Those Were the Days (of Repairs)

I never intended to become Archie Bunker. But, he had a point: the old LeSalle ran great. Things of the past did, because they were easily repairable. In an age of disposable everything, working with something old is a reminder of that.

Two products over the last week made me think of this. First, was the revelation that the impressive new Mac mini, with its M4 processor, has an (unofficially) replaceable SSD drive. Second was the old Igloo cooler that probably has been around the family for longer than I’ve been alive.

The cooler does one thing and it does it really well: it keeps stuff cold. Put ice in it and several days later, there will still be a few bits frozen. It’s never needed to be replaced because it works and it was built to last.

After several decades — I’m not precisely sure how many — of service for all sorts of family functions and trips, one of the plastic hinges on the lid broke. I turned to a quick search of the web to find a universal, official Igloo replacement piece that that screwed in with four Phillips-head screws.

The replacements didn’t last nearly as long — my eBay account tells me eight years — but when they broke this fall, I was able to pull up the part number from before and the only glitch was that Amazon lost the new replacement for a week.

A total cost under $20 and five minutes was all it took to keep the old reliable cooler going for years to come. That’s striking because it just isn’t normal. How often does something like a cooler break and we pitch it, despairing of any hope of fixing it?

Apple is often the whipping boy for the opposite scenario: things that cannot be easily repaired. Apple is the company that started the trend of non-replaceable batteries when phones and computers normally had them. Progressively, this has gone further with non-replaceable RAM and then the same for storage.

These trades are not the exclusive domain of greed and arbitrary spite. Non-removable batteries made devices thinner and more water resistant. “Unified Memory” on the same chip as the processor is incredibly fast — the performance of Apple Silicon is objectively best in class.

But, when someone discovers that you can unofficially upgrade a new model’s SSD, I do find myself both celebrating and wistfully thinking of when there was no need of an unofficial hack to add storage. Why not at least make the parts upgradable where upgradability compromises neither performance nor cost?

Here’s the thing: if Apple made all of its systems’ SSDs user upgradable, few people would bother. So any notion the choice is a plot to force users to buy new systems seems to give too much credit to users’ hobbyist skills. Most would still upgrade when ordering or never at all. From a bottomline perspective, it’d be imperceptible.

It might actually increase loyalty and sell more systems. If someone underestimates the amount of storage needed (or just buys one of the too-small-of-SSD models typically stocked at retailers), the person probably is going to begrudgingly live with it, not plunk down money on an early replacement. But the lack of frustration if the drive can be swapped might sell another system down the road.

Sort of like the cooler: they last for years, typically, even if they aren’t as robust as the old Igloo. But enjoying one that is so robust and so repairable? If I need a different size or configuration, of course I’d be inclined to pick up another from Igloo.

(And, in getting the part, I discovered many of their products still have replaceable parts. Yeah, Igloo it is next time I need a cooler.)

Am I renouncing my love of Apple? No. Regular readers know I love my Mac and there are plenty of other reasons I’ll take it over a system that is — at best — slightly more repairable but inferior in other ways. (Though most systems, not just Apples, are designed to be disposed these days.)

That said, there’s a simple pleasure in easy repairs. Where it isn’t unreasonable, mister, we could use stuff repairable like an Igloo again.