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It makes me wonder if they’ll drop support for repairs once devices hit 2 years old. That would largely defeat the entire point of offering repair parts and manuals in the first place.

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If they're no longer manufacturing older devices, they're probably not manufacturing parts for them anymore either.

The only new iPhone that Apple is selling that's not on the repair parts website is the iPhone 11 which is a bit peculiar.

I suppose that an enterprising shop could stock up on common parts expected to need repair, such as USB ports and screens. They could even speculate on other less-common parts but would need to mark them up 1000% if only 10% of that stock is expected to ever sell.

Note that the core charge might be an attempt to prevent such stocking up.

That's exactly what those mobile phone repair shops do right now (I worked in one for a few years). We would offer to dispose of the device for you free of charge/recycle old devices, and break them down for parts.

Shops could definitely do this, but as others have pointed out elsewhere Apple requires a serial number before they sell you the part as well as a deposit repaid when you return the replaced part.

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