Categories
ranting

The Right to Repair

So this happened:

Actually it happened back on the 10th of December. My original Apple Watch’s screen just fell off while I was walking around. I was actually packing for my vacation, which started on the 12th. So I just tossed the watch aside, no time to do anything and I was not planning on taking the watch on vacation anyway —one less thing to charge.

While on vacation I thought about checking at duty free to get a new Watch and save some tax but I never got around to looking. Back in Singapore in January I checked at a local shop and they said the Watch was out of stock and would take two months to get, at least the version I wanted. Since I expect Apple to release a new version in four months or so (Apple Watch is still an April product right?) I passed. No point buying the old version two months before the new one.

So… what to do. Looking again at my old watch it looked like the screen just came in glued. So I reconnected the one thing that looked like it was connecting the screen to the main board and with a satisfying “click” the screen came on. To fix the floppy screen I had to resort to using The Kragle [brickmedia.org]! Worked like a charm:

Which makes me part of the reason Apple is minting less money [motherboard.vice.com]. So far it’s survived two weeks including several trips to the gym: