Repair is awesome, but equally important is to take good care of stuff in the first place. Look after things to prevent them breaking. Learn how they work and how to make them last. (e.g. learn how to keep batteries in good condition.) Get a good case. Keep things clean. Look after stuff!
@kdsch Completely agree that hard pressure should be made on manufacturers, for both durability and repairability. It is certainly not the responsibilty of citizens alone. Still, I think we could in general value our things more, and try to avoid e.g. broken screens or rusty bikes.
Interestingly durability and repairability are sometimes now in tension with each other. (e.g. making a phone water resistant makes it harder to open.)
I'd love to see a teardown of an old oscilloscope!
@neil I'm now going to make a list of things that I need to show some love.
There are always tradeoffs in design. What I like about cooperatives is that users could be more involved in navigating them.
@Wolf480pl @kdsch Cue: Is that a 1960s oscilloscope in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?
@Wolf480pl @neil I'm the first to admit that the comparison isn't entirely fair. We're talking about two very different kinds of technology.
I'll try to come up with a better example to illustrate my point, which is that the philosophy of design has changed.
@kdsch @neil
Look at a desktop PC. Very modular and hackabe.
Then look at eg. Thinkpad X220. Still relatively modular and hackable. One screw to replace HDD, two screws to replace RAM.
Then look at some consumer laptop of similar size, where to replace RAM, you have to remove the keyboard and 5 screws, then open the bottom hatch, and then hopefully you'll be able to reach RAM.
@Wolf480pl @kdsch Indeed, minituarisation does make things more difficult as more things get crammed into a small space.
That said, it seems possible if you actively try, Fairphone for example have done a good job of making a smartphone more repairable (at a fairly high level at least, e.g. swapping out the camera module), without taking too much of a hit on form and function.
@neil For some time, I was keen on iFixit's repairability ratings. Most smartphone designs fuse the LCD to the glass, which is the most typical thing to break and the most expensive to replace. Yet iFixit scores such designs highly. Your point rings true.
1960's oscilloscopes, in contrast, are hackable, maintainable, long-lived, and repairable. They take years of use and abuse. Perhaps an unfair comparison, but my point is that we work against the grain of current designs.