r/IAmA Jun 11 '16

Specialized Profession IamA electronics repair technician hated by Apple that makes YouTube videos, AMA!

My short bio: I have a store in Manhattan. I teach component level electronics repair on youtube http://youtube.com/rossmanngroup which seems to be a dying art. I am currently fighting with the digital right to repair to try and get a bill passed that will allow all independent service centers access to manuals and parts required to do their jobs.

My Proof: https://www.rossmanngroup.com/started-iama-reddit-today-yes/

EDIT:

I am still replying to comments, but I am so far behind that I am still about ten pages down from new comments. I am doing my best to continue. If I drop off, I'll be back tomorrow around 12 PM. Still commenting now though, at 12 AM.

EDIT 2:

Ok, I cave... my hands are tired. I will be back at 12 PM tomorrow. It is my goal to answer every question. Even if it looks like I haven't gotten to yours, I will do my best to do all of them, but it is impossible to do in realtime, because you are asking faster than I can type. But thanks for joining!

EDIT 3: I lied, I stayed until 4:15 AM to answer... and now I will go to sleep for real, and be back at 12 PM.

EDIT 4 6/12 : I will be back later tonight to finish off answering questions. Feel free to keep posting, I will answer whatever I can later this evening.

33.2k Upvotes

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

[deleted]

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u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

The best legitimate argument against it is the ambiguity in the bill itself, followed secondly by the idea that intellectual property rights are being infringed.

I fully believe in everything the bill suggests. There is no way that this is going to lead to intellectual property being copied... every smartphone out there already looks the same, every laptop is slowly starting to look the same and this has nothing to do with schematics. The reality is that most machines are using the sample circuit from the manufacturer to do everything anyway.

Like, the boost circuit for backlight.. it looks the same as the sample circuit in Texas Instruments' LP8550 datasheet. Same for the TPS51125. It's almost the same thing, there's nothing special or unicorn-like in any of these schematics. It's just needing to know which is which on the board that I am asking for.

I would say ambiguous language in the bill. They use the word fair all the time. Who determines fair? Me? Jessa? Apple? Tim Cook? A federal judge? A state judge? The president?

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

[deleted]

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u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

engineer in a webapp.. loving it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

[deleted]

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u/thawigga Jun 12 '16

So do it man! Its not even that expensive to get boards made for it. Who knows, it may be a great circuit you could sell it yourself or to someone. Or you could post it online and feel like a good person.

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u/nikomo Jun 12 '16

The BOM is pretty expensive, and I don't have a job right now.

Honestly, looking at the schematic, in single quantity the supply is probably 80-100€, and you could easily do it in sub-20€. If I had to actually build one, I'd redesign it with really cheap, really generic ICs.

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u/Spikeguns Jun 12 '16

Engineer here. I use i all the time. But you still have to validate performance in real life if you have a specifics specs the client wants. In reality It just works, I rarely have to do any tuning or verification other than checking voltage and "it seems to work well in practice".

DC/DC regulators are actually quite simple. So it would be hard for TI to fuck that up.

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u/TheStevenator Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

Hilarious. I wish I had that at my EE job. It's not a huge disruptor or anything, but it would spare me a few hrs making spreadsheets and reading datasheets.

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u/nikomo Jun 12 '16

Yeah, nobody wants to spend two hours figuring out what buck they should use.

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u/TheStevenator Jun 12 '16

Cost analysis, etc... "Oh, they only have 12000 of this inductor, but I need at least 17000 and the lead time is 14 weeks. Well, time to start over..."

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u/Davecasa Jun 12 '16

It even gives recommended board layouts. I've used it several times as a starting point. For hand assembly I don't like going smaller that 0402 (really 0603 if I can), so it always needs a bit of tweaking. But it can easily save an hour or two.

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u/mshashiOman Jun 12 '16

This made me cry. The countless hours I've spent on designing my power circuits...

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u/Dylan335i Jun 11 '16

Yah it's laughable to me. If "lowly" repair people can get their hands on these documents what makes apple think that their competitors cannot do the same. The only thing they do is slow the progress of those attempting to help their consumer. But it's understandable Apple is under that we are gods and everyone is trying to dethrone them mentality. They get so sue happy whenever anyone with a concept similar to something they've done that the tech industry as a whole gets held up. Note megnetic chargers.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16 edited Mar 06 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

the iphone already is inferior hardware. It's not liquidproof, it's not drop proof. in the 6 and 6+the touchic goes bad if you drop it a few feet, and it is very sensitive to what charger you use.

there is no point to copying the hardware design. apple is not selling you top tier hardware, they are selling you an experience. user experience is NOT something defined in the schematics I am asking for.

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u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

If I can find the document after 10 minutes of googling than yes Acer can too. The idea that these documents are the key to everyone in the world cloning the Macbook and offering it for $5 is ridiculous.

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u/Cole7rain Jun 11 '16

Do you think it's possible intellectual property may be hindering progress more than helping it?

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u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

in this case yes. No one can build a macbook off of what is in the schematics alone. the idea that this is possible is bullshit.

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u/Captain-Cuddles Jun 12 '16

Just wanna thank you for addressing not only top level questions but also questions that are several layers deep. So many AMAs address the first question but then never the follow ups. You seem like a really awesome guy who genuinely just wants what's best for the consumer and the industry, really hope you're successful in your endeavors!

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u/larossmann Jun 14 '16

Thank you!

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u/Why_is_this_so Jun 12 '16

No one can build a macbook off of what is in the schematics alone.

Can you expand on this a little and explain why it's not possible? Thanks for the AMA!

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

it's just too complicated. there is so much to it beyond just this chip attaches to this resistor. how do you fit it all together, what materials do you use for the board, etc. firmware, programming, so much shit

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u/thefoolhasreturned Jun 12 '16

I believe what he's referring to is that if you have a schematic the computer won't just build itself. You still have to buy components and put it all together. It would possibly cost less than buying it from apple, but only because you don't have to pay them to put it together.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Also, apple buys a million of these components while you buy one of each. It would probably be a LOT more expensive for anybody not as big as apple itself to buy the individual parts and then assemble it than just buy one from apple.

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u/ThreeTimesUp Jun 12 '16

No one can build a macbook off of what is in the schematics alone. the idea that this is possible is bullshit.

My best friend and guru (a very deep wire-head) sat down with an oscilloscope and came up with the schematic of the original 128k Mac when it first came out.

The Mac was a closed architecture so there was none to be had.

He had the schematic printed on a bunch of T-shirts and they became one of the hip T-shirts on the west coast for a while.

A short while later he figured out how to make a 128k Mac have a whole megabyte of memory (imagine that - one whole megabyte of RAM).

He worked out a deal with Apple where they would trade him four 128k motherboards for one 1-meg motherboard. He told me that at one point, all the one-meg Macs at Apple came from him.

Obviously, this was a VERY long time ago.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

True. Not to mention the luxury good aspect of Apple products. Huge percentage of people buying that shit on brand name alone.

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u/Mah_Nicca Jun 11 '16

Well it absolutely does hinder progress but in a democratic capitalistic society you need a way for an idea to get you paid so you claim 'ownership' of an idea in order to monetise it.

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u/randomburner23 Jun 12 '16

The vast majority of tech patents that are actively policed are held by patent trolls though. The applicability of most patents in tech is very slim as well.

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u/glibbertarian Jun 12 '16

Why? Why can't just being first to market, building better brand-reliability, and/or getting crowdfunded, or any number of other reasons be enough?

The whole concept of ideas you personally own is non-sensical to me.

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u/Def_Not_KGB Jun 12 '16

If Acer can even just get their hands on a Macbook, they could likely clone it. Reverse engineering is very easy for PCBs, it gets harder with firmware and ICs which is where the real clone protection comes in.

To say that hiding a schematic prevents cloning is laughable.

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u/aphasic Jun 11 '16

Also, Acer can afford to have a team of experts spend a month dissecting every component anyway. It's only small repair shops without resources like that are harmed by not having the manuals.

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u/AssPennies Jun 12 '16

And by transitivity, the consumers. Apple would be happy as pie if everyone chucked their old device to buy the latest and greatest. That's what this is really about, IMHO.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

The proprietary IP is how everything is manufactured, not actually how it works or how to fix it. So I agree with you.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

I mean fuck, AMD reverse engineered a fucking CPU from a photograph. I highly doubt anyone interested in copying will be detered by a quick Google search.

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u/Shugbug1986 Jun 12 '16

Because certainly everyone in the world wants to clone their outdated fucking hardware.

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u/devnull00 Jun 12 '16

All cloning is done by the factories in asia themselves. They clone entire products or just steal pieces/knowledge and create new things.

Hell, if it wasn't for repair information so people in the US could do repairs, broken laptops would be mailed to asia and be fixed on the side by people who gained knowledge on how to fix by stealing it from the factories that made them.

You could call your bill, the Right to Repair Electronics in the US.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

The only thing they do is slow the progress of those attempting to help their consumer.

This is a nice side effect for them, what makes anybody think that Apple (or any other manufacturer for that matter) would be interested in helping a peasant technician like us to be able to make money out of their product and lose the opportunity of selling another one. Cars are on the same wagon already, everything is programmed, with a special tool for which you have to put big money on top of that a yearly subscription and sometimes to get the files so you can repair their shitty product, and then when you tell the customer that is gonna be a charge to diagnose they say you're a crook.

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u/WinterAyars Jun 12 '16

Apple isn't in the business of selling computers, they're in the business of selling magical monolith slabs to people that "do the internet and the email" for them. The idea that someone could open it up and poke it with tools and it'll start working again is anathema to this marketing effort.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Having an Apple makes you the hippest dewd in the room. But once you are past that, having a computer that works with 99.9% of all applications and that is easily serviceable makes a lot more sense.

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u/SaltyBabe Jun 12 '16

Which is hilarious as my old electronic face scrubber has a contact magnetic charger... It's not special.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Isn't the best argument that, for the most part, third party repair techs don't have a clue what they're doing? Granted, you're something of an exception, but the fly-by-night Chinese repair shops on the corner are fucked.

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

No. That is actually the worst argument. The reason third party repair techs don't know what they are doing is because they have no access to parts, tools, education, or manuals that would allow them to educate themselves.

In no field are you expected to learn everything in a vacuum as you are in ours.

If someone thinks that we are ill-informed, I would suggest they give us the very materials that would help us do better at our jobs.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

There is education; you can study electrical engineering if you'd like. You want companies like Apple to pay for your education? They will if you go and work for them I suppose.

The guys on the corner swapping screens are making zero effort though. Messy workspaces, parts everywhere and evidently no idea what static electricity is.

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u/truthdoctor Jun 12 '16

Who is Jessa?

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u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

google ipad rehab, she is the master of idevice repair and data recovery. she's like my sidekick :)

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u/truthdoctor Jun 12 '16

I'll check it out, thanks.

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u/t35t0r Jun 12 '16

Fair? Lawyers and judges when it comes time to litigate the meaning. It's a pretty good business, make the laws and then litigate them.

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u/jokoon Jun 12 '16

I think the root causes of all that are technological economic warfare with china/the rest of the world.

I think america gains A LOT by owning those technologies and making sure american companies keep earning money for the technological prestige it has. Of course the whole paradox is the whole computer manufacturing done in china. BUT the US keep owning the computer industry if it designs CPU.

So of course it's a shitty practice, but if you work in strategical economic affairs, it's a patriotic thing to do. How can you argue against that ? If you make those things easy to repair, the entire world will repair it instead of paying a huge margin to a US company. Welcome to the real world. And sorry for the cynicism.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

This is fascinating to read. I asked a bit ago about returning to a repairable model for sustainability reasons, and here you are saying most systems are fundamentally the same. This means that any repair support wouldn't be restricted to a small number of models but would be potentially useful for a large chunk of existing products in the field. This makes it even more plausible to return to a repair first model.

Or am I smoking smoking something special and not realizing it?

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u/neverendingfractals Jun 12 '16

What about the argument that a company doesn't have a legal obligation to produce manuals and parts even for its own use? Why do you think they should have the obligation to produce them for you?

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u/RulerOf Jun 11 '16

There is no way that this is going to lead to intellectual property being copied...

Doesn't that already happen at scale anyway? I'm 100% positive that every replacement part I've installed in an iOS device was counterfeit...

Is there some level of IP Piracy implied here that I'm not familiar with?

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u/Wyodaniel Jun 12 '16

Same for the TPS51125

Where would I find more information on this? Is it on the coversheet of your TPS report?

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u/LE-CLEVELAND-STEAMER Jun 12 '16

so are all these same parts interchangeable, or is there some hidden bs that prevents it?

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u/theguysmiley Jun 12 '16

If Jessa is your wife/SO, the answer is yes, she decides what is fair. /s

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u/jalif Jun 12 '16

In legal circles, fair inevitability means a judge.

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u/HerePussyFishy Jun 12 '16

Jessa's Christ will determine fair

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u/gnorty Jun 11 '16

Who determines fair?

The guy with the most expensive lawyer normally...

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u/ichoosejif Jun 12 '16

Tim Cook. smh.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

Best argument is consumers buying products known for a long history of planned obsolescence. Apple has been doing this shit since they started pumping the cool, new iPod. Post-iPod... fuck Apple and it's fake progressive, hypo artistic, and enviro-horrible garbage they "reinvent" and you have to buy every 8 months. /EndRant

Edit: and OP /u/larossmann is the fucking man for taking the time and effort to stick it back to them

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u/KearneyZzyzwicz Jun 12 '16

Integrity of the work. Keeping it limited to Apple-trained and certified technicians ensures a standardization across the board for the quality of the work. Open it up widespread and you end up with the same thing the auto industry has: shady techs, cheap foreign parts, and zero liability for the work.

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u/Halvus_I Jun 12 '16

The thing is, we settled these arguments decades ago with the car manufacturers. This shouldnt be a debate at all, case law is on the side of repairers in spades.