This week on Gadget Lab, we dig into the dirt about John Deere and what the repairability of tractors means for the rest of the gadgets out there. Read Lauren’s story about John Deere. Follow all WIRED’s coverage of the right-to-repair movement. Mike recommends the book Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat by Jonathan Kaufmann. Lauren recommends taking the train. Choo choo! Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys. If you have feedback about the show, or just want to enter to win a $50 gift card, take our brief listener survey here. You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here’s how: If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts, and search for Gadget Lab. If you use Android, you can find us in the Google Podcasts app just by tapping here. We’re on Spotify too. And in case you really need it, here’s the RSS feed. Lauren Goode: Mike. Michael Calore: Lauren. Lauren Goode: Have you tried to repair your tractor lately? Lauren Goode: Why not? Michael Calore: I don’t have a tractor. Lauren Goode: You don’t have a tractor? Michael Calore: No, not yet anyway. Not at this stage in my life. Lauren Goode: OK. So when you get a tractor—let’s say you spend $80,000 on it, you go for one of the good ones. Would you say at that point that you own that tractor? Michael Calore: Well, yeah. Lauren Goode: So then why isn’t it easier for you to repair it? Michael Calore: Oh, it’s difficult to repair tractors? Lauren Goode: Well, that’s what some farmers say. Michael Calore: OK. I don’t know. Is this a trick question? Because I’m stumped. Lauren Goode: No, it’s not a trick question. It’s just a lead into the podcast. Michael Calore: Oh. Lauren Goode: So maybe for all those people who are listening now who are like, “Really, why are we talking about farmers and tractors today?” We should get to it because it actually has something to do with all of our technology devices. Michael Calore: I am eager to learn more. [Gadget Lab intro theme music plays] Lauren Goode: Hi everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I’m Lauren Goode. I’m a senior writer at WIRED. Michael Calore: And I am Michael Calore. I’m a senior editor at WIRED. Lauren Goode: If I sound a little different than I normally do, it’s because it’s a new year. It’s a new me. I have a new voice. No, I’m actually taping this from a hotel room, just as Mike and our other awesome WIRED colleagues did last week from CES. Now I’m in a hotel room and I’m dialing in remotely. But today we want to talk about repairability and specifically about John Deere. Now, stay with me here. John Deere has gotten a lot of flack in recent years for keeping a pretty tight grip at how customers use the farming equipment that John Deere sells. When something goes wrong on a tractor and a farmer needs it fixed, they typically have to go through John Deere’s official channels to get that done. They have to go to an authorized John Deere technician. Now, farmers in right-to-repair groups have taken issue with that. In some cases, they’ve even filed lawsuits to try to force John Deere to give them the tools that they need, which are both hardware and software tools in order to repair their equipment. Now, here’s the news this week: In a new agreement that was signed on Sunday, John Deere agreed to a few concessions that seem to make the company a little bit more repair friendly, but it’s more complicated than that. And some of the right-to-repair advocates we spoke to are worried that it doesn’t go far enough. Michael Calore: This was a really big deal in the farming community and a big deal for people who own John Deere equipment, but most of the listeners of this show—most people don’t own John Deere farming equipment. So I want to ask you about this memo that they released because it’s a sort of agreement that can affect all different kinds of gadgets that people want to repair. You wrote a story about the John Deere development this week, so can you give us a sense of what else is at stake? Michael Calore: Right, OK. So before we zoom out, let’s go over what the actual memo promises. What does it promise that John Deere and farmers are going to do? Lauren Goode: OK. Yeah, this is an important point. The memo says that any independent repair facility that provides assistance to farmers would have electronic access to John Deere’s tools, specialty tools, software, and documentation. Like operator parts, service manuals, things that farmers would have to take a look at, figure out how to troubleshoot something, onboard diagnostics tools. There are some other things, too: John Deere has this service that it calls John Deere Customer Service Advisor, which it makes available to independent repair technicians and farmers for a fee. So this is like a good faith measure on the part of John Deere to say, “Hey, we have heard a lot of your complaints about how locked down our systems are, and you’re a farmer who has spent a lot of money on our tractor, and you need your thing repaired because without it, you cannot harvest. You cannot make a living. We’re going to try to open this up a little bit more.” But the good faith part is probably what’s worth unpacking, because the big question is, why would John Deere do this? And is it enough, and right-to-repair advocates say it’s not. Michael Calore: Right. And John Deere has been a target of right-to-repair activists for a really long time. Lauren Goode: Yeah, they have been for a really long time. And one of the reasons, I think, is just because of how big and influential John Deere is. Something like 60 percent of American farmers have at least one John Deere piece of equipment on their farm. And globally they have a very large market share as well. They’ve also come under fire because of how egregious some of their practices have been in the past about locking down their tractor trailers and really forcing farmers into a situation where something breaks and they have to either get that machinery to a John Deere dealership or they have to have a John Deere technician come out. It means they can’t just do quick fixes. It means that they can’t rely on the person they know who’s a really great independent repair person, or a mechanic, to do the thing. And so that shoehorns you into this situation where John Deere can set a premium on those services, and you’re stuck. You’re locked in. And then I think it’s worth pointing out that when it comes to repairs, when you’re talking about your iPhone, it’s a very different situation than it is like your tractor. Having a broken iPhone—incredibly inconvenient in some cases, probably worse than inconvenient. But having a broken tractor when you’re approaching harvest season, that can really mean financial ruin for farmers. It’s a really big deal. It calls for some pretty desperate measures. And so John Deere has really raised the ire of some groups of farmers across multiple states because of the way they have really locked down their equipment as their equipment has become more computerized. Lauren Goode: Right. Yeah, there’s so many layers here. Even that scenario you just described of, “Hey, this is great. Now any Joe can repair this.” We’re not even entirely sure if that is true. One of the farmers I spoke to who runs a cattle farm in Montana said he’s not totally certain whether or not you actually can reprogram a new part for your tractor, for your broken tractor, without some kind of intervention from John Deere at some point of the process. And I asked John Deere about that two different ways, and I couldn’t get a straight answer about that either. So you might be able to use diagnostic tools now a little bit more easily, but can you actually just program the parts in a way that is really easy for any independent repair technician or farmer? That part is unclear. The other part is that this memo is not enforceable. It’s not legally enforceable in any way. It’s two parties agreeing to something at any point. One of them could back out of it. And then to your point, Mike, there is a clause buried in the third section of this memo that says, “At this point we are asking the AFBF not to pursue legislation.” So we’re asking them not to pursue any actual laws that would make this legally enforceable. That would make John Deere liable for this not actually happening. It’s just like a handshake, and it’s a handshake where you’re shaking hands and you’re not even a hundred percent sure of the other side’s terms of the deal. Michael Calore: So the AFBF and John Deere are parties in this memo, but is it possible that there are other parties in the farming world who can introduce or lobby for legislation that would force John Deere and other farming equipment companies to provide access to tools, to provide the things that they’re promising in this memo? Lauren Goode: Yeah, they absolutely could. You could look at something like the American Farmers Union, which was not actually a part of these conversations, and there are statewide bureaus for that union as well who could work toward legislation. Most of the legislation we’re seeing at this point is happening at the state level, although at the federal level, the US Federal Trade Commission has said in recent years that it plans to enforce right-to-repair laws where applicable. So it’s possible that there still could be legislation, but it’s been a really long road for the folks who are proponents of right to repair. It’s really started as a grassroots movement, and we see bills cross different desks, and ultimately it’s not put into legislation. Lauren Goode: Yeah, slow opening. I was trying to come up with some kind of farm phrase or ag-phrase there to make a pun, but admittedly, my farming skills are a little dusty. Michael Calore: Oh, no. Lauren Goode: But we should take a quick break and then maybe when we come back, Mike, we can talk about repairing other electronic devices and maybe paint a realistic picture of what right to repair looks like in the future. [Break] Lauren Goode: All right. So we just talked about John Deere and farmers’ rights around repairing their tractors. But as we noted, the right to repair movement, as it’s known, is something that’s been happening more broadly across the United States. And it can apply to devices big and small, like your iPhone—or in my case, iPhone, in Mike’s case, a Pixel phone. Michael Calore: Pixel. Lauren Goode: Mike, have you ever tried repairing your Android phone? Michael Calore: No, but I have repaired an iPod. I replaced a faulty hard drive in an iPod way back when—this is probably 2008, 2009—and then I have repaired an iPhone 6 Plus for a friend. I replaced a screen and I’ve replaced a battery in a Samsung Galaxy device, all of which I did myself using instructions that I found on the internet and using a $40 kit from iFixit. In both cases, it was very easy. The tools that you can buy from iFixit make it really easy to just pop something, take one of their tools, pop it into one of the cracks on the phone, twist it in a certain way, and it just comes right out. This is all years ago. This is all five or six years ago. It’s more difficult now to replace things in phones because smartphone manufacturers are using glue a lot more than they used to. They’ll lay out the phone in the manufacturing process, and then they’ll just shoot a bunch of glue into it and then slap the screen on. And that keeps all of the parts, I guess, from overheating or from dust getting in there because glue is in the way. It just makes the phone last longer, I guess. But as a downside, all of that glue makes it harder to repair. So I don’t know if I would have the same success repairing or replacing any parts on a phone now, that I did five or six years ago, just because the manufacturing process has changed so much. Lauren Goode: And a lot of manufacturers now put things like in-display fingerprint sensors in the phone, and so if you’re trying to take the glass off, you’re at risk potentially of breaking the thing, or at least that’s definitely what they want you to think, too. Lauren Goode: Yeah, like you, I did it maybe, I don’t know, maybe a decade ago, maybe eight years ago. I, too, bought a kit from iFixit and repaired one of my iPhones. I think it was an iPhone 5 or 6, and then I immediately shattered that same phone. But there was another service at the time that had cropped up in Silicon Valley that I don’t think exists any longer where someone would show up at your door. It was like a TaskRabbit for fixing phones, and I tried that too. I ended up writing about it, and so that wasn’t exactly me fixing it myself, but it was not going to the Apple Store or going to an authorized technician. It was inviting someone into my home who was just good with gadgets and being like, “Hey, can you fix this?” And they had sourced the parts from somewhere. And generally when I’m home and something breaks, I really do try to troubleshoot it myself before I take it to any sort of official channel to get help, mostly because that just takes time, and then you do get locked into what may be a very expensive service in that regard. So I’ve tried it. I totally understand that there are people out there who are like, “This thing broke. I need the quickest solution. I’m just going to go to the Apple Store, I’m just going to get it taken care of.” That’s fine and well for a lot of people, but we should have the option as consumers who own our devices. The whole definition of ownership is changing. So it depends on how stony we want to get on this podcast. But if you own your device, you should be able to tinker with it yourself. Michael Calore: And you can now. There are tools that you can rent from Apple, from Samsung, from Google. They get shipped to you. You open up the box, it comes with the tools that you need, the parts that you’ve asked for, and instructions, manuals. It’s all kind of heady. I don’t know if an everyday consumer would order one of those repair kits, the official repair kits, using the official channels and find it necessarily more or less useful or more or less inscrutable than the consumer-level tools that you can buy from companies like iFixit. Big shout out to iFixit—by the way, this is not spon-con. They’re just the company that has been doing this for a very long time that is very good at what they do. So we are all sort of iFixit devotees here on the show. But I think if you order one of those kits, it’s still an experience where you might feel like you need some handholding, so it’s not perfect. Lauren Goode: Well, part of that has to do with how the gadgets have changed too. Just over time, they’ve become more complicated devices. We talked about that a little bit earlier. Lauren Goode: Well, one way to put it would be they felt the threat of legislation in certain states such as New York, and then thought, “Hmm, maybe we should get on board here and start to offer some concessions.” Microsoft has slowly been making its products more repairable over time. Apple started leasing repair kits, like you mentioned; Samsung and Google started selling phone components directly to consumers. So they started to take steps closer because I think that they felt that both at the federal level and at the state level, that legislators were starting to keep a really close eye on this. Michael Calore: And in the EU, we should mention also, the fact that the EU legislative bodies have been very forward-thinking with regards to right to repair, and they’ve been applying pressure as well. Lauren Goode: That’s correct, yeah. Did you know that in France now, when you go to buy an electronic at a retail store, it will list a repairability rating at the point of sale? Michael Calore: I love it. Lauren Goode: I know, I feel like we should go to France to check this out. Michael Calore: OK. Lauren Goode: Gadget Lab goes to Paris. Michael Calore: Well, first I wanted to ask you about the recent developments in New York that happened over the holidays with regards to right to repair. Lauren Goode: Yeah, New York governor Kathy Hochul signed this new law on December 28, 2022. It was a pretty big deal because it’s something that had originally passed the New York State legislature a year earlier. And it’s only really the second law of its kind in the United States, the second state law of its kind. So it was a big deal in the right to repair world. However, there were some last minute concessions made to the bill that had right to repair advocates pretty upset. So it’s not quite as sweeping as I think they were hoping for. Michael Calore: What were the concessions? Lauren Goode: Well, the bill exempted a lot of categories. So it doesn’t apply to home appliances, motor vehicles, cars, medical devices, or any kind of off-road equipment. It’s really about your own independent gadgets. And the memo also stated that July 1, 2023 is the date when devices would become eligible for coverage, and that includes devices that are sold then, too. So what I understand is that anything that dates prior to that—your iPhone 13 that you bought a year or two ago wouldn’t necessarily have these same kind of protections. So I think that wasn’t great. In an ideal world, this right to repair law would be something that applies to your car, your Samsung refrigerator, your CPAP machine, things like that. And really, it’s just going to apply to gadgets and very, very new gadgets. Lauren Goode: Yeah. You can get access to all the manuals and diagnostic tools in part that you need to repair your own thing, which is great. Michael Calore: So again, a slow opening, right? Lauren Goode: Yes. Michael Calore: Baby steps is what we’re looking at in the right to repair world, whether you’re a farmer or just an iPhone person. Lauren Goode: Right, look at Massachusetts. Massachusetts is the other state that actually has a right to repair law, and it applies to automobiles. Our colleague Aarian Marshall and I have ran a lot about this for WIRED. This law first passed in 2016. There was a revised version of the law on the ballot in the November 2020 election season. It was overwhelmingly voted into law by the people of Massachusetts, and in this amended version of the law in 2020, it was any original manufacturer that sells a vehicle in the state of Massachusetts that uses some kind of telematic system was supposed to be required to equip vehicles with an interoperable, standardized solution onboard so that anyone can basically repair that car when they need to. Even if it’s a super high-tech, computer-on-wheels kind of car. And the legislation was supposed to become effective for cars with the 2022 model year and beyond. But then this group called the Alliance for Automotive Innovation filed a lawsuit after the 2020 election saying that they couldn’t meet that deadline. It was impossible to meet, the original car manufacturers are not going to be able to comply with the law without violating federal safety and environmental laws. This is often a complaint you hear from the side of the industry or manufacturers who don’t want to allow access to repairs. They will call out safety and security concerns. And at this moment, I asked Aarian, our colleague who writes about this, what the status is of the Massachusetts lawsuit. We’re still waiting on a federal judge in Massachusetts’ decision on this lawsuit. So there are always special interest groups that crop up, that when they want to slow down a bill or a law, they find ways to do it. Just as there are grassroots advocates on the other side pushing for the laws to pass. Michael Calore: And whether those are automakers or farm equipment makers, or the companies that we talk about on this show all the time, they’re all very active in Washington on this issue. Lauren Goode: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve never lived in Washington, have only visited there, but I just imagine that as a journalist, you just go out to dinner and you’re surrounded by lobbyists. Michael Calore: Maybe. Lauren Goode: Like you go to the grocery store and you’re like, “The person in front of you is actively lobbying for something that you’re just about to put on the conveyor belt.” Lauren Goode: Web3. Michael Calore: Whatever the kids are into these days. I don’t know. Lauren Goode: Right, yeah. So, slow going in the right to repair world, but also some movement that’s encouraging if you are a person who tends to favor the side of repairing your own devices. Michael Calore: I am optimistic as usual. Lauren Goode: That doesn’t surprise me, you’d be optimistic. Michael Calore: I know. Lauren Goode: You and I are both soaked in technology all the time, so we see some of the really great upsides of all of this connectivity and some of the more obvious downsides. And one of those downsides is, as everything in our lives becomes more internet connected, as companies try to monetize them by selling services like recurring revenue or selling you a service to repair something—or selling you a service to get that software update or monthly recurring revenue or whatever it is—they’re going to hold on tighter to your experience of it. So you actually kind of lose ownership even when you own something. Michael Calore: Yeah, it’s a bad trend. It’s really started influencing my own purchasing decisions. I look at things and I wonder, if I disconnected this from the internet, would it still be useful to me? Look at this power cable, does it this look like something that I could repair? It looks kind of flimsy. Would it be easy to replace? I really do think about these things now, and I didn’t necessarily think about those things just a few years ago. So all of the reporting and all the editing of these stories that you’ve been writing has really been influencing my mind. Lauren Goode: Well, it’s a team effort, certainly. Plus, I’m really glad that I’m just influencing your mind. I sound like a cult leader, that’s great. Michael Calore: Oh, yes. Whatever you say, Lauren. Yes. Lauren Goode: All right. Let’s take another quick break, and then we’re going to come back with recommendations. Let’s try to make our recommendations have nothing to do with tech. Michael Calore: OK. [Break] Lauren Goode: All right. Mike, what’s your recommendation this week? Michael Calore: OK, I’m going to recommend a book. This is a book that I devoured over the holidays. It’s called Hippie Food. Lauren Goode: Yes. This is the perfect anti-tech book. OK. I don’t even know what it’s about. Please tell us. Michael Calore: It’s a history book. It’s a recent history book. The subtitle is “How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat,” and it’s written by Jonathan Kauffman, who is one of our own. He’s a San Francisco–based journalist, was recently the restaurant critic for SF Weekly, I believe, in East Bay Express. Anyway, this book is old, it’s five or six years old. But I just got around to reading it. It’s a history book. It traces the history of what we knew as health food, things like tofu and fake meat and nutritional yeast and sprouts and whole grain bread, brown rice, all of these things that were basically invisible to American society and Western society in general until about 50 years ago. So what happened? The hippie movement, the Back to the Land movement, the macrobiotic movement, people who got very interested in Eastern religion and Hinduism and Buddhism, and traveled to Asia in the middle part of the 20th century, came back to this country and said, “Look at all these wonderful things you can eat that are not bad for you.” Also, the rise of preservatives in our food and automats and fast food, all these things influence the way that we as Americans eat. All of this stuff existed in the counterculture for years and they became mainstream. I grew up with all of those things being normal, like tofu and brown rice and whole grain bread and sprout sandwiches and avocado toast, all being normal. So it was interesting for me as my own journey of a plant-based person to read the book and get up to speed on the long history of all this stuff. And also, I didn’t know this, but there was a commune in Tennessee called the Farm. I’ve had the Farm Cookbook for a really long time since I was a teenager, and I’ve made almost everything in it. But what I didn’t know is that you can look in the cold case at your local grocery store, and you can see brands like Lightlife and Wildwood and Tofurky, and all of those brands were started by people who lived on communes in the 1970s. It’s fascinating. It’s like, “Wow, who knew?” Anyway, I got really into this book, and it’s impossible to read it without getting hungry, especially if you’re a vegetarian or a person has veganism like me. And I can highly recommend it if you’re at all interested in natural foods or health foods or just weird history stuff: Hippie Food by Jonathan Kauffman. Michael Calore: They’ll tell you. Lauren Goode: Yes. Michael Calore: On their podcast. Yes, I’m aware. I’m a walking caricature and I’m totally OK with that. You know why? Because I feel extremely powerful all the time, and it’s OK. Lauren Goode: Wow. That’s like a caricature of a privileged white man too. Michael Calore: Oh, no, that too. Lauren Goode: I feel powerful all the time. Wow. Michael Calore: Lauren, what is your recommendation? Lauren Goode: On that note, my recommendation is the subway. Michael Calore: The subway? Like the veggie sandwich at Subway? Lauren Goode: No, no, the subway. OK, I’ll broaden it out. Trains. Trains! Michael Calore: Trains. Lauren Goode: I love trains. I love trains more than I love planes and automobiles. Michael Calore: OK. Walk us through how this is a recommendation, please. Lauren Goode: Well, I’m in New York this week. I used to live here. I lived here for a long time and I took the subway everywhere. I didn’t have a car for a very long time. I realize New York has changed since I last lived here. I am older, years have passed, we lived through a pandemic. Somehow we’re still living through it. Things have changed. Life has changed, but I’m back in New York and I have to tell you, it’s one of those things where if you haven’t been to New York in a really long time and you’re just reading news reports, you probably have a very skewed idea of what New York is. And I’ve been spending time back here for work, and I get back on the subway. By the way, there is tap-to-pay on the New York City subway right now. It’s great. You tap your phone and you go through. You don’t need to swipe your card seven times to get the right swipe through, and it’s just, it’s incredible. It’s just an incredible transit system. I know there’s probably seven articles I need to read right now written by The New York Times that have investigated how the MTA is underfunded and everything’s wrong. I’m sure, I’m sure of it, that exists. And I know that there are very real and valid safety concerns for some people on the subways right now, too. So I recommend taking some of those concerns seriously. But just, if you’re on the New York City subway, if you get the chance or you have the chance to take a train somewhere, put your phone down. This has to be not about tech, right? So put your damn phone down. Michael Calore: After you’ve tapped to pay. Lauren Goode: After you’ve tapped to pay. And just look out the window or people-watch and just observe, and just make it a meditative experience, because you know what? Trains are great. Trains are just great. Lauren Goode: Yeah. Well, no. Yes, but I moved to New York City in the iPod era, so that was like 2003. So a lot of people were listening to iPods, and so there was some element of digital distraction introduced to the subway at that point. People were using their little click-wheels to scroll through the thousand songs they could fit on their iPads. But otherwise, it was a lot of people strap-hanging and reading the poems or looking at the arts. It was people reading books. You could judge people based on whatever books they were reading. It was great. It was totally great. Michael Calore: I have a very strong mental image of being in San Francisco in the year 2000 when the new Harry Potter book came out, and I rode the N Judah train into work one day. And everybody on the train had this massive 900-page hardcover book that they were trying to read. And I’m like, “You guys should just team up. You should just have one person bring a book for four people, because you’re all starting from page one. You all just bought it.” Lauren Goode: I think the New York City version of that was probably like Jonathan Franzen. Michael Calore: Oh, yeah. Of course. Lauren Goode: It was probably The Corrections or something like that that everyone was reading. Michael Calore: Of course. Lauren Goode: Or Dave Eggers, maybe. Michael Calore: Yeah, Dave Eggers, for sure. Lauren Goode: Yeah. Michael Calore: Heartbreaking Work, yeah. Lauren Goode: Oh, it’s memories. Michael Calore: OK. Well, that’s lovely. I’m going to actually, I’m going to take— Lauren Goode: That’s my explanation. Poor Boone, our producer. I’m like, “How is he going to link to trains? Just trains.” Michael Calore: We do have a trains tag on WIRED, so he can link to all of our train coverage on WIRED.com. Lauren Goode: Cool. And maybe while you’re on the train, eat some tofu from your commune. All right. That’s our show for today. I’m sure some of you are glad we’re wrapping up. Thanks, Mike, for being an awesome cohost. It’s great to be back on Gadget Lab. Michael Calore: Anytime, Lauren. I look forward to being in the same room with you to do this next time. Lauren Goode: Soon enough. And thanks to all of you for listening. If you have feedback, you can find both of us on Twitter. We’re still there. Just check the show notes. And our producer is the excellent Boone Ashworth. Goodbye for now. We’ll be back next week. [Gadget Lab outro theme music plays] Lauren Goode: I love the subway. Love it so much. Michael Calore: Yeah. You get the $5 footlong? Lauren Goode: No, no, not that Subway. The trains, vroom, vroom. Michael Calore: Oh. Lauren Goode: That subway, gosh. Michael Calore: Sure. The smelly one. Lauren Goode: Well, they’re both smelly.
