Hacker News Reader

Comment by rasz | Hacker News Reader

Just as a reminder, their phone "independent repair program" has you signing rights to your business away (you are forced to let apple audit you at any time, you have to share personal client data on all of your clients with apple. All of this not limited to Apple repair part of your business) for the right to:

- remove battery / screen from client device

- send battery / screen to Apple with all clients personal information

- wait for replacement unit (at a price not dissimilar to the price of same model 100% working used device)

- mount new battery / screen after about a week

Its designed in a way to not make any economical sense, but sound like Apple is a real independent repair champion.

View on HN

This is Apple trying to avoid real Right to Repair legislation by taking actions that look like they support independent repair.

Consider taking a moment to donate to https://repair.org/ - we're pushing to get Right to Repair laws passed in state legislatures across the US.

Apple's workaround may work in US but don't think it will get very far in EU

I don't know. It's infuriating what Apple gets away with in Germany. For example right now to maybe get my 2018 MacBook Pro keyboard fixed, I have to relinquish the unit for a minimum of five workdays. Mind you nobody guarantees me that they will actually do the repair within the time frame or that it will in fact be covered by the extended warranty. This is just the minimum time they will hold the unit to have a look at it and tell me what's up. Cool.

I actually just handed in my 2016 MBP and got the keyboard replaced under their extended 4 year “butterfly mishap”-warranty. The new keyboard feels so much better than the last one. Plus they also replaced the battery because it’s all soldered together, so battery life got like 50% better. It cost me nothing and they did it when I was on vacation anyway, so it wasn’t much of a nuisance. No data loss at all.

I live in Sweden but I think they sent it to Czech Republic for the replacement. Handed it in Monday evening and got it delivered to my door Tuesday the week thereafter.

All in all it was totally worth it, but I’ve only had it for a few weeks now so who knows how long it’ll last this time.

Would you take vacation the next time your laptop breaks?

I'm not an apple fan and never owned an apple laptop but, even with other brands unless you buy their enterprise models (e.g. dell latitude, lenovo thinkpad) with the appropriate warranty you won't get same day hardware support in most of Europe.

And even with onsite support with Dell I had a case when the battery died completely and the laptop could only work when plugged in, they did show up at the office, they checked it out diagnosed that the battery is dead (no kidding), and came back 2 days later with a new battery.

> unless you buy their enterprise models (e.g. dell latitude, lenovo thinkpad) with the appropriate warranty you won't get same day hardware support in most of Europe.

This is the case in the US as well, but I think it should be said that Apple is trying to compete with those classes of computer, not low end consumer grade models. I don’t know if I’d say they’re doing particularly well, but most of why Apple computers are so expensive is because they are designed to last and work well for business.

With other brands you can get 3rd party repairs done on a much quicker basis.

Heck, HP and Dell publish freely available technical manuals that you can look at and fix the device yourself.

I am a real believer in right to repair. But I wonder, if we are unable to achieve legislative results, what can be done to build hardware on open standards?

People have tried and failed.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/2/12775922/google-project-ar...

I think there is no money in letting people repair and upgrade components.

That was a dumb idea to begin with. We don't need phones that work like lego. Just reverting to how phones worked 5 years ago would be a massive improvement. For almost all users all they will ever need to do is replace the battery. We used to be able to replace the battery with no tools or skills and the screen was pretty easy if you had some skill at all.

The problem we face now is that the user can't fix anything at all, repair stores can fix things with great difficulty but they can't get new parts, and apple themselves can't even fix most things because the individual parts can't even be replaced on their own without replacing the whole thing. (The macbook keyboard which was prone to fail was attached with 50 rivets)

All we need is user replaceable batteries, and for service centres to have access to all the parts they need. Lewis rossman can't get access to a chip that was >$1 on the old macbooks and is prone to fail. The newer version of the chip is impossible to source meaning those macbooks either get binned or pay apple for a whole new mobo which costs more than the laptop is worth.

For real, all I want is for us to go back to the time where you could pop off the back cover of your phone by at worst unscrewing some screws, and the easily replace the battery.

Then maybe Apple wouldn't need to send out a backdoor patch to underclock old devices. People that still want the long battery life the device had on purchase could go out and purchase a new battery (or attempt to force Apple to give them a new one) - those folks that are fine being tethered to a power outlet can choose to ignore the shortening battery lifespan. Either way, it'd move the decision into the hands of the consumer instead of Apple making that choice for you. And don't forget that Apple did get into trouble over their stupid underclocking "We hope no one notices that we don't allow people to repair things" patch.

Then you could vote with your wallet and take a Fairphone :-)

This doesn't work. You can't rely on individual action for massive scale initiatives. Look how far that got us for the ozone layer (solved through governmental action), climate change (unsolved, because there is no governmental action), decent working conditions (everything achieved was through unions, protests and government intervention), etc

Project Ara was so overdesigned that I'm almost convinced that it was a false flag.

Google kills off a lot of things lol! I'm more concerned with raspi and ARM and etc :)

Only functionality missing would be valid cell tower functionality. Wifi and satellite would work just fine

The market could fix this issue if a significant enough chunk of consumers comprehended what they were losing when going with Apple and were willing to put their money where their mouth was. That's simply not going to happen and a market based solution is unreasonable - this is a time where subject matter experts need to help make an informed decision for the population at large.

Apple is hardware maker. Of course it make sense for them to design the hardware so only they can repair it. It is part of their business model.

Except.. They're not the only ones who can repair it (even though they act like it). And their efforts to hurt independent repairshops show signs of antitrust, which is the topic at hand.

But in many cases this is achieved solely by supply-side restriction of replacement parts - stopping IC manufacturers from supplying those chips to people who could easily repair the device given those parts (macbook power IC springs to mind - same device as a commercial one, just a different pinout for the unobtainable Apple version), or making replacements locked down (such as on new macbooks - you can't just swap a screen now).

Should we also have to pay $990 for oil changes on a leased BMW? ^.^

It just isn't something most people buying electronics care about, and there are real tradeoffs with size, weight, and aesthetic design choices. Combine those factors, and it's easy to see why the economics don't work. Making your device easily serviceable makes it more attractive to a tiny segment of the market, while making it less attractive to a much bigger segment.

I disagree that making your device easily serviceable necessarily makes it less attractive to that portion of the population. I think that making your device brittle, fragile and easy to tamper with makes it less attractive to that portion of the population - having open documentation about the ways to approach repair and then letting the electronics repair shops all be able to repair your device makes it really attractive to pretty much all of the population.

If your ease of repair comes at the cost of quality people will complain about the lack of quality - but nobody specifically wants something that can only be repaired by one market entrant that has full control over the price of repairs.

Also, if you really want to emphasize quality you can run a repair certification program that distributes high priced stickers to aide in people's confidence.

I think the point was that making it easier to repair will compromise something like device size or weight, making it less attractive to the larger portion of the population.

If they could provide the same form factor and make it easily repairable, then I think you would be right that would be attractive to all, however I think small size and repairability are mutually exclusive properties.

Ten minutes watching YouTube will demonstrate that amateurs are certainly capable of repairing todays devices, even down to something small like an apple watch, so small size and reparability are clearly not mutually exclusive. Why would they be anyway? Certified repair technicians aren't magic, they just have access to training, parts and tools that help.

You should see the insanely tiny pads I had to solder to on my Xbox 360 to install the RGH mod. With a 10$ solder iron, homemade flux, miracle I was able to do it. But I did repeat it and given the same incentive even if they made it smaller next time I would get some jewellers glasses and a better iron.

Right to repair is not about redesigning products to become easily serviceable, its about access to same tools and parts manufacturer uses for its own internal service.

That can lead to a full on 'only replace' strategy, as you can see with canon's consumer printers.

Unfortunately 'only replace' does seem to be workable for many devices, like TVs. At most you will be replacing entire boards.

There's a difference between intentionally making a device harder to repair and making design tradeoff to satisfy certain consumer preference.

This has the same problem I've seen with other such proposals: it joins together "you should have the legal right to repair" with "manufacturers should be forced to make only devices with modular replaceable parts". The latter sounds good in theory, except if it means thicker, heavier, less optimized devices. By all means offer such devices, but don't take away the option of devices at a different point on the tradeoff between modularity and thin/light/optimized.

You should absolutely have the legal right to open, tinker with, repair, or otherwise mod any device you own. That doesn't mean prohibiting the legal right to manufacture, sell, purchase, or use devices whose design trades off simplicity of repair for some other property that people purchasing it want more.

> except if it means thicker, heavier, less optimized devices

Speaking specifically of my MBP Retina, and looking inside, I fail to see how eg. a soldered NVME would make the laptop any thinner. There is plenty of space created by the much thicker heat sink, leaving room for a bunch of components to be modular.

The reason all these components are soldered in is to make it hard for users or small shops to do quick repairs and cheap upgrades.

You must buy a new laptop for a RAM upgrade.

Apple negotiates with component suppliers as a single buyer, drives the price of components down, keeps all the savings to itself, and re-sells the components at an exorbitant markup.

It is ridiculous for anyone to think this has got anything to do with quality.

A modular battery would make the laptop bulkier. If a modular NVMe drive wouldn't, it's because other components have already have. And beyond that, you should be comparing to an Air or MacBook, if we're talking about devices that have been optimized at the expense of modularity.

Also, soldering down RAM means you don't have to include support for negotiating the properties and quality of arbitrary RAM sticks, which you'd have to do with socketed RAM; that can mean booting faster and providing more performance.

There are good reasons to design components to work specifically with other components. There are also good reasons to make devices more modular. Both have value, to different users with different use cases.

> There are good reasons to design components to work specifically with other components. There are also good reasons to make devices more modular. Both have value, to different users with different use cases.

If your point is that there is a trade-off to modularity, I'm not sure who it is in response to. It's obvious that modularity has a tradeoff. And I don't see any significant group in this conversation contending that. Nobody is asking for a user-replaceable RAM on an iPhone.

My own point (and R2R's I think) is that Apple, in most cases makes hard to repair products not as a tradeoff in favor of simplicity/compactness/robustness, but to increase profit.

> If your point is that there is a trade-off to modularity, I'm not sure who it is in response to. It's obvious that modularity has a tradeoff. And I don't see any significant group in this conversation contending that. Nobody is asking for a user-replaceable RAM on an iPhone.

I've seen many people in "right to repair" discussions arguing for legal mandates that every device must have a replaceable battery, for instance. That goes beyond having the right to repair, and into restricting the manufacture of devices.

If we start legislating technical architecture, we limit the possibility of innovation and competition, and we drastically reduce the chances that anyone will ever dethrone any of the current market leaders by building something nobody saw coming.

> I've seen many people in "right to repair" discussions arguing for legal mandates that every device must have a replaceable battery, for instance.

That's actually a good example of choosing the right tradeoff in demanding right to repair. Again, people are asking for replaceable batteries, not interchangeable RAMs (which would effectively disallow SoCs). This seems to limit the downsides of regulation to pretty much nothing.

A common worry about regulation is that it'll snowball [0] and stifle innovation. But R2R isn't asking for generic regulation. It is asking for specific and imo sane things like replaceable batteries. That is not too much to ask.

[0] As in: "If we give them batteries, pretty soon they'll ask for generic SoCs on phones" or something like that.

I actually do support the right to repair. I even donated at the link you provided. But, as a hardware designer myself, the devil is in the details for something like this and people need to be really careful.

https://repair.org/policy

"Unlocking: Legalize unlocking, adapting, and modifying any part of the machine, including software."

The backdoor tools the FBI is asking for could easily fall into that category.

I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying, be very careful what you ask for.

nonono.

This is not the right place for that restriction at all. You should have the right to install backdoor tools on a technical level. If you install backdoor tools on equipment without permission from the owner or a properly executed warrant that is the crime and what must be prevented.

Don't conflate restraining the FBI with being allowed to treat the device you paid for and own exactly as a device you paid for and own and is entirely your property.

The FBI can commit crimes with impunity, that much has been made clear. So given that, the best thing you can do to your hardware is make sure that even criminals can't get in, which also restrains some of the rights of the original owner.

Right because everyone knows that rootkits and other malware are just a hypothetical issue - no one ever deploys them against unsuspecting victims because that would be against the law.

Illegal actions - especially by the government - must be punished. Otherwise our laws are just a polite suggestion. I agree that it's problematic to conflate Right-to-repair with technical issues that are supposed to be solved by the legal system.

The trivial solution to this is you have to unlock the bootloader/etc via a command/option which is only available on an unlocked device.

This is how google phones work. You can flash whatever you want when the bootloader is unlocked but it is locked by default and can only be unlocked while the phone is unlocked.

Are you referring to the secure enclave?

That’s a part of the machine therefore it would technically be included by the statement given on the right to repair policy page.

Obviously that page is meant to be a high level statement, it’s not law. But hopefully you can see my point.

The secure enclave might end up being where the trap door goes. :(

IME, they've really hobbled the functionality of independent repair shops, making it necessary to supplicate to the Apple Store. I was trying to get the battery replaced in a 2015 MBP and the independent shops were 'required' to keep my machine for about 7 days since they had to first 'diagnose' that the battery was dying, order it, wait for it to arrive, and then replace it. In contrast, one could make an appointment at the Apple Store to get the battery replaced while one waited.

This level of customer-hostility would cause a huge uproar for any other "Pro" or "workstation" vendor.

Indeed and it's this utter nonsense that made me finally give in and switch to Windows. Turns out it's nicer than I thought.

But which version do you run? The only version I would consider currently is the Enterprise version of Windows 10.

I have both pro (Home desktop) and enterprise (Work laptop). I don't notice a difference. But we don't really take advantage of the group policy very much.

It used to be Home versions couldn't get more "Enterprise" features, like full partition encryption and the ability to join a Domain. Naturally GPO doesn't apply to a home user.

These days, I run Pro on pretty much everything and don't seem to miss anything. Perhaps "Enterprise" comes with less Candy Crush and other bloatware pre-installed?

I don't think there is any difference between pro And enterprise except for some of the ways licensing is implemented and some group policy stuff.

Now that i've check it seems Enterpise get's the feature sof Pro for Workstations. https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/windowsforbusiness/compare

I used to use Pro so I could use NFS with Windows.

Apple fans seem okay with this and also not being able to install apps outside the app store.

Its usually less that they are ok with these problems and more that the alternatives have even more problems. Most OEMs copied apples designs so everything is shit. Rather than taking your laptop to the local apple store you now have to send it off to china and face all the same problems.

Windows also isn't useful for productivity and linux is only viable for certain jobs.

We buy Lenovo ThinkPads for work. We pay a bit more (not that much, like £50 a laptop I think) for the warranty package. When something goes wrong they send a tech out who repairs it onsite. More minor things like hard drive issues they just ship us a new NVMe drive and we swap it.

I think the techs work for IBM, weird they still keep this bit.

> Rather than taking your laptop to the local apple store you now have to send it off to china

For "pro-grade" laptops Apple is the odd one out by not offering on-site warranty repairs at all, instead requiring you to travel somewhere.

> Windows also isn't useful for productivity

Can you expand on this? I think it's the contrarian position to be taking here.

There are so many anti features in windows. They seem to change all the time and depend on what version of windows you have but the main ones are forced updates that can't be done while you use the computer, MS teams poping up and nagging you to sign up when you never installed or use it, adverts in the start menu, dark patterns in the setup page making it tricky to not register a microsoft account. And whatever flavour of the month anti feature windows includes.

Its getting slightly better with the the new WSL but its still not as good as OSX and linux.

I use Linux fine and it is a requirement that I be able to run Linux before accepting a job. When it comes to Android though, they already allow external apps through a security permission that I use for F-Droid and sometimes other apps outside of F-Droid, like Kodi on my Fire TV.

I didn't say it wasn't fine. I use it as well but I work in one of those jobs where it works fine. You aren't going to use linux if your job is video editing or CAD.

What gives you that idea?

When my Macbook battery ballooned up on me I just replaced it myself. It's not hard at all and can be done in 15 minutes, I have no idea why people in tech take their machines to repair places to do it.

There is plenty of people who lack the skill or ability to do fine repairs. Especially with batteries, if you have no idea what you're doing, it can easily lead to insurances not paying in case you do get injured or damage something.

Because people want a genuine part (reliable battery). I would pay the price if the battery was max 200eur. Nope, Apple is greedy. In my case they wanted 400Eur (together with top case)

So buy a genuine battery then? They aren't hard to find and are under $100.

Wait, it is possible to get a genuine* battery replacement for an Apple device? And no, I'm not being sarcastic, my friend was told by an Apple Store that even an attempt to open the Macbook chassis voids warranty. They refused to replace the battery EVEN WHEN HE WAS READY TO PAY "because there was an unauthorized attempt to open the device". He finally had to go to a repair shop and get it done under an hour (because now the warranty was void anyway).

genuine = guaranteed by Apple to not break your warranty

There is no genuine original battery on the market. Only option to get it is from Apple for 400eur. Every seller is lying about originality.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck...well who cares if it calls itself a swan.

Anyone paying $400 for battery is out of their minds. My $100 apparently ‘fake’ battery performs identical as the one Apple sells. Who cares at that point.

Apple "fans" are less bothered by this than they would be bothered by the problems of the alternatives. Or they are locked into the ecosystem.

Apple generally ships parts overnight to shops. I've worked somewhere that had an AASP as part of it. Occasionally there's a delay but around 90% of the time our guys could order up to about 4PM EST and have it come in for the midday FedEx Express dropoff the next day. And this wasn't in a major metro area where overnight delivery is common/easy.

2-3 days would have been a plausible turnaround time. 7 is laziness or a long queue.

It's fine if an Apple Store is near my home. I prefer such service but also right of self repair.

I don’t think that’s true for all Apple Stores. I just got my battery replaced last week from an Apple Store and it took them a week to do it.

You could have also done it yourself in about 15 minutes. I've done my 2015 MBP twice now, it's not hard at all.

I'm not sure why people in tech bother paying inflated prices for easy repairs. Just because you work with software doesn't mean you have to be afraid to turn a screwdriver ;)

After my futile efforts to get it repaired at the independent shop and the Apple Store (they never came for me even with my appointment and I wasted an hour sitting in that place for no reason), I bought a third party battery and a set of guitar strings to replace it myself. I was successful but the battery was garbage so I had to return it and go back to the original swelled battery to be able to use the laptop albeit plugged in; I gave up and asked work to order me a new MBP instead. Total waste of time: 3 hours plus a perfectly good MBP going probably to the landfill thanks to a difficulty that Apple created for no good reason. Edit2: the guitar strings were used to saw off the nasty glue strips holding the original battery, along with d-limonene as a solvent to weaken their deathgrip.

In contrast, replacing the battery in my HP Elite x360 was a piece of cake - no nasty glue, no proprietary screws, and oem batteries available everywhere. HP sent me the battery under warranty (shipped next day) when I called them to buy one and I was able to replace it in minutes. Now that's a repairable product. Edit: clarified that HP in fact covered the battery cost under the included 3 year warranty.

Edit3: want to say that it was a bit uncalled-for of you to assume that I couldn't do the replacement myself. This was a work laptop (i.e. not my property) so I didn't feel it was my place to dink with it.

> In contrast, replacing the battery in my HP Elite x360 was a piece of cake - no nasty glue, no proprietary screws, and oem batteries available everywhere.

Replacing the battery for my Surface Pro was a different story. The shop told me there's a high probability that removing the screen will break it. Warrant repairs from Microsoft consist of them taking your surface and shipping you a refurbished machine in exchange.

I remember the earlier Surface machines got a pretty bad repairability rating from iFixit but it seems newer models get better ratings. I bought the HP precisely because of its repairability.

I just ordered one off ebay, let my current battery discharge until the mac shutoff (risk of fire is greatly reduced completely discharged), and yanked out the old one with no special care or care about the glue. Set the new one in place, works perfect.

The second half of my comment was clearly tongue in cheek. Sorry if it seemed personal, it wasn't.

I didn't mind - just wanted to clarify that I did try to make this work :) . Thanks for clarifying your intent. Edit: you lucked out that your eBay battery was good - mine was unfortunately a total dud even though it claimed to be OEM (and had labeling on the battery to match) but caused the machine to shutdown randomly. Edit2: I was also responding to a thread on how Apple treats its certified shops, which is why I left out the details on my endeavors to replace the battery after my attempts to get it done properly failed. Edit3: all of the procedures I saw (iFixit, Youtube) showed a fairly complicated procedure with that nasty glue removal so I am surprised your battery came off easily - perhaps it was previously replaced?

Totally understandable. No the battery wasn't replaced previously, I am the first owner. I think the difficulty of the glue is overstated (especially iFixIt's guide where you take apart half the machine to use some solvent, wtf). Just pull the battery cell at an angle so you don't bend it too much, it'll come off.

I replaced it with the string method as well. I didn’t find a recipe to soften the glue before. Thanks

The iFixit guide for battery replacement on the mid-2015 MBP [1] is a 74 step process involving the use of a nasty chemical solvent to remove the glue that holds the battery. You must have found some enormous shortcuts to have replaced your battery in 15 minutes!

I'm quite comfortable opening most electronics, but my MBP is one of the few I would hire a professional to handle.

[1]: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Disp...

The late 2015 model is, relative to the mid-2015, much simpler. Only removing a few ribbon cables and prying the old battery out (heat and fishing wire works ok, I didn't need solvent).

It was more like 30 minutes for me, but maybe if I need to do it again it'll be quicker.

All this was neccesary because I'm in Poland which doesn't have 1st-party Apple stores and none of the AASP would touch it.

I don't like working with mobile / laptop parts except for user replaceable, or very easy ones. They make all kind of decisions with no repairability in mind. It can be very error prone. All that said, IDK how hard a MBP battery is. The HTC m8 I tried to replace the battery on, it was one of the last parts you could remove and a bit of a mess of wires, glue, ribbon, and tape. Of course that was a cell phone and a laptop should be easier.

I broke an iphone a couple of years ago while replacing the battery. I follower all the instructions but some small part accidentally snapped. I swore Id never touch such tiny corcuitry ever and instead go to a repair guy who charges quite decently, depending on the model. Sometimes its now worth fixing it, the parts and fixing fee are a bit above buting a refurb.

Yeah, I completed a mid-2011 screen replacement. The screen worked, but it'd never leave sleep. It's a very repairable device. I'm sure people that do it all day have an easier time. I was able to fix my projector, which was pretty cool. A rare win.

I'm curious if it's possible to build a 2015 MBP from scratch with aftermarket replacement components...

I forgot the best part - just like Apple Authorized, "independent repair program" prohibits you from performing ANY other repairs on Apple products, you can only do battery / screen replacement and thats it.

Btw Apple also doesnt give you any warranty on supplied parts.

Jessa Jones analyzing leaked IRP paperwork https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OawkqCPi1LQ

That doesn’t sound legal in the EU. Is it true in Europe that to be an independent repair shop you have to get your customers to consent to having their personal data processed by Apple before they can get their phone fixed?

Is the program even available in the EU?

There's loads of authorized apple retailers and apple repair stores, even in countries which don't have any official Apple Stores. So there must be a certification program for those.

I'm not sure if the grandparent was getting to this, but sharing your client information with a 3rd party in the EU and/or for EU citizens is problematic w.r.t GDPR. You'd have to disclose to your client that you are sharing their data, why you are sharing, and get their informed consent.

Consent is only one legal basis, but it’d be hard to argue that sharing their data for processing by Apple is legitimate interest, and the other non-consent bases don’t apply here.

No worries here, Apple IRP actually requires independent business to get a waiver signed by the customer. Among other things Customer acknowledges repair has no warranty from Apple, despite repair being performed "using original Apple parts by Apple Certified technician working within Apple authorized independent repair program"!

Why Apple should know that a random Joe replaced the touchscreen of his iPhone? I don't see any reason. HP doesn't know I replaced my keyboard three months ago and the keyboard works.

> you are forced to let apple audit you at any time, you have to share personal client data on all of your clients with apple

I assume they want to be able to confirm the shops aren't also buying counterfeit Chinese components on the side and swapping them in for the genuine ones.

I also assume they want the repair information to feed into their tracking of the history of the device, as it can affect warranty, AppleCare, whether Apple is willing to service the device in the future, etc.

I don't know the details, but can you point to specifics (actual text) that seem unreasonable, or that don't make economic sense? Also remember that with franchises, repair shops, etc., agreements commonly give the franchiser/manufacturer tremendous power. They don't need it in normal cases, but it's reserved to be able to act against "badly behaving" companies trying to cut corners, falsify records, etc.

Once you buy the device why the hell should Apple prevent someone from putting a counterfeit battery/screen/whatever inside of it? Sure, people might be defrauding AppleCare, but that's their problem - there's no reasonable justification for why they should be able to regulate who fixes their devices.

I can understand the battery but admit the case is weaker for screen and other components.

If someone gets hurt using an Apple product it’s international news [1] and everyone ignores the reports 5 days later when it shown they were using a counterfeit. So I can understand why Apple would care. Keep in mind this article is about bringing repairs to Mac. The 16” MBP has a 100WHr Lithium-Polymer battery. That thing is no joke.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-new...

> If someone gets hurt using an Apple product it’s international news

You can replace pretty much everything in your car which are literally killing machines and yet everything seems to be doing ok why give Apple this special treatment?

The question the parents asked, "why the hell should Apple prevent..." and the answer could be, so they don't get raked over the coals by the press when something goes wrong. I don't actually know the correct answer. Tim Cook never told me.

Note, whether or not Apple should sell, or be forced to sell, parts is a different question and conversation.

The injuries usually have different causes though.

For car accidents there is usually human action or inaction at fault. It is possible for parts to be at fault but that's the minority of cases.

For phone injuries it is usually a faulty part at fault.

If someone sharpened their iPhone and went on a killing spree I don't think anyone would be asking which parts are inside.

Note that I support the right to repair. I just don't think this particular analogy is a good one.

> For phone injuries it is usually a faulty part at fault.

Then Apple should have no issues selling good parts for repair but they are not doing that as well.

I fully agree. I support the right to repair, I just disagreed with the specific analogy.

Isn’t it the impact of Apple’s strict rules on repairs? People get used to thinks that they can’t replace any part by themselves. Thus any accident happened, people automatically thinks it caused by Apple itself. For car, it has been known we can replace anything. So most of the time when there is accident people don’t think it is related to manufacturer fault.

If Apple is so worried about people using crappy Chinese parts, they could sell original spare parts themselves, like proper hardware vendors do.

PS: Don't post AMP links, they cause cancer. De-AMP'ed link follows:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/iphone-5-owner-ma-a...

Eh...they don't really.

Dell doesn't sell most parts to the public.

HP and Lenovo theoretically do, but you've got probably 50%+ odds of the part you want either being perpetually unavailable/OOS or priced insanely if you try to buy direct.

I don't know about Dell but I put several original and not original parts inside my HP laptop and they worked well. HP's next business day service came to my home twice to replace the screen and the keyboard. I replaced the keyboard myself after the 3 years service period expired. I never bought from HP, just googled the part number and picked one of the results. Anyway I think HP sells through partners here.

I increased RAM twice, one rightaafter unboxing the laptop because buying an 8 GB laptop plus 16 GB from a third party was some hundreds Euros cheaper than buying a 16 GB laptop from HP. I bought two SSDs in different years and replaced the spinning disk and the DVD. I can't see myself having to depend from a single company for such things, and some of them being outright impossible.

> why the hell should Apple prevent someone from putting a counterfeit battery/screen/whatever inside of it?

You can definitely do whatever you want to the machine. And the audit prevents my parents got scammed by those individual shops. eg. Paid the price for a genius battery but got a counterfeit from China.

The scam is already included in the price of the phone itself in my opinion.

I am sick of arguments "for" consumer protection here. There is no chocolate pudding if someone shits on your plate. Sure there is QA, but not in the interest of consumers for any replaceable part.

As someone who has quite a lot of apple phones in my hands, the genuine Chinese batteries die as frequently as the not genuine Chinese batteries. They both smell nicely like bubblegum at least.

There's an argument here that the customer could end up the victim if they pay for a genuine part and end up with a knockoff. However, that should be something resolvable after-the-fact— if a device shows up at a Genius Bar with a counterfeit battery, ask the user where it came from, engage lawyers.

I remember when iOS started showing alert for non-genius battery for a while, some people hate it.

Looks like this started in 2019, so I guess it only affects more recent hardware? I put an iFixit battery in my 5S a year ago and I didn't hear any complaints (doubled the life of it compared to the tired old one in there, too).

Most efficient answer to "why the hell should Apple prevent someone from ...":

Control.

If control cost them money they would let control go. The answer is money.

> I assume they want to be able to confirm the shops aren't also buying counterfeit Chinese components on the side and swapping them in for the genuine ones.

> I also assume they want the repair information to feed into their tracking of the history of the device, as it can affect warranty, AppleCare, whether Apple is willing to service the device in the future, etc.

> I don't know the details, but can you point to specifics (actual text) that seem unreasonable,

All of that is unreasonable. When you purchase a device, it is yours. Apple isn't asking for repair information but is demanding personal data on customers of the repair shops.

You also have to ship the part being replaced before you get a new one. And they have to receive it.

Louis Rossmann has a ton of videos of this program originally.

totally bunk stuff they're doing. "Look, we're complying".

I thought specifically one benefit of an IRP was that they had official Apple inventory on hand like screens and batteries without resorting to grey market stripped/scavenged parts. Is that not the case?

> - send battery / screen to Apple with all clients personal information

I trust Apple far more than any independent repair shop with my personal information. But also, what personal information is on a battery / screen?

Additionally I use full disk encryption via FileVault on my Mac and keep the passcode enabled on my iOS devices which is known to be secure. No one, not even Apple, knows my password/passcode.

The point is IRP program requires your personal data, and requires IRP business to send your broken part and wait for replacement, usually taking a week.

Real independent place wont ask you anything beyond contact email/phone number _if and only if_ they are unable to do the repair on site while you wait/do your shopping at the mall/take a short walk. Since most places stock parts on site you will get your battery swap /screen replacement done right away.

If you have to do any serious repairs they will ask you to make a second admin account so they can login and test things.

The one time I brought my laptop to an Apple Store for a serious repair, they asked for the password to my primary account. I told them to just wipe the drive if they needed access.

Wouldn't work with iPads. If you have connected your Apple ID with the device and forget your password, you cannot even reset the device. Not sure on phones, but pretty sure it works in a similar way. Macs are probably different though. A "If they could, they would"-situation probably.

Newer Macs with T2 chips and Activation Lock enabled are similar. In either the case of T2 Macs or iOS devices I'd be happy to just reset the device myself rather than giving credentials. I was surprised that they asked at all - in my mind, asking someone for a password is verboten.

Certainly does create the potential for repair brokers. A person who is the owner for the duration of the repair and as such the details of that person would be provided to Apple to comply with this data grab.

Always a way to game/fight the system.

There's another side to this coin.

I had some work done on a device at one of these independent Apple-certified repair locations. There's a sign in the store telling the customers that they may be contacted by Apple to ask how their experience was.

It's a way for Apple to ensure that the shops flying its flag are quality operations. I'm OK with that. I specifically chose that store because of its relationship with Apple.

remove battery / screen from client device... etc...

That sounds like an extreme case. My repair took three days, and only because the shop was out of the battery I needed, and had to order a new one from Apple. The store said the work is usually done the same day.

This couldnt of been IRP shop, because IRP program does not let you stock parts.

Apple can can certainly limit the scope of use for the data collection for quality assurance only. But it’s probably worded much more broadly.

I need something more specific than "probably" to believe the previous poster's rant. Some actual draconian contact text would be helpful.

Afaik paperwork is 'secret', you can watch video of Jessa analyzing leaked copy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OawkqCPi1LQ

Reply on news.ycombinator.com