Oregon has officially become the seventh state (behind New York, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota) to pass “right to repair” legislation, making it easier and m…
It’s still got several bullshit or weird exemptions in the bill.
It doesn’t cover medical devices, farm equipment, anything that runs on an internal combustion engine, video game consoles, and…electric toothbrushes.
Not including the farm equipment, game consoles, and anything with an engine is total sellout bullshit.
You’re right. I think we should mostly take the stance of “look what great progress we made” while also remembering “the fight isn’t over, let’s keep pushing!”
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Hooray!
I have to say I am very disappointed in how Apple has handled all of this. Over the last few years they started signaling more commitment to right to repair and privacy. I actually think they have done pretty decently on the privacy front, especially considering the direction Microsoft and other companies have all been going. But it’s incredibly clear they have no intention of empowering users with the ability to take care of their hardware.
It’s a shame. I was kind of excited to see what Apple was going to do this decade. These were surprisingly forward thinking promises that I believe correctly anticipated 2 major concerns that are still increasing among consumers. And with all the shenanigans happening with the Win 10->11 transition I think they could’ve had a great opportunity to grow their market share a bit. Their loss, I suppose.
I am not convinced that Apple cares about user privacy the way we think it does. Rather, I am suspicious they are entering the advertisement business, requiring them to profile their users for the purpose of better advertisement capabilities, simultaneously preventing advertisement competitors from actually competing. The fact that it seems to provide better privacy to its users is the cherry on top.
The result is we now have privacy services by Apple such as Private relay (and even earlier, Apple Card) which give them a heap of information, in addition to the fact that they host their users emails and imessages (which even though is e2ee, allows for a great social graph) while their competitors had their hands cut off with Privacy nutrition labels and app tracking transparency (which doesn’t apply the same way to apple or might even be irrelevant to them).
And they own the keyboard, the browser, the location tracking and many more features. In the end, it’s in my opinion just a matter of time before they expand on their advertisement business. They are already doing advertisement in their online stores after all.
So yes, I’m suspicious and if we see anything with how Apple behaves in China (easily following all the rules by the government instead of standing up for their consumers who deserve privacy) and how they keep pushing malicious compliance in the EU to secure their turf, this should not be a surprise. If some people are idolising Apple for being a good company, I’m afraid to say, today’s Apple is not the company from 20 years ago and also, this is not a surprise if pulling these actions make you rich: it is after all a profit driven company, responsible for generating profits to its shareholders.
I think there is this misunderstanding that Apple users are all trusting of Apple’s motives, decisions, eco-friendliness, etc. That’s not what I’m saying, and I think you would be hard-pressed to find somebody who’s actually drinking the Kool-Aid that hard.
What I’m saying is Apple is relatively better than windows and a few years ago I was optimistic that their incentives lined up with what I valued. I did not think they were doing it out of the kindness of their heart or some false notion of integrity they definitely don’t have.
I also am not as bothered by companies collecting data and using it internally as much as I am when they sell it to third parties without my consent. I don’t love data harvesting in general, but if I’m going to pick my poison, I’m going to prefer to keep it siloed.
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