Apple Sued an iPhone Repair Shop Owner in Norway and Lost
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I think this is the crux of the issue. The guy was importing refurbished parts with the logos covered even. They weren't counterfeits. How does a manufacturer have the right to sue for copyright infringement when it's just end users reselling authentic parts? The owner even states he in no way markets them as OEM parts.
Frankly I think it's pretty obvious apple is just trying to squeeze every cent out of these phones and it's a really bad hat to wear.
I'd guess that's their reasoning. But I'm not on their side here. I think they should be allowed to design products to make repairs as hard as possible if they want to, but once I buy it I should be able to do whatever I want with it. Plus there's not that much great experience to protect lately..
Other fuels may contain additives which make your Ford™ engine seem imperfect. A few misguided people are tempted by the siren call of the independent fuel suppliers to use something other than the Ford™ fuel specially made for your needs. When things go wrong, they spread rumors that Ford™ vehicles suck, when it was simply their misguided fault.
And that's why, as the proud owner of a Ford™ vehicle, you must go to a Ford™ gasoline station to buy Ford™ fuel. That's Ford™ fuel, available from a Ford™ station somewhere in your state.
Yes. The FCC actually sent out reminders to phone companies two days ago reminding them that use of aftermarket parts cannot void a warranty. This also applies to things like "warranty void if seal removed" stickers etc.
https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/04/10/ftc-reminds-phone-m...
The 30-pin connector lasted from the third-gen iPod (2003) through the iPhone 5 (2012), or around nine years. Lightning has remained the connector of choice since then for the past six years.
MagSafe debuted in 2006, was improved to MagSafe 2 in 2012, and is being phased out for USB-C (which is terrible, but I digress) in 2018.
One change in fifteen years for their handheld product lineup and two changes in twelve years for their laptop lineup seems pretty reasonable.
Which is why they added support for arbitrary file providers to integrate with iOS 11's Files app, and why they announced that iWork will support collaborating through Box last month?
Heck, they don’t even let me organize my home screen the way that I want to.
Microsoft was reamed over installing IE as the default browser on their OS, so how is not letting you change safari as the default on iOS any different?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-court/u-s-appeals-c...
"I can't change the default SMS app on my phone!" This has always been the case with the iPhone since the beginning. Until Apple says that this is now a new part of the OS, pretending like that was some kind of bait and switch or deceptive business practice is completely silly.
No they aren't - not here at least. Scanning this thread, it looks like they're just complaining.
> pretending like that was some kind of bait and switch or deceptive business practice is completely silly.
Who did that? Can you point out a specific comment? I certainly didn't and I don't see any other comments that did. I simply pointed out how Apple makes their product difficult to use by being so stingy with the level of access that they allow me to have.
Anyway, there is an anti-trust lawsuit against Apple right now. Since their iPhone does have somewhere around 50% marketshare in the USA I think there's a chance for it to succeed and I hope it does.
And what are the damages claimed against them? Even if they have 50% marketshare, they still have competition with a larger marketshare both domestic and worldwide. There's nothing that can be brought against them because they're not doing anything illegal or immoral.
The fact that there is a conflict of interest and the manufacturer will charge more doesn't mean that there aren't real issues.
... and at 3x the usual price.
Regardless, this is a pretty low-effort attempt to make a point.
Safety is one thing. Working against your customer another.
It's quite obvious that, to put it mildly, that's wishful thinking inspired by a heavily rose-tainted view of Apple.
Meanwhile, Apple is known for their extreme price gouging complemented with extreme actions to stop even their very own customers from even repairing their broken products, let alone upgrade them to a usable state.
Like what kind of actions? I can go to ifixit.com right now, order parts for my iPhone, order tools to work on my iPhone, and watch detailed instructions about how to repair my iPhone. (or Mac, or iPad, etc.)
The products are NOT easy to work on, but I am not aware of any action that Apple has taken against individual customers who want to repair their own products.
> let alone upgrade them to a usable state.
Personally speaking, I'm still using a 2008 Macbook Pro today because I was able to order and install more RAM (even above the recommended limit), a new SSD, and a new cooling fan.
While you may have the right to do that yourself, they don't want you to have the right to hire someone else to do it for you.
They also don't want you to have the right to get those parts for your iPhone.
Apple goes after producers and technicians, and not so much end-users. For one, I think end-users have rights, like the first-sale doctrine, which makes it harder for Apple to do anything to you other than terminate your warranty coverage.
Though I think they really would have preferred if they could sue you for jailbreaking an iPhone - they lost that court case.
I think the legality of jailbreaking was actually decided by the Library of Congress DMCA exception process.
iFixit was part of that effort. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8q89wb/how-to-fix... describes more about the company's history. I found it interesting.
https://es.ifixit.com/Answers/View/121003/The+replacement+ba... says (concerning a battery)
> The iPhone 4 Battery we sell is made to the same specifications as an Apple OEM part, but cannot be classified as 'OEM' because they are not made by Apple. Apple doesn't like to sell their OEM parts to anyone, so they are extremely hard to find. Our parts are brand new, fully tested, and made to the same quality as Apple OEM parts. They also come with a 6-month warranty."
The problem is, they are becoming less and less effective.
If you have no documentation or repair manuals, then it's harder to fix. An authorized repair site might know what error code 59276 means, but do you?
Apple famously started using a pentalobe screw, seemingly for the goal of making it harder for people who aren't at authorized service centers to carry out repairs. If a company uses non-standard parts when standard parts would work, this makes it harder for you to repair your own items.
In the pentalobe case, third-party vendors sprang up to sell the specialized screwdrivers, so it became less of a barrier. But imagine if the new screw were covered under patent that prevented substitutions .. and only authorized repair centers could buy the correct screwdriver.
Companies are using their rights under other laws to make it harder for you do to your own repairs. For example, farmers are turning to foreign hackers because farm equipment companies use the DMCA to prevent farmers from using anything other than authorized repair technicians from fixing the equipment. This equipment is increasingly reliant on DMCA-protectable software.
As you saw in this case in Norway, Apple wants to use its trademark power to prevent people from buying parts which would otherwise be legal
Are there any requirements would you force upon Apple in order to ensure that people have a reasonable ability "to repair any item they own or pay anyone else to do it?"
Make not mistake - it's also well-established law that the government can force companies to sell to people they might not otherwise want to sell to.
Are the iFixit parts genuine? I have no idea.
Just because some people might fail at certain tasks thinking they could perform aftermarket changes (so long my Palm IIIx and iPhone 3G) doesn't mean all people will fail at these things (wayhey hello new screen on my Thinkpad and significantly improved wifi on my XPS).
Meanwhile my MacBook Air now gathers dust and I was forced to fork out significantly more money for a MacBook Pro just to double the RAM from 4GB to 8GB. There's only one winner there (well, arguably two, as I still got a new laptop out of it...)
Well.... You can start by reading the news piece that's the source of this discussion. You know, the article on how Apple went to extreme actions to stop even their very own customers from even repairing their broken products or even upgrade them to a usable state.
The base model of their products are perfectly servicable and price competitive for the quality. They just know what the wealthier consumers are willing to shell out for.
Hooray Apple and its stockholders, but the consumer keeps on getting thoroughly screwed over and over again.
Capitalistic tendencies in capitalist companies is not shocking.
Otherwise that's merely another form of 'just following orders'.
1. Users swap parts in a way Apple didn't account for in software
2. Something goes wrong, users blame Apple for intentionally breaking third party repairs
3. Apple deals with it
Touch ID mismatch: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/19/error-53-...
Third party screens: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208067#1103
Third party screens, again: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/10/iphone-8-...
There’s almost no software that actually depends on you having the latest version.
Bad battery life or flash storage used to beyond it’s reasonable lifetime is a much bigger problem, a problem that can be solved by replacement parts, or even better: user replaceable batteries or SD-cards.
The first thing you are being told when becoming Apple Authorized Service provider is UP-SELL. Your main function and profit source is telling people "cant be repaired/repair will cost as much as new one, would you like this new model?"
I had water damage to a 2013 MBP, minor but nonetheless.
It passed all diagnostics. Ran fine on AC power. Battery diagnostics were fine too. But it wouldn't charge. "Charge circuit error".
No problem, I think. That's where the water damage was, no doubt. So I take it to Apple (in 2014, probably 18 months after purchase). I set my expectations, hmm, maybe $200-300? Let's go with $300, after labor, etc.
Haha.
"Sir, the charge circuitry is damaged and we need to replace that. You're looking at $899. Perhaps we should talk about you buying a new MacBook? Have you seen the latest?"
So, there's labor, etc. But you're going to tell me that to repair something, that by your own diagnostics, is fine except for this one part costs 70% of the new purchase price? I paid $1300, if I recall for the MBP. Take away something for labor, etc, and apparently the charging circuit is worth more than the CPU, the memory, the SSD, the screen?
No, now it serves as a driver for my step daughter's Garage Brand / Logic Pro setup with MIDI drums, keyboard, etc., remains on AC and has worked fine for several more years.
That's what a highly integrated machine gets you. Charge circuit defective => replace entire main board, including CPU, probably memory and storage too nowadays.
No one is doing component-level repairs any more.
Not entirely accurate, its just a highly skilled bit of work that you have to work to find people that can do it. This guy does it: https://www.rossmanngroup.com
Watch his youtube channel here and you can learn how to do it yourself: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl2mFZoRqjw_ELax4Yisf6w
That said, in general you're right. Component level repair on multi layer pcb's with BGA or reflow soldering is... not all that economical in the amount of labor and skill and equipment involved.
I also possess a 2013 MBP with a Retina screen, proudly running well all these years later after many AAA games, overclocking, and innumerable HD repartionings. However, I broke my MBP's screen twice, and both times I called the closest Apple repair shop, and once the main "independent" repair ship in my city, and all three times the price came back as a nice, round $1000: nearly half of the original price!
So I looked around online (always had been vaguely aware of Right-to-Repair, and ifixit.org). After reading the excellent repair guide online and ordering what seemed a high-quality screen online, the repairs, which cost me no major headache or extreme difficulty, materially ended up costing around $300. Also, I want to mention that the aforementioned ifixit guide listed the highest difficulty grade to this type of repair.
So you are telling me, someone that had never engaged in computer or mechanical repairs before in his life, performed $700 of labor in just under an hour? No, the likelier answer is that Apple is simply rent-seeking in the sector of product repairs.
There is a vendor on eBay who does this, cannot recall his name.
But they will definitely desolder and replace any component wherever this is possible.
I've sent my laptop to this guy in NYC, and had a pleasant experience, even if he couldn't find my problem. (intermittent shutdowns)
I tried to stay with Lenovo, but after the endless waves of shitware, spyware and low quality hardware (!) I had to give up. Thinkpad’s great name is thanks to IBM, and perhaps, maybe, a bit of early Lenovo. Maybe.
If Lenovo is competing with anything, it’s with IBM.
I don't think this is particularly true, 2009-2012 era hardware designed/built by Lenovo/Quanta is also around in plentiful numbers.
This way I can upgrade to a new model when I feel it's time to.
My daughters new macbook pro dropped in to some very wet grass and the authorised repair shop wanted $1400 (in New Zealand) for a new motherboard to repair the water damage, the insurance company said to get a new one which we did.
The shop made it difficult to to get the old one back as it was being replaced with a new one and they said the deal price for the new one included a discount for the old which by pointing out on the apple web site it obviously did not.
Once it was returned about 5 weeks after going in I switched it on and nothing, five minutes of googling found a blown fuse and its been fine ever since, that was 2015 and I have since fixed two others with similar easy to fix problems.
It saddens me because the hardware is well designed in these computers and as an electronics engineer I hate to think how many good computers go to landfill for the sake of a $5 repair.
A Lot of my favourite companies are in on the act not just Apple (And Tesla Most Annoyingly) and it proves to me that the engineers in these firms have lost the high ground and now have a large controlling input from their legal departments. Personally I would keep quiet and take the money too but wouldn't be a happy engineer.
I think the thing is, even on a site where people brag about making $300K a year, everybody has way unrealistic ideas of what skilled labor costs. In my world, $55K is a good living for a programmer analyst, but that exact person gets billed out at over $120 an hour. An independent car mechanic might be $100/hr where I am; a dealer rate might be $160-$170. In the context of other types of skilled labor, that seems reasonable to me. Surely an auto technician and an electronics repair person are roughly comparable in skill, so should be in the same ballpark of costs.
But first world labor costs mean fixing things is frequently infeasible compared to replacing them. This is practically a cliche, but it seems like people will not or cannot come to terms with it.
Oh yes, one other thing I wanted to fix on my car was to replace the busted antenna. I bought one online for about $90. However, I was quoted something like $600 to install it. Well, I replaced the antenna on my car once, and I know it's a hassle when you try to thread it through and then it sticks or breaks, but the estimate was stunning.
All in all, I don't think Apple is as malicious as they seem - the problem is that expectations are set by robotic factories and third world labor costs.
A good mechanic will do a better job and usually be cheaper than what your local stealership will try and charge you for. Replacing a battery clamp will run you $60 at most Honda stealerships, versus a $5 part cost or $20 at the shop down the road.
On the other hand, I also have a 30 year old German sports car and limited ability to work on it myself (not having a house/garage) and I felt an independent European car specialist was taking advantage of me, so I tried a dealer of the marque. Keeping in mind they only want to replace things and charge incredible rates, it still seems like the best option for some repairs, to get it done right. When I had a fuel leak, I was happy to have the dealer replace the fuel pump and filter. Maybe somebody intrepid who charges half as much per hour could have just disassembled it and changed some seals, but how much labor is that and do I trust it not to result in setting my car on fire? I certainly wouldn't trust myself to do it.
Sometimes you want OEM parts and sometimes it doesn't matter so much. I'm going to continue to choose what to do on a case-by-case basis.
If you have an unusual old car, a lot of independent mechanics may be horrified at the prospect of working on it, plus the factory manual is out of print plus there's a very limited number of specialist mechanics. So, I'm not saying the cliched advice about avoiding the dealer and going to a good mechanic is completely unfounded, but it's of limited use if you haven't found a good independent. The good mechanics only survive because they're cheap and attract cheap customers, and don't specialize too much, so I say to myself - how can I expect them to be better than the dealer? If I was an employee and I was any good, why wouldn't I work at the dealer? Lots of dealers are terrible, but I infer that independents operate under really harsh constraints. The fact that their labor rates are so much less makes me paranoid both they are padding their hours and that they can't retain good mechanics.
As far as a battery clamp, I can order anything I need mail order, and I can compare mail order prices to the dealership and see if the markup is less than shipping costs. I can choose an OEM part or not. This really is just a separate choice, not a factor in deciding to go to the dealer. My Honda dealer will charge you a ridiculous price to put in a new cabin air filter, which costs almost nothing and is trivial to replace. But that doesn't mean I don't trust them to work on my car at all. Just that I'm careful to double check whether any given thing is reasonable.
But also, a major metro area may be different. I live in a three-city area that has about a million people combined, so it isn't in the middle of nowhere, but it's not like Seattle.
Presumably, anyway.
What problem in their design are you referring to?
Except that a lot of the times, you don't. The issue arises when the manufacturer adds some encryption to validate that a part is genuine (e.g. printer manufacturers using code signing to validate a printer cartridge is theirs) then suing people under the DMCA when they have to reverse-engineer the encryption just to repair their item.
Take the John Deere case for example (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/06/nebraska...) - farmers bought tractors. The tractors needed to be repaired. To do this, the farmers needed to either break John Deere's copy protection mechanisms or use John Deere's own expensive repair services. Deere sued the farmers for trying to repair their own tractors.
No, it's very clear they make their money by pushing new product.
Ford motorcars just cares about the brand, that is why you're only allowed to run them on officially licensed Ford fuel.
Philips lighting just cares about the brand, that is why you're only allowed to use Philips batteries.
Keurig just cares about the brand, that is why you're only allowed to use officially licensed coffee cups.
Miele just cares about the brand, that is why you're only allowed to use Miele dishwasher detergents.
...
What a horrible world that would be, don't you agree? Sometimes regulation of business really is for the benefit of all, as Apple so vividly reminds us of time and time again. Designing their products to be basically irreparable should be allowed but it would be good if they were made to fess up to this before people forked over their earnings to buy one of those discard-a-phones. In Europe manufacturers of white goods have to put an energy label on their products to give prospective customers some idea of how much energy the device uses in comparison to other current devices in a scale from A to D (up to 2010: A-G [1]). This concept could be adapted to device maintenance as well, covering both repair as well as replacement of consumables. Apple products would score 'D' on availability of spare parts and 'D' on third-party service access. Such a scheme might help in convincing manufacturers that serviceability can be a selling point if done right.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_energy_label
Adding further to this, Apple also wants 100% control over that experience and how that experience is deployed, including how and what can be repaired.
They can want it all they like, they just have no implicit right to it.
Not the 1st time they did that apparently. https://web.archive.org/web/20170103102649/blog.irepairnatio...
Source, please?
I’m sure they do it all the time, but this one incident actually caused worldwide news-coverage, even in tabloids read by normal people (that is, not just techies).
That’s the phone slowing the CPU when the battery gets old to prevent unexpected shutdowns. If you think this is “planned obselence” you misunderstand the issue.
iOS 11.3 now lets you disable this, so you can have full performance at the cost of unexpected shutdowns. Or you can just get an official battery replacement for $29 and your phone will be like new.
I'm sure there are examples with newer devices and iOS versions, but I wouldn't tell, because I didn't get any other afterwards.
Since when is buying a deliberately un-maintainable device 'the best experience'?
I would call that anti-user.
This is not subjective, this is not an argument over whether or not their laptops should have a replaceable battery. This is a blatant cash grab by them, at my expense. I gain nothing from this decision.
This practice may also be illegal in Europe.
I'm not sure this is an accurate representation of Apple's case. First, it seems like they are suing for trademark infringement, not for copyright infringement. Second, the repair shop owner is by no stretch of the imagination the end user of this product. Wikipedia gives this definition of end user:
"In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user)[a] is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product.[1][2][3] The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product,[4] such as sysops, system administrators, database administrators,[5] information technology experts, software professionals and computer technicians."
As for "no way markets them as OEM parts," this is not a very consumer-focussed answer. I think a reasonable step that this guy should have to take is to explicitly state, "I am not an authorized Apple repair technician and these parts are not guaranteed to be genuine Apple parts. They do not bear an Apple warranty and are not eligible for support by Authorized Apple Technicians."
Otherwise, from Apple's perspective, this repair shop owner is just taking advantage of Apple's reputation for quality and using it to make cut-rate repairs.
The point is that once the physical product was sold, consumers have the right to do whatever the hell they like with it, including sell it.
As to your latter statements, opinions will vary on this, but I believe it is well known that this guy's shop is not official / authorized by apple. People coming to this guy's shop are doing so to specifically avoid the drastically higher costs of seeking an authorized repair / replacement from apple. It'd be much easier to just mail it to apple, so I think there is an implied cognizance in seeking his services as an alternative. So I personally think as long as he is honest about not being an official apple repair shop, doesn't brandish their logos or in any way affirmatively hijack their brand, he should be safe from penalty of law.
Okay. So my mechanic needs to state that for every single manufacturer of every single component that he may potentially use to fix my car, right down to the level of individual capacitors on individual circuitboards, he is not an authorized technician for that item? That seems unduly onerous.
Except that the archive.org page for his site clearly shows that his site was marketing the replacements as genuine Apple parts and that it was changed after the court case began.
Apple now is a full on evil corporation.
Before long they could even choose to make you buy an expensive Mac Pro or iMac Pro, or even require an 'iOS dev kit' if you want to develop for their platform.
And if Microsoft had succeeded in the mobile/tablet space, they'd be doing exactly the same...
Hopefully this was sarcasm, since this is literally what is required right now to develop for iOS - you need a Mac (windows is not allowed) and a $99 developer account.
Why do these two things have any relationship to each other? They can and do lock down x86-64 machines, you're just able to "opt-out" right now[1].
[1] https://it.nmu.edu/docs/allowing-third-party-applications-in...
I'm an android/*nix user. I'd love it if more devs had your mindset but they typically don't.
EDIT: I guess you do have to technically agree to their terms to use the SDK and such, but if one were to get a hacked copy or whatever I think it'd be legal. They can definitely make it very hard to dodge their terms though.
Considering that their terms of service explicitly prohibits this, I'd say that it's illegal. Will Apple go after you if you do it? Probably not.
Second, terms of service don't always apply, you may refuse them, and then you're not even in breach of contract. Things like shrink-wrap/click-through EULAs aren't binding contracts in Norway; so the default provisions of copyright law apply, which allows reverse engineering without the permission of the copyright holder.
Which law?
Copying software without permission might be illegal - loading it from disk into memory isn't counted as copying btw - but running the software?
That ship sailed decades ago.
> Only "authorized" programmers will get the access code required to change anything.
Stallman. Laser printer firmware. `nuff said.
Speaking of Stallman and Apple: have you heard of this? It was formed in reaction to Apple's actions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_for_Programming_Freedom
Time and time again, we have observed that patents are a tool of the haves to prevent competition from the have-nots.
While this case may have been about 'trademark' infringement, it's clear that if patents didn't exist one could procure genuine replacement parts that don't 'infringe' on Apple's trademarks (which in this case is obviously a dubious assertion).
Every time a 'tech person' buys and espouses Apple products (and other patent encumbered products), others less educated in technology suffer.
Reach for free and open source alternatives whenever viable, and try to educate others on the important compromises they have to make when it comes to freedom. We could lose free software and any resemblance to right to repair or open hardware in a generation if we're not careful.
Well, it's either that or Android... so yes I think I'll stick with Apple. I am also sad that there's no alternative, but what can I do? I already bought a WP when I had some hope they could succeed but they never did. :(
Someone who repairs a single brand of products will have a skewed image of the big picture. He'll basically only receive items too damaged to be repairable by others, but he has no data on whether he receives 1/million or 1/2 whatever and makes the assumption every single one of them are like the ones he receive. I've watched Rossmann's every video for a couple of years on my youtube subscriptions until he started with his political opinion and investment recommendation talks. It's a guy who thinks his opinion is the infallible fact and that there are no other possible explanations, and it undermines his professional opinions as well.
I've done repairs on my own Apple products once they've been out of warranty and it's not as bad as he makes it sound. Parts are easily accessible either as China-clones or working spare parts from dismantled products, because almost every model of anything Apple makes are made for a very long time and in large volumes. You'll have a much harder time finding something like a spare motherboard for a 5 year old random Acer laptop and such. Apple does carry service parts for a long time for their products as well and they're accessible to the authorized service providers, but the pricing is very steep and not really worth it unless it's the only option you have, or if it's paid by insurance.
> "microsoft" has the highest breakage rate
is microsoft really bad at making hardware or something? or is it all the technically inept people thinking their windows laptop is made by microsoft?
I suspect that graph is misleading and says nothing about brand durability, only about damage incurred to products at specific price brackets, demographic and use cases. It would much more revealing to break down by those segments.
It also excludes breakages within service contracts so we can't tell if the difference is simply that Apple is selling a higher percentage of AppleCare contracts (potentially because of their high repair costs) than their competitors.
I encourage everyone to sell their spare Apple products for parts. The recoveries are surprising. And because all the parts are designed to one spec, you don't have a bazillion screws to deal with like non-Apple laptops.
So, even a person holding 1 (2, 3!) genuine Apple keyboard(s) in their hands likely still couldn't do the repair -- they'd have to get a new top case. Out of warranty, I've heard it is a $500 repair. That seems to be a direct consequence of ignoring repairability (the maintainability ship sailed long ago).
This is my biggest complaint with the "Right to Repair" movement. They're constantly conflating what Apple is fighting against (counterfeit parts and being compelled to provide documentation and manuals without oversight) with the valid complaint of users not being legally allowed to repair their own devices. Apple has never been against that and isn't fighting that. They're fighting the fact that these bills, every single one of them, wants to force Apple to provide instructions and parts for repair shops that aren't Apple authorized for which they can't verify or guarantee the quality fo the repair. That's a completely understandable position and yet people keep falsely claiming that it's simply about Apple wanting to keep people from repairing their own stuff. That's not it at all and it's doing a disservice to the "Right to Repair" movement to continue to do so.
Well, apparently Apple actually restricts the repairs you can do. For example, if you have water damage, you aren't allowed to just fix the actual components (capacitors, etc) that blew, you have to replace the whole board, resulting in much higher costs and eWaste for customers. (This is from Louis Rossmann, a well known YouTuber who fixes MacBooks). You are basically restricted to mostly replacing boards and things like that, not fixing individual chips.
For a company that toots their horn about being Green, their policies sure generate a ton more waste than necessary.
And I say this as someone who almost exclusively owns Apple stuff. I am holding out with my 2015 MBP dearly for the next iteration of their laptop keyboards that don't require a $500 repair because of a spec of dust.
All this has made me a STRONG proponent of the right-to-repair movement. If Apple actually cared more about less flashy and sexy parts about being green, they'd make these parts readily available.
It’s important that people know if they are getting 3rd party or refurbished parts, but it’s equally important for people to have the right to use 3rd party and refurbished parts if they so choose — with the only restriction of having the necessary safety/compliance markings.
The amount of misinformation around here is staggering...
My capacitor analogy was more to the point of Apple being against microsoldering repairs where individual components are replaced instead of the entire board.
This is especially surprising given the unusual design of the Lightning port. Most ports (e.g. all USB variants) put the parts that are likely to wear out in the cable. Lightning has them in the jack, which is why the cable is so pretty. But for some reason Apple thinks it’s reasonable for the jack to be officially non-replaceable.
I fixed this just by using a plastic flosser to pick the lint out (you could use a paper clip, but I opted for the somewhat-softer plastic), then some canned air to get rid of the remaining bits.
Went from "oh god, I gotta go to the Apple store" to connecting with a SNAP again, with a seal tight enough to support the phone's entire weight.
I hope that this is just your issue, because it's very easy to fix, even if diagnosing it is a bit tricky.
Fortunately, it's a simple (if tedious) fix with a $15 part.
This isn't true or accurate. The costs of this service are lower, overall because the rate of repairs are faster which means more customers can have working devices faster which means that Apple can (and does) take time on the backend to remanufacture and certify parts. They don't throw out these components. They're taken apart, tested, and, if they pass, they're used to remanufacture devices for warranty and insurance purposes that are then sold to phone insurance carriers and given to warranty customers.
The idea that they are restricting repairs for any reason other than the fact that it's a better experience for the end-user is complete FUD.
And you are assuming that "flash" and "sexy" serve a single, vapid purpose. The designs of their products are as compact and space efficient as possible because weight, battery size, and thermals all play a factor in the quality of a product.
You can shit on them all you want but no company comes close to Apple in quality, and I don't see anyone complaining about the right to repair ultrabooks, or pixelbooks.
I can tell you, I'm a software guy. And I was absolutely intimidated by circuit boards, until I found the world of electronics repairs on Youtube (EEVBlog too). Now I have fixed two power supplies and a pair of headphones. In all those cases, I was able to get parts easily from third parties (and for my headphones, I got cheap replacement parts from AudioTechnica themselves).
I am delighted to have rediscovered this part of my skills that I lost in my teens when I fell in love with software development.
Yet I still can't get a genuine apple battery to replace on my phone. I've successfully replaced batteries on about 5 iPhones now, but they were all shady battery replacements on Amazon. Frankly I'm just annoyed that Apple doesn't make these parts available.
Look at the backlog for battery replacements now. If you get it from Apple, there is now a monthslong wait-list at the genius bar because they've created their own bottleneck.
Rossmann makes money off of his businesses that repair computer products, Apple or otherwise. He stands to gain a lot based on the popularity of his channel whether he's telling people the truth or not. He's not in it to help people, he's in it to drum up business. If he helps people along the way, then that's great.
Case in point - he made a whole video about how shitty the new MacBooks are and claimed that plugging a USB device into the USB-C port disabled WiFi. He pushed that point and tweeted about it and posted it everywhere. When it was discovered that it wasn't the computer but the cheap $5 USB-C to USB-A converter that he was using that was unshielded (which is required by the USB spec), he never issued a retraction or an apology. All he wanted was to get in on the fervor surrounding the newly released laptops. He doesn't give 2 shits about whether or not he's teaching people factual information. What really sucks about it, much like the whole "Right to Repair" movement, is that it takes away substantially from the issues and points he brings up that are completely valid.
I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. You'd have to take into account the cost of sourcing raw materials for a replacement machine, right? I've heard anecdotes about how buying a used gas-burning car is actually less detrimental to the environment than buying a new EV; this strikes me as a similar situation.
I think that's only true if that gas burning car was going to be destroyed if you didn't buy it. Someone will buy it, maybe someone that's replacing their older less efficient car. And by buying the more expensive EV, your demand is helping to increase volume and lower costs of EV's.
https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life...
Manufacturing a mid-sized EV with an 84-mile range results in about 15 percent more emissions than manufacturing an equivalent gasoline vehicle. For larger, longer-range EVs that travel more than 250 miles per charge, the manufacturing emissions can be as much as 68 percent higher.
These differences change as soon as the cars are driven. EVs are powered by electricity, which is generally a cleaner energy source than gasoline. Battery electric cars make up for their higher manufacturing emissions within eighteen months of driving—shorter range models can offset the extra emissions within 6 months—and continue to outperform gasoline cars until the end of their lives.
The reason why Apple doesn't want any Joe-schmoe just yanking and replacing caps and other components is simple: quality control. I can barely count on two hands people I would be comfortable working on the innards of a PC, let alone my phone and even then let alone desoldering and soldering new components onboard.
Apple isn't doing this because they don't want people to repair their stuff, but because for most consumers it isn't feasible without ruining the rest of the product. These are small, compact, and complicated devices. It's not like swapping out some RAM or a GPU on a desktop rig at all.
So yes, replace the whole board and recycle the old (as Apple does with most of their parts).
So you're discounting someone's opinion because they were forced to use unauthorized repair manuals since the manufacturer stopped producing repair manuals for devices customers have paid for? That's the whole crux of the issue, that people have lost the "right to repair" their own devices due to suppressing information, suppressing reverse engineering efforts, and suppressing compatible replacement components (and software).
Effectively you're saying that if someone supports and tries to uphold the "right to repair" their opinions should be ignored because they did something a large corporation told them not to.
> Apple isn't doing this because they don't want people to repair their stuff
See, I thought it was financially motivated.
> but because for most consumers it isn't feasible without ruining the rest of the product.
Someone has a broken device, they shouldn't be allowed to try and repair it themselves because they could make it worse? In either case they have a broken device. And Apple is well within their rights to refuse a repair after someone has tried a DIY repair, but often that isn't a financial possibility which is why a DIY repair was tried to begin with.
You don't have to go far to find an anecdote of someone who took an older Macbook into an Apple store and the repair cost was nearly as high as a replacement cost.
Why is a manufacturer in any way obligated to provide this information for customers (and for free, no less)? Apple is not stopping him from taking apart these devices and figuring out how to repair them but I don't see why they should shoulder any obligation to provide that information to people that refuse to become an authorized repair center (which is exactly what that authorization and certification gets them).
>Someone has a broken device, they shouldn't be allowed to try and repair it themselves
This is not at all the point of contention nor in any way what Apple is doing here. Stop spreading FUD.
Yes, because it's a legal case we are discussing here and that's called "breaking the law". Failing to understand that means I cannot discuss this article with you at all since a really important common understanding has been missed on your part.
It is an issue for society at large, fair use should include repair materials, and if you look at judgements from vehicles and farm equipment cases you'll see that the legal side isn't clear cut anyway.
Not least of all because you're conflating OWNING stolen materials and REDISTRIBUTING them. Copyright largely covers the latter and not the former. In this case they're simply owning a "stolen" document and using the knowledge from it, which isn't within itself a copyright infringement or illegal.
Unless you can explain how simply owning a stolen document is "breaking the law." Which law?
> Failing to understand that means I cannot discuss this article with you at all since a really important common understanding has been missed on your part.
You don't wish to discuss it because it challenges your whole viewpoint. Which is in essence that Apple's rights extend into a device they sold to a user, and that a user shouldn't be legally allowed to "tamper" with their own property.
Right, which is why people are advocating getting the law changed, because they believe the practical outcome of law as it current exists is not just (nor economically efficient, for that matter).
Even if this is true, the law isn’t some divine fiat. Some laws are dumb and it is proper and patriotic to point it out and criticize. Just because something might be against the law doesn’t make it wrong. Your argument is the shallowest sort of moral argument, that things should be done a certain way just because that’s how they’re done.
Are you seriously trying to discredit a man for doing exactly what he's fighting for?
It's like trying to discredit a politician that's pushing for the abolition of jaywalking by saying that he jay walks himself. No shit - that's the whole point.
> So you're discounting someone's opinion because they were forced to use unauthorized repair manuals because the manufacturer stopped producing repair manuals for devices customers have paid for?
Yes, because it's a legal case we are discussing here and that's called "breaking the law". Failing to understand that means I cannot discuss this article with you at all since a really important common understanding has been missed on your part.
And yet people are perfectly OK with a greasy mechanic fixing their metal cage hurtling down the freeway at 65 miles per hour. Your attempt to demean skilled repair workers is rather telling of your own bias.
It isn't about QC; it's about money. It's the same reason every car dealership has an in-house repair department. Branded repairs mean that people can still buy the brand after they already own the product. Counterfeits cut into that revenue stream.
Right, and the entire discussion is that Apple's right to quality control has overreached to the point that it is now impinging upon the common sense right of someone to be able try to fix something that they own when it breaks.
Come to thing of it, I personally don't know ten people capable of doing state of the art SMD repairs but I'm sure there are many more than that in _my town_.
"This is my biggest complaint with the "Right to Repair" movement."
So yeah, have a problem with some group, reorganize information to make that group look bad and pretend like this thing you made up is a great illustration of the grudge you had against some people.
But my question is, why?
Because he’s a former Apple employee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpkonofa
https://web.archive.org/web/20160327050030/http://www.pckomp...
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160327050030/http://www.pckomp...
I'll just go ahead and roll my eyes at this trash.
“PCKompaniet has never removed the coverup of the Apple logo on the screens that have been imported and has no interest in doing so. PCKompaniet does not pretend or market itself as Apple authorized and does not give any indication that the repair comes with an Apple warranty.”
Unless you have evidence of the contrary, your argument is not applicable to this case.
Not trying to pick side in this argument, but a quick search on webarchive[1] shows that this page (https://www.pckompaniet.no/reparasjon-iphone/) used to have this blurb:
'Kun orginale deler blir brukt her hos oss!'
That google translates as 'Only original parts are used here!'
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160327050030/http://www.pckomp...
This is objectively not true. Apple is not against selling parts or manuals. That's the entire point of an Apple Authorized Repair center. Anyone can get certified by Apple if they can demonstrate that the repairs are done to the level that Apple specifies. What the "Right to Repair" bills are asking for is that Apple provides the manuals for free. Why is that justifiable, fair, or right in any sense if doing so could (and materially would) harm their business?
As for the second claim, Apple has never, ever sued someone simply for repairing their devices as a third-party. They've only sued people who claimed to use genuine Apple parts that weren't or people who stole manuals and schematics that are reserved for authorized repair centers.
Hmm, what? Apple is actively fighting that by making devices incredibly difficult to tear appart, not selling replacement parts, and, yes, suing every mom-and-pop repair shop.
Besides, people have differing opinions on what constitutes “ difficult to tear apart”. I’ve replaced batteries on all my iPhones and while it’s a delicate procedure it’s not particularly difficult, takes just a few minutes, and I’ve never damaged a phone in the process. I remember how much vitriol there was against Apple for not having hot swappable batteries, but I’m sure glad they went that route, and that they were able to lead the market in that choice.
But for the rest of it, they should definitely have to provide parts, manuals, and attacking the independent repair shops is wrong unless the shop is actually misleading their customers.
This is blatantly false. Please link 1 instance where Apple sued a mom-and-pop repair shop for anything other than they were claiming they were an authorized repair center or used genuine parts and didn't.
>This is my biggest complaint with the "Right to Repair" movement. They're constantly conflating what Apple is fighting against (counterfeit parts and being compelled to provide documentation and manuals without oversight) with the valid complaint of users not being legally allowed to repair their own devices
Your complaint seems rather imagined to me. Where are they "constantly conflating"? I don't see that here.
Please show me a source where Apple sued someone (either an individual or a third-party repair center) simply for repairing their own device or a user's device on behalf of that user. You won't find it because that's not what Apple's complaint is here. People are conflating Apple's refusal to provide manuals and replacement parts without cost (and outside of their certification program) with the idea that Apple is trying to prevent people from repairing their own devices. That's not true in the slightest and it's straight-up misinformation.
That would be inefficient and a waste of their money in most cases.
>People are conflating Apple's refusal to provide manuals and replacement parts without cost (and outside of their certification program) with the idea that Apple is trying to prevent people from repairing their own devices.
Apple uses various methods - Updates that brick repaired phones, and copyright/patent law to block others from supplying parts. Here they can choke the repair shops much more easily. I don't want to be forced to go to Subaru to repair my car either. I prefer to have an option of which tires to buy, which oil to use, which stereo I use, etc. I also don't want the car to be welded together to the point where nobody can repair it. YMMV.
Sometimes the good guys win.
https://9to5mac.com/2017/02/25/iphone-warranty-third-party-s...
http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/06/technology/apple-australia-l...
>the idea that Apple is trying to prevent people from repairing their own devices.
People don't want to repair the phones themselves. They want to use services available in almost every other consumer industry to service their phones. Apple insists that they should be the sole arbiter of who is and isn't allowed to do that. People are trying to fight Apple on that. And thats what its all about.
Apple does produce some very high quality products and I have enjoyed many of them over the years. That doesn't make them a saint on all fronts. Fairs fair, Praise where praise is due, and criticism when they do something purely out of greed/control.
Microsoft effectively has to support literally any combination of things someone might try to do to their Windows PC, because they know nobody will blame the author of the crappy driver or the manufacturer of the peripheral. They'll blame Microsoft.
Apple, by tightly controlling its hardware ecosystem, avoids a lot of that. But also gets to build software that's tested for far fewer configurations, meaning that if you do step outside that configuration, you have to accept that they're not testing for it and aren't guaranteeing the next version of their software will continue to work for you.
But rather than understand this, you attribute it to Tim Cook twirling his mustache and cackling over how he's going to deliberately brick all those phones that people repaired themselves! Soon, he will rule the world! BWAHAHAHA!
Except you know as soon as you think about it that you have no evidence of this and that the kind of "Apple bricks your phone to punish you for repairing it" narrative you're pushing here is completely false. Apple might not like losing out on some more of your money, but figuring out ways to push updates that will break your phone while not breaking someone else's is just not worth the time and money for them. So the simplest explanation -- that they don't have staff thoroughly test every type of repair you might do to your phone with every update they push -- is the likeliest, and you know that too.
This, for the record, is my problem with the "right to repair" people. You ignore real problems to peddle conspiracies.
This requires Apple to have a team studying how third parties repair their devices, and working on ways to modify their software to break such devices while leaving all others unaffected. That's a not-insignificant challenge.
The likelier explanation is that Apple does not invest in developing updates that will deliberately break your phone as retaliation for you repairing it in ways they don't like. The likelier explanation is that Apple simply doesn't test the interaction between their updates and your repairs, and doesn't much care if your phone breaks as a result. They test for the interaction with their stock devices, and devices repaired through their advocated channels, and don't seem to want the "absolutely everything everybody might do must be supported" approach Microsoft historically took (with good reason -- one of the advantages of tight ecosystem control is getting to avoid Microsoft's nightmare).
Can you explain this?
I believe this because I've worked on software teams that developed things that would only be used in-house in controlled ways, and I've seen how fragile those usually end up being and how poorly tested they usually are.
But I also see that there's no possible evidence someone could present, or argument someone could make, that would change your mind, because as the quote says: you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason their way into.
I can never understand why people want to stop others from choosing where they repair their products. If you (not you specifically) think third party repairs are shady, well great ! you already have a choice and you can get yours serviced at Apple. We should be free to make decisions about things we own. Apple fighting to block our right is disspointing.
>But I still think it's much more likely that Apple just doesn't test for third-party repairs than that they deliberately work to come up with ways to break a third-party repair without breaking their own repairs.
There is no "testing for repair". When you replace a component on a logic board, it either works or if its sabotaged (like inkjet cartriges, kurig kcups, iphone screens), it doesn't. And thats if you're doing a component level repair. For parts replacement, it should be way easier. I get the feeling you're not very familiar with how electronics repair works. It is really nothing like software.
No... your reasoning is based on your interpretation of all parties' intentions of which you have no basis for combined with flat-out misinformation about what the third-party repair shops are doing/claiming. Apple is not stopping anyone from choosing where they repair their products nor are they stopping third-party repair shops from repairing their products. The fact that you continue to spread this objectively false information is all anyone needs to know to validate that your position is unfounded. If it was, you wouldn't have to lie and rely on already discredited information to make your point. Your point would stand on its own. As it is, though, it falls apart immediately under any kind of basic scrutiny.
The fact that you keep saying things like this, when I've said nothing indicating that I believe such a thing, is a clear indicator of willful dishonesty on your part. You get no more of my time.
This is entirely inaccurate. They just want there to be a clear distinction between Apple service and third-party service.
To use your Subaru analogy, it would be like Subaru making parts for your car and no other third-party manufacturer making them. You wouldn't have a choice but to buy from Subaru. Subaru isn't stopping anyone from reverse-engineering those parts or simply making their own parts that are compatible but it doesn't make sense that Subaru would have to be forced to provide instructions on how to do it. Anyone that's ever taken their car to a mechanic and gotten screwed should be able to relate to what Apple's goals are here. They're not preventing anyone from doing anything but there sure as hell do want to know that the people they've authorized for repairs are doing them to their standards. If someone's iPhone is all fucked up, other people don't know that they got it repaired at some janky kiosk. They just see an iPhone having issues. That devalues and severely harms a brand and company.
False. This is getting tiring.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Consumer-watchdog-accuses-Appl...
https://boingboing.net/2015/10/01/apple-removes-ifixits-repa...
https://9to5mac.com/2017/02/25/iphone-warranty-third-party-s...
Apple is using or was using (for above links) various ways to make it seem like third party services are illegitmate. Its one of the several tactics to maintain a monopoly. Consumers are getting wiser. Thousands of people have gotten a screen fixed or a battery replaced without paying Apple's tax. Apple sure as hell doesn't like that. But tough cookies. Its no different than the inkjet situation where they blocked third party cartriges and made it nearly impossible for you to refill ink.
>To use your Subaru analogy, it would be like Subaru making parts for your car and no other third-party manufacturer making them. You wouldn't have a choice but to buy from Subaru. Subaru isn't stopping anyone from reverse-engineering those parts or simply making their own parts that are compatible but it doesn't make sense that Subaru would have to be forced to provide instructions on how to do it. A
Subaru doesn't brick my car if I put in a non-subaru stereo.
>Anyone that's ever taken their car to a mechanic and gotten screwed should be able to relate to what Apple's goals are here.
And anyone who has gotten gouged by Apple knows that a monopoly of service and parts is never going to bring about competition.
>If someone's iPhone is all fucked up, other people don't know that they got it repaired at some janky kiosk. They just see an iPhone having issues. That devalues and severely harms a brand and company.
So your argument, as best as I can unpack it, since it was very confusing to me, is - Its justified because someone somewhere at somepoint in time in some cases might face some issues with their third party repair and some people might possibly sometimes mistake that as an Apple problem. Wow.
Anyway, we're going around in circles. There is no point in arguing you have your opinion and I have mine. I am happy to support a positive movement that promotes less e-waste and more local jobs.
If Subaru offered an alarm system in your vehicle that disabled the ignition if the system was tampered with, you'd be saying that the system worked exactly as intended. Apple didn't brick people's devices to prevent third-party repairs. The devices were bricked because the chain of trust between Touch ID and the secure enclave was broken. Users had Touch ID enabled and their phones were bricked because Touch ID couldn't verify and there's no way around Touch ID. It's exactly why the update that "fixed" the issue was an update that simply turned off Touch ID for devices that didn't pass verification.
Apple is setting up an environment where counterfeiting is practically necessary by hindering legitimate repairs using non counterfeit non genuine parts.
Apple doesn't allow those who aren't Authorized Repair Centers to purchase genuine replacement parts or to have access to service manuals. I'm not aware of another OEM that does this. I can go to HP, Dell, Samsung, MSI, Acer, or LG and purchase genuine parts or download service manuals. Apple posts service manuals online but they go out of their way to lock them behind a login so that only Authorized users can see them.
Apple has bricked iPhones during iOS upgrades if those devices weren't using genuine Apple displays.
Apple has bricked iPhones during iOS upgrades if you replaced the touch ID, regardless of whether it was a genuine part or not.
The iPhone X camera module is a separate part form the display yet if you replace the display genuine or not while keeping the original camera module, it stops working for facial authentication.
Apple disabled the ability to adjust the brightness of your Macbook's display if it wasn't genuine. Hey maybe it doesn't want to damage non genuine displays... so what's the difference between a genuine and non genuine part? The EEID that Apple programs into them. A counterfeit display in this case is simply one that was purchase from Apple's supplier, LG, and programmed with Apple's EEID not by Apple.
This is incorrect and a complete oversimplification of what actually happened. In every single one of the cases you mention, the device was bricked because having the part displayed broke the chain of encryption from the secure enclave to the device in question - Touch ID or Face ID. If you can't verify the chain of trust, there's no way for the device to accurately tell that the security measures that are in place are working correctly with any kind of certainty.
In fact, Apple reversed the Touch ID issue by simply notifying the user that a third-party display had disabled Touch ID (because the Touch ID module key no longer matched the key in the secure enclave). The software simply wasn't designed to allow insecure use of the device and it was fixed within less than a week.
You're either simply ignorant of how these situations came to be or you're being disingenuous because the inaccurate click-bait headline is easy to use to confirm and support your suspicions.
It's not incorrect just incomplete because even genuine parts would fail validation and result in a bricked device.
> In fact, Apple reversed the Touch ID issue by simply notifying the user that a third-party display had disabled Touch ID
> You're either simply ignorant of how these situations came to be or you're being disingenuous
Now who is being disingenuous and/or ignorant?
Only Apple could replace or repair your screen/button and have Touch ID work. When users had their screens repaired using non genuine parts they were fulled aware that Touch ID wasn't going to work.
The devices didn't brick themselves on first boot. They disabled Touch ID and access to the secure enclave but continued to work. Then Apple released an iOS update that bricked their phones for their safety. Then they back pedaled and released a patch so that instead of bricking devices it just notified the user of what they already knew.
Genuine parts would only fail if they were installed without rekeying Touch ID. It didn't matter that the parts were genuine Apple parts or not. It mattered that Touch ID and the secure enclave were no longer paired after the hardware keys no longer matched between the 2.
Or in the case of the iPhone 7, disabling the home button?
Disabling Touch ID is necessary to support the security of the phone. I don’t want a state actor installing a crocked module and use it to break the phone’s security.
It wasn't a bug according to Apple. First they said it was deliberate then after the story blew up they said it was a test feature never intended to leave the factory.
They never said it was a bug, the behavior was intentional.
> Disabling Touch ID is necessary to support the security of the phone. I don’t want a state actor installing a crocked module and use it to break the phone’s security.
No one is disputing that, why do you keep bringing it up?
Are you trying to downplay the fact that they are intentionally screwing over people who don't get repairs through them?
Why does swapping the Touch ID module necessitate disabling the home button as well as Touch ID in the iPhone 7?
And why shouldn't they be allowed to do that? They're not stopping anyone from reverse engineering the parts. They're not stopping anyone from doing the repairs and documenting them otherwise. I don't understand why anyone thinks that Apple should be compelled to willfully aid people that could harm their business model and their brand and to do it for free, no less.
They are perfectly in their right to do that, it's just shitty.
> They're not stopping anyone from doing the repairs
Actually they are by bricking devices later for having non genuine parts or unauthorized repairs.
> I don't understand why anyone thinks that Apple should be compelled...
Who said anything about compelling them to do anything? I just said they were dicks.
And how would allowing people to service their own machine hurt Apple's brand anymore than people currently making unauthorized repairs?
Giving them access to genuine parts would just increase the likelihood that the repairs work.
The only time devices have ever been bricked for unauthorized repairs is for screen repairs where the chain of trust for Touch ID couldn't be verified. It wasn't intentional and they reverted with a patch within weeks.
Actually when it first came out Apple said it was intentional enhanced security checks that disabled the phone for the user's safety.[1] Why brick the phone? The enclave is secure and the Touch ID doesn't work, it hasn't worked since it was repaired. Why suddenly decide the phone needs to stop working during an update? Why not just wipe the secure enclave?
When user's contact Apple for support, they were turned away and Apple recommended they replace the phones.
Apple later changed their story and said that it was intended for validation at the factory and mistakenly affected customers.[2] Bricking a device at the factory seems like an odd way to validate it. Wouldn't a JTAG or SPI bus be a better way to query the phone to perform validations?
> they reverted with a patch within weeks.
Weeks. Turn your phone off and don't use it for weeks then come back here and tell me how it was no big deal.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/feb/05/error-53-apple... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/18/apple-apologizes-and-updat...
You are incorrect. The Apple logos were covered up and the court findings state that they were never uncovered. I didn't see anywhere in this article where they say the owner was making claims about using genuine Apple parts.
But I do agree, it seems the right to repair stuff is not great. Repair whatever you want but don't force Apple to help you.
The appropriate move is that everybody on the market to deliver the schematics of the device to the purchaser, not to the service shops. And while we're at it (since as you said, Apple is not fighting the right to repair) provide also the complete source code with all the private keys they use to brick repaired devices into oblivion.
You might want to reconsider your position on defending idiotic corporate behavior against individuals.
Why? Why is that appropriate when that's not the case for any other product or service that you can own?
There's nothing to reconsider if I don't find their behavior idiotic.
With regard to your circular reasoning: it goes nowhere. You should know that all devices used to come with service manuals and some still do today.
I sense a fairy tale infinite complexity in todays devices from your post. You know that people built them
Edit - https://web.archive.org/web/20160327050030/http://www.pckomp...
"PCKompaniet does not pretend or market itself as Apple authorized and does not give any indication that the repair comes with an Apple warranty.”"
Edit: https://web.archive.org/web/20160327050030/http://www.pckomp...
Wow, talk about snitches! Has anyone notified Apple about amazon.com? Pretty sure they're selling 'counterfeit' iPhone screens too.
The Norwegian custom officials are evil heinous people anyway though, they've recently begun confiscating test kits (even though they're legal) and reporting it to the police. Thank god Norway is decriminalizing soon.
I myself would estimate 10-30% of chargers sold are counterfeit, I see some sellers that are obviously selling fakes but 90% seems extremely unlikely.
If the parts are branded fraudulently with apple logos and such, they should go after the supplier for that.
Talking of counterfeits, I wish the replacement part manufacturers would put their own brand on like the Floureon battery I've got in this macbook rather than saying genuine Apple when they are not like all the iphone battery replacements I've come across.
...and likely upgrades too:
You might think people would stop buying products from those who do the latter. But no.
I assume Kompaniet is Company in Norwegian.
>Apple sues PC Company