Featured in this episode of Chaos Lever
The idea that you should be able to fix the devices you paid for, also known as the “right to repair" is, for some reason, a very controversial idea at the state and federal level. Wait, no, I got that wrong- it’s a super known reason.
“Despite dozens of state legislatures taking up right-to-repair bills in recent years, very few of those bills have passed due to staunch opposition from device makers and the trade associations representing them.”
This used to include Microsoft. Now, however, they are changing their tune. The Fair Repair Act, a Washington state bill that attempted to force this reasonable request to be possible, died in committee- but not before Microsoft was able to make a public statement supporting it.
This has been an evolving ongoing position, with Microsoft trying to ‘be part of the conversation, rather than outside it,’ since 2021. This includes efforts to open up their own device repairs. Tough to say if this is simply a cynical shot at Apple, bandwagoning because they see the writing on the wall, or a sincere belief in what should be an uncontroversial concept, but it seemed significant enough to be worth mentioning.