What Apple’s New Repair Program Means

It is quite fascinating to see the right to repair movement. More power to the people fighting for it. Louis Rossman is fighting the good fight, though he can devolve into Apple bashing way too much.

What I wanted to note was why the Right to Repair became such an issue in the first place? For example, I live in India. The smartphone penetration hasn't reached the heights it has in America. But, we sort of already have our own "Right to Repair". In the city I live in, I am able to go a place called Nehru Place, and get the parts for any device I can think of. This past summer, for my HP laptop that is about 5 years old now,the official customer care asked me to pay about 9000 bucks for the original battery and I was able to get the same one for 3500 at Nehru Place. (FYR 9000 Rs = 121 USD, 3500 RS = 47 USD)

I don't really understand how people were putting up with it for so long, considering America has had electronic devices such as the PC and now smartphones. Whereas, I have been going to Nehru Place for more than a decade to get anything related to electronics that I may need including repairs.

However, I agree this might be a bit myopic, but there are smaller scale repair shops to the places I have been to. Now of course we have a long way to go ourselves. In more rural areas, I don't expect there are many and people might still have to travel to the nearest city to get their smartphones repaired (but people there are also less likely to have smartphones though the "Jio Revolution" may have brought up numbers a whole lot )