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Comment by kin | Hacker News Reader

Apple absolutely needs to make their official spare parts accessible. I was in a situation where my phone somehow had the water detection strip turn red on a 6S (before waterproof). It was working fine, I just wanted to get my screen replaced officially at the Apple store. No luck. They have a policy where they won't replace screens if there has been signs of water damage. I'm forced to go with 3rd party screens. I haven't been able to find a repair shop that uses screens that feel as good as the original.

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What would be considered "accessible"? A web shop for every single component inside a phone? Just the main logic boards and components?

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)?

Third parties could get access to those parts in theory https://support.apple.com/irp-program

this program is a sham, few places tried signing up and its designed to make you go bankrupt

So lets say Apple put up a store of spare parts and they charge $399 for a replacement screen.

How does that look?

IMO, charging as much as a new iPhone SE for just the screen doesn't fit the definition of "making their parts accessible". :)

Have you seen the markup on car spare parts? If you want to build a normal German family sedan from just the spare parts, you'll be paying 20x the cost of a full car easily.

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.

There are abuses. But for cars, even with the insane markups, having car parts is still a win, specially compared to tech devices like iphones.

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...

It looks like Apple is asking to be regulated.

Ah, thanks I had a good laugh! An honest loud laugh. Agree 100% though.

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