This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Interesting things that are not on the list:
Not sure if smart TVs fall under "electronic displays", or if they just mean commercial displays when they say that.
Farming equipment is a particularly annoying one, that and construction vehicles, are becoming increasingly locked down by proprietary software and impossible to maintain yourself. You can't even employ mechanics outside the dealer network in some instances and it will be more so in the future.
not yet ! we hope !
John deer tractor lost a case that became famous in my rural area (and elsewhere). It now have to let repair shop acces the tools and allow repair on its tractors.
I take the win ! And we continue to push forward in talks, petitions, actions and repairs (autorised or else) Support and/or use open source.
It's a good start.
Pisses me off that laws are required for this, but that's what we get for being ruled by the Epstein Class.
Good start I guess but missing plenty of things that others have already pointed out. This list only covers like half of devices in a household. Also, what is stopping companies from pricing replacement parts way out of proportion because of this? Even more than they already do now to prevent repairs
Great in theory until companies start charging 80% of the product price for a single spare part so you'd rather buy a new product than try to repair your existing one.
Depends on how it's done. If they have to make schematics and binaries available, it's different than having to provide parts at whatever cost they'd like.
Hopefully this will benefit other countries indirectly, instead of designing one repairable phone and one not repairable, should be easier to just design one.
I've read a couple stories of companies (planning to) release EU-only models there, but non-EU-compliant ones everywhere else.
"Hold my beer" - Nintendo, releasing an EU centric revision. Meanwhile Apple and Samsung are digging up every legal loophole to prevent the law applying to their devices.
Apple and Samsung be like: "It's not a mobile phone or a tablet, it's a phablet so it does not fall in to any category of the devices that need to be repairable."
The past two phones I bought were not because they broke, but because they stopped being supported on apps that I need to use.
Let me guess, iPhone?
Androids
Huh...I'm guessing banking apps? Those are the only ones that have ever given me problems on old Android devices
yes
Good, now let's increase the list and also add vacuum cleaners to it! I thought that they already were but seemingly not :(
For mine replacing the roller belt would require replacing the entire head. So damn wasteful.
This is good.
The RIGHT to repair does you no good if the thing itself is not DESIGNED to be repaired.
This is a step in the right direction love it. Although I got a reality check recently when I bought a washing machine and had a chat with the guy selling them new and used. He said that from 201X onwards basically the manufacturers constructed the insides of them in a single piece which is 350€ and with that it’s not economical to fix them. So yea technically they are repairable. But I have not much hope that this will actually change something for consumers or the environment.
I wonder how it handles things like protected software code? Repairable probably would mean buying an electronics module worth more than the device.
I wonder why the US doesn’t have this law.
Hmmmm. 🤔
I hold out the thin hope that manufacturers will not want to split their product lines any more than they have to and will make these devices available globally.
It's possible that they want to hang on to the revenue streams that making irreparable garbage generates, but it would have to be greater than the cost of designing and manufacturing a second product line for most of their stuff.
Kind of how like when dumbass apple was forced into USB-C in the EU and they finally gave up on their own charge cables globally.
That's a good example. You've sold me on the hope!
wake me up when German cars are on the list. Until then I'll regard this as purely performative and will be overturned in some months.
Also: making repairable the very cell phones on which they require constant monitoring of private communications reeks of hypocrisy.
Yes I'm skeptical about all this.
This is purely performative, but won't be overturned.
it's unlikely that spurious/generic parts will work unless they want them to, and even then they'll be less effective.
Their official parts will likely be more expensive, so they'll be easier to repair, but cost a lot more, instead of paying the repair shop.
The devices or machines will no longer become waste as much, but the parts will. Warranties will be voided etc.
What would've been a better law to introduce would be introducing a minimum time limit on planned obsolescence with the right to repair.
Also, in the EU many countries have law that supercedes EU warranty.
If your device has an inherent defect (was always going to break no matter what you did with it) and sometimes may need to be proven in a court of law, The warranty can be extended to 7 years (some countries are shorter).
For example if you buy a TV, and after 4 years it develops a fault outside the normal warranty, and you find out that, that model has a known fault that happens to a few of them, don't try to repair it and void the warranty.
It may be still protected by that warranty in your country.
Don't worry, the phones don't have to be repairable as long as they are waterproof.
This is excellent news, but I really wish this same logic will spill into the recent "stop killing video games" movement as well.
That whole fight was really about consumer protection as well, not just about video games IMO.
I want to be able to be easily repair and support products that are past their manufacture supported end of life. This goes for both physical products and digital products!
So what exactly does this entail? Is Bosch going to make their dishwashers less awful to repair? Or are they going to say "well it's possible to repair it, and it's not glued shut like a phone, so we're good."
Yeah, feels like devil is in the details. Lots of gray area in "repairable".
F.cking Great News! Next: forcing every product to be open source, and durable. 100 years for a product is not a dream. We already have products, used for more than 50 years.
Libertarians in shambles.
