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Last fall I took my early era MacBook Air to Apple and ordered a battery replacement for $99. It came back with a new motherboard too. Essentially a new machine, and it took two interactions: drop-off and pick up.

Last fall I bought two Dell desktops (for a client project) and neither has working Bluetooth/WiFi. One machine has been fully out of commission for 2 months and the other is limping along with weak WiFi and no Bluetooth.

The Dell is upgradeable and I could put 3rd party cards in there and get along. But they’re brand new machines under warranty. I’ve had two tech visits and traded more than 45 emails with Dell tech support and I’m still waiting on full system replacements that will ship in February sometime. I bought these machines in November.

Right to repair or not, I trust Apple non-right-to-repair hardware over Dell “I could repair it myself” desktop hardware.

The user experience of dealing with both companies negates the right to repair concern for me, on these right now.



A more extreme example- they may not allow this now

working in education at a nonprofit you quickly learn that warranty support on the acer / Sony is not worth a ton unless your time is free.

You are working with folks reading scripts designed to waste your time.

Meanwhile you can take 5 machines to apple store and walk out w new ones - or if out of warranty pay not unreasonable prices to get them fixed


Yes that Dell experience is poor, though it's warranty work rather than a revenue-earning service for them.

But what would your experience have been if Apple has simply said "no, we don't service that model any more"?

That's where "right to repair" is important.


Yup, in absolute terms that's a concern.

But if/when we ever have right to repair laws that apply to Dell & Apple, based on their track records, I'd probably still invest my future computing dollars in the one that has the strong game.


How is that important? You could absolutely do that and Apple absolutely could do that. Right to repair laws wouldn't force Apple to create obsolete parts so what's your point?




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