I think this is misunderstood - everybody points out that how evil BMW is for trying to be proprietary, then immediately points out any Chinese factory can produce a compatible tool for pennies - which one is it?

I think this is a pretty good mechanical design in general because:

- large contact surface (like hex or torx)

- no chance of slide-out (like flathead) or torque-out (like Philips)

- you can use a different size screw bit than the screw, and it wont slide around, or destroy your nut like torx does with hex

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MisterTea 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> which one is it?

Which what? I honestly don't understand what the comparison is or what is misunderstood as there is nothing to misunderstand - it's a proprietary screw designed to defeat self/unlicensed repair - FULL STOP. Fuck the technical merit. And the point of mentioning that Chinese factories can produce cheap knock-offs is to demonstrate how absurd of a anti-consumer measure this is.

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RankingMember an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> everybody points out that how evil BMW is for trying to be proprietary, then immediately points out any Chinese factory can produce a compatible tool for pennies - which one is it?

Just because there's a workaround for an unnecessary annoying thing doesn't mean the thing ceases to be unnecessary and annoying.

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torginus an hour ago | parent [-]

An I am pointing out the design has merit from a purely mechanical perspective, and is a very poor method for actually preventing third party repair.

BMW has done some despicable things as pointed out by a recent article, like welding in a pyrotechnic fuse that would kill the battery when the car detected a fault, and which could only be replaced by cutting the factory sealed battery case open, or installing 'theft protection' measurers, which could brick ECUs if an unlicensed repair shop would attempt repairs on the car (which have been known to trigger even when the dealership attempted to fix the issue using official tools)

	▲	MisterTea an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> An I am pointing out the design has merit from a purely mechanical perspective, and is a very poor method for actually preventing third party repair. It sounds like you are defending both the design and the decision with nothing said about it being a poor method.