SteamPal is a fact. Valve announced their first handheld console named Steam Deck

[saltycaramel]

Question: Valve saying “You have every right to open it, but for the love of everything that’s holy in this world DON’T DO IT, you could DIE ” doesn’t basically prove Apple (or whoever makes modern consumer electronics devices that are not user-serviceable) is right?

[saltycaramel]

Or, putting it in another way, is it an hypocritical stance just to get some “nerd/tinkerer street cred” (see Linus falling for it “they didn’t have to, they have nothing to gain”, well nope your praise is just proving what they had to gain)?

 

”Kids, don’t do drugs. Now back to that super COOL drugs we were talking about..”

[Blademaster91]

18 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

Question: Valve saying “You have every right to open it, but for the love of everything that’s holy in this world DON’T DO IT, you could DIE ” doesn’t basically prove Apple (or whoever makes modern consumer electronics devices that are not user-serviceable) is right?

No, valve telling you not to open it sounds like they hired a lawyer to come up with some disclaimer telling you not to open it, even though the Steam deck is completely repairable, and no batteries aren't going to kill you if you're using the right tools and aren't being careless taking it apart.

Apple on the other hand tells you not to service it because they'd rather you go into their stores and push you to buy new instead of fixing it, and the fact that they use flex cables that are too short, glue things in place, and serialize components to the device to prevent any sort of repair.

[saltycaramel]

I’m not friends with Valve.

We’re in a commercial relationship.

What their lawyers say matters in our relationship.

The fact that they deemed it necessary to make that scary “don’t do it” preamble proves Apple kinda (kinda, I’m not saying they couldn’t make professional repairs easier) has a point when they try to prevent bad user experience from

- bad user repairs

- shady non-certified repair shop repairs (Louis Rossman is the first to admit the down-the-street repair industry is full of shady shops and cheapskates saving on cheap parts)

 

We can’t just brush it off as “Valve just said it for the cameras”.

[Blademaster91]

On 10/9/2021 at 12:34 AM, saltycaramel said:

I’m not friends with Valve.

We’re in a commercial relationship.

What their lawyers say matters in our relationship.

The fact that they deemed it necessary to make that scary “don’t do it” preamble proves Apple kinda (kinda, I’m not saying they couldn’t make professional repairs easier) has a point when they try to prevent bad user experience from

- bad user repairs

- shady non-certified repair shop repairs (Louis Rossman is the first to admit the down-the-street repair industry is full of shady shops and cheapskates saving on cheap parts)

 

We can’t just brush it off as “Valve just said it for the cameras”.

I really don't see this as a "see told you" for the people that are opposed to right to repair, how this proves user repair is bad, or proves anything that certified repair is better than any decent repair shop that isn't certified.

If apple didn't make repairs so difficult to do, there wouldn't be so many bad repairs, and "certified" repair shops make plenty of bad repairs too so that doesn't mean much, you have to do your own work to find someone with a good reputation that will stand by their service. Louis Rossman has videos explaining why certified repair doesn't matter, often "certified" means the shop just tests the same parts non-certified repair shops get, but throws away the ones that don't pass whatever internal testing the "certified" shop has access to, non-certified shops often can't test parts first because they don't get test equipment without getting the certification, but getting approved comes with consequences that aren't good for the repair shop.

There needs to be support from companies to even make a product serviceable in the first place, teardown videos are great and I think more companies should make them, the warnings are just for liability reasons, but way over the top and make it sound like touching the console with a screwdriver is going to make it explode.

[WereCat]

13 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

I really don't see this as a "see told you" for the people that are opposed to right to repair.

If apple didn't make repairs so difficult to do, there wouldn't be so many bad repairs, and "certified" repair shops make plenty of bad repairs too so that doesn't mean much, you have to do your own work to find someone reputable. Louis Rossman has videos explaining why certified repair doesn't matter, often "certified" means the shop just tests the same parts non-certified repair shops get, but throws away the ones that don't pass whatever internal testing the "certified" shop has access to, non-certified shops often can't test parts first because they don't get test equipment without getting the certification, but getting approved comes with consequences that aren't good for the repair shop.

There needs to be support from companies to even make a product serviceable in the first place, teardown videos are great and I think more companies should make them, the warnings are just for liability reasons, but way over the top and make it sound like touching the console with a screwdriver is going to make it explode.

My theory is that a lot of people said to get the 64GB version and upgrade the SSD, there are also people telling other people the same and making it seem like it's the intended design of the console and it should be easy.

I think that Valve have seen this and are trying to discourage people from doing it, especially the people that don't know any better and would otherwise never even attempt to open the device.

Basically anybody who actually gets scared/worried after watching their video should not open the device as they are either extremely inexperienced or have no idea about what's going on, in which case the Valve video makes its purpose since majority of people are likely like that. (They are basically saying to take the device and let someone competent do it for you if you have to swap the SSD/Thumb sticks).

Most tech people won't care, that's why everybody on this forum is rolling their eyes after those warnings.