Apple supports right-to-repair bill
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
First is "to enable the repairs performed by authorised repair channels", which indicates they don't really want to make parts available to the average joe, and likely also hampers independent repair shops who don't want to participate in (pay for) a manufacturer programme.
Second is "repair providers disclose the use on non-genuine or used parts" which indicates they may try to continue the serialisation of parts to force the repairer to buy replacement new parts, rather than being able to swap in known-working used or non-oem bits.
Taken together, it sounds like they want you to buy new replacement parts only from them, to only repair the bits they allow you to repair, as long as you sign an authorised repair contract with them. Which doesn't seem that different to their existing authorised repair programme?
Overall I think there is some progress, but I don't think Apple is switching to be pro-RtR yet. Maybe I'm just skeptical based on their past actions, but I hope I'm wrong.
This has my complete support. I’ve had a phone repaired with a knock off display/touch module. It stopped working with an OTA update. Buying used phones is a total gamble, as is.
If you wear polarized lenses, like good sunglasses out in the sun, polarization angle changes visibility of your screen.
It can make your screen completely illegible if not created with forethought.
The IPS iPhone SE 2000 has a fancy polarizer that is never fully opaque in any orientation. I've seen this on other phones too. I believe it's pixel-level polarization.
Some of the screens might be different on each subpixel, making the screen not-blue for example when you're wearing polarized sunglasses.
I’ve never found credible information online, but I haven’t looked that hard.
This is infinitely better than a black screen, which is what you get with linearly polarized screens.
That's not a failure of the display module per se, but a dealer handwaving "suitable substitute" without authority while failing to satisfy a performance requirement that's observable but not abundantly obvious.
In other words, third parties without privileged design knowledge tend to operate on a naive "it's a suitable substitute because it fits" paradigm, which is good enough in many cases, but the risk of a repair based on this model being met with dissatisfaction tends to increase with the character/complexity of a replaceable component and/or sub-assembly, which may not be independently discoverable or even documented.
As a trivial example, you may independently observe a simple 470-ohm 0805 SMT resistor in my design, and you could certainly purchase a quality replacement on the market that "fits"...but the unacknowledged risk in doing so is not knowing with certainty whether my design intent surrounding that component depends on other salient characteristics, e.g. composition, power rating, tempco, operating range, endurance, etc.
This wasn't intentional -- it was an inadvertent result of routine code cleanup -- and Apple added the driver back in a later OS update to restore functionality, and added messaging to indicate to users if their display wasn't a genuine Apple part.
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
Currently, I think it will only tell you if Apple did the repair or not, but it would be great to have a list of all parts that have been replaced, if the part is genuine, and if the part was swapped in by Apple and/or an authorized repair centre.
I want full disclosure of whats happened to a phone when buying used, but I don't want Apple to be able to make parts not work. If I want to buy a franken-phone full of knock off or mix and match parts I should be able to, but I should be able to clearly see that in the settings screens.
Sounds like you want to have a master give the master the whip but their good concience should prevent them from whipping you.
> If I want to buy a franken-phone full of knock off or mix and match parts
Its a phone for christ sake, they only last a few years, where have you seen this issue even come up
For me this is a decent service and a decent device lifetime (provided it will stay in my kid's hands for a few years more).
In the past I had to deal with non original repairs (in specific batteries for HP laptop) and my experience was truly truly bad. True, it was 15 years ago, so battery technology might have changed.
I don't really care for self repairing. I understand that there are people that care for that and I respect that; for them Apple probably is not the right brand. For me, personally, a phone or a laptop must work as expected, have a decade of lifetime, and might require servicing a couple of time during its lifetime max, for a reasonable price.
So far, my experience with Apple tic these boxes.
Self repair is a tiny part of the market. But if I can’t self repair because I can’t get hold of parts, then you probably can’t find an independent repair shop to fix something because they can’t get parts either. That is their goal.
> Apple is probably not the right brand
How do you imagine that other brands are not doing the exact same thing? If Apple is allowed to do it, everyone will do it. Not just on phones, on cars, on dishwashers, everything.
https://www.cdccellularrepair.com/post/samsung-parts-seriali...
Again, this is MY experience, in MY context, with MY use case. I believe that my use case is pretty common, but I might be wrong, of course.
If the second case is true, we can clearly mandate this by law, but then we must explain the reasons behind it, and we must also search for alternative ways of enforcing such reasons.
IMO the modern devices are way too complex to service on your own for most of the people. And those who might be able to technically do that often times are not interested into actually doing it. Also, the tradeoff that such a serviceability would imply might be not interesting (e.g. bulkier device, more complex waterproofing, less sturdy chassis, ...).
Again, it's my personal opinion, based on personal experience, but since we do have alternatives (e.g. the fair phone) and since these devices are not that widespread, I'm afraid my opinion is more common that you'd think.
ah yes, "right to repair" was going so well, up until it led to a place you didn't like and then "it's a phone for chrissake, throw it away and buy another every 2 years".
what happened to e-waste concern, weren't you saving the planet?
like if your goals can only survive if you utterly steamroll everyone else's concerns and cross-purposes/goals that's probably not a goal that's accomplishable in a multilateral society, or at least your attitude towards those goals is unhealthy.
people want to know that a used phone isn't going to be full of shitty parts that diminish the experience, and we are trying to bias towards longer device lifecycles and more re-use. driving down cost to the absolute dropshipped-firehazard minimum isn't the only singular goal that people might have.
in fact sometimes these goals are inherently contradictory, like parts quality vs cost! cost encourages repair, but bad parts are also e-waste and every repair increases the likelihood of a total failure (damaged board, damaged back, etc). Shipping 27 batteries from amazon or china so you can replace them every 2 months is carbon-intensive and resource-intensive, on top of all the social issues it causes (like people who get upset and sue apple for "breaking their phone" when their knockoff part uses a legacy driver from an older phone that was removed from a certain iOS release).
in this situation, diminished trust in used products probably also has a negative effect on device lifespan and e-waste, and you've explicitly codified this with the "it's a phone, throw it away every 2 years" standard. That's not very eco-minded. You absolutely should care about parts, because parts keep those devices running and out of landfills.
If anything we should be pushing harder to force vendors to provide verifiable first-party supply chains with defined, long-duration lifecycles. Why can apple keep a battery or a display or a camera in stock for 10 years but google or samsung can't?
You seem to be criticising some fantasy scenario that has never happened in the real world, and likely never will.
> people want to know that a used phone isn't going to be full of shitty parts
How often does this happen? I have never seen this issue come up in my life, I bought my phone second hand. Have you ever bought a second hand phone ?
Parts avaliability bites all the time. The manufacturer told me to throw away previous phone because a microphone jack is broken.
> we are trying to bias towards longer device lifecycles
You are not if there are no repair parts avaliable. Things break, thats normal, you can't overengineer every screw to make them last forever.
> sue apple for "breaking their phone" when their knockoff part uses a legacy driver
As they should, it is my phone after all. Imagine your car manufacturer shows up in your garage at night and removes something because it's "legacy"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37258203
> Parts avaliability bites all the time... You are not if there are no repair parts avaliable
well, apple has better parts availability and supply lifetimes than any other brand on the market, so sleep easy. You are getting 8+ years more parts availability than most android vendors. That's great for the planet.
> As they should, it is my phone after all. Imagine your car manufacturer shows up in your garage at night and removes something because it's "legacy"
your car manufacturer is under no legal or moral obligation to support your modifications to the car.
practical example: if you replace the head unit (which ties into the rest of the control electronics nowadays) with a third-party model, and the car manufacturer does an OTA software update which changes the way the car interacts with the head unit, and it breaks the third-party integration: wow, sucks to be you.
they don't have to keep supporting legacy cruft forever just so that a third-party modification doesn't break, just like anything in the software world. if it's not advertised as being a publicly-exposed interface then it's subject to breakage at any time. Carplay is a supported interface, swapping in a new head unit and a CAN interface to try and mimic the OEM head unit's CANbus traffic is not.
if you use sun.misc.unsafe, you're gonna have a bad time, period. That's on you. Tinker all you want but don't cry and sue when the unstable ABI is changed. Linux kernel explicitly formalizes this philosophy. You're approved (in-tree), or you're subject to breakage and we don't care about the consequences, you brought it on yourself.
again, you can say that's software and it's different because we need to keep phones out of landfills, but apple is providing long-life availability guarantees of OEM parts at OEM rates for 3-4x the total lifecycle of their competitors' products.
If apple advertises somewhere that you can use older phone screens then fine, sue, but otherwise they’re under absolutely no obligation to support them when misused on other models. The fact that it worked for a while is irrelevant - you touched com.sun.unsafe.
You have choice.
You can go to "authorized repair shop" and pay 50% of the cost of a device for a repair or go to your nearest repair shop and pay a fifty bucks to repair the broken charging port. You get what you pay for.
The only problem would be "authorized shops" up charging premium rates for cheap parts"
I live in Switzerland and I get why repairs are expensive. Because the labour is really expensive. I did multiple repairs (not on phones) where the labour was more expensive than just buying a new device (cheap printers).
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/businesspers...
>Under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (MMWA), it is illegal for a manufacturer to void a warranty or deny coverage if a customer has a repair or maintenance performed by an independent repair shop or using a third-party replacement part (unless the original manufacturer provides the service or part for free).
car manufacturers market "genuine OEM spare parts" as if we have a moral and social obligation to pay for their parts 4X than the same part from cheap chinese knockoff brands.
They too are buying from the same chinese OEM, just their "brand sticker" gives them the power to charge a high premium
I really am willing to pay 4X the price for something that’s twice as good. Half as good isn’t good enough for me anymore.
There are tons of non-Apple repair shops they can go to.
- tell them detailed information about the device in need of a new battery, wait up to a week for that bespoke battery to arrive, then send old battery back.
- agree to share all of your accounting with Apple, now and I think up to 5 years from termination of the contract.
- agree to share all of your client details with Apple.
- agree to audits checking if you dont posses any third party parts that could be used in Apple products.
- agree to never repair Apple product beyond strict list of services approved by Apple.
This is actually incredibly false. I have several collages that came from the automotive industry, for automotive chips. The automotive industry is not using the same Chinese OEM parts, for any of the safety critical ICs, which come in some of those expensive OEM parts.
In fact, they have incredibly complicated processes, with full supply chain lockdown/inspections, to keep cheap Chinese knockoffs out of the supply chain, in direct response to human death from Chinese knockoffs making it into the supply chain. When a knockoff is used, and it makes it into a car, that vendor is blamed, when someone dies. Vendors put extreme pressure on these companies to make sure they don't make the news for killing people/recalls.
All of that, obviously, adds a premium over the unqualified knock offs.
I'm not sure about structural parts, but I suspect it's similar.
What I want is to known if a device I had repaired, or am about to purchase, has a knock off in it. This could be displayed in the "about device".
There are two main problems he mentioned, IIRC. (It's been a while, so my memory may be wrong or the situation may have changed).
Firstly, you can no longer do component level repairs. So replacing some capacitors that got waterdamaged is no longer allowed. This is part of the agreement you make with Apple.
Secondly, although you can buy screens and batteries, you can't keep them on stock. You need to get the phone from your customer, then order the parts from apple, then wait for them to arrive, perform the repair, and only then can you finish. If you want to do "While you wait" repairs it's impossible.
It's a bad look to go off on a rant about Apple every time a customer asks a question, so I can understand them being annoyed when someone asks them if they're part of the official program.
Apple obviously doesn’t want it because even under the best of circumstances it’s difficult to ensure consistency from repair to repair, much less between different technicians or locations. And explaining a customer that while, yes, they did go to an authorized repair shop, but no, that specific repair doesn’t fall under Apple’s warranty or seal of approval, is also a nightmare.
Similarly, for keeping parts on stock I can see both sides of the debate. Shops would like to have stuff in stock to provide the best and fastest service available, Apple on the other hand wants to prevent parts from falling in the wrong hands given the already prolific grey market for their parts.
I know they’ve already loosened up a bit with some shops that have high volume and good track record, letting them have some common stuff on hand (e.g. batteries, screens, etc.), but there’s also the option to let the customer get the part via the self-repair program and bring it to the store to have it placed.
There are two competing interests at play but I think with a bit of compromise in either end a workable solution is possible.
As for shops getting pissed when asked if they’re part of the program, I think your explanation is rather poor. It’s equally, if not more of, a bad look to get pissed everything they’re asked that question. If anything it makes them look sketchy when that doesn’t need to be the outcome.
People are generally just interested in the quality of the components used and want to know if official components are used to gauge that, as well as know if they can go to Apple should problems arise (i.e. if it’ll be covered by Apple’s repair warranty).
Car manufacturers get a reputation based on used vehicles not just new cars. High resale value translates into higher margins because higher trade in value means purchasers have more money for their next car. Similarly people who used to buy used cars will often move up to buying a new car when their economic situation improves, that makes used cars a valuable form of advertising.
In that context Apple likely looks at the used market as quite valuable as long people still consider used iPhones as durable devices worth paying a premium for. They don’t need to sell you 1,000$ phones every year if you’re willing to buy a slightly used phone for 500$ someone else can more easily keep buying the next generation.
Why would someone selling a used device disclose that it was repaired for $15 at a flea market?
Apple wants their devices to either work great, or not work at all.
Sounds like it’s not a brand for you, which is fine. Plenty of other people are happy with the value prop, which is also fine.
The fact that our industry's security practices demand constant updates is a regulatory failure, not an inevitability.
Assumes facts not in evidence. My experience has been people tend to blame the platform supplier first and foremost.
1990s OEM computer maker loads a bunch of crapware on your PC? You're likely to blame Microsoft Windows.
SimCity doesn't run on Windows 95 because of a bug in SimCity? You're likely to blame Windows 95. Microsoft at least understood that dynamic.
iPhone acting weird? Apple's fault, obviously, no questions asked. It's the default position of consumers.
I agree with your assertion that this is a knock on the Apple brand for a certain subset of their audience. I don't think it matters to the lay user as much as it does to the power user.
For the first, MS knew what was happening, and worked to make it easier. The computer manufacturers were the MS customers, not us. MS didn't do the actual loading, but they did point to how easy it was to load up, and say "Gee it would be terrible if you did this, this, and this, to load up the machine with profitable junk the user doesn't want.".
For the second, MS had somewhere between zero and negative interest in non-MS software continuing to work. We have sworn statements in court that they actively worked to make sure that 1-2-3 wouldn't run.
Your third is the statement you're trying to prove using the first two.
Again, I don't _completely_ disagree with your third statement. But the first two do _not_ support it.
Because I have known people to buy repaired cars and blame the manufacturer for issues that might be related to the repair, not the repair place. But usually IME when people buy a car out of warranty, that's been repaired a few times, they realize what they're getting into.
For phones there would, at a minimum, be a few years for most people to adjust from "it's an iPhone, no one else even _can_ repair it" to "it's used, who knows what's inside anymore". But I'm willing to bet we'd get there. But it's just a gut feeling.
Now the laptops have soldered ram and ssd, and the screens are paired to the motherboard. Actually I started using linux for a few years, since macos started spying and sending telemetry about every move you make in the OS.
Components don't always fail in isolation. When they do, they can cause damage up/downstream, like if a cap shorts to ground. It's very hard to detect partial damage. That's what drives module level replacements.
How do you get people to pay a lot for a phone, and do so fairly often? By making sure they can sell their old phone for a decent prize.
Everything Apple does is in support of this. That implies that they do want you to be able to repair your phone (otherwise you couldn’t sell it), but only if it’s in a way where the buyer of the phone can feel confident that the phone they buy isn’t going to die in a month due to a shoddy repair job. Apple providing OS updates to old phones also supports this (and it also helps them with App Store revenue).
Apple doesn’t care if you sell or continue to use your old phone because in that segment they’re not competing with themselves. They’re competing with cheap android phones.
IMO, Apple does more than anyone to make sure their phones are used as long as possible. Most android brands are far more likely to go in a drawer as it’s not worth the effort to sell it.
It doesn’t mean they couldn’t do better. I think it’ll be a process between Apple, repair shops and regulators to come up with a compromise that benefits consumers even more… including those that buy second hand (possibly repaired) phones.
People were complaining you can’t use random parts salvaged from dead phones or use non-genuine parts. And yeah, that’s true, because functionally those are indistinguishable from parts chopped from stolen phones.
Yes they do, the self service is a useless PR stunt which is useful to no one. It’s there so Apple can say “look, we support repair” but it’s completely useless to the average person to the point where people are getting laws put in place to force them to make something better
“who is paid to not like them”
What is this conspiracy theory? I guess technically people donate money to his non profit but that doesn’t go to him?
“There is no problem with them”
What about these problems? - It doesn’t help at all with aftermarket parts, only “genuine Apple” ones they have complete control over - You have to order each part individually, so it takes way more time and money than it needs to if they could just stick replacement parts - It’s designed for individuals to repair parts, which very few people do, they need to be able to take things to repair shops (there is an independent repair program but it’s even more useless)
“other than rossman not being able to make money performing installations of genuine parts at the prices apple charges”
If Apple is artificially blocking others from competing fairly with them, then yes, that’s an issue. It’s called being anticompetitive. Despite all the barriers, though, he (and other independent repair shops) can still often do repairs at a much lower price, but because Apple wants to extort more money rather than making their prices competitive they create artificial issues with this
“People were complaining you can’t use random parts salvaged from dead phones or use non-genuine parts. And yeah, that’s true, because functionally those are indistinguishable from parts chopped from stolen phones.”
What about this compromise solution? Each part is still serialised, but the enforcement is done in the part itself rather than the OS. The part will refuse to power on if a key isn’t provided by the phone. An aftermarket part will still work because it doesn’t have this enforcement, and there is an unpairing process that can be used to salvage non-stolen devices that requires the device to be unlocked. When the unpaired part is connected to a phone again it will pair to that device. Of course, Apple won’t do anything like that unless they have to
What? Why? Are they like nuclear bombs? What happens if an iPhone screen gets into a wrong hand?
Its shocking to me, that in your mind my right to keep my phone repaired is somehow comparable to Apple's right to prevent me from buying (not stealing) a replacement part.
It means the manufacturer retains ownership and control over an item after they sold it. You are giving them a lot of control over your life, many years in the future - they often refuse repair or impose oneirous terms. This creates insentive for them to consider your phone 'their terf' and to create artificial obstacles to repair by third parties.
This does not stop at Apple, it happens to cars, farm equipment, household appliances, et .
This is a total capitulation of right to private property. You are basically going to become a medieval serf, but with mutiple owners.
Does it matter?
I’m stating as a fact of matter what their interest is in a comment in which I try to describe the interests of both sides of the equation (with reasonable efforts made to be accurate).
You make the mistake of reading that and attributing it as a personal opinion of mine and then proceed to get all worked up and making false equivalencies in a strained effort to make your point.
The fact of the matter is, for better or for worse, that they are free to decide who they want to do business with (pending some legislative changes here and there).
What their reason is for doing business with one, but not with another, is neither here nor there but if i had to venture a guess I’d say it probably has to do with the prolific market of fake Apple devices.
> It’s shocking to me, that in your mind my right to keep my phone repaired is somehow comparable to Apple's right to prevent me from buying (not stealing) a replacement part.
It’s shocking to me that you present the argument in such a way that the only logical conclusion is for you and me to encroach on Apple’s property rights by being able to dictate if and how they sell their property to us.
And what is the basis of this? Apparently according to you, your property rights are so broad, that it includes access to someone else’s property lest you be deemed a medieval serf of all things.
Drama much?
It needn’t be this complicated nor dramatic. When you purchase an iPhone the iPhone (i.e. the physical device and the physical components it contains) become your property.
You can do with that property as you wish, but those property rights decidedly don’t lend you any rights over other components Apple might produce.
To suggest that your purchase somehow grants you any entitlement to components that weren’t part of the initial sale is outright bizarre, regardless of whether you assert that the entitlement exists outright or as an option for purchase.
Car companies will argue that all third party car mechanic shops should close down because its difficult to ensure consistency.
We all understand why Apple wants these things: they are advantageous to Apple. But what I do with my phone after I bought it should not be Apple's concern.
>If anything it makes them look sketchy when that doesn’t need to be the outcome.
You yourself said that the local store is beloved, didn't you? Maybe most customers understand that the store is working within the confines of Apple's rules?
You should just use the Genius Bar. What's your problem with it?
The repair shop will definitely have considered the option. They will have researched the pro's and con's.
You complained about having to deal with the Genius Bar. I think a lot of repair shops will think that if they go into the repair program they will just turn into a worse version of the Genius Bar.
In addition, the repair shop will know what kind of work they do, what kind of work they want to do, and where they get their profits from. You don't.
So 90% of the time when a customer will suggest joining the apple repair program it's someone who doesn't understand the pro's and con's, doesn't understand the shops business case, and won't respond well to a full explanation of why the repair shop doesn't join. And this person is saying "you need to change your business model, this thing I heard about is better".
Imagining myself in that position, I would also get pretty annoyed.
Sometimes at a party or something someone hears about what I do, knows very little about it, and tells me I should do it completely differently. Doesn't happen often, but it's happened. I get pretty annoyed by that.
This is the tradeoff you make for not having iPhones stolen and stripped for parts. If you allow “blank” parts with no serial, or allow pairing with random serials, then people will steal phones and strip them.
I’m all for allowing “unpairing” of components when a unit is not in the “stolen lockout” state, such that they can be re-paired with other phones, but they do it for a reason, not just restricting repair.
The value delivered to the average customer by reducing theft risk isn’t zero, and actually it’s probably more than consumers gain from the ability to have a third-party shop install a counterfeit battery with half of its advertised capacity.
Apple battery replacements are dirt cheap, arguably actually probably dumping/under cost (this “byo part” thing usually ends up with repairmen whining that if they have to use first-party parts they can’t compete with apples pricing) because apple wants to make a show of greenwashing. So the commercial value of third-party battery repair is quite small. Is it all really actually worth saving 10 bucks?
Honestly this is a major spit in the face from apple, there is no reason to not make the parts available for sale.
Isn’t one of the major, constant gripes of the repairmen that they can’t do component level repair and so they have to replace assemblies?
That works in the favor of the repair program here. Oh it’s the camera? Well, there’s only one part that it can be - the camera board. Easy to order.
Repairmen don’t like that but apple is never going to sign off on randos drilling and repadding and reballing their products.
Like again, the accusations of bad faith are fundamentally misplaced. The faith is so good that independent repairmen can’t compete with the service rates that apple offers unless they’re using non-genuine parts to do it. It’s not exactly the way repairmen would prefer to do it, but it accomplishes the goals of maintaining product quality, preventing phone theft, and minimizing e-waste, and repairmen don’t really care about #1 or #2 so their solutions don’t solve for that.
People don't like this take, but most of the time Apple's goals are not completely malicious or incoherent. Just like the sideloading thing: there are legitimate user-focused security and permissioning goals there, and people just don't like it when those ideas are taken to their logical conclusion. Letting users bypass permissioning and app review mean those processes might as well not exist, you have to put a non-trivial barrier there (like requiring a developer account). And providing board-level repairs and driving down the cost of assemblies is realistically how products have to be serviced in the modern world. Krisfix drilling and repadding 4090 boards is not typical quality/skill and is not a scalable model for a repair network. This needs to be something that can be done by a person with 1 year of experience in a strip mall store.
Right to repair does not mean that rossman's business model is the only way that can ever be allowed to work. Shipping around a tiny PCB is not a big deal and board level repairs still keep phones out of landfills, even if it doesn't keep rossman in business. There is no inherent right to profit in capitalism, you can't outlaw someone's business model just because it makes yours difficult.
I think you might be confusing me with someone else, I don’t recall complaining about the Genius Bar?
> So 90% of the time when a customer will suggest joining the apple repair program it's someone who doesn't understand the pro's and con's […]
Who’s talking about customers making suggestions? We’re talking about customers asking if they are or aren’t an authorized repair shop that’s in the program.
Customers have plenty of legitimate reasons to ask this question, and shops that get pissed when they are being asked this question will quickly lose the trust of their customers.
I can understand why shops get pissed when they’re being asked the question, because best case scenario they see the writing on the wall and know they’re about to lose a prospective customer and “worst” case scenario they are about to be confronted with the reality that someone might in fact not agree with their beliefs that a non-official part is as good as an Apple OEM part or that their beliefs that their work is on par with Apple’s certified repair processes.
But from the perspective of the customer the question comes with the implication that the customer has a certain standard they’re looking for and they are not interested in someone who doesn’t meet that standard, regardless of if the workman shares the same opinions on those standards.
Why would apple restrict parts sales? They still make a profit from selling the components. They are only needed for repairing a product, there is no other use for them.
On the other hand, speaking as an old EE the amount of crap Apple do to their Laptop on newer generation of MacBook circuit. You kind of understand why Rossmann has all the rage.
While I am not aware of Apple doing circuit level repairing, at least not since 2001 with first Apple stores opened. Apple's Genius Bar and repairing were there to file all the problems their products were getting in real life usage. So you get some iteration and small improvement every half generation. Somewhere along the line this stopped happening.
"Authorized" basically means "manufacturer mandated incompetence" in the repair space.
A couple of locations didn't survive COVID. With their crappy attitude, nothing was lost.
Manufacturers can't realistically be expected to guarantee a device will keep working as normal with third-party parts.
Any of these could throw off a third party part if not implemented exactly the same way.
Occam’s razor..
Why would they ever have a plan to make sure only their screen works with their phone?
So the display was ok but was disabled by SW.
These kind of modern just movements are not what mega corporations like Apple enjoy. But they have to throw bits and pieces around for marketing to show to mostly young that 'they care', 'they understand', 'privacy first' and so on. Well sure they do, about their revenue. Just look at their actions, rest is pure marketing carefully crafted over months and endless meetings and psychological market analysis.
What they did is just marketing move and basically allowing you to pay them fully just like in official repair center. That's not what right to repair means (hacking together my own fixes if I decide to, ie in old John Deere fashion). They should just make sure that things work at the end while not compromising things like security and longevity, ie by open protocols and specification. Nothing like that is happening anytime soon in Apple realm.
You could claim that the lack of serialization/identification was the problem.
If they would have known it was a non-genuine part, they could have used the legacy driver. As is, they would have had to find some side channel to identify it was genuine or not, or just never update the driver for that module again, all based on user reports of random phone stopping, and analyzing those phones, because there's no way to know what some random knockoff is doing.
Motive, Opportunity and Means, Aplle has all three.
Drivers have intimate knowledge of the hardware, and expect exact behavior. If the knock off hardware doesn't exactly implement those same behaviors that that driver expects, problems can happen.
I assume that the driver did something different, that the knock off got wrong.
Third party manufacturers are perfectly able to make an entirely equivalent and compatible display unit, as the originals are sourced by Apple from such manufacturers in the exact same way.
If a panel driver manufacturer messed up the standard MIPI DSI and eDP interfaces for a bog standard smartphone panel, they would not have a business. Conformance is easy to validate due to the very limited scope. On the other end, Apple likely sources a third party IP block (as is standard in the industry) for their SoCs, and have little to do with over what goes on the wire.
If the display was a dud for other reasons and the software update overlap was coincidental, then sure Apple is without blame - this could happen with an original screen too.
> with a knock off display/touch module
I don’t agree with this,
> they would not have a business
> Conformance is easy to validate due to the very limited scope
This is difficult to respond to, since we come from such different backgrounds. Your assumption is that there is reasonable QA, for a knock off part. Even though this is a logical assumption to have, it is incorrect. QA can very often be, does it work in this device we have right here?
And, implementing a hardware interface correctly doesn’t mean much when you, for example, attach a flex that makes the signal marginal.
To your ears, maybe. Another perfectly feasible explanation is that there were differences in the third-party component which fell foul of an update.
I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to use third-party components. I'm saying they shouldn't be surprised—or cry foul—when they break.
It wasn't Apple.
But, trying to place the blame on the manufacturer would mean that they have to support all third party screens, that they have no knowledge of, in their driver/software updates. That's nonsense.
Best case scenario is they hear field reports, and undo whatever they wanted to do.
Apple should not be allowed to inconvenience users of aftermarket/non-Apple parts.
Disclosure is nice.
But what reason would cause an after-market component to fail after a software update? We don't want these companies building software "genuine" checks to brick phones that use other parts.
With the camera modules and batteries it’s a question of calibration and Apple clearly never thought anyone but them needed to calibrate the part.
Except they already do that. There were plenty of discussions on HN about their repair toolkits users could get to replaced parts of their phones.
Because Apple doesn’t have amateur tools. They ship you the same thing the stores and third-party use.
The framing of this article seems very clickbate-y to me. Sounds like Apple wanted to make sure a couple of reasonable rules/clarifications were in place to prevent their customers for being ripped off. And once that was in place they were happy to support it. Which makes sense because they’ve already started moving in this direction anyway (the writing was on the wall).
They even seem to be designing things to be easier to service. The iPhone line last year, and reportedly the iPhone pro/max line will join in this year.
They could just send you a screwdriver set and a few spudgers, but it's really easy break a phone like that =)
Not to mention I don't have to ship the phone to another town or something like that.
Then just buy the parts you need at https://selfservicerepair.com and use amateur tools you get elsewhere.
Their free repair manual won’t tell you how to use those, but still will be helpful.
And you’re right. You don’t have to use Apple’s tools.
But boy did people complain when Apple finally released them after years of people complaining they didn’t support fixing your own stuff.
This argument wasn’t in Apple’s defense, but an attempt at showing that Apple’s approach doesn’t come from an ideological dislike of repair per se, but from pure business calculation based on their current status as a brand and user-experience-focused company.
Now, if you want the ideological bit, that’s a different one and more generic and it’s the old Steve Jobs tenet: users don’t know what they want until you show it to them. I personally believe that’s still true, and yes I believe it applies to the right to repair when taken beyond a small bubble of entitled electronics enthusiasts.
Edit: oh no, I dared say something against the right to repair! Hasten! Bring in the downvotes!!!
This is disproven in these very comments by people blaming the repair shop for doing a poor job. People know whether or not they took their phone to the Apple store to get it repaired.
These arguments also seem... odd? From a marketing perspective. "Our customers are much too stupid to know where they had service done, so the only solution is to prohibit them from having it done by anyone independent." (Pay no attention to the effect on our repair margins or that increasing the cost of repairs often causes people to buy a new device instead.)
But also, Apple has a certified refurbished program. The buyer of a second hand device also knows whether they bought it from Apple or not, and so "fuck that seller, he lied" is actually in their interest.
Nope, the repair shop absolutely gets the blame, even when the fault is coming from Apple, like the fake software errors which got introduced in the last models in order to blame third-party repair shops.
A deliberately stretched example. Apple laptops are claimed to not need camera privacy shutter, because the recording light is hardware controlled, so the user always knows when the camera is recording. What if what if recording ight on non-genuine camera is software controlled via additional register and simply automatically turned on on recording to not cause suspicion, but could be manually turned off via software?
More generally the issue is about broad compatibility. People often mention screens and batteries as being observably worse. Sure off-brand screens do display pixels and batteries provide power, but they do that at an observably lower quality. A networking module may not support some "smart" features and so on.
Hardware quality levels are what differentiate macs from PCs. Whatever you say about Apple, you have to agree that with Apple you consistent (and relatively high) quality levels. With PCs it is quite another story. You can buy "business class" laptop that has durable frame, quality components that easily interface with the rest of the system and things mostly "just work". And then there are shit tier laptops where BSODs show up if you look at them weird, you need to hunt down right versions of drivers after every OS update and some features outright do not work.
Apple could maintain the quality floor mostly by being in tight control of hardware. With independent shops installing shit-tier components Apple is going to have shit-tier macs in the wild. I can understand Apple. But on the hand, I do not want to be forced into genuine-only programs, as long as I can make an informed decision that I am sacrificing something. it's not a small thing. An older laptop is quite often not worth to fix with genuine parts (that are expensive in part due to quality control), but it may make sense to revive with with an off brand component.
I have no idea how to coalesce these two ends of a stick.
US law doesnt recognize such a thing as "genuine" part. Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act spells it out pretty well
"it is illegal for a manufacturer to void a warranty or _deny coverage_ if a customer has a repair or maintenance performed by an independent repair shop or using a third-party replacement part"
If you have two broken iphones in your house, you can't make a working one with them.
Apple still honors warranty if you have third party components.
Even outside of warranty, they’ll repair it. A family member of mine cheaped out and got a mall screen replacement on their phone. Turned out to be terrible but Apple still honored a repair claim on it.
Your quote doesn’t really pertain to the serialization imho. They can still notify you of illegitimate parts as long as they don’t deny you service based on that.
It's that simple.
There are plenty of things (e.g. phone cases) that are sold on the open market, but they still get knocked off, and those knockoffs sell because they are cheap.
This exists already. Apple is denying the consumer to purchase a legitimate Apple part to fix the issue unless they take it to an "Apple authorized repair shop"
I’ll accept that this doesn’t cover all devices in the last seven years, but it does cover recent devices.
I don't know a single car manufacturer which denies genuine parts with custom fake software errors.
> An older laptop is quite often not worth to fix with genuine parts (that are expensive in part due to quality control)
A huge lie. Older macs would usually be worth the fix with genuine parts, which don't exist because of greed. If parts were expensive because of quality control, Apple products would cost 10x more. If Apple gets regulated to provide parts for non-exorbitant prices, their devices wouldn't necessarily have to change price.
it’s already your choice right now. it’s just that the device won’t work without the correct part. as it should be.
That's the problematic part. Even as (or maybe because of, at this point I do not really know) somewhat knowledgeable in hardware I am not sure I can confidently enumerate the risk beforehand.
If I go to a cheap third party repair shop to replace my computer/phone screen I kind of expect there to be some compromise in quality. However, I usually have no what quality level will I get. Will the screen be as bright and sharp as in manufacturer's store or is it going to be invisible in sunlight with constant color smudge like screens from early 00s? I have no idea and have to prepare for worst.
The same with battery. I know that at manufacturer claims 10 hours of use, my actual use squeezes 6-8 hours. What am I going to get with an off-brand battery? I can live with 6, it's cheaper, I could probably stomach 5 hours if the price difference is severe, but I am not willing to compromise down to 4.
If my phone's EMEA radio dies I can maybe have have it replaced with NA one. Generally, it will work. Some channels/frequencies will be unavailable and therefore my battery life and coverage will suffer. How much? Again, I have no idea.
So while I wholeheartedly agree that it should be my right to accept the risk and make a compromise, I know that in quite a lot of cases I either lack expertise/experience/knowledge to make an informed decision, or there is simply not enough information provided to make that decision. Sadly, "the market" will not solve that, because cheaper products are quite often sold by hiding the deficiencies
>Will the screen be as bright and sharp?
When I had mine replaced with aftermarket one, I asked about that and they showed me a phone with a screen of supposedly comparable quality and even offered an option to come in later and check the phone mid-repair for a 15€ fee. (That was a fee to let you back up data off of the phone if you didn't want to go trough with the repair)
>What am I going to get with an off-brand battery?
Many shops will offer warranty so that if the capacity degrades quickly they will replace it for you.
No, I prefer paying a government taxes so they can hire restaurant inspectors who work to ensure the probability of being sold food with worms approaches 0%, regardless of how much the food costs.
I have no interest in keeping track of the price of sushi. My main concern is knowing the product being sold meets a very high probability of meeting a certain minimum standard, such as not being infested with parasites. Otherwise, I just opt out of the market and make my food at home.
You are claiming that people will always pick the cheapest repair but that's not the case in any other market. Similarly as you are not always picking the cheapest food. Even if health inspectors do their work flawlessly, (wishful thinking,) there are more factors to consider besides price so you check the reviews and there is correlation between quality and price.
I would argue that having these devices live for close to 10 years in someone else’s pocket, even if a potential repair was a bit more expensive is more important.
> I would argue that having these devices live for close to 10 years in someone else’s pocket, even if a potential repair was a bit more expensive is more important.
I didn't understand the point you were trying to make. Why would my phone go to someone else's pocket?
Which means they’re really making the money on sales of non-genuine parts.
You say this but then when your knockoff part uses a driver from a different older phone that gets pulled from an iOS release, you’ll be filing a lawsuit about how apple “deliberately” broke your property.
https://9to5mac.com/2016/02/18/ios-9-2-1-error-53-update/
Like are you just demanding that apple support third party components with ongoing software development or you’ll sue? Because that’s literally what already happened.
People have this “buy the cheapest sushi, get worms” mindset when they’re being toughguy internet libertarians but when it’s their own personal loss they absolutely start looking to make it someone else’s problem. Bioshock was so right.
That’s a massive brand image problem on top of the financial risk posed, a rational actor certainly might choose to opt out of that broad support model and it’s their market right to choose to choose to opt out of that. But that’s where we get into the “socialism/regulatory protections for me, markets for thee” thing.
Just like with the sideloading and the protections that provides against "third-party stores" using that as a dodge for app review/violating user privacies - for a lot of android users it's not enough that they just win in the marketplace of ideas, they have to actually outlaw and ban any competing business models that they don't like. Again, bioshock nailed it so perfectly - the market is awesome until it picks a solution you don't like/that doesn't make you a profit.
Hardware controlled is either a physycal switch or a hardware circuitry linked to the start of streaming from the camera which is difficult to implement (you need to decode the stream in hw).
So i really think that Apple is lying here.
Why would you need to decode the stream in hw? Simply attach an LED to power-good signal of signal buffer and you are good to go. As long as the data stream is open, the LED is on. It's not even intern level, it's student level circuitry.
> A deliberately stretched example. Apple laptops are claimed to not need camera privacy shutter, because the recording light is hardware controlled, so the user always knows when the camera is recording.
Don’t Apple devices have the ability to take photos of thieves stealing the device? Surely the camera indicator won‘t turn on in such a case, right?
I could be completely wrong.
What apple (and samsung, etc) does is not let the thief actually power off the device without a password, so until the battery lasts it can share its location via some way to the owner.
I think what this means is that just want to be required to support the "replace whole part" type repairs that Apple Stores already do - i.e. replace motherboard, replace display assembly, replace whole top case.
Compared to enabling the kind of board or component-level repairs that people like Louis Rossmann does which requires access to schematics, individual ribbon cables and specific chips.
The former means that one slightly torn 50 cent ribbon cable means a $300 screen replacement, or one blown $1 power controller chip means a $2000 logic board (cpu/ram/flash storage all that is soldered on) a replacement, which is all extremely wasteful both of money and natural resources.
If you can't use other units for parts, it means that people don't have any reason to steal it.
Oh and a usb connector requires replacing the entire board, for $400. Maybe just buy a new one for $1000 instead?
New devices are just too cheap, because it's much more efficient to build a new device. Labour and logistics are much cheaper when manufacturing millions of the same device.
I believe the cost for repairing electronic devices in the next 5 - 10 years should partially be paid upfront. Making new devices slightly more expensive for everyone and making the repairs considerably cheaper for those who need them.
My point is, repairable phones are totally feasible, if fairphone can deliver this service, why couldn't Apple ? (I know, because of profits). This fairphone may not be as sexy as an iPhone Pro, but it is still a very capable device. With the amount of R&D cash that Apple has, they could make a sexy repairable high end phone, but it is not in their interest.
absolutely. and apple does this - you just described applecare. and that money prepays (heavily discounts) a couple repairs and maintains the parts supply/availability, and helps maintain a massive network of first-party retail locations to perform those repairs and keep those phones out of landfills. The parts go back and can get recycled or serviced and maybe used again (like the refurb phone cycle).
but y'all ain't ready to talk about that yet.
--
apple's repair program is much more extensive than virtually any other phone vendor, can't go buy a OEM google repair tool or a first-party samsung phone screen off the website. And applecare is the "pay upfront to get cheap repairs later" model that does exactly what you are describing, pay the (averaged/amortized) cost to maintain those parts stockpiles and the repair staff networks etc and then basically just pay labor if you have an accident, and if you have any other accident in those 3 years you come out way way ahead.
OEM 16" XDR Liquid Retina screens have an estimated BOM cost of $250, versus applecare at $350. If you have a broken screen that costs you $100 with applecare or $450-750 without. So basically you are prepaying one screen and then if it happens you just pay cost of labor.
https://medium.com/macoclock/is-apple-fleecing-you-a682c851a...
But like, as much as people whine, $200 above BOM cost for the screen replacement isn't awful for labor + facilities + parts supply maintenance for an extended lifecycle. And that's why people like rossman complain when apple launched the self-service, apple's parts prices are so good he can't actually compete with the labor costs involved unless he's using non-genuine parts to get the cost down. Apple isn't screwing consumers, they're actually dumping in some situations (battery replacement) and providing things at/below cost. But that's a good thing for repair, it keeps phones out of landfills! and like, are we optimizing for e-waste reduction, or optimizing to keep rossman in business here? what's the goal you're looking to solve for?
Again, y'all ain't ready to talk about that either, but "right to repair" is not the same thing as "right of rossman's business to exist". Apple is not going to sign off on people drilling/repadding/reballing their parts at scale. They have actually accomplished an extremely green overall lifecycle with higher levels of software/parts support, refurbishment+reuse, and repair service accessibility than anyone else on the market, they just do it in ways that people like rossman don't like because rossman doesn't get paid in that model.
--
but yeah if you want to equalize the "logistics advantage" of new devices, that's easy, just tax new devices at time of sale. we already do this for TVs to account for the cost of disposal etc. make it a bigger tax to make repairs more financially attractive.
you could theoretically put that money into some subsidy or other but you don't need to, the point is just to remove the financial disadvantage of n=1 repair/logistics and a pure tax accomplishes that.
Drop your phone in the water? Free. Smash the screen? Free. People will bring their stuff in and fix it and keep it out of landfills, and vendors themselves will be incentivized to find ways to support their product lifecycle efficiently, because it's their own bottom line (and their own product sales prices).
This is one of those diffuse problems like littering or jaywalking where we've kind of allowed the industry to redefine their problem as being your problem and invert the fault/blame. If straws are constantly ending up in the water it's fundamentally ineffective to hammer down on one random person, compared to regulating the root source, the business causing the problem. Which is of course why "recycling" (and not reuse or reduce of course) is promoted as a solution instead of regulation. Regulation would be effective, make companies pay for the full lifecycle of their product. If 10% of people litter and that costs $X per year to clean it up, that's McDonald's problem.
And yes that would drive up prices quite a bit. But that's the lifecycle of owning the product, and if you want to incentivize repair over new, the price of new is inherently going to have to go up anyway. At least this way you get something out of it.
Maybe instead of unlimited incidents you only cover the 80th percentile of incident rates per lifecycle.
But again, the ironic thing is how much this looks like applecare and yet people utterly hate it.
The Fairphone? The Framework?
> OEM 16" XDR Liquid Retina screens have an estimated BOM cost of $250, versus applecare at $350. If you have a broken screen that costs you $100 with applecare or $450-750 without. So basically you are prepaying one screen and then if it happens you just pay cost of labor.
Why is the range so variable? If part ($250) + labor ($100) is $350, why is the minimum $450 and how could the maximum possibly be $750? Where does this extra 100-400 dollar cost originate, if it's not only being applied artificially?
> And that's why people like rossman complain when apple launched the self-service
Who is Rossman? Maybe you're right here but the way you invoke this guy and claim his intent without stating his actual complaint makes it feel like you're attacking a strawman. From your post I gather that he wants to be able to use third party parts on the cheap if he would like and that the Apple system somehow impedes that, which seems valid.
To be clear, I am of course against e-waste and very much in favor of having the right to repair my own devices with whatever parts I can make work. If Apple is swinging that way, great, but this post comes off as accusatory for a reason I'm having a hard time discerning. It's still hard to trust Apple on something like this when there is so much obvious money to be made by behaving subversively when it comes to pricing out their repairs.
1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/18/we-are-lo...
2: https://www.howtogeek.com/894168/apples-self-repair-program-...
3: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjdjnv/apples-independent-re...
4: https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/28/apple_selfservice_sla...
And as usual because there's an Apple on it, most of this place will eat it up even though it hasn't been that long since OpenAI blatantly tried the same thing regarding AI regulation.
Consumer: right to repair means fixing my broken display will be a DIY job for $50? Sweet!
Repair shop: right to repair means I can source a display from lowest bidder, charge $150 for broken screen, and make $120 in profit? Let’s go!
Apple: right to repair means you must buy $275 display module to fix a broken display.
Apple being world’s most valuable company, is not going to willingly allow consumer or repair shop to get advantage over itself without kicking and screaming.
A smartphone is not a device of yore, where components cost make up vast majority of its price. Instead it is almost pure margin. Every device repaired without handing cash to Apple handsomely is one less device they can sell.
We cast about for myriad unique negative motives for Apple, while essentially all the various activities that "harm" middlemen are better explained by:
Apple wants normal buyers to have a frictionless no worries experience.
They didn't care about the telcos, refusing to bundle crapware. They don't care about the mall screen repair kiosk. They don't care about ad companies. They don't care about any middlemen on the value chain. They care about how the normal buyer feels about depending on and using Apple.
You can explain product designs, app store curation, Apple store experiences, and repair policies, through this "don't make me worry" experience lens.
> Apple being world’s most valuable company, is not going to willingly allow consumer or repair shop to get advantage over itself without kicking and screaming.
They are not most valuable by screwing people over. Resenting this suggests the real complaint is annoyance at having to go that extra mile of excellence around the total experience to compete. It's incredibly difficult to compete with their operational excellence.
The negative motives are mostly attributed to profit motive, as in this parent post, though when taken apart, Apple is usually find to be delivering a more consistently high quality at a margin comparable to rest of market, with any better margins usually boiling down to operational excellence.
> A smartphone is not a device of yore, where components cost make up vast majority of its price. Instead it is almost pure margin. Every device repaired without handing cash to Apple handsomely is one less device they can sell.
Teardown after teardown has found when you include not just parts but also assembly quality and longevity, as reflected in resale value, (a) other manufacturers such as Samsung or Dell charge the same for flagship products, and (b) Apple's assembly retains higher resale value.
This would imply Apple's focus is on quality, quality costs money, and yet their pricing is comparable to flagships of less quality, making Apple a reasonable or even better "deal".
Of course, it's not just that.
There's an overall value prop you can expect anywhere you engage with Apple in their value chain, including walking into a store for a repair:
- Think Different (and at the experience level, not just the parts)
- Tech that "just works" (relative to others, and w/o tinkering)
- "Using the product" is the product, not "User" is the product
If Apple supports something, it 99% of the time means they already have a way to exploit for it. They've been doing it for decades sadly, if Apple endorses regulation it almost always implies their bottom line won't be impacted from it.
It's been 20 years since Casey Neistat's "iPod's Dirty Secret" [1]. If they've fought against RtR for so long, surely they won't give up so easily?
Authorised apple repair shops quoted ~300 euro for face id replacement - with a caveat that if they detect any moisture they won't fix it at all. For that price I can buy any of those phones second hand.
Unauthorised shops told me they have no way to replace face id.
With android phones at least you can unlock your phone not with pin code but with gesture or unlock with cheap smart mi band. I knew apple watch can be used to unlock your phone but it WONT work if you face id or touch id IS broken.
So all those phones are just sitting on a shelf and I use one just for app testing.
With apple serialising parts I think things are just getting worse, not better - what's the point when you are forced to buy genuine parts from apple (instead of genuine but from donor devices) and still have to go through authorised repair shop and this is economically just not worth it?
What's the point of your 'right to repair' but you have to pay 50-100% of you (second-hand) device price?
This part is the most interesting to me. Alarm systems I understand, though this looks like security by obscurity, but video game consoles? Are legislators willing to go that far to protect Sony's DRM?
Quick Google search tells me that..
>PlayStation made $11.3 billion more than Xbox, and $14.7 billion more than Nintendo. Xbox made $3.4 billion more than Nintendo.
Nintendo is the smallest. The biggest earner is the PlayStation 5 today and the PlayStation 2 overall.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_co...
People are screaming to let them install 3rd party software for Apple devices.
But why doesn't anyone want the same for the Xbox, Playstation and Switch? They are arguably even more "general computing devices" than an iPhone for example.
If Apple is forced to allow 3rd party app stores, why can't I get the same for my Playstation? Why is it different?
I’m really curious of what effect will the DMA have when it will be confronted to game consoles.
I haven't heard devs say anything of the sorts for gaming consoles. Certainly barriers to entry are higher and NDAs probably stricter... But, dunno, the complaints are basically non existent in media.
If you start to complain in public, you'll get neither and that's it for your company.
And the more important reason is that Epic probably already has deals in place with Microsoft and Sony. We have seen that they exist for Activision thanks, to the merger, so why shouldn't Epic have similar arrangements?
But with phones, you basically need a phone to function in the modern world and with only two locked down choices, it's a problem for society
why should we arbitrarily proclaim a console to be a "gaming appliance" rather than a general-purpose computing device, but apple doing the same thing ("iphone is a phone appliance, not a PC") is bad?
the reason you think of a console as being an appliance is because their propaganda strategy has worked on you, there's no reason you couldn't build a Steam Deck (ahem, console) at $500-700 and provide similar performance to consoles while allowing an open environment. people are willing to make this cognitive leap for ios but a console is just a gaming box, you know? just buy a PC in addition to your gaming box! (oh, we don't care about e-waste/consumerism anymore now)
PS5 is sold at a profit since less than a year after launch, xbox series x isn't sold at much of a loss if it's a real loss at all (might be hollywood accounting to look good for the trial so they can claim they're losing money on hardware). So you can achieve very similar prices/performance on hardware.
> But with phones, you basically need a phone to function in the modern world
nobody is saying we need to outlaw phones, people are currently functioning with phone-appliances in the modern world just fine! just like they do with xbox.
in fact many of the modern real-world uses like banking would really prefer you to be using a locked-down appliance for security. that whole TrustNet concept and all.
again just like right-to-repair this always just turns into a mismash of different causes and goals that all get lumped into some broad "right to repair" (ok here's replacement boards at our OEM cost, and we'll ship you OEM repair tooling at a loss or let repair shops purchase it at cost) but actually are a bunch of disjointed but similar causes and goals (rossman really wants component-level repair because that's how he gets paid, so solutions that reduce e-waste but fall short of rossman-getting-paid are unacceptable to him). Other people are generally more into it for the anti-consumerism aspects and just want people to consume less in total even if it's repairable, and are fine for driving up costs/making repairs more attractive by taxing new devices etc. there's really like 3 or 4 different goals being wrapped up into one "right to repair" cause!
but "living a life in the modern world" does not require letting facebook sideload an app store so they can bypass app review/permissioning and datamine me. And actually doing so is detrimental to the real-world security of banking and the other important stuff that's run through my phone.
Again, reminder they've literally already been busted for doing exactly this, apple revoked their dev credentials because they were paying customers 10 bucks to install the datamine version of facebook with a dev build.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...
About consoles, I wonder what's inside that we can't replace a failed part with a working one.
My phone contains information or can access information that would harm me much more than someone robbing my home (while I am away). And if someone breaks into my home while I am there, the alarm system is not going to get the cops there quickly enough anyway.
So I do not see why an alarm system would be considered as something that needs an exception for security reasons, but a phone is not.
1.) prominently "devalue" parts where Apple is not earning money, apply the "Licensed by Apple" model from accessories (which comes with annual member fees, steep certification costs and per-unit revenue share) to component manufacturers, which then charge a premium for components to not trigger the "non-genuine part" alarm on the device...
1.) create an UBER-like business model for "Apple-recommended" repair shops, where Apple has even less obligation than now, with all costs of compliance to their blessing covered by individual shops, and Apple earning revenue-share from every Apple-customer related transaction in those shops (by only allowing use of licensed parts)...
After all, if Apple moves to USB-C on the iPhone, and the EU regulation has no loop-hole for them to only allow "Apple-licensed" USB-C cables, they need to compensate for that loss of revenue...
If a company wanted to change the market, the only viable option is to go through legislation, because the internal company goals that might actually be repair friendly is then forced on all the competition as well. Leveling the playing field.
You can't go against the flow, you can only try to change it.
I guess they're maybe opening up to authorized repair places and just that.
Everybody [1] can buy parts at https://selfservicerepair.com and download manuals
> only to find out they didn't work after the swap.
AFAIK, Apple ¿currently? doesn’t support cannibalizing systems (because they’re greedy or to prevent stealing of phones for parts. Your pick)
> So even if you can get a replacement component, do you have the management software to update the eeprom
Their manuals tell you how to do that.
[1] in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK or the USA and, by extension, in the entire EU (https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/selling-in-eu/selling-...). I don’t know whether Apple honors the latter, though.
For 'iPhone 12 mini TrueDepth Camera Bundle' you have to pay $280 in EU countries + shipping I guess. If your iphone 12 mini breaks in ~2 years from now probably will be cheaper to buy just working second hand iphone 12 mini.
yes, this is a general problem with all repair. n=1 repairs are very expensive in terms of labor and logistics. making a million pixel phones in a factory is cheap, mailing someone a camera board and having a technician disassemble the phone and solder a part and re-seal the phone for waterproofing is very time-consuming.
if repairs are only financially viable by using knockoff parts with inferior quality, that's a problem, that's a market failure.
easy answer is tax new devices heavily so that repairing a device is relatively more attractive. but I think people won't like the idea of 50-100% tax on new devices.
there's always a price for your morals - nobody is buying a new phone at $100k tax per phone, and would not support such legislation. now we are just haggling over the price.
Taxing is not solution I don't want to tax cars 100% so even though fixing cost the same supposed make me feel better because it's then just 10% of whole product instead of 30%. Car industry has right to repair and it's a solved problem - even though cars have bigger safety considerations.
Repair can be cheap in the same way as car repair can be cheap. Currently iphone repair cannot be cheap because of their DRM.
You mentioned before that cheap repair cannot be done because of more expensive labour. But I mentioned that authorised repair shops quotes me ~300euro for repair and apple for just ordering single component wanna charge me ~280usd - it's obvious they just price component so expensive to make it not worth making repair yourself.
> "To eliminate parts pairing entirely, they need to find new technical ways of meeting these goals without limiting repair," she told Ars. "Until then, our best compromise is in SB 244: If manufacturers use parts pairing, they need to make their pairing software tool available to the public."
This section seems a little vague...does this mean that Apple will still be able to block you from swapping in a part that they dont deem as "valid" for whatever reason? What does that software tool that theyre supposed to make public do? verify "authenticity"?
I could also see Apple customers being more willing to pay a premium for geniune Apple parts than budget smartphone and PC users, which could be a new source of revenue.
Apple has also shifted more toward selling services in recent years, and seems content to let people continue to use their old hardware longer if it means they subscribe to iCloud Storage, Apple Music, Apple TV+, etc.
Finally, whether you believe them or not, Apple makes a fairly big show of caring about the environment [3]. They devote a fair amount of time in all their major product announcements to talking about environmental impact. And supporting this bill is on brand for them.
[1] https://thelec.net/news/articleView.html?idxno=3574
[2] https://www.amazon.com/ZICOROOP-Bluetooth-Speakers-Waterproo...
There are good reasons to prefer Apple but repairability is not one of them.
privately, we oppose everything good all the time, from beginning to end -- only the public stance changes.
i'm sure that's the same for Apple and every other big tech firm, every tech firm, every firm.
Long term, I hope this increases competition for quality hardware
Don’t like them? Don’t use them. It’s not hard.
RAM being soldered has legitimate arguments - it reduces latency and power use, as well as costs, and RAM isn't a wear part. I'm not endorsing it, but RAM can be justified by argument.
In contrast, hard drives don't gain any real latency advantage, and will die before most of the rest of the computer. Soldering in hard-drives is just insane.
The latest generation of hardware is now designed and optimized for repair and they're at the point where they've been preparing for a long, long time.
The next few launches of Apple hardware will be light-years ahead of competition in design and engineering to make the repair experience delightful.
If you want to see hints at it, the latest Apple Watch Ultra has four screws -- a sign of things to come.
Further, their industrial design has moved to a flat, extruded shape with mid frame designs, perfect for accessing batteries and screen components.
They made it repairable in steps and most likely the generation starting from next month will be repairable enough to match what the California bill and EU laws require.
...and I'm pretty sure Apple knows some of their competition isn't ready yet so they're trying to catch them off guard by pushing for the law to pass now.
With the "small" detail that the repair guide for the Pros is ~600 pages long, because you need to replace the whole board+bottom assembly for most things. You need to take the whole thing apart, and then put it back together. The Airs are saner, surprisingly.