The Blog Subscribe

There has been a fair bit of bemoaning the lack of repairability in many new computational devices as of late. Complaining that people can't fix their things, should they break in some way, and that the manufacturers are huge, evil corporations that just want to sell you new things expensively. Here's the thing though; almost everyone who owns any modern computational device can't repair it, even if they wanted to. They lack the necessary knowledge and most definitely the equipment. In many cases, there simply is no way to repair things.

Having worked in electronics manufacturing, I like to think I know a thing or two about the process from naked circuit board to finished product. I also invite people to think rationally about who is doing the complaining and what their possible motive for doing so might be. If it is someone behind a repair shop, perhaps they have an agenda of their own that they like to push, not just supposedly working for the better of mankind? It's always good to remember that we are dealing with companies on both sides of this, and companies are supposed to make money, saving the world might not be on their agenda at all.

But I digress.

When producing electronics on a large scale, as is necessary to get enough devices out the door before people change their mind and go chasing the next shiny thing, streamlining the manufacturing process is absolutely key. While this process is refined over time, nowadays the company behind the product does their best to design their products to be easy to mass produce. Make them easy to screw together, if you will. As such, there can't be too many loose components and things that need assembling.

In order to make things both pocketable and powerful, more things need to be stuffed into a very small space, meaning that the individual components need to get smaller as well. If you crack open any modern device, you won't find many individually distinguishable components on the circuit board. Most things are housed in the bigger, black IC's that are no trivial task to desolder without fairly expensive equipment that most people and repair-shops simply do not have.

I'm not saying I like the way things are going in every single aspect. I would truly prefer to see things being a lot more repairable, but in reality that's just not going to happen. The environmental impact of fairly unrepairable devices is something that irks me quite a bit, even though there have been major strides in making things more environmentally friendly.

But I do understand that if we are to have capable devices that do not take the space of a small refrigerator, something has to give. We can't expect to find the same huge hole-mounted components that were common in the 1980s when we look at technology manufactured in 2012!

So please, spare me the whining and lamenting of how unrepairable modern electronics and devices are.

Robert Falck

Robert is a freelance tech writer from Sweden. You can follow his posts here on the British Tech Network, listen to him yap away on the British Tech iOS Show and read even more of his stuff on his site streakmachine.com or you can even follow him on twitter @streakmachine.

Author

Robert Falck

Gold Subscriber : $20.00 USD - monthly Silver Subscriber : $10.00 USD - monthly Bronze Subscriber : $5.00 USD - monthly