This is the best summary I could come up with:
But now we may have some glimmer of Shamrock Shake-flavored hope: not only has iFixit performed a teardown of McDonald’s machines, but it’s also petitioning the government to let it create the parts required for people to fix them.
As shown in a video posted to YouTube, iFixit purchased the same ice cream machine model used by McDonald’s and spent hours trying to get it up and running.
The machine spit out numerous error codes that iFixit says “are nonsensical, counterintuitive, and seemingly random, even if you spent hours reading the manual.”
Despite consisting of “easily replaceable parts,” such as three printed circuit boards, a motor and belt, and a heat exchanger, the ice cream machine can only be fixed by its manufacturer — Taylor — due to an agreement it has with McDonald’s.
While a company called Kytch attempted to remedy this by creating a product to read ice cream machine error codes, iFixit says McDonald’s “sent a letter to all of the franchise owners” instructing them not to use the device.
“We’d love to be able to make a device like Kytch that can read error codes on the ice cream machine we have, but we can’t because of copyright law,” Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit’s director of sustainability, says in the video.
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Not sure why.
It’s a running joke. But nobody is actively furious that they can’t get their soft serve from McDonald’s outside the weirdos who eat McDonald’s daily.
It’s soft serve. It’s not hard to find.
It’s precisely because it’s so well known and such an egregious example of the absurdity of anti right to repair legislation. ifixit has a vested interest in the success of right to repair laws expanding, but they are up against multimillion dollar companies. And trying to set legal precedent on anything is hard, so it helps if you can get momentum on cracks in the current system.
This isn’t about folks ability to get shitty ice cream from a fast food joint, this is about pushing right to repair laws.
It’s a problem that ultimately McDonald’s doesn’t care to fix.
If they cared then they would stop using these machines and go with a different manufacturer. They’ve had this problem for over a decade and have had plenty of time to address it. They won’t because they just don’t care.
People go else where if they want ice cream and it doesn’t seem to bother McDonald’s at all.
It’s also that franchisees are forced to purchase the machine and get them fixed often under very expensive maintenance plans. McD’s benefits from this due to alleged kickbacks from Taylor.
So in other words corporate McDonalds is exploiting their franchises? Why am I not surprised.
