Apple crushes one-man repair shop in Norway’s Supreme Court
repair.eu
repair.eu
This court case bas brought on by Apple because he did not properly remove the Apple logos. He used a permanent marker to "remove" them from the parts. Apple did not agree that this was a proper way to do it.
As much as I am for the rights to repair. I would say that Apple has some grounds here.
Take a broken iPhone, part it, replace the glass, now you have a refurbished screen to go in someone's broken iPhone.
I bought a new apple battery with the apple logo from online vendor - turned out to be total junk. Amazon used to be filled with these junk apple parts - I tried so hard to buy a real apple charger etc and you just get junk (with an apple logo).
Despite the claims here that all this trash is "refurbished" real apple product it is not.
Apple has some lawsuits going about this issue. 90% of the items they bought from amazon that were "genuine" turned out to be fakes.
Apple has tried to crack down a bit. You used to be able to drop a crappy third party battery into a used iphone and the buyer would see that battery had no degradation (it often died months later). Now if a bogus battery is installed you get some kind of warning.
Disclaimer: I'm an Apple fan, and have previously interviewed there, but I am quite critical of many of their actions like the lockdown on iOS (although I am a huge fan of the mandatory sandboxing)
From the article, it doesn't sound like that to me at all. It sounds like Apple deliberately put the logo on individual parts to try and make this claim later. But the logo on the part itself presumably isn't visible on the finished product. Even if it were, it would still not be passing off because the part did originally come from Apple!
This isn't true.
The aluminum iPhones (and other phones) were so beautiful. I have an old HTC M8 and it just looks and feels so nice compared to all glass Samsungs. Plus the front facing stereo speakers - truly practical.
Security has drawbacks.
Not really an argument for saying an implementation isn't possible.
So manufacturers do it anyways, and sell them in the grey market. I wound up with these parts myself after trying to buy a high-quality replacement display for an old phone (complete with blacked-out Apple logo). There is no legal alternative. They're not "fake" parts, but the parts aren't supposed to exist. (Seems like that issue would be between Apple and the manufacturer, but I digress.)
What good is a right to repair if the major companies can just make it illegal in practice?
I mean, even the use of the word 'fake' here is questionable. A replacement considered fake is not expected to work the same way the legit version does. It stubs that functionality out or makes it worse. If the chip does the same work and performs the same way it's not a fake, it's an alternative or a competitor. And if Apple are short-changing their Chinese sweatshops to produce these chips (and they absolutely are), then it's no surprise they try to seek a profit in the grey market.
This is why I'm somewhat annoyed that this case is being paraded as something to support right-to-repair…
The easiest way for you to demonstrate this is to get some official Legos. Then go on Aliexpress and order some no-brand knockoffs (Lepin or whatever they're called now). Both work as building blocks, both connect to themselves and each other.
But you can just feel that the knockoffs haven't been produced to the same exact standard as the officials, they're just a little bit off and squeaky and wonky.
Now if someone sold you the knockoffs as officials, it would affect the Lego brand. And this is why companies go to court for.
Refurbished parts are not fake. You can have an original screen that only the top layer is cracked, that top layer can be replaced or fixed, the people that fixed the screen did not erased the existing Apple logo.
Anyway this would not happen if Apple would allow selling of parts to third party.
It's like changing a windshield for a third party one and then getting sued once you try to sell your car because there still the logo on the car.
I find the situation where the state dictates private companies what to sell much more ludicrous.
To clarify, I don't think that it's a good practice, and it's one of the reasons I don't buy iPhones anymore. But as I would vote against company doing this idiotic thing with my wallet, I would still defend it's legal right to do that idiotic thing.
It's not the government place nor responsibility to solve such trivial problems, especially with products on very competitive markets that are almost a luxury item and in no way a basic neccessity. Consumers can figure it out on their own.
Phones are designed to be held in your hands, and hands occasionally drop things, so phones should be designed to withstand being dropped. You should be able to get a warranty replacement / repair for your phone if you drop it.
We would have stronger phones that last longer, and produce less waste.
Never assume that government knows better than it's citizens. It's made out of the worst of them.
but the government doesn't need to know that something is a bad deal if instead it provides for ways to revert the deal once it's discovered to be bad.
for example in the EU any online purchase can be reverted within 14 days without requiring any explanation, because it is assumed that bad deals may not become aparent until after the purchase.
clearly a lot of people have already been burned by bad purchases, otherwise this law wouldn't exist. laws like this are generally made in response to existing problems, not in speculation of potential problems.
the issue with your claim is that it is less likely that bad actors give a money back guarantee. and those are the ones why such a law is needed. or from the other side: those businesses that do offer s money back guarantee are more likely those that do not need it. it's for the other ones that this law was made.
That's because you seem to operate out of an unspokem assumption that if government can change something in society for the better, it should.
This core assumption is the only thing I disagree about. Every additional little thing that government gets involved, brings unseen debt of increasing power of monopolic beurocratic apparatus with absolute authority and very ineffective oversight.
I believe that government should be involved only in things that can absolutely cannot be resolved without it. Being able to merely do some good is not a good enough reason. Yes, the phone situation is probably better with such legislation, but it's not a good enough reason for people to give up more of their power to the state and state-like institutions.
The economic costs are not the only costs in a capitalist society. The other costs just don’t show up on the paper.
P.S and I’ll argue that smartphones are necessary in today’s world. They are the primary form of computing, communication and fulfilling bureaucratic work for large sections of the population on the planet. In India, you’ll have a tough time in life if you don’t have a smartphone. You can survive? Yes. But it will be a PITA to communicate with others, deal with govt, banking or utilities etc
How does that look?
Not even speaking of the skullduggery the VAG consortium is doing, they use the exact same parts for a large portion of their cars, just with different serial numbers.
A widget for Premium Car costs 1000, the EXACT SAME WIDGET for Budget Car costs 100. You just need to know the magic number or have a friendly salesperson behind the counter.
Also, cars are 1) a bit more complex 2) a bit more granular in design, which leads to more swappable components. This result in needing to replace just a few relatively small components in case of breakdowns (a pump, a filter, etc), and even with the markup, repair is often a good solution financially vs replacing the car. By contrast, on a phone, the individually swappable components are much bigger (a whole screen, a logic board, etc), making repairs less viable.
Last point is supplying spare parts is also quite complex logistically, which explains part of the markup. But not all of it, I agree, there has been numerous cases of price fixing/abuses, for example:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-software-pricing-in...
Do they need to be sold at-cost or can there be the normal brand name part mark-up on spare parts (just like in cars)?
Doesn't matter. Just draw it and adjust it later on. At some point environmentalism is more important than profits and some reasonable support timespan of ~3-8 years is fairly obvious.
I dunno, how about we start with 10 years?
Does there need to be a line? Arguably small custom electronics manufacturers may not be able to do that, but surely something similar would apply to custom car makers.
Arguably small electronics manufacturers would have an easier job fulfilling this since they usually use off-the-shelf parts anyways.
The question was asked out of worry that some agressive rule targeted at a big guy, might have unintended consequences that hurt the little guys.
To which question I agree with "doesn't matter, draw it anywhere and adjust as needed" because there are easily identifiable reasonable ranges, and not knowing the final perfect answer is not a good enough excuse for not doing anything at all, and what we have now is already worse than a line that was drawn a bit off the mark. Waht we have now is a defacto line drawn 100% off the MAP.
With a car your spare parts are typically a small fraction of the value of the vehicle even used. With an iPhone, an official replacement screen will cost more than the 4 year old device is worth. Likewise the mainboard.
Really what I'd like to see is Apple doing a re-use campaign where they recover working parts from their own recycle chain, certify and resell them.
Producing and storing spare parts for a widget that costs less than a Starbucks coffee will never be feasible. Neither is storing an unknown quantity of said widget in a warehouse somewhere for 10 years to provide people with replacements.
Also, making things serviceable is hard and requires planning and forethought on component placement etc. This incurs even more costs.
I'm all for repairability and long lived devices, but I'm in a privileged position and can afford the premium price. But is this a viable solution for the world?
Especially if the whole thing is about internal parts.
For many, many repairs the Genius bar just tells you that it is not repairable even though it is. A 2000$ device that you just bought a couple of months ago. What right to repair do we have if Apple doesn't offer repair, even if you bought Apple Care.MacBooks are designed to fail, a drop of water kills the machine, the fuses never blow, if a sensor dies the whole machine stops working, they admitted a keyboard design flaw and if you get it replaced they replace it with the exact same one...
If Apple made parts available there wouldn't be a case. If Apple offered repair services like Lenovo there wouldn't be a case. If Apple designed their machines to be serviceable there wouldn't be a case.
Given that this case is about importing counterfeit products from China...I disagree
>If Apple offered repair services like Lenovo there wouldn't be a case.
They do as long as your business is near an apple store.
>If Apple designed their machines to be serviceable there wouldn't be a case.
Why should they be serviceable?
wow really
> They do as long as your business is near an apple store.
No?
Apple Care doesn't cover liquid damaged devices. And often they claim the device was liquid damaged even when it wasn't.
And when Apple does fix your machine, how many times do you get your data back? ZERO times!
>> If Apple designed their machines to be serviceable there wouldn't be a case.
> Why should they be serviceable?
Because I paid thousands of dollars for a premium machine with the tag "Pro". It is unacceptable to turn it into a paper weight if it breaks, many times without user error.
It does now
Seems like a stretch to call the parts counterfeit. He imported refurbished displays that were original Apple displays with broken glass that had been replaced by a third party product. The original parts of the display still had Apple logos on them. So clearly they were refurbished, not counterfeit.
Do you buy a new car every 3000 miles or do you get it serviced? Do you buy a new car when one of your tires get punctured by a nail?
>>If Apple made parts available there wouldn't be a case. >Given that this case is about importing counterfeit products from China...I disagree
This happens all the time in the automotive industry as well. Why are aftermarkets parts allowed to exist? What's the balance between aftermarket and counterfeits?
>>If Apple offered repair services like Lenovo there wouldn't be a case. >They do as long as your business is near an apple store.
Great, if they actually have properly trained/educated technicians at each store. Quoting for $1200 on a 5 year old laptop, to replace the motherboard and display, all because of a defective cable (a $15 fix).
If you bought your device a couple of months ago, wouldn't you still be covered by the warranty?
Repairable by a random Genius bar person and repairable by Louis Rossmann are two very different things.
Yes, if you could hire enough Rossmanns cost-effectively and get them the proper equipment and training, then the Apple Stores could fix _everything_ on site.
But it's a few orders of magnitude easier to have iFixit style guides and tools for swapping whole logic boards to fix a single component. It's also WAY cheaper for Apple.
Also there is a whole spectrum of repairs between "replace some swappable parts" and "reball a CPU".
Not to mention the free replacement is only valid for three times.
Would also like to add the thin cable that makes Screen stop working, Thunderbolt charging that fries the CPU etc etc.
And yes all of these are 2016 - 2019 MacBook. Apart from Staingate, 2015 MacBook Pro is pretty damn good.
Apple could have hide all of these "flaws" with a free repair given out to customers, making them feel better without actually acknowledging it. Instead they actively tries to price gouge customers with ridiculously expensive repairs.
I still remember you could get a brand new Keyboard on MacBook Pro if you ask for a battery replacement which is much cheaper than keyboard repair.
Not surprised that the top comment on HN is a comment defending Apple either.
It seems to me that something like the exhaustion doctrine[1] should be made to apply here (but presumably doesn't in Norway). Once a part is legally sold, even if as part of a bigger product, IP law should not be able to be used to prevent the buyer from doing what they want with the part, including using it in a different product that is then sold as a refurbishment part. The only exception should be to prevent others from being misled about the origin of the product; that doesn't appear to have been happening here.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_of_intellectual_pro...
Whether a phone or watch generally is one of those sorts of products though is certainly something to debate.
I feel like you've never had your car repaired before...
This is exactly something we're fine with protecting and encouraging. The manufacturer of the defective part is at fault, and depending on circumstances the repair person, not the company who originally built the device. Go ahead and try to get Chevy to sell you a brake master cylinder for a 1970 C10, your only options are after market parts manufacturers and that's fine, we've dealt with this for literally as long as there has been n > 1 blacksmiths in a town.
Someone buying a refurbished powerbank, for example, may end up lighting something on fire because it was repaired incorrectly.
Yes it'd maybe be on the manufacturer of a replacement regulator if an insulin pump was 3rd-party repaired and failed, but would it maybe be safer to say that the device should be modified or repaired only within its certified supply chain?
There's CE and UL listings for communications and electrical devices to in part protect consumers against poor manufacturing leading to irradiated or electrocuted people.
Could we agree that there's a difference between a bushing and a microcontroller?
Original batteries aren't some magical spec devices that other batteries can't substitute. Most of them are made by the same few manufacturers and it is trivial to find a replacement with similar specs.
Silently? Unless they're passing off a refurbished iPhone as a new one, replacing parts as necessary is exactly what refurbishment means!
As a buyer I might be interested to know if they used only genuine Apple parts, but I'm happy that the market can take care of that and the only legal intervention should be if there was a deliberate misrepresentation. It's perfectly fine for a repairer to use third party parts without having to specifically call it out. This has been done in every other market since the beginning of time, so this would not be misleading anyone.
Refurbished products should always tell you who refurbished them, and you can draw conclusions about the supplies from there. Ideally, they'd also tell you what was replaced, but it can be difficult to track that with the item.
However, I do know - in general - component manufacturers are notorious for cutting corners to save a few cents, doing additional factory runs after hours, altering chemistry, faking specs, etc. It's a shady business climate that needs constant QC.
Also a fair amount of what you pay for is a known chain of custody from component manufacturer to your device. From what I can tell for many components there isn't a clear feedback loop to end customers, as parts travel through several intermediaries, which means its less likely bad quality will lead to repercussions to the component manufacturer. It goes all the way to the repair place, who's typically doing a one-off order for a customer rather than having an ongoing customer relationship, and who may never see a failure 6 months down the line.
As far as batteries, and this may be a hypothetical as I do not know about who's manufacturing what and at what quality, but there's also legitimate safety concerns which is why a higher than typical level of scrutiny is required.
These are all conditions that could lead to potentially higher failure rates. How much higher is debatable, it may be only a percent or two, and for many folks a small additional risk may be worth saving some cash for.
Personally? For older devices I wouldn't care. A newer device, I would.
For competition however, I maintain that the consumer should have the ability to choose to do business with a repairer with no supply relationship with the manufacturer who claims to be able to do better. As long as the consumer isn't being misled, the consumer should be entitled to choose to take that risk.
Back in the day, high-end electronics (particularly audio equipment) had full-blown schematics, for repair. While reflow re-soldering BGA devices is way out of reach for the average non-technical home users today, with a steady hand, and the right tools, replacing an iPhone battery is only slightly more complicated than changing a tire.
Remember engineers love anything that loosens constraints. Making things easy to repair is a pretty challenging constraint to juggle with all the other constraints like manufacturability, chassis design, thermals, etc.
They say they don't make profit on repairs. I've no particular reason to not believe this. They could design products to be easier to repair and thus cost less to repair, but the fundamental rationale always points back to controlling brand risk, because a drop in customer satisfaction by even 1% is worth billions.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/11/20/are-apple-repairs-profita...
The part was imported into the country.
The customer is 100% being deceived.
A court found that the customer wasn't being deceived, and this specific finding has not been overturned on appeal. The issue is about IP rights unrelated to customer deception.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ar2Gxw8mIQ
You may remember Louis Rossmann testifying in this case. To his credit, he published this video about the different ways he was wrong. Unfortunately, you probably didn't see the retraction bc the original testimony got 13x the views. Not through any fault of Louis, simply due to how things spread online.
But is it "allowed" (by Apple or by law) at all, to manufacture/sell 3rd party parts of iPhone (I mean by not pretending to be genuine parts)?
If not, and combined with the fact Apple don't sell their genuine parts to basically anybody, the situation still sounds ridiculous to customers at the end of the day.
Edit: by the way, what's the legal status of reclycled parts from genuine iPhones?
As the article describes it, the parts are only counterfeit in the sense that an original Apple part was broken, re-furbished by a Chinese manufacturer (e.g., replacing a piece of glass), and then imported into Norway without having the Apple logos sufficiently scrubbed off. It would be reasonable to call these parts "counterfeit" if anyone was actually being deceived into thinking they were genuine new Apple parts. But if no one in the supply chain thinks they are genuine, it seems wrong to call this counterfeit, which implies deception. It's like saying monopoly money is "counterfeit".
In the mobile space Apple is transitioning to a services and ecosystem business as the space commodifies. You buy an iPhone and then get Apple Music, TV+, News+, AirPod, Watch, Glass etc.
If you look at the Android OEMs they don't even support phones after 2 years. And Apple would likely increase upgrade support for more than 5 years if those phones weren't massively underpowered.
Btw. If I by a car from, say, Toyota and go to a shop to have it repaired. Of course the dealer may use off brand parts to repair it.
Also note how Apple pretends to care about their environmental impact, while being actively hostile towards repair efforts, that would reduce the amount of e-waste generated. Absolute hypocrites.
Of course Apple is a company that likes to keep a tight control of their market and their image, and you could maybe say they go to the point of control freakiness in that regard. Any potential loss in image regarding the quality of their products is a significant cost to them; being able to charge a premium for replacement parts probably doesn't hurt either. If independent repair shops and consumers lose something in repair costs and freedom, that probably doesn't tip Apple's scale in any way. For the rest of the society it could, and if needed, Apple (or any company) needs to be able to be criticized for that, and legislation needs to cater to that and not to the needs of any single corporation.
Edit: It might be worth pointing out that while yes, Apple would probably like you to buy a new phone within five years, e.g. many Android devices aren't supported for more than a couple of years. I agree you shouldn't necessarily be forced to buy a new device even every five years, but most other vendors aren't any better in that regard.
The situation is exactly the opposite when it comes to computers/laptops. I can still have latest version of Windows on my father's 2011 laptop.
Secondly, this whole 'loss is image' is a giant smoke screen. Consider that you can repair a BMW in a random garage with unauthorised parts and incompetent repairmen - and you might even die as a result. Does BMW's image suffer? Is their brand worth nothing?
The consumer can comprehend the consequences of repairing his device where he chooses, this is not medical equipment. Using copyright to restrict repairs is a bastardisation of copyright law - it's intended purpose is wholly different.
I was merely speculating on why it might make sense for Apple to want that kind of control even if it isn't in the best interests of anybody else. The costs to everybody else just have no weight to them, as long as their customers keep paying, and thus even a small potential matter of image could weigh more to them. That doesn't mean you, me or anybody else should support that line of though.
BMW might not mind having that kind of control either if their customers and the legislation were to put up with it.
Your point about computers is valid.
In the car business, a large part of the profit that a manufacturer makes is actually made after the car is sold, in the form of replacement parts. Basically, by buying a car you enter into a relationship with the manufacturer to buy replacement parts for your car. Some are being manufactured independently, but many aren't available. I guess it's similar in the case of phones.
This question is in the same vein as hypothetical questions like 'what prevents Apple from violating people's privacy to sell/use their data'. The answer is always the same: pick a business model that aligns customer and company interests, and these things won't happen.
Apple thinks in long term customer relationships measured in customer lifetime value, which can be 10s of thousands of dollars over decades of customer relationship. To sacrifice that for a few extra bucks on screen repair would be really dumb.
Have we never seen management prioritise short term gains and next quarterly report over long term profits? Think of 2008 and the Boeing disasters. Almost everyone involved knew that this will blow up one day, and yet they kept going.
It's always possible to conjure up the hundreds of ways businesses can fail, but I don't think it adds anything meaningful to the issue at hand.
They appear to be well into doing that, and making solid efforts into ensuring it continues.
This strategy applies beyond this particular example, and is probably one of the strong business motivations for Apple’s vertical integration.
Business-wise, this is yet another way to boost the “lifetime value” of a customer and ensure it is far more than the price of a single product, which I’m sure is a significant factor in the high valuations (and revenues) of Apple. The fact that they invest so much into marketing/advertising the Apple ecosystem as a lifestyle brand also means that they are pushed towards a business model where their customers need to have a large lifetime value to offset the customer acquisition/retention costs.
If the end consumer winds up confused, it still hurts Apple. That is the matter of this case. The repair shop didn’t make it clear enough that these are not genuine parts.
Essential to the concept of ownership, is the idea that I don't give a rat's ass what Apple or anyone else prefers. Do I own my phone, or does Apple?
Or they could cut the breaks and get me killed.
In fact, even a car wash could do that when I leave the car keys with them and pick up a clean car the next day.
You assume that nothing on my phone could result in my death. That privilege is not available to me. Personal beliefs, medical history, and other aspects of my self that are stored in digital form on my device could kill me if viewed by the wrong people.
If you've ever looked at buying a used or refurbished phone, it's a total wild west out there with people claiming (or being purposefully deceiving) that the phones are refurbed to the quality of Apple or similar. Or you find out after buying that you end up getting a poor quality uneven brightness display from prior-generation China factories, microphones that don't work right, etc. The guy in the story was importing counterfeit parts.
Apple (and other manufacturers) have a big interest to not have people feel that their hardware is shitty.
And if Apple were really trying to make people's technology obsolete, why would they support the OS of legacy phones for multiple (4-5) years longer than most other phone manufacturers? I guess they're so evil they're trying to confuse us with good cop/bad cop.
Inject some reality into your thinking.
They created the environment where counterfeits and shady dealers are required by prohibiting any official ways to repair things
So I do not have any sympathy for your argument. The day I can go to apple.com to buy a capacitor and order a schematic is the day I will agree with you
Your insistence that folks buy trash phones that get thrown away (and are totally unsupported software side almost from date of mfg) is ridiculous and actively harms the environment.
By increasing confidence in their products, including used products, apple does a LOT to enhance the perceived long term value of their product. There is a very active apple refurb market, and you can take your phone and get new batteries etc from apple.
They have a huge retail presence with walk in repairs. They have authorized third party repairs. And they have mail in repairs.
as to their retail stores and "authorized repair" centers, I urge you to look at any of investigative reports on these place, or any of Louis Rossmann's video's, or read any of the 1000's of reports from consumer who have been denied repair or quoted repair costs that exceed the replacement cost of the device, or have been told that repair can not include data recovery, or about 100 other things
Apple stores and apple "Authorized repair" shops are not Repair centers, they are board replacement houses. It is akin to having a fouled plug in my engine and the dealership telling me the only way to fix that is to replace the engine then they walk me over to the showroom to sell me a shiny new car... That is what the apple store is
Possibly in mobile space, but not in PC/desktop space. My desktop has 2x the lifespan of any macbook/iMac/whatever, will be on the latest of Windows/Linux for 20 years and every nut and bolt is replaceable. Even a single component, like graphics card, can be repaired on a chip-by-chip if need be.
Gaming rigs enjoy high resale value, it roughly tracks their performance compared to whatever is currently available on the market + 10% discount for being used.
Do they have to sell you a replacement secure enclave chip, enable you to solder it in, provide the certificates to match it up to the rest of the phone? Sell you their source code so you can make your own patches and mix and match parts as you like? What if they only sell the main board as a whole component? What if their pricing for it is 2/3 the cost of the new phone? Do you mandate that they sell it to you for a certain cost too?
It starts to get a little ridiculous and out of sync with how electronics are built and operate, if you take this to where some people would insist that it go.
When I BUY a device I should have access to all the schematics, all of the components, etc. otherwise I do not OWN it, I am simply borrowing it
I fail to see why electronics should hold a special place that other manufactured goods do not, for example we disallowed car manufactures from locking down the cars we own and they used the EXACT same excuses that modern electronics manufacturers do
Now we are starting to see modern car companies, like Tesla, want to bring back those Anti-Consumer policies to the automotive world
I am sadden that soo many people want to BUY a product but still have the manufacture get complete control over it. That is not ownership, that is serfdom
I haven't heard anyone claim Apple does this because they have indigestion or really like the smell of landfills. Of course they have interests.
They are not, however necessarily legitimate interests, or ones that outweigh the interests of those who purchase their devices.
We, as a species, have a lot of history with artifacts we make and trade with one another. And by and large, we've come to the conclusion that if I sell you something, I cease having a legitimate interest in what you do with it.
This notion has been blurred by the need for operating system updates (hammers didn't need those) and the proliferation of "cloud"/OPC services. And now we are trying to find the right balance.
But there's a pretty good bet that abusing trademark law to control a secondary market with what amounts to literally an engineered legal argument is a pretty good indication that Apple is... getting creative, and I think the fact of the matter is that "we" won't put up with that shit long-term. Most humans value their property rights over HugeCo's reputational concerns.
> Inject some reality into your thinking.
Physician, heal thyself.
Unreliable devices damage Apple's hard-earned reputation. An end user won't know why the Apple device they're holding is unreliable - they may not even know it has been repaired if they acquired it from someone else. They'll just know it's an Apple device, and thus it must be Apple's fault. When that person talks to someone a day or a month down the line about their experience, they will not have as good things to say. In sum, this reputation will depress sales and customer satisfaction, which are the two key metrics for how Apple measures success.
Building reliable tech that just works is hard enough. Non-OEM components and third party repair shops add additional business risk, which is why Apple takes a pretty restrictive stance.
This is hilarious as the only Apple related Videos I know of are those of this repair guy who cheaply fixes parts that were obviously made to break and be repaired at ridiculous costs pushing the customer to buy a new device.
Nobody who goes to a private fix it shop would blame Apple. But they might hear about those strange parts that were build to break and this is where they may indeed lose reputation. Reputation they do not deserve in the first place.
I'm no fan of Apple's crackdown on repairers in general, but this sure sounds like he had third-party screens that he called "refurbished iPhone screens," which sounds pretty misleading to me. If someone told me something was a "refurbished iPhone screen," my assumption would be that it was originally a genuine Apple part, and it doesn't sound like that's what he was using.
Just leaving out the word "genuine" doesn't make it not-misleading.
agree on this point - in english there would be some distinction between 'refurbished iPhone screens' vs 'refurbished screens for iPhones', where the former implies some kind of 'official screen' and the latter implies a 'compatible part'
but - and I don't know the labelling used or norwegian - what if there is no native language construct that captures this subtle distinction?
It doesn't sound like that to me at all. From the article I get the impression he was selling "refurbished iPhones" or offering to "repair your iPhone". In both of those cases I don't think using non-Apple parts is misleading - because as the article says "he simply used refurbished iPhone screens that he never advertised to the public as “genuine” parts from Apple".
I guess €23,000 passes for severe in Norway. He's lucky he's not in USA.
The court might have just done its job, as the laws stands Apple wins. The politicians should pass laws forcing Apple to allow repairs, if they want to sell iPhones.
Most of the repair shops here (I'm in East Asia now), get broken iPhones, or higher and lower end Samsung phones. I can understand Apple being constantly hostile towards the repair shops can easily put customers out of option to repair their own devices from cheaper places, and the repair shop lot of business because they simply can't source spare parts.
I think Louis Rossman was very vocal about the issue (a New York based YouTuber and a repair shop owner), that is probably worth a look.
> We are now holding the European Commission to its commitment to “a Right to Repair” in the Circular Economy Action Plan, to ensure universal access to affordable genuine spare parts for all electronics for both repair professionals and consumers.
Does that mean there's a European Citizens Initiative? A petition? Or what is this referencing ?
I don't really know how EU policymaking works (although I guess I should, as I'm a EU citizen), but it seems to be more of a broad but approved plan than just an initiative or a petition.
Android OEMs support their phones for typically 2-3 years. Apple supports them for at least 5 likely to be longer in the coming years.
Now good luck trying this with an iPhone.
How do I know it wasn’t water damaged? Bought new from amazon, only used for testing android apps.
As for repairs you can do all that with Apple handsets. However with all third party parts you really never know what the bell you’re going to get. A friend of mine has a Sony handset which they took to a high street repairer who did a bodge with a 3rd party screen. Literally the touch point calibration is completely off, the thing isn’t gorilla glass as the corner cracked trim finger pressure and the thing doesn’t fit properly.
YMMV but my phone pays the bills so it’s mid range iPhone with AppleCare thanks.
I’m perfectly capable of doing repairs myself but I’d rather someone else did it where if they screw it up or encounter an issue I’ve got an exit plan. Apple when they screwed up my 6s repair on warranty just gave me a whole new handset. This was while I was having a coffee up the road. <2h.
Car industry has few problems with third party spare parts and it's definitely not up to the manufacturer to police that.
Unsure if I should be glad people have a place to escape to and talk about the banal, or be concerned.
Not only is it somewhat nearsighted (if perhaps sometimes tempting) to suggest that everything and everyone should put their focus on a single matter and stop focusing on anything else, it also leads to people getting weary really fast.
Of course you might be referring to the issues of racism and police brutality. While those -- especially racism -- are significant matters on the global scale, the current events are mostly a U.S. thing, and not everyone is American.
I agree those topics should be getting high visibility regardless, but I don't necessarily agree with the idea that we should just drop everything else we were doing and are interested in, or that it would be automatically sad if the top posts on a tech-oriented international forum don't happen to revolve around the current hot topic in the U.S.
And, that's, just like, your opinion, man. Clearly a lot of people all around the world agree with me that systemic racism is worth discussing, based on the various protests in Paris, etc.
I certainly am not arguing anyone has to agree with me.
But to deny the validity of the discussion?
I disagreed with the idea that a single topic needs to be always at the top, or that it's somehow a bad thing if it isn't, or that it should be to the exclusion of other things. That's not at all the same as denying the validity of discussion about anything else unless you live in a black and white world.
I literally said "I agree those topics should be getting high visibility regardless", and now I'm apparently "denying the validity of the discussion".
Not so much liking the scissors MB Pro keyboard. Enjoying Android. Appreciate being able to add an sdcard. I think Lenovo will be my next laptop.