New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

129

aaustinallegro about 5 hours ago 51 commentsRead Article on rte.ie

ES version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

71% Positive

Analyzed from 1523 words in the discussion.

Discussion (51 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

ShadowOfThePit•about 3 hours ago

> According to the European Commission, the new rules are expected to bring €4.8 billion in growth and investment within the EU.

The source of this number seems to come from here, on page 73:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

Interestingly, the number is over a span of 15 years, and is only the calculated "Growth and investment".

Other numbers are "Savings in production costs" at €15.6 billion, and "Consumer savings" at 25€ per consumer per year for an impressive total of €176.5 billion.

It also lists "Business adjustment costs" at €8.1 billion, "Business administrative costs" at just €69.8 million and "Implementation and enforcement" at €105.5 million.

I wonder why "Growth and investment" was chosed as the number to use. Maybe to keep emphasising their gist of "the EU is the future for sustainable growth"?

Also, here are the announcements by the Commission:

https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/right-repai...

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/right-to-repair-...

expedition32•42 minutes ago

I live in a rich European country. This is not Shenzhen. The, very scarce, technically inclined people who know how to repair a vacuum cleaner or electronic toothbrush can get a real job with an hourly rate that makes repairs economically unfeasible.

Repair cafes are nice hobby projects for pensionados but it is not going to move the needle.

mk89•10 minutes ago

EU is huge and hourly rates are different in many countries.

Nevertheless, the point is not the electronic toothbrush, but rather the "BIG" stuff that costs much and it's creating a lot of garbage.

A 1200 euro TV that breaks after 5 years - are you willing to buy a new one just because?

Once you have that infrastructure in place, eventually also the "smaller" things will be cheaper to replace.

tpxl•12 minutes ago

The manufacturer/seller already employs people who deal with this, and it's not expensive. Getting my washing machine fixed for 10€ parts + labor instead of 300€ parts + labor sounds mighty nice to me.

> Manufacturers must also provide [...] access to spare parts at a reasonable price.

This is the important part. Stupid shit like 0.3€ soldering buttons to 200€ motherboards so the repair is expensive has got to go.

shiandow•36 minutes ago

You underestimate my willingness to 'under sell' my free time by spending it to fix something I own.

philipallstar•23 minutes ago

How does that generalise across the population?

shiandow•6 minutes ago

Hard to tell, but if you were to replace anything when doing so would be cheaper I think people would be throwing away a lot more.

If you want an economic argument there's no way to sell my free time for anywhere near the market rate on such a short notice.

euroderf•20 minutes ago

When did it become socially acceptable to throw things out rather than repair them ? When did it become economically rational ?

Helsinki (for one) needs some real repair cafés.

ethbr1•6 minutes ago

As someone quipped to me, there's a reason the environmental movement used an priority ordered list.

   reduce, reuse, recycle

spockz•9 minutes ago

The moment manufacturers started making products that didn’t last long enough, with replacement parts expensive enough, and raising hourly rates for labour which made it cheaper to buy a new product rather than repair the old one. Also the new product tended to be more efficient with electricity and water or marketed as such.

troupo•about 3 hours ago

> including a repair obligation for manufacturers of certain products

Unfortunately regulations often don't go far enough.

I have a ~10 year old iPad Pro in perfect working condition. I can basically do nothing with it, and increasingly it can no longer even browse the internet because Safari is so outdated on it.

So it will be waste.

See similar story about Amazon bricking old Kindles: https://www.techradar.com/tablets/ereaders/amazon-bricking-c...

But, this regulation is still a tiny step in the right direction.

xxs•about 2 hours ago

the main issue is that's an ipad and it's locked. In contrast - a 15y+ laptop can be used (after few upgrades - i5-560M, 8GB RAM, 500GB SSD, AC-8260) to do office work: it runs the latest Firefox and Open Office + googledocs and friends without too much trouble.

Hendrikto•about 2 hours ago

I recently had to throw out a first gen iPad that was physically still in mint condition (even including the battery, somehow), simply for the lack of support essentially turning it into a useless brick.

microtonal•about 1 hour ago

IMO this is one of the biggest gaps in the new EU repair rules (from what I have seen of it). It should mandate unlockable bootloaders, etc. or at the very least an unlockable bootloader once the regular support period is over.

Imagine the cool things people could do with old iPads. Put Android or Ubuntu Touch and give it to people who cannot afford a tablet. Wall display for Home Assistant. Rip out the batteries and have a very low energy ARM server, etc.

stavros•about 1 hour ago

I understand that Apple can't provide upgrades for free, but why can't I buy an upgrade for $30 or whatever? Better than throwing away perfectly good devices.

And they won't let anyone install any other software onto the hardware, so I can't even rely on the free market providing what I want.

kubelsmieci•11 minutes ago

> why can't I buy an upgrade for $30 or whatever?

Because otherwise you won't buy new device for full price

sajithdilshan•about 1 hour ago

I think for these kind of scenarios what Apple should do is unlock the device when it officially stop supporting with new iOS updates. You bought the device and you own it, so you should be able to use it as long as you want.

vrganj•20 minutes ago

Try out Reynard, which ships up-to-date Gecko instead of relying on outdated system WebKit! https://github.com/minh-ton/reynard-browser

Might help you get some more use out of it, thanks to the DMA :-)

embedding-shape•about 1 hour ago

> Unfortunately regulations often don't go far enough.

Eh, what are you proposing? That these new regulations should cover +10 year old devices too?

Similarly I still have an iPhone with a lightning port instead of the legally mandated USB-C port, but at no point was I expecting Apple to somehow change the ports of existing devices.

yonatan8070•about 1 hour ago

Not the OP.

I'd say that we need regulation requiring user-replacable software. Even though a PC might not be supported by Windows 11, and subsequently major browsers will cease support. You can still install a 3rd-party OS like Linux which will maintain support far beyond the original EoL.

Same goes for Android devices, I used to have an LG G2 (the phone, not the TV), which IIRC shipped with Android 4 or 5, and through LineageOS I updated it all the way to Android 11. Granted it couldn't remain relevant forever, its 32-bit ARM architecture is quite outdated and a lot of apps lost support for it, but for a while it remained quite useful.

moffkalast•about 1 hour ago

Arguably compute performance has changed very little in the past five years and we're way into diminishing returns for silicon, so yes it makes perfect sense for devices to last more than a decade and remain perfectly capable machines now as long as they're not kneecapped by lack of support combined with a locked ecosystem. Manufacturers either need to keep it updated or they need to make it possible for others to do so.

vv_•about 3 hours ago

Updating old products is expensive, especially as their hardware falls further behind. Unless manufacturers adopt some kind of subscription model to justify the cost of continued updates, which would likely be very unpopular, I don’t see how they can realistically keep older devices supported indefinitely.

Hendrikto•about 2 hours ago

Vendors do not have to support their product indefinitely. They have to design their products in a way that they do not become useless after support ends. E.g. by opening up the bootloader and letting users install custom software.

vv_•25 minutes ago

> E.g. by opening up the bootloader and letting users install custom software.

If limited to the bootloader, such as allowing users to run their own operating system, then that is definitely a possibility, with the exception of firmware running on the device itself. But I doubt that is what most users here are expecting, and in my opinion, it wouldn't provide much value to the vast majority of customers.

NL807•about 2 hours ago

>I don’t see how they can realistically keep older devices supported indefinitely.

They don't have to. Open up the platform for linux and custom OS.

seemaze•about 3 hours ago

unlock old hardware and let the community support

6510•about 2 hours ago

Government could hold the keys. Sufficient weird behavior should also trigger release.

vv_•about 2 hours ago

It is not always possible to provide the required support. First, it is expensive, as someone needs to prepare all the materials and resources the community would need to continue supporting the product after official support ends. Second, there are legal restrictions, for example, you may not be allowed to provide access to the radio firmware. Finally, most companies simply do not want to make their intellectual property publicly available.

You could make the argument that manufacturers only need to provide the means for the community to support the device, rather than extensive documentation. However, these communities are often so small that this would never be a priority for most companies. Combined with the IP-related issues, I don't think this is really feasible.

fhackenberger•about 2 hours ago

Well I'm quite sure the advances in LLMs abilities are going to be quite a nice change in this regard. If vendors would be required to release all firmware source code or at least full specs after devices drop out of support, it would be fairly simple and cheap now to port drivers to new kernel release or different OSs.

troupo•about 2 hours ago

They don't have to support it indefinitely.

Allowing users install what they want on it would be the best case scenario.

Instead we have bullshit like "your TV is three years old? No updates for you": https://developer.samsung.com/smarttv/develop/specifications...

vv_•about 2 hours ago

Your link doesn't say that the device isn't getting any updates. It only says that, if I understood it correctly, pre-2023 devices don't receive OS updates. They still get guaranteed security updates for five years.

> They don't have to support it indefinitely.

How long should support for devices last in that case? And what should be supported?

jeremiahlee•about 2 hours ago

Great, now require it for software.

Y-bar•about 2 hours ago

They have already begun. It’s called the Product Liability Directive (2024/2853) and forces software providers to guarantee fitness for purposes and safety.

moffkalast•about 1 hour ago

Does that conceptually imply we might get newer OS releases for ARM machines that ship with one that's already outdated and call it good? That would be pretty epic, but I doubt it covers it.

embedding-shape•about 1 hour ago

I'm not disagreeing, but also I don't understand what you mean. It's already legal for you to repair your own software, AFAIK? Or are you proposing they force only "source available" software or something?

lnsru•about 2 hours ago

Good luck to hardware startups in Europe! For every developer now a company needs one technical writer or compliance specialist. That basically means that all small everyday electronics products will come from overseas. Either because it’s cheaper or it’s cheaper and nobody cares about certification.

mk89•38 minutes ago

The rule applies to imported goods too. So not sure why would overseas electronics get a free pass.

birdsongs•about 1 hour ago

This is so disingenuous. I've been part of two Norwegian hard tech startups in the past few years (one as a founder, one currently as an embedded lead) and all it took was our mech engineer (which you will always need) making an accessible case design and publishing a short two page PDF on disassembly.

Down the road, if we make it, we will have access to funds for a few roles that maintain spare parts and a repair (more likely replace/refurb) department, that will coordinate with our manufacturing houses.

None of this blocks innovation or velocity for early stage startups. Unless you have more concrete examples I'm somehow missing?