Is there a defensible argument for Apple's tactics?
Of course, any sane person would have a discussion with the customer about whether or not they wanted to try a simple fix versus replace the whole damn thing, which is the crux of the overpricing argument.
The other argument is cost, Apple faces massive short supply on the Genius Bar, so having more bodies that can do simpler repairs faster (ie blind part swaps) seems to have won out over having technical talent properly diagnose and repair the machine.
They could have alleviated this through their authorized service providers, but hobble them with massive fees, high part prices and overall little trust (often being last in line to receive technical documents and training for new devices). Just check out Linus Sebastian's iMac Pro saga for an insight.
Overall, it's a massive system orchestrated to give Apple maximum control over the entire process, and nowhere near enough supply for consumers. It's now actively hampering their experience, leaving people without the super glossy Genius Bar experience or a cheap option at all. I believe they've just put too few resources into this area and are too greedy to loosen the stranglehold of control for third parties to pick up the slack. Directly in contrast to their whole "we want these products to last" argument from the recent iPhone release keynote.
Maybe it's like a car? You can get the mechanical issue really fixed, or you can have a less expensive repair. Most people understand almost immediately that there is going to be a drawback if you select the less expensive repair.
> You can get the mechanical issue really fixed, or you can have a less expensive repair.
Does it qualify as a repair if it's not actually a repair?
I'd imagine the same people who are happy with these kind of repairs with Apple would be the same ones to complain about planned obsolescence...
I think you missed that point. He talks about replacing the cable, which is the 100% fix, and still cheap. The problem is looking at the "this got wet/humid" indicator and deciding that the only valid step is replacing entire boards unrelated to the problem.
I suppose expensive retail spaces? Apple has got mail-in and phone service but I've never really heard anything about it.
Absent that, the only way to provide a reliable service is to make it very process-based - Run this procedure to find which of these 5-6 components in the device is most likely faulty, replace it with a new one by following this standard procedure, then run this automated QA test and if it doesn't pass, replace the next most likely component until it passes.
It probably costs Apple a lot less to do their warranty/applecare repairs in this way, replacing whole boards at a time, than to try and hire enough people who could do board-level repairs.
It does suck for people who are out-of-warranty and have a minor fault like in this case though - and Apple should have a better solution for them. Arguably if it's a minor fault, they should charge a minor fee to fix it even if their solution is replacing a whole component.
Apple also seems to be trying to restrict third party repairers (and not just for security-critical components), which is indefensible IMO.
I use Apple products (and in turn services) because I can be fairly certain that an aftermarket unit (Macbook) is going to work well. If I didn't know that I'd look for other brands that do exactly what Apple does now - and then I'd buy their phone and use their cloud so it works well with my main device.
If Apple stopped doing what they do, a lot of people will start to experience weird issues that didn't happen before - and they will attribute these issues to Apple. Additionally the resale value of Apple gear would go substantially lower and Apple would probably also stop offering free OS.
Since I assume that the cost of new device would remain the same, this could actually substantially negatively affect poorer people (to which right to repair would be relevant) - much more than this Apple policy does.
As Apple customer, I prefer their approach. Why should anyone else stop me from consuming a service/product however I and the company I buy from like it (and it doesn't hurt anyone) just because it doesn't suit them? Why don't they buy a Lenovo?
I see your point though, there are plenty of untrustworthy third-party repairers.
With his complaint he is effectively saying is that trademarks mean shit and anyone can use anyone else's brand whenever they want. It's absurd. And it's a loser case. If he tries to fight Apple, he won't win.
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/9pow06/louis_rossman...
"The reason is that, if you are not “authorized” to buy an original part, it is considered counterfeit, regardless of the content of the actual part. The way the law works right now, if I bought five iPhone 5C from the Apple store, flew to China, took the five screens off and shipped them to an unauthorized repair shop in Jacksonville – they would be taken as “counterfeit” for having Apple logos. I personally believe this to be wrong, regardless of what the law says – but it is the world we live in, and the vendors deal with that reality the way they do."
And for what it's worth he even acknowledges the possibility that they fit his personal definition of counterfeit:
"This is Chinese market, which is known for counterfeits. It is possible something is fake. This is also an industry where everything is done to place roadblocks to people like me getting parts - I realize he is jumping through hoops and could've made a mistake. Since I have not seen the box prior to it being confiscated, there’s no way for me to tell what is in there..."
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/9pow06/louis_rossman...
If he is getting the same kind of of surplus parts we get here in Europe (everything comes from Shenzhen anyway...) then there is functionally no difference between them and the parts installed in an Apple device, because that is the specification they were built to/what their intended use at production was. I doubt an Apple engineer could reliably distinguish between parts used in a machine then recovered and the kind of surplus you get from decent resellers in China, they are for all intents and purposes the exact same part.
That's pretty much the exact definition of counterfeit. The product doesn't need to be inferior or even different in order to qualify. Counterfeits could be absolutely identical.
If I went to a company that was capable of manufacturing US currency to the exact same quality and standard as the US Federal Reserve, how perfect would they need to be before they stop being counterfeit? Trick question: they are always counterfeit, because they were not issued by the US Federal Reserve.
This company may be manufacturing batteries to Apple's specification and possibly even maintaining Apple's level of quality control. And they are allowed to do that. They can sell their batteries to Louis. But they can't print the Apple logo on them.
Can they? I'd expect Apple trying very hard to prevent that via patents, "only sell to us"-contracts, not offering specifications, laws against reverse engineering, etc. I'd expect Louis would want to buy them, if available. So why isn't he / aren't they available?
Yep, viable choice. Patents definitely are standing in the way of many things, IMO, but this is the very reason of its existence, so we need to decide whether we want to protect companies (and spur innovation, at least that's the theory - we definitely should revisit it and measure it) or if we want to allow people to start new companies making now-not-patented cheap hardware.
> "only sell to us"-contracts, not offering specifications
What's wrong about that?
> laws against reverse engineering
Are there any? I'm not aware. Can you elaborate?
> why [...] aren't they available?
Probably because making counterfeit (as defined by law) hardware isn't that profitable anymore and the market is too small for legal newcomers.
What I really don't understand is why the company he bought from had to stick an Apple logo on it. It wouldn't be counterfeit if they didn't.
That's a great question. Why aren't these non-genuine parts manufacturers able to produce these parts without also printing the Apple logo on them? I mean it shouldn't be that hard to not print the Apple logo on something.
Apple is trying to take away everyone's legal right to repair property that they own. I consider that a violation i of property rights.
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- It's not quite fair to compare the service you get from some randomly chosen retail employees with the service you get from a near-celebrity repairman.
- Aggressively suing people over copyright infringement is sometimes required by copyright law. If you don't do it, other people in the future can argue in court that you were implicitly giving up your enforcement rights. I don't know how often they win with that argument, but I know how Apple's lawyers feel about risking it.
Apple doesn't claim to offer electronic circuit diagnosis services, they offer limited repair options for a limited set of devices. Sure, it would have been nice if the Genius Bar staff could offer a disclaimer-laden advertisement for competent third party repair shops, but I'm not surprised that they don't because as Rossmann himself acknowledges, many third party repair shops are staffed with incompetent fools.
They were happy to charge $1000+ for making "significant" repairs.
And remember, that $1000+ was a quote, not a final invoice. If it turned out to be a broken cable, a motherboard replacement wouldn't have solved the issue. It's likely the actual repair technician would have identified this fault and the customer would have ultimately paid a much lower price.
So why give a quote of $1000+ when the Apple guy did not know what the problem was?
It's not fair to expect Apple's store staff to accurately diagnose faults on the assumption that the device was opened and mishandled by the customer or a third party repairer. The guys in these stores aren't electronics experts, they're just regular people with some training on the most common points of failure and the out-of-warranty repair options offered by Apple.
Interesting, can you please give a link on the Apple site which says that.
> It's not fair to expect Apple's store staff to accurately diagnose faults
Apple says the people working in the genius bar are experts, I would assume an expert would be able to diagnose faults.
and now many people have found out they are not doing that instead they have resorted to fleecing their customers.
No it never is, EVER. This is a myth people use to give companies like Apple cover for the aggressive actions
This myth has been debunked countless times, yet it still used by fan boys
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...
Selling non-genuine products bearing another company's trademark is not legal. Failure of the trademark owner to police such activity can dilute the strength and future defensibility of the trademark.
In this case—as Louis himself admitted—they were not manufactured by or on behalf of Apple. They weren't even manufactured by the current OEM and sold on the side. They might prove to be of equal quality, they might have been manufactured to Apple's particular recipe, but that doesn't make them genuine.
Just because a company used to be an OEM for Apple in the past doesn't mean their present output is "genuine" or is allowed to bear the Apple logo.
If Nike ended a contract with a shoe factory, should that factory be allowed to continue manufacturing Nike branded shoes and import them directly to shoe stores in the USA?
That is the relevance of the comment, not to the Apple Situation but as a rebuttal to the claim the parent made
I imagine you could tie the pricing into the above argument somehow by saying you need to pay more to do the repair correctly (training technicians, buying the proper parts)
There's a reason why a ten year old BMW 7 series has terrible resale value, the parts are incredibly expensive and rare/hard to find, in addition to the intentionally overcomplicated engineering of many subsystems. Using the 7 series as an example there is a steel cooling system tube that runs through the top center of the engine, with a rubber gasket on it. It's a thing that commonly fails and if you need to replace it, the "book rate" labor to do so requires something like 13 hours of labor (at $150/hour?), because it requires removing the whole engine.
Even if you are willing to take it to a third party small repair shop that specializes in german cars, your repair costs are going to be a lot higher than a ten year old Lexus.
Apple gluing things together in a way that can't be easily serviced (look at ifixit's repair scores and teardown photo galleries) is very similar.
Ironically, one model of Lexus engine has the starter in a location that requires disassembling most of the top of the engine (and thus incidentally also requiring the replacement of many other soft parts like gaskets) to reach it:
http://www.lextreme.com/starter.html
That said, a lot of newer cars, not just luxury models, have seemingly been designed to make changing the simplest parts as difficult and involve removing as many other parts as possible.
I use the MityVac 07300 and can recommend it highly if you have a good sized compressor to run it. They also sell a manual pump version.
(And with new cars quickly moving to LED lights, we won't be changing them very often anyway.)
When you go on eBay to buy a used Macbook, you can be reasonably sure that what you're buying has had "complete repairs" with original parts (if it was repaired at all). Buyers can be sure that the computer they bought didn't just have a pin bent back, but has some other unresolved problem that will lead to a failure later on. That increases demand in the used market and gets better prices for sellers.
If you look at the components that Apple has additional restrictions on e.g. Screen, TouchID they are the ones that if were comprised would enable actors to record you, capture keystrokes etc.
There have been recorded incidents of state actors taking people's laptops, replacing components and then giving them back to them. Apple's position at least to my knowledge prevents this.
State actors who have someone really interesting to focus on can likely defeat anything Apple does anyway.
Is there something similar for electronics repair?
I think the point is that they can't.
Just like state actors do struggle against the secure communication apps like Telegram.
In term of telegram, I'm not positive but I always thought that the encryption was in transit and if you could infect the phone you could see the messages as the intended user looks at them. An "analog problem" attack if you will.
I don't know if you can see telegram messages simply by having access to the phone.
I'm glad Apple maintains trust between the fingerprint sensor and the secure enclave. That's a feature, not a bug.
Unless we're willing to compromise our lives to RMS proportions, we are forced to trust third parties. The value proposition for me with the iPhone is that I'm trusting the fewest third parties possible, and Apple has shown themselves to be sufficiently deserving of my trust.
Sadly that phone vendor doesn't allow unlocks anymore, so the upcoming replacement will be a hassle and I'll probably have to settle on a somewhat inferior device (also hoping for a headphone jack and replaceable battery).
Thank god I can choose from a big and free-ish market of android phones and don't have a huge sunk cost locking me into a specific vendor.
I'm fine if we conclude "yes", but it is worth noticing that this is not the "norm" for most of human history and so the question is entirely reasonable to ask.
In this case I think most people who buy Apple products are not really looking for the cheapest parts and repair costs. They pay extra for the experience they want to get.
If Apple doesn't want to lose money then they should follow the law.
I'd say the same thing to a company selling poisoned food. "Just don't buy it" isn't a valid argument.
The valid argument is instead "companies that break the law should be fined, sued, or people should go to jail".
That's democracy for you!
So whatever rules you create (and I'd say there are too many of them already), huge legal team at Apple will work their way through them. It won't be easy for a small startup though.
If you do not like that policy you should just choose not to buy a car?
Seem like a terrible, anti-consumer position to me
There are laws against price gouging and egregious behavior, especially if a company has a monopoly position. Is Apple price gouging or being egregious? Is it a monopoly? It's hard to say.
In a capitalist society, we are supposed to have competition which naturally guards against such behaviors. If one store charges $100 for a bottle of water, you can go to another that charges a reasonable price. But the modern capitalist system seems to want large conglomerates dominating markets. In agriculture, supermarkets and tech, it all seems to be merging and converging to a few market players.
Apple is interesting in that they are somewhat monopolistic but not completely. They seem to be overcharging, but not price gouging. They collect tons of your data, but only for themselves and don't sell it to others ( at least as far as we know ). They seem to be walking a very thin line where it's hard to attack them as easily as you can facebook or google.