Apple and Tesla vs. right to repair

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The Right To Repair is a legal concept thrown around a lot in the past few years, which would force manufacturers to allow third party repair shops to service their products (tractors, cars, laptops, phones...etc.) and to sell spare parts at a reasonable price.


Some legislation has been passed in 16 states of the USA, but most of them are incomplete and still let manufacturers off the hook, when they don't provide parts and repair manuals.

Apple makes all kinds of IT products, but most of its profit comes from the iPhones, consisting of a generous margin on the hardware product, services and a considerable margin on the Apple App Store... long story short, Apple is an extremely profitable company and it's buying back its shares, paying dividends ...etc... absolutely no losses in the recent years.

Add to these purely financial reasons the fact that iPhones are built using standard electronics components, just like any other smartphones, there is no real world obstacle for Apple to provide parts for everyone... they just don't want to. A positive example is Samsung, as they have a reasonably priced parts store, where anyone can order parts on-line for almost any Samsung product, nice and easy....

http://www.samsungparts.com/Default.aspx
There are several lawsuits and lobbying going on right now, so hopefully somebody will force Apple to take care of its customers properly, instead of frequent warranty refusals and 2-3 week wait times.

Tesla makes electric cars, solar panels and stationary energy storage products, with advanced electronics (most of them unique) inside. Almost none of their parts are standard.

Tesla is also in startup mode, financially speaking, as they are still ramping up production. It seems the Model S and X production has stabilized at about 100.000 units per year, but they have about 600.000 preorders for the Model 3, out of which they delivered about 70-100K units... they currently make ~5000units/week, but they have to reach 10K/week by the end of the year.


They have at least 4 new exciting products to manufacture, Tesla Semi, Pickup, Model Y and Roadster, which will require some more serious investment ... long story short, until 2018Q3 they've been investing everything they could ... but they promised they'll be profitable by the end of the year.

So comparing Tesla to Apple, especially in financial terms (with Apples' estimated 300 billion dollars in cash) makes no sense at all. Apple is a mature company sitting on a huge cash pile and no upcoming revolutionary products, so they should definitely be forced to provide parts for their products, which fail quite frequently.



Tesla needs more time. In my opinion Tesla should be forced to provide most parts for the Model S and X, with certain exceptions of course, which can't be replaced by just anybody off the street (ex: battery pack, falcon wing doors, cameras and sensors...etc.). BUT for the Model 3 and upcoming Semi, Pickup, Model Y and Roadster they should be allowed to "do the best they can", as every manufactured part needs to go into new products, to do right by all the people on the list who preordered. When the preordered list gets shorter, 1-2 years after start of production, then they should in fact provide service manuals and (most) parts for any Tesla owner and repair shop.
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Losing more and more respect for Linus each day ...

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Until now a really enjoyed most of Linus Media Group's content, starting with LinuTechTips, Channel SUperfun, TechQuickie ... and not TechLinked ... but a few weeks ago something changed for me... I began to see Linuses ... how shall I put this ... redneck side.


In this video he explains why he bought his old car, perfectly understandable, I got nothing against it ... served him well for ~10 years ... whatever... BUT the new car he bought is a excellent car, I couldn't pick a better one for today's infrastructure ... the problem starts as he's explaining why he bought it.

Long story short he doesn't understand how it works AT ALL! OK, maybe i'm exaggerating a bit, as I've followed the electric car industry closely for the past 3-4 years, so it's somewhat understandable that not everybody knows as much about them as i do, but GEEEEZ ... he pretends to know about technology in all those youtube videos .. and he doesn't know the first thing about plugin hybrids, nor about electric cars in general ... Shame on you, Linus!


The second generation Chevy Volt (which Linus bought used) has an all electric range of 50 miles and another hundred something miles on dinosaur juice. The battery can be charged from the grid or from the internal combustion engine, using gasoline.

As you can see in the picture above, the Chevy Volt's drivetrain is even more complicated than an ICE cars', but at least it is very flexible when it comes to operation, as it has:

  1.  pure EV mode - the battery powers 1-2 motors to move the car up to 50 miles
  2.  mixed mode - the computer decides when and which motor it uses
  3. generator mode - the gas engine charges the batteries and also powers one electric motor, which moves the car
  4. pure gas mode - the gas engine moves the car with or without charging the battery pack
*not necessarily 100% accurate, but IMO these are the logical modes, if you consider the components

This is all fine and dandy, if you're not sure what situations you'll be getting into with your car ... BUT the truth is that most people know, even if they don't want to admit it to themselves: a pure EV is all they need.

A pure EV is much more simple, has about 50 times less moving parts ... and it's much easier to operate.
As i tried to illustrate in the second photo, an EV only needs one battery, power electronics and one electric motor connected directly to the wheels (with gear reduction and differential, of course).


Teslas are the best available EVs out there, and they have a gear ratio of 9.3 to 1, perfectly fine for up to 155mph in just one gear, without any mechanical trickery (like Toyota's eCVT).

Q: So why would you buy a Hybrid or Plugin Hybrid today, when fast charging stations are all over the place?
A: Only when you travel to places without electricity, and the ~200 mile range of the average EV can't get you there and back.... BUT I DARE YOU to show me a place like that on Earth!


Where does Linus go, where he's more than 100 miles away from one of these dots, where he can fill up a Tesla for free in about 30-45 minutes?
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What do you do when you're a multi-lingual blogger?

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As a multi-lingual blogger i've always actively researched what's the best way to get my message across (and also get payed for it) in all three languages I speak fluently: Hungarian, English and Romanian.


I've made this decision a long time ago, and today i'm making it again: i'll only have one blog in each language, where everything has to fit ... whatever i want to write about.

Long story short, I've picked two of my blogs with the most posts - i'll only focus on them. The Hungarian blog I have will not be updated, as there's no point. Hungary is very hostile to foreign companies and workers, so it would be very hard to put ads on the blog and actually make some money, while providing readers at least somewhat useful content.

https://stiri-itc.blogspot.ro will be my main blog, as I live in Romania and know this market the most.
https://gr8-dealz.blogspot.com will be my English blog, where I don't expect to make much money, but will write a lot, as I enjoy writing in English more than in any other language.

I will also have a third blog, where I'll only post funny photos, Photoshopped by me (actually I only use MS Paint), maybe a few words for explaining the context... I don't know how that will go ... https://feexed.blogspot.com
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Linus, Luke and Yvonne from Linus Media Group hate the environment, because "it's not practical" (clickbate)

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As many of you know, Linus Sebastian from Linus Media Group got his car destroyed by fans at his recent LTX event ... a car, that was worth hundreds of Canadian dollars ... and now he's allegedly looking to buy a new car, and maybe a motorcycle.


Jump to minute 34 ... and you'll see ... how misinformed an alleged tech tuber, his wife and friend can be. I will never listen to their advice again... extremely superficial guys, they need a lesson in ... EARTH, aka. the planet we live on...

Research environmental stuff on your own, all I have to highlight is that all gas/diesel burning cars (including Hybrids and Plugin hybrids) have emissions, some of which end up in their own cabin and in the cars behind/near them, poisoning the drivers and passengers...



1. In Canada you can get the Tesla Model 3 in like 2 months, if you order it today
2. You don't want anything less than a Model S or X for your family, if you can afford it (~80K USD), as they have those huge HEPA filters, which will save your kids from lung cancer


There's nothing like it in other cars ...

3. Teslas are safer than Volvos in avoiding collisions and in collisions. The only fatalities to date hit solid concrete barriers at 80-120mph, not survivable in any car, IMO ... and another owner was putting his faith in autopilot and wasn't paying attention to the road, ignoring autopilot warnings ... crashed into a semi truck, which was crossing the road illegally.

4. Electric cars with sufficient range (200+ miles) and fast charging stations all over the place ARE THE MOST PRACTICAL CARS for city traffic AND long distance travel. All Teslas have at least 200 miles of range, even if you buy a used one, and they all support supercharging, aka. 20 to 80 percent refill in about 30 minutes, but you usually charge at home at night, in about 8 hours max.


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Live streaming on a low budget

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I've been recording Dota 2 gaming videos for almost a year, but I never tried live streaming, as my hardware is barely able to record 720p 30Hz in mostly uncompressed format (1hour = 8GB). Little did I know that my PC is actually capable of live streaming Dota 2 (haven't tried other games yet) in absolutely acceptable quality in 720p 30Hz.


The video above was recorded using OBS and a cheap ass Canyon webcam for keyboard&mouse view. Windows and Dota 2 are installed on the SSD and OBS captures video onto the hard drive...


My PC specs are:


For streaming I use the Software x264 Encoder, as the GT 1030 video card doesn't support NVENC hardware acceleration, and a constant bitrate of 4000kbps, so the load on the CPU is as constant as possible. CPU preset is Ultrafast of course ...


Dota 2 is running in 1920 x 1080 resolution, almost maximum quality settings, capped at 60FPS, but in OBS it's downscaled to 720p and 30FPS, as my PC can't handle more.
NOTE: 720p is mostly fine for watching, but you should run your game in the highest resolution possible, so it doesn't affect the playability of the game. In 720p you may play worse than in 1080p, 1440p or 4K

There's one more important setting to modify:


Process priority needs to be set to HIGH on a cheap PC like mine, because the game is trying to maintain 60FPS all the time, while the recording/streaming quality is more important in my case. If the game gets lower proirity and FPS drops to ~40FPS, that won't affect recording/streaming quality... as long as it stays above 30FPS. So it's a kind of a balancing act.

Subscribe to my channel for more videos and live streams!
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