On Thursday, November 9, 2017 at 3:59:50 PM UTC-5, Alan Browne wrote:
On 2017-11-09 09:03, nospam wrote:
Alan Browne wrote:

meanwhile, the rest of the world wants to do actual work, not
open up their computer and swap parts all day long.

The usual asshat reply from nospam. People don't "swap parts all
day long". They do it when needed from time to time.

actually, they don't. the vast majority of users have someone else
repair their computer, just as they do with their cars, tvs and
other products.

A nonsense reply of convenience.

Hidden within the angst are a couple of fair & reasonable points,
namely that hardware swaps aren't generally all that frequent of
an occurrence for many people, and that the decision to DIY versus
getting someone else to do it is also an option to consider.

As to just how often -vs- infrequent, that's a YMMV. So too
is whatever the statistical split is between DIY'ers and delegators.


Having it so a user can maintain and repair it doesn't prevent
people from getting it repaired elsewhere.

Probably not, but making something harder will probably serve to
discourage DIY'ers (and the potential revenue stream for repairmen)


When a drive is failing, failed or not large enough it is trivial
to remove and replace. About 10 minutes with most desktops.

only if someone has the skills and tools.

A couple screwdrivers. The skills are fairly low end and there a
gazillion sites showing how to do it elsewise. IOW another nonsense
reply of convenience from you.

In a generic old school desktop, yes, it usually is pretty trivial.
However, well over half of PCs these days are laptops, and these
quickly become more involved/complex.


while readers of usenet might, the general public is not going to
open up a computer to swap a hard drive.

Perhaps. But why not make it easier for those who will. Indeed make it
easier for the "pros" (including Apple) who do it? Again and again your
replies are nonsense convenience reasons.

FWIW, I agree with the interest in 'design for maintainability',
but unfortunately, this isn't really a major objective for any
PC OEMs today: the generic WinTel boxes happen to be pretty easy,
but that's really more by accident than by plan. Apple OTOH does
have 'harder' designs (since the cheesegrater Mac Pro), supposedly
due to their design aesthetic to want to be thin at all costs, etc.


On a current iMac it can easily take an hour or more. Tedious.
And no reason to make it so difficult other than the Apple
aesthetic.

the reason is that opening a computer is rarely done, if ever, and
optimizing for that scenario stupid.

Not at all. Many things are designed for maintainability and capability
growth w/o making them more expensive. It's your usual nonsense reply
of convenience.

Things & times change. I can't even recall the last time that I
opened up one of my cellphones to upgrade its RAM. g In any
case, the days of DIY incremental upgrades because of rapid PC
technology change ... are over. As such, the "hardware upgrade
temptation" paradigm has shifted from ~9 months out to 2-3 years.

FWIW, I've only done brain surgery on an iMac once ... it was an
example of where the owner didn't want to do it, so he asked me.
The exercise took longer than dropping a 3.5" into a tower, but
then again,

a) I also took the time to verify that the owner did indeed
correctly clone the original drive (and have a data backup)
before I opened the case;

b) I'd never opened an iMac before, so I went slowly & deliberately,
and following the step-by-step instructions;

c) I also upgraded the RAM while I was replacing the 2.5" HDD
with an SSD;

d) I also had to prepare & clear the workspace, unpack the box
of replacement parts, verify inventory, etc.

All in all, I'd say that it took me 3-4 hours from "okay here's
the pile of stuff" to "all done & all cleaned up"...but that also
included a lunch break, etc.

it makes a lot more sense to optimize a computer for every day use,
versus something that *might* happen.

some cars have the battery in the wheel well, requiring a wheel to
be removed just to swap the battery. since car batteries usually last
5-10 years, that's a very good design decision.

No, it's a horrible decision. Batteries here rarely last 5 years due to
the harsh winters. Having to remove a wheel to even examine a battery
for its condition is absolute stupidity. I see why you admire it.

Checking battery condition? Is this still the 1970s or something?
Batteries have been pretty much maintenance free for a couple of
decades now.

.....oh, and except for extreme (nee Arctic level) cold, it is
usually heat and NVH that tends to kill off batteries.

For example, I'm personally in US Climatic Zone 5 and while I
normally expect 5+ years life, it does depend: I replaced one
battery this summer (in a low mileage 'collector') which when
we checked the service records turned out to be 2 weeks short
of 14 years old...and FYI, for all but 3 of those years, this
particular vehicle used to be stored outside in the winter
(it only started to be garaged in 2014, when we learned that
it had become a 'collectible' worth more today than when new).


-hh