on Toshareproject.it - curated by Bruce Sterling
*That’s especially interesting if you like to re-purpose electronic components for purposes undreamt-of by the original manufacturers.
https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13
(…)
The alternative was to treat drops, slips, cracks and battery depletion as features, not bugs. Apple could go to war against repair, and in so doing, it could capitalize on those mishaps by selling its customers new devices on a regular basis —and annihilate the market for used, refurbished systems.
That’s the path Apple took. The company embraced planned obsolescence, designing products with ever-shorter duty cycles. It recruited the US Customs Agency to block the importation of refurbished parts from overseas, falsely labeling these as “counterfeits,” even going so far as to etch minuscule Apple logos on parts that no one would ever see, as a means of invoking trademark lawso it could have refurbished parts seized at the border….