Microsoft and Apple wage war on gadget right-to-repair laws
By Mark Bergen Justin Millman has always fixed things. He tinkered with gadgets before opening a repair shop in Westbury, N.Y., a few blocks south of the Long Island Expressway. Students from a nearby school started trickling in with their busted devices, and business was brisk enough that Millman worked only on those. Each month he now fixes about 2,000 iPads and Chromebooks, computers that, since the pandemic, have become education essentials.Sometimes, though, Millman cannot fix them. It's not that he's technically incapable. It's that the parts and schematics are not available, usually because device manufacturers, including the world's richest companies - such as Microsoft and Google - do not share them. Several students recently came to Millman with defective WiFi cards on their Chromebooks, laptops designed only to work when connected to...
