Do you have the right to repair your devices?
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, it’s Jeff and this is Plain English, where JR and I help you upgrade your English with current events and trending topics. The full lesson is available online at PlainEnglish.com/445.
Coming up today: Imagine you’re the owner of a shiny new iPhone 13, but the screen shatters. You don’t have the money to replace the screen at the official Apple Store, but an independent repair shop says they can replace the screen. When you get your phone back, it looks perfect. But then you turn it on and Apple says, sorry, Face ID has been disabled. Without Face ID, you can’t use your phone.
Welcome to the debate over the right to repair. In the second part of the lesson, we’ll talk about the English expression “down the line,” and JR has a song of the week.
Do customers have the ‘right to repair’?
When the radiator in your car fails, or the brake pads on your motorcycle wear down, or the chain on your bicycle breaks, you don’t need to get a new car or a new motorcycle or a new bicycle. And in most cases , you don’t need to bring your car, motorcycle, or bike back to the manufacturer for the repair. Hundreds of thousands of repair shops and mechanics can fix those problems for you.
But if your green John Deere tractor breaks down , or if your iPhone stops working, you have only one option: take your equipment to an official John Deere dealership or take your phone to one of a small number of authorized Apple repair shops. That’s because some companies don’t provide parts or the technical know-how that would allow independent shops to make the repairs.
The “right to repair” movement is a consumer-led movement that would force companies like Apple and John Deere to provide parts and knowledge necessary to allow consumers to make their own repairs. The advocates for “right to repair” are targeting four industries: consumer electronics, agriculture equipment, home appliances, and medical devices. In today’s lesson, we’ll focus on consumer electronics and farming equipment.
First, though, “right to repair” is a bit of a misleading name because it’s not about legal rights. You have the legal right to do anything you want with a device: you can use it as intended, you can take it apart, you can put it back together, you can do anything you want with it. Instead, the “right to repair” is about giving consumers the knowledge and access to replacement parts that are necessary to make their own repairs.
Why is this necessary? It’s because the makers of certain devices make it difficult, if not impossible, for customers to make their own repairs.
Take farming equipment. Tractors used to be simple machines, with engines like cars or lawnmowers. Most farmers made their own repairs with a basic set of tools. But in the last few decades, farming equipment has gotten a lot more technologically advanced. Today, the operator uses an onboard computer to control the machine, monitor the yields, and guide the machine’s path.
This has been great for crop yields but fixing a John Deere tractor is not what it used to be. When a tractor or combine breaks down today, it’s as likely to be a software problem as a hardware problem. And when a computer glitch happens, farmers have no choice but to call an authorized dealer to come out and diagnose the problem.
In consumer electronics, it’s a little different. The parts are extremely small, and the spaces are extremely small. Many of parts inside a phone are custom-made and can only be accessed with certain tools. Some parts are glued in place, meaning that if you remove the part, it can damage other parts of the device. And some parts are even paired with the device. The device has an ID, the part has an ID, and if they don’t match, the device won’t work. Device makers purposely withhold access to special tools, replacement parts, and technical know-how required to make repairs.
“Right to repair” advocates say these policies unnecessarily raise costs for consumers. If you can only repair devices with authorized repair shops, then competition is limited, and customers can’t do simple repairs themselves. Right to repair advocates say that manufacturers should foster an independent marketplace of parts and they should publish guides to software and hardware that would allow anyone to make these repairs.
There are several benefits to this; the obvious one is cost. Today , the makers of devices have a monopoly on repairing the devices that they make, and the costs for consumers are unnecessarily high. It’s also unfair for people who don’t live near an authorized repair shop, or where the official repair shops are too busy to serve everyone.
There’s also an environmental benefit. Too often, when just one thing fails on a phone, the answer is to throw it out and buy a new one. Of course, the makers of devices are all too happy to encourage customers to buy new devices on a regular schedule. But if it were easier to repair devices like computers and phones, consumers could extend the lives of their devices, save money, and create less electronic waste in the process.
But there are strong arguments on the other side, too.
In both agricultural equipment and consumer electronics, the hardware and the software work together. In many cases, a repair is not just about swapping out a small physical part, but about making sure the parts are working well with the code. But if device makers make diagnostic tools inside the software open for anyone to use, it can make the devices easier to hack.
What’s more , making changes to software is much different from swapping out a worn-out belt. Farmers may have the tools and experience to repair the physical parts of a tractor, but if they incorrectly modify the software on their tractors, they can create problems that are almost impossible to fix down the line .
Another concern is safety. Phones, for example, have batteries that can overheat. The software controls how the device uses the battery and it has safeguards to avoid overheating. Remember Samsung’s exploding Galaxy Note 7? Inexpert repairs could affect the way a device uses the power, and that can create a safety hazard.
Device makers also say that if they make their parts interchangeable and accessible, they’ll be able to do less in the small spaces they have available. Do you remember when I said some parts are glued in place? That makes taking those parts out almost impossible. But device makers say that consumers want their phones to be more powerful and smaller. That comes at a price, and often the price is that some parts simply can’t be swapped out.
And finally, there is intellectual property. By sharing repair manuals, makers would be forced to open the books on how the devices are designed and how they work, both for competitors and imitators who might steal their designs. Companies invest a lot in research and development; they don’t want all that hard work and effort to be open for the world to see.
Manufacturers, however, can see that their own customers are upset and want greater rights to repair devices. U.S. state governments, the EU, Canada, and other countries are contemplating legislation to require the “right to repair.” So companies are looking for a middle ground. Apple has long been considered one of the stingiest with its parts and repair manuals, but last year decided to make more of its parts available to customers and third-party repair shops. And Dell made a prototype computer with many, many fewer parts that are easier to access. They said the design is intended for the “second life” of a device.
Extending a phone’s life
My phone battery is useless. It’s now three and half years old and it drains really fast. I’ve mentioned before I’m sticking with my iPhone 8 in the hopes that Apple’s next iPhone doesn’t have the notch at the top. I hate the notch. Anyway, the repair cost is $79 for a new battery. Personally, I think that’s a bargain. I wanted to get it done before I came to Mexico City, but I couldn’t get an appointment at one of the authorized repair shops in Chicago!
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