alt Hacker NewsThey shouldn't be making such unnecessary proprietary components. For cases where there really is no way around using custom hardware, at end of life the specifications should be made public so that a third party can manufacture them.
In this specific case, the real issue is just the incredibly short service lifetime. While different medical devices are going to have different lifetimes, manufacturers need to continue to provide support for at least 36 months after reporting that they plan to discontinue support, which is 60% of the lifetime of this product. Typically medical devices are supported for much longer.
To play devil's advocate:
> They shouldn't be making such unnecessary proprietary components.
Perhaps not, but that's not right to repair. Pretty much everything in any modern smartphone is completely proprietary.
And as the article said, the battery wasn't proprietary. The missing part was the battery connector. That doesn't even suggest to me that it's wildly proprietary, just that it can't be found anymore. Lots of components that are easily sourced now would be challenging for an ordinary person to source in a decade.
> at end of life the specifications should be made public so that a third party can manufacture them.
This also isn't right to repair. In fact, it probably doesn't help much at all: a sufficiently specialized part on a specialized medical device is going to be so niche that the cost of an aftermarket part will be huge. There's probably what, twenty of these things in the wild? A hundred? How many aftermarket manufacturers will even pick up the phone for a one-off custom part, spec or no?
> manufacturers need to continue to provide support for at least 36 months after reporting that they plan to discontinue support, which is 60% of the lifetime of this product
The device was supported for the regulatory limit of five years, and the owner has been using it for ten. Assuming they did give three years of support after discontinuing the product, it's now two years beyond that.
For a product only approved to be sold for five years by a regulator, I think the fact that the only piece that couldn't be serviced after double that time is a battery connector is pretty impressive (all things considered). Customer service aside, I'm not sure how much more you could possibly ask from this company.