishment from them, then I would have sympathy for them wanting to hold a complete monopoly on servicing their software. If they held that the software was irreplaceable and inviolable but that anyone could service their equipment, then I would have sympathy for them holding their software sacrosanct. But they try to hold both the software and support as complete monopolies, so that in effect you don't actually own the thing you purchase, you merely operate it at their discretion.
So if a John Deere tractor can only be serviced using John Deere's support, because their software is proprietary, then the user should 100% be free to replace that software, without John Deere disabling that tractor. If they fail to do this, then the claims that the software on board are so proprietary that you do not purchase it when you purchase the tractor (and thus, cannot be allowed to self-service, or use third party service) are invalidating of the concept of ownership. You either own the device and can operate it when and how you see fit, or ownership was never transferred. And that either makes the deal a rental or it falls into the realm of fraud. They cannot retain ownership on something they claim to have sold to you, and that includes the software present on the device.
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