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Comment by Spare_account | Hacker News Reader

>What if Apple starts to say that we can rinse off our iPhones any time they get dirty? They already show advertisements in which iPhones get dunked in water.

Semi-related: If they somehow use that loophole then they should be obliged to honour warranty claims for water damage.

I'll admit that I don't know about iPhones, but my Pixel 6 was described as being waterproof but experienced water damage after being dropped in a swimming pool (1 metre depth) for a few seconds and Google refused to repair it under warranty.

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There was a guy in Australia who bought the iPhone XS after Phil Schiller stood on stage at the announcement and said "you can drop it in a pool and be fine". After he accidentally dropped it in a pool and it broke, Apple refused warranty repair. He filed a claim with the New South Wales Fair Trading bureau and they convinced Apple to reimburse him...

Yeah.

My (<2 yr old) series 6 watch now has water damage to the face and digitizer, after doing a swimming workout. It's nominally 50m water resistant, and I went a max of 1.5m. It's had a handful of water experiences, but nothing deeper than a pool and no high speed/pressure type stuff.

It's effectively dead.

Apple wants 359 eur to repair it. The new cost, with charger (39eur) and the braided sport band (100eur) ((which was nice, but stretched and became useless) was 509 eur. So there's effectively a 10 eur difference between the original sale price and the repair price.

There are refurb series 6 gps + cell on the amazon.de for 299 eur, and those include a strap and charger, as well as the cell functionality that I didn't have.

This is within the EU (and Ireland) 2 year limit on defective products, and I originally bought this from Apple directly. So I might have a claim there. On the other hand, I don't want them deleting my apple account in retaliation.

>I don't want them deleting my apple account in retaliation.

This is by far the biggest crime being committed here.

That they have you by the balls for access to essential services as well as your data needed to make the hardware purchase complete.

If they don't want to do the account hosting for some of their customers (because they don't like them for some reason) then they should offer an option to self host alongside a heavily discounted device which is compatible with self hosting. If you've already bought a device and they remove access to services they should be legally obligated to refund the difference. Otherwise they should make the services an explicit part of the purchase contract and be legally obliged to continue providing them.

Part of the apple tax is precisely to cover costs of maintaining the whole integrated ecosystem.

Nobody should feel the need to keep silent over a hardware issue because they may be cut off from essential software and services required to make good use of the hardware.

This is one of the core reasons for why I refuse to buy devices which are forcibly integrated into an ecosystem like this. But anyone who so chooses should not be fucked over by their choice at the whim of a large company.

There’s also the complication of being in the EU with a US Apple account, because we moved here after the account was set up.

Change your payment method to one based in the EU and it becomes an EU Apple account.

i'm also in the EU with my main apple id being US based. have you had any other major issues unique to our scenario? aside from having to create a new german account for country-specific apps it's been pretty smooth sailing for me.

I believe they're right, and you're wrong.

Quoted depths are usually for Static Pressure, when the item is not moving against the water.

My Citizen wrist watch is marked as WR 100, i.e. 100m Static Pressure. That can be used for swimming, and I regularly do so. It is now around 25 years old.

A watch marked as water resistant to 50m is only really splash proof, or can be rinsed under a running tap. So it is safe to keep on while washing your hands.

One of my dive computers, intended to be used to around 40m, happens to be marked on the back as water resistant to 80m - but the casing is generally much more robust than in a watch.

I’ve had several 50m water resist watches as a kid, and I always cracked the face, broke the band, or lost them. They never died from water, and I was in water a lot more back then.

50m is approx 5 atm of pressure — essentially waterproof unless you’re doing serious diving.

You may wish to consult the following table for how the manufacturers currently expect you to interpret those markings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Resistant_mark#Water_res...

Yeah, so swimming in a pool and doing a swim workout, using the fitness app, should be fine.

With iPhone you can’t claim warranty for water damage, but if you have apple care+ you can just say “oops I broke it, here’s $100 for a new one”

It's Apple. Expect that. Their USB-C already has been designed to be DIFFERENT than others even thoigh defeating the EU directive intention. Unless EU rewrite a more stringent USB-C requirement, we will get that new USB-C feature "for first time in computing" by Apple for iphone 15 ultra.

> It's Apple. Expect that. Their USB-C already has been designed to be DIFFERENT than others even thoigh defeating the EU directive intention. Unless EU rewrite a more stringent USB-C requirement, we will get that new USB-C feature "for first time in computing" by Apple for iphone 15 ultra.

How do you know that? There is no iPhone from Apple with an USB-C port. You are just speculating based on some rumors.

On some rumors and previous Apple behavior.

Current and previous Apple behavior with USB-C is regular USB-C, with USB-PD for changing, on Macbooks and iPads. Why should iPhone be any different?

Also being different would make it would be incompatible with current Macbook and iPad owner's chargers.

You mean even though Apple already ships iPads with USB C that aren’t “different”? Do you think Apple is going to turn around and make the iPhone USB C port “different” and incompatible with their shipping iPads?

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