Nigra Lux

That’s Louis Rossman, a repair technician and YouTuber, who went viral recently for railing against Apple. Apple purposely charges a lot for repairs and you either have to pay up or buy a new device. That’s because Apple withholds necessary tools and information from outside repair shops. And to think, we were just so close to change.

My mom has an iPhone 6 Plus and hasn’t even had it for a year when one day it suddenly died and would not charge. So she took it to an authorized Apple repair place and they charged her $50 for a diagnostic only to tell her that she would have to buy a brand new phone.

So she decided to go to the AT&T store to talk to our usual guy that upgrades our phones and handles any problems for us. She tells him what’s wrong and he takes her phone to the back only to come out two minutes later, puts her phone on charge and it comes back to life. 

She asks him what was wrong with it that he managed to somehow fix when the people at the “authorized apple repair place” couldn’t. And you know what he told her?

All companies want you to buy their new products. None have gone to the lengths that Apple Inc. has gone to make end user repairs as impossible as is legally viable. I have been repairing electronics and computer systems privately, commercially and active duty in the US military for about 30 years. 

Apple puts extra effort into special hardware requiring proprietary tools that are only legally produced by their licensed manufacturer and can only be purchased through licensed repair shops if at all. 

Companies like iFixit can only exist as profit making companies because they are able to make workaround tools and kits that are still profitable but less of a blatant ripoff than Apple. 

“Si tú pones la boca ahí, te pueden entrar gusanos en el estómago”, manifestó.

Gratitud.

Marta se queja de la falta de gratitud de alguien a quien consideraba amiga. Es comprensible su perplejidad, pero me permito recomendarle que hay que estar muy preparado para cosas así. 

No tiene vuelta de hoja: los hay que agradecen los favores recibidos, y los hay que se vengan de ellos. No sabría decir yo cuál de los grupos es el más numeroso. Quiero pensar que el primero.

Es uno más entre los grandes enigmas éticos. El Bien no siempre produce el Bien. Pero el Mal casi siempre provoca el Mal. Quien ha recibido castigos físicos en su infancia tiende a ser violento cuando llega a la edad adulta. El estudiante o el soldado que ha sufrido las peores novatadas acaba siendo el mayor defensor de la humilación a las promociones que le siguen. Quien ha recibido gritos, tiende a gritar. Quien ha sido maltratado o discriminado, tiende a maltratar o discriminar. Los esclavos liberados que retornaron Africa tras la Guerra de Secesión norteamericana, se apresuraron a esclavizar a sus iguales en Liberia, lo que convirtió a ese país en el pionero del continente africano en la implantación del apartheid. Y esto ocurrió mucho antes que el apartheid sudafricano, que solo se formalizó en favor de los blancos hace 70 años. Kapuscinsky trata el tema con elocuencia.

me, who hasn’t been able to recognize anyone on my dash for years: