I think that people are overlooking a few aspects of the whole right to repair legislation. I see two big asterisks in the whole discussion.
The first one is "product conformity" and how much repair can deviate from the original design. I know that it takes very very little modifications to a design to invalidate any EMC/Intended radiator/Safety/... test for FCC/UL and CE. The producer has to be sure that every product he makes is exactly the same as the one which is tested. He is liable if it doesn't adhere to the same standards. So they have meticulously create internal assembly guidelines on how to create the exact same product, how to open/close the enclosure, how to apply shielding tape,... Just to ensure "product conformity".
How can somebody without proper training do this correctly?
Exactly. This is another excellent point!
How can repair people figure these things out, correctly, without instruction from the manufacturers? It's a crap-shoot at worst, and best-practices at best.
If manufacturers responded to certain detailed questions about repair, the repairs could be done in a manufacturer-approved way.
This isn't a denial-of-service thing. They're big, they have plenty of time to respond to questions. More to the point, repair people only need one answer, and they can share it among themselves (e.g. via Rossmann's wiki).
That communication could take many routes: it could be ad hoc, everyone for themselves; it could be structured, through designated channels e.g. a few people in the community volunteer as liaison; it could be formal via an industry group/consortium that collects community questions, sorted by priority, relevance, etc.; lots of possibilities.
The point is to have anything at all, and not be just guessing all the time.
Nor is this an IP thing. Specific, pointed questions about component availability or replacement, reveal absolutely nothing about the IP. There's very little protectable about PCBs anyway, and in the recent past, no one had any problem with distributing schematics and even board and layout photos. (The schematic might be protected by patent if novel, and layout is protected by copyright either way, IIRC. Doesn't matter how you publish it, or in what forms.)
So you make an excellent point. I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that it works against RtR. Such a conclusion almost seems it has to be a case of, looking at the current state of industry and saying "well this is terrible, how could it ever improve, I'm not going to do anything to fix it!"
And this training is not about if they can replace a SMD resistor or do rework on super small BGA component, that doesn't matter. The only thing that matters if the repairs happens accordingly to the same way a new product is assembled. A repair guy can be very skilled at dissembling and reassembling a laptop, but the main idea here is, did he used the same methodology as they did in the production line? Must that repair guy guarantee "product conformity"? Or is the original producer still liable for the product conformity when a third-party repair has happened?
How can an auto repair guarantee that emissions control systems work as intended?
Well, there are means of testing this, but before these were available in the 90s, what did they do? Well, they didn't do anything, they just replaced parts more or less to spec and that was that. Best practices. The same works here.
Maybe they got a bum part sometimes, or didn't install it correctly, and you had some stinky cars on the road. Maybe they were later discovered, and fined, or repaired. Responsibility goes to the owner first, then repairer, then manufacturer, as noted by others.
Have you had a product returned by FCC complaint? Are you familiar with the procedure?
In principle, a sale of 1 should be tested as much as anything else. But there's The Law, and there's "The Law". In practice, you can have... thousands, hundreds of thousands even, of products out in the wild, without testing. Maybe they even generate complaints, maybe they pass after all whether by good luck or intent. I've seen it before. The first step is typically a licensed user making a complaint -- the FCC has little time to wardrive anymore (they're more concerned with [not] regulating telecom these days). A C&D is sent to the user. On repeated complaint, the user may be investigated or fined. Only when a pattern of behavior is found, does the manufacturer get notified, and then a recall, or fines or other remediation, might be used.
As for actual repairs, stuff like pictured, doesn't bother me in the slightest. Antennas? Perhaps. The wires are low to the ground plane, hardly different from the traces they're extending. They're short, only relevant in the GHz. (I would go a bit further than pqass, and say no, it won't have any effect at AM BCB at all.) Perhaps this would raise the radiated floor a few dB in the 1-10GHz band. It's not even obvious if they'd do anything at all -- there might be an absorber or shield over the location in question.
You're also missing something about the nature of this kind of repair -- many of them are "heroic", patching traces from water damage, shit like that. No one's going to guarantee that kind of work. Well, maybe they do, I don't know. It would be foolish to give a guarantee on something that's cursed with contamination and chronic corrosion. If it can't be cleaned up, and it's going to keep spreading, just get out of there -- back up your files and get a new machine.
The purpose of such efforts is to recover
anything. Remember, Apple thinks YOUR FILES DON'T EXIST ANYMORE if you so much as break a key off your keyboard, let alone any kind of damage like this. If your alternative, as a customer, is to literally throw away everything on that machine; or pay much less than the cost of a new machine, to a maybe un-reputable (certainly not manufacturer-approved) service -- what are you going to do? It's an insane, retarded situation to be put in. And it's an entirely, intentionally constructed situation. The manufacturers MEAN to do that to you.
Probably, a lot of people do continue to use machines after such treatment and repairs, anyway. That's fine, they do so at their own risk. Maybe they take the lesson and use NAS backups (or backups of any kind at all). Maybe they follow through on the action and actually get a new machine. Whatever -- it's on them, the repairer has done their due diligence.
One more point about EMC. It can fail spontaneously over time. The manufacturer tested one article and put it into production. What happens to the components in operation, who knows. In particular, X1 type filter caps are made with very thin materials, and are exposed to mains surges; over time, they self-heal, meaning some of the material breaks down and vaporizes, "healing" the wound. After enough time, whole sections of electrode can be "healed" away, significantly reducing the capacitance. They also corrode: the metal layer is so thin, it can be fully oxidized by exposure to oxygen or moisture -- which diffuse in through the plastic slowly but surely. So, they even have a shelf life. All in all, they can end up with very little value after a decade or so of service. You'd think this should generate huge amounts of reports, but, eh? Just seems to be part of modern life, having awful reception in the MW to SW bands.
Also, besides capacitors, I suppose stuff like EMI tape might fatigue and break, if subjected to flexing; or EMI springs may not wipe cleanly, or get clogged with gunk.
(Both of which can be repaired, if a tech is instructed to look for such things!)Or do we want year checkups of all our electronic device, the same way we do for our Car's in the annual vehicle safety inspection? A yearly EMC inspection?
It's funny because that would actually be pretty feasible... get a LISN for mains checks, a CDN or cable clamp for peripherals/telecom lines, and a TEM cell for radiated. Hook it to a spec -- pretty cheap these days for the couple GHz you need -- and you can do these checks in under an hour. Nothing like the certified lab experience of course, but if you have a baseline, and you have a device that exceeds it considerably, well that's a good hint that something might be wrong!
I wonder if I could make a sales case for that... heh...
The funny part is, it's literally just making more work for the end user. So, I think not. Unless the FCC requires it, which I've seen nothing to hint at that. So, possible, but highly unlikely.
Apple invested in that part, why should Apple sell you that part?
Well, "invested" is maybe an overstatement. But sure, they customized it, and to the extent of NRE and minimum order quantities, you could say that.
Why should they sell it? They shouldn't, and Rossmann has noted this before. You can hold onto all the chips you want.
You're an asshole, but you have the right to be an asshole in this country.
Securing parts supply is probably a pipe dream, but it's still one of extreme importance to board-level repair, so he will always be bringing it up.
That this happens is just NORMAL way of doing business. I design and manufacture boards for a customer, and a customer of my costumer comes directly to me for a replacement board, should I sell it to him? Is it my place to sell a board where I don't have the intellectual property anymore? If I did this and my customer knows about it, I would a serious court case against me, with a very slim chance in winning. Same applies to Intersil. If the original customer, which hold the IP, doesn't want to sell the board, then it is too bad I can't help you.
If I will be legally forced to sell those boards to customers the value of doing design work and contract manufacturing will drop. I think this will render most "Do not compete" void.
You're extrapolating pretty far down one track here...
First off, if such a law were enacted -- it would either have to grandfather in prior terms like you're working off of above, or provide some graceful means, or remediation, to break the clauses relevant to the above.
So, going forward, such agreements would simply be made with different terms, allowing for whatever that law would cover.
More likely, such a law would target the product OEM, not their suppliers. They ordered custom parts, so they should retain extra stock of them, or make them available as long as they support the product themselves, or retain some amount of stock thereafter; whatever. It needn't be the 10 year sunset period that auto parts have. It needn't be much of anything at all, just so long as the parts are available
at all, through some means other than desoldering junked boards.
They can even turn a profit on them. Hefty one at that, it seems. Or they can set the price sky high, and even write press releases saying
We DiD tHe ThInG gUyS, reLaX!!11 They can continue to, you know, be an asshole, as is their right.
Anything like that, would be a step in the right direction. Right now, it's outright impossible, they refuse to release any stock. At least then, it would be a matter of negotiating price.
Tim
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