I personally feel that repair manuals and documentation are not the worst problems facing repair at this point.
What I've noticed in consumer electronics over the past few years is increased part integration - pretty much every device is just a logic board with a case and display, along with some support components. Pretty much every logic board is just a collection of switching power supplies, soldered ASICs, mem/disk, and connectors.
Even things like power supply ICs are becoming proprietary,with customer-specific part numbers that are hard or impossible to source. Furthermore anything with a microcontroller and firmware on it is perma-bricked should something go wrong on that. This is something Louis Rossmann (the famous MacBook repair guy) talks about a lot.
Now don't get me wrong, I totally support repair documentation, but being able to get replacement parts and materials is probably more of an issue to those "reasonably skilled in the art" than manuals teaching how to mechanically open something (usually possible to figure out) or even what's connected to what (worst comes to worst, you "beep it out" with diode mode and compare with a working exemplar [REWA technology on YouTube does this]).
The issue with parts and materials is that since we're moving towards proprietary ICs, the motive of manufacturers to not provide documentation/parts is even greater as they don't necessarily want to talk about the technology they are using, whether or not it was really novel. It provides a decent excuse for the manufacturers to fight Right to Repair. Furthermore, security issues and proprietary interests come into play, since you don't want hacked fingerprint sensors and Apple probably doesn't want to sell A-series processors.
Futhermore complicating matters is that component and board level repair remains more of a science project than a process. It is logistically difficult for many companies to bother dealing with selling parts (should they sell just subassemblies at 70% of the replacement cost of the product? Resistors for ten cents?) especially to people outside their network of people. And it's hard to deliver consistent experiences when you actually need to try to fix stuff; a lot of people I know are happy with Apple store service because they DON'T try to fix stuff and instead give you a NEW one, without all the warts and scratches, and it's hard to compete with this if you have to swap parts over and over again with subpar or defectively-designed "refurb" parts like I sometimes see happen with the PC manufacturers.
So I'm sort of half and half on Right to Repair every time it gets brought up. People seem to be warming up to first party repair. I think the biggest realistic benefit to RtR at this point is going to be pressure on first party repair to lower prices and improve service. And that's a good thing.
I think the other issue facing RtR discussions is, not that it's anyone's fault or anything but often it is very difficult to have the perspective of actual design and business challenges faced by the engineers and people delivering products. This makes it easier for companies to refute the claims being made. The people actually working on this stuff from the companies' side usually and understandably never talk about it - so we're only representing largely the end user side, or the reverse-engineering side.
What I've noticed in consumer electronics over the past few years is increased part integration - pretty much every device is just a logic board with a case and display, along with some support components. Pretty much every logic board is just a collection of switching power supplies, soldered ASICs, mem/disk, and connectors.
Even things like power supply ICs are becoming proprietary,with customer-specific part numbers that are hard or impossible to source. Furthermore anything with a microcontroller and firmware on it is perma-bricked should something go wrong on that. This is something Louis Rossmann (the famous MacBook repair guy) talks about a lot.
Now don't get me wrong, I totally support repair documentation, but being able to get replacement parts and materials is probably more of an issue to those "reasonably skilled in the art" than manuals teaching how to mechanically open something (usually possible to figure out) or even what's connected to what (worst comes to worst, you "beep it out" with diode mode and compare with a working exemplar [REWA technology on YouTube does this]).
The issue with parts and materials is that since we're moving towards proprietary ICs, the motive of manufacturers to not provide documentation/parts is even greater as they don't necessarily want to talk about the technology they are using, whether or not it was really novel. It provides a decent excuse for the manufacturers to fight Right to Repair. Furthermore, security issues and proprietary interests come into play, since you don't want hacked fingerprint sensors and Apple probably doesn't want to sell A-series processors.
Futhermore complicating matters is that component and board level repair remains more of a science project than a process. It is logistically difficult for many companies to bother dealing with selling parts (should they sell just subassemblies at 70% of the replacement cost of the product? Resistors for ten cents?) especially to people outside their network of people. And it's hard to deliver consistent experiences when you actually need to try to fix stuff; a lot of people I know are happy with Apple store service because they DON'T try to fix stuff and instead give you a NEW one, without all the warts and scratches, and it's hard to compete with this if you have to swap parts over and over again with subpar or defectively-designed "refurb" parts like I sometimes see happen with the PC manufacturers.
So I'm sort of half and half on Right to Repair every time it gets brought up. People seem to be warming up to first party repair. I think the biggest realistic benefit to RtR at this point is going to be pressure on first party repair to lower prices and improve service. And that's a good thing.
I think the other issue facing RtR discussions is, not that it's anyone's fault or anything but often it is very difficult to have the perspective of actual design and business challenges faced by the engineers and people delivering products. This makes it easier for companies to refute the claims being made. The people actually working on this stuff from the companies' side usually and understandably never talk about it - so we're only representing largely the end user side, or the reverse-engineering side.