One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks
Living in Shenzhen, it’s shocking how easy it is to go out and repair stuff. Living in Palo Alto, it’s frustrating how hard it is.<p>I’m thinking maybe, just maybe, introducing repairability laws won’t solve the problem.<p>I am perfectly happy upgrading the memory on my MacBook Air with a reflow air station rather than swapping out some dims if it means my laptop is half as thick and twice as rugged. I’m also just as happy dropping my phone off at a corner shop to replace the glass (while preserving the same electronics) using an industrial laminating machine.<p>My problem today is not that repairability laws impede my progress here (they certainly don’t exist in China either).<p>My problem is I can only get the chips and schematics I need to effect the repair on the Chinese Internet (WeChat&#x2F;Taobao) or find someone to do the repair for me for $40 on the Chinese street markets (Huaqiangnan in Shenzhen). When I go to a corner store in the US the “solution” to swap the whole sub-assembly (glass+electronics) not just glass in case of a screen repair for $100+