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Comment by Pingk | Hacker News Reader

Two parts of their statement stand out to me.

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.

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> repair providers disclose the use on non-genuine or used parts

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.

What you should support is stricter laws and penalties on fraud. I have no issue with (and sometimes prefer) used or "non-genuine" third party parts as long as it's an informed decision.

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

That's the whole point though, by requiring repair services to disclose they used third party or used parts, you get to make an informed decision, without that, you don't.

Problem is some people make an 'informed decision' and forget to tell that to a buyer when they sell their phones...

This is why I support Apple's "serialization" of parts. I think the right to repair bills should prevent Apple from nerfing functionality if a new part is swapped in, but it's great being able to go to the settings screen and see the details of each repair.

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.

> 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.

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

> Its a phone for christ sake, they only last a few years, where have you seen this issue even come up On this point I don't agree. My iPhone is about to be 5 years old, it's fully functioning and I'm about to pass it to my daughter. The only repair I did was changing the battery at an Apple Store, which cost around 100$ and took a couple of hours.

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.

> I don't really care for self repairing

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...

My point is that if there is a market for devices that can be easily repaired, then there will be devices that can be easily repaired. If there is no such a market, then there will be no such devices.

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.

Security isn't a binary. Banks are secure. Prisons are secure. In software and hardware the thing being secured against is increasingly the "owner" of the device, for the benefit of rentiers.

I might agree, but my experience with this brand in particular is that I buy much less devices, and I pay them more. All in all I think that the money I spend is similar, but the quantity of devices is lower.

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.

> Its a phone for christ sake, they only last a few years

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?

> Shipping 27 batteries from amazon or china so you can replace them every 2 months is carbon-intensive and resource-intensive

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"

> You seem to be criticising some fantasy scenario that has never happened in the real world, and likely never will.

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.

Have you ever sold a car? Have you ever told buyer about provenance of every single part replaced?

That’s what they said. You both agree!

Absolutely. My local and much beloved (by others) repair shop got really pissy when I started asking them if they participated in the authorized repair program. Why? Because the battery replacements always sucked. Sure they “covered” the work, but I was tired of going back every other month for half a year because they “got a bad batch of batteries.” I got tired of their crappy attitude and eventually found an authorized shop. Give me genuine parts with the convenience of not having to deal with a “genius” bar.

Louis Rossmann has talked a lot about why he isn't part of the authorized program.

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.

The component level repair issue I get from both sides. Rossmann obviously wants to continue to be able to provide that service, in part because it’s arguably his specialization.

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).

Most customer's are not able to go this in-depth into the "parts availability" issue. If you try to tell them, their eyes will just glaze over.

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.

> You complained about having to deal with the Genius Bar.

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.

Call me a starry-eyed optimist but I think consumers are perfectly capable of understanding “you need to order the part off this website and I’ll install it for you”.

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?

You may not know exactly which part needs to be replaced, until you go to a shop to diagnose the issue. That would be 2 trips instead of one. And there could be issues with multiple parts. And you can't know about further issues until you fix rhe first one, resulting in a lot of back and forth.

Honestly this is a major spit in the face from apple, there is no reason to not make the parts available for sale.

> You may not know exactly which part needs to be replaced, until you go to a shop to diagnose the issue.

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.

When the phone doesn't charge it could be the battery, it could be the charging port, it could be a fried resistor on the board or something else.

> Apple on the other hand wants to prevent parts from falling in the wrong hands

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.

> What? Why? Are they like nuclear bombs? What happens if an iPhone screen gets into a wrong hand?

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.

The only reason apple doesn't want to allow repairs is so they can sell more new ones. This "consistency from repair to repair" is largely a myth used to fool gullible consumers by playing on the assumption that apple actually has a competent repair wing. They do not, so this line of thinking that it's "third party repairs are a problem" is completely unfounded.

Look at a market where repairs are normal.

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.

I think you have it completely backwards. Apple aren’t necessarily that concerned with selling the most phones. They want to sell the most expensive phones with the highest margins, and still sell quite a lot.

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.

Apple's attitude about repair is a HUGE knock on the brand, at this point. There is no justification for it, apart from greed. Even if they are right and the repair isn't great, which does happen of course, a rational person will blame the repairer, not Apple. So for them to make these paternalistic claims is another HUGE knock on the brand - not only are they greedy, they lie to justify their greed. I don't care how good their products are (and the M1 based laptops are damn good) I'm not giving Apple a dime until this changes (and the batteries are no longer glued into everything).

> a rational person will blame the repairer

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.

Then Apple should lease and not sell phones. Once sold it is no longer theirs.

The fact that our industry's security practices demand constant updates is a regulatory failure, not an inevitability.

How do you think the anti-apple peanut gallery would respond to your market strategy?

> a rational person will blame the repairer, not Apple

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.

While I don't think that your conclusion is 100% wrong, your argument does not support it. The first two examples are actually the way I would bet.

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.

I'm not buying anything apple since I know repairability is zero.

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.

I occasionally buy and repair used Apple phones and are more comfortable with them than other brands. Even though Apple may discourage it most phone repairers know them and can do repairs, probably more so than an old Huawei whatever it is. I was quite impressed when an iPhone 5 was reduced to a spread of components on the road in a Thai scooter accident and the shop had it back working same day.

> This "consistency from repair to repair" is largely a myth used to fool gullible consumers

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 can parts be “in the wrong hands”? Whose hands are wrong? Why does Apple get to decide?

“But whose hands can be said to be truly right”, says the chopshop car parts dealer

How can parts ordered directly from Apple also be taken from stolen phones? Surely anyone being able to get parts from Apple reduces demand for those if anything?

Nobody dislikes the apple self-service except rossman, who is paid to not like them. There is no problem with them and that system works well, other than rossman not being able to make money performing installations of genuine parts at the prices apple charges.

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.

“Nobody dislikes the apple self-service except rossman”

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

>Apple on the other hand wants to prevent parts from falling in the wrong hands given the already prolific grey market for their parts.

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.

> it’s difficult to ensure consistency from repair to repair,

Car companies will argue that all third party car mechanic shops should close down because its difficult to ensure consistency.

>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.

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?

Do you mind clarifying the "grey market" you mentioned? What does that mean?Illegal resellers of spare parts?

I can understand why Apple doesn't want component level repairs because most repair shops dont hit the level required for the job. Rossmann is arguably the top 10% of that level of work if not higher.

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.

I’m sure Louis Rossmann knows what he’s doing and does a good job, but unless I’m going to go to his shop in…looking it up…Austin if I need my phone repaired, I’m gonna stick with authorized shops because I want to avoid the negative experiences reported upthread.

It should be possible to have an authorized and unauthorized repair center in the same building, maybe even same store, as legally distinct entities.

Well, they were right to get pissy. the "authorized repair" programs are completely illegitimate, not interested in actually repairing anything, and are incapable of doing their job. Whether or not a repair shop is "authorized" has no bearing on whether it will be better, in fact if it's authorized it's way more likely to be worse.

"Authorized" basically means "manufacturer mandated incompetence" in the repair space.

Right to get pissy at a customer question? Try explaining it to the customer instead of summarily dismissing it and asking the customer why they were asking.

A couple of locations didn't survive COVID. With their crappy attitude, nothing was lost.

Also, non-genuine display modules can utterly suck. The most obvious failure is linearly polarized light output. Bonus points for horizontally or vertically polarized light — diagonal is at least somewhat tolerable.

> The most obvious failure is linearly polarized light output.

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.

I don't buy apple products so I don't quite understand the implication here; how is a physical property you cannot really perceive relevant to you?

It’s not really anything to do with Apple, and applies to all displays.

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.

My (OLED) pixel 7 has a polarized glass that is brightest at -45° and opaque at 45° from vertical with my polarized sunglasses, so that works out well.

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.

As far as I know, all LCDs operate on polarized light. I’ve generally assumed that Apple puts a quarter-wave plate in front of their screen to circularly polarize the light. Without having done any math, I would expect a noticeable amount of color shifting when viewed through a linear polarizer because most waveplates are wavelength-dependent (they shift the optical path by a certain distance, which is a different amount of phase at different wavelengths).

I’ve never found credible information online, but I haven’t looked that hard.

> I would expect a noticeable amount of color shifting when viewed through a linear polarizer

This is infinitely better than a black screen, which is what you get with linearly polarized screens.

I expect that if you're wearing polarising lenses such as sunglasses, you can't see your phone if it's held in portrait or landscape.

Must resist the urge to make a joke about Apple users "holding it wrong".

Apple learned something from SUN. Don't sell the mouse (iPhone) without the mousepad (glasses). /s

Their point is that genuine Apple devices used circularly polarized filters so this isn’t an issue.

The display on my Samsung S21 (with original, unchanged screen) turns pinkish when I'm wearing polarized sunglasses - presumably it's filtering out part of the blue wavelengths. Mildly irritating when I'm driving and using it to navigate.

For me the most obvious failure was the glass cracking. Genuine Apple ones use 'gorilla glass' - a strong glass, and my cheap replacement did not and broke before long. Then again it was like 1/3 the price - you get what you pay for sometimes.

If the screen was working fine then an update caused it to stop working that doesn’t sound like an issue with the display but rather a hostile software update that is preventing it from working merely because it is a knock off screen but was working as you say just prior. Should be mad at apple in that case not the knock off screen.

Probably, but not necessarily. Could also be a code change that works perfectly fine for the OEM part, but not the third-party one.

Manufacturers can't realistically be expected to guarantee a device will keep working as normal with third-party parts.

Sure, but having the screen stop working because of an unforeseen coincidence is very different from intentionally breaking the screen with malicious intention. Besides, has there been a single documented case in the history of smartphones where a device manufacturer changed the communication protocol with a display via OTA update after the phone shipped?

I can think of a myriad of things such as enabling a feature that was previously disabled/in development, updates to calibration values/curves, tweaking timing and power saving control registers, etc.

Any of these could throw off a third party part if not implemented exactly the same way.

Sure, but we also know for a fact that Apple does a lot of tweaking to disable non-genuine parts. Seems as likely.

Surely Apple maliciously went after some tiny third party that sells 3 screens per year.

Occam’s razor..

Apple, that rules their supply chain with an Iron fist and prosecute owners of independant repair shops?

Why would they ever have a plan to make sure only their screen works with their phone?

Apple has had internal memos leaked in the past where incompatibilities were specifically engineered in macOS with plausible deniability, so I wouldn't be so quick to give a benefit of doubt.

> It stopped working with an OTA update.

So the display was ok but was disabled by SW.

Important distinction - the day when Apple is honestly supporting right to repair is not yet here, and given company's history it most probably won't come anytime soon. Which is fine, but let's be honest here. Apple is for-profit corporation just like gazillion others, it will fight tooth and nail against anything imparting their revenue streams, be it massive cut from itunes sales or expensive repairs.

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.

That's not really how interfacing with hardware works.

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.

This doesn't necessarily indicate malice. Apple has little obligation to test every software change on non standard hardware so it's reasonably possible some innocent change had a breaking effect on a modified device.

In reality, Apples hardware DRM checks broke the OTA no matter how functional the display was.

It wasn't Apple, and it was unrelated to DRM. This device had no DRM.

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.

Do i observed this so many times, whenever we have a strong suspicion something dodgy is going on - folks on this forum have such prepensity to give large immoral corporation benefit of the doubt, but declare individuals guilty.

Motive, Opportunity and Means, Aplle has all three.

That's Apple's fault, not the repair shop, and apple should be fined for doing so.

Why is it Apple's fault that a knock-off (i.e. unsupported) display stopped working after a software update?

Because it sounds intentional, as the affected electronics are off-the-shelf and not something subject to firmware updates and because apple specifically have a habit of intentionally interfering with parts not installed by Apple.

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.

> Because it sounds intentional

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.

So a part that cannot tolerate a change in data characteristics the same way that a genuine part can must be allowed to function?

Rather unlikely for that to occur in a genuine scenario as neither side of the interface is software defined and as the functionality is fixed and provided by a third party.

The knock off probably didn't implement something correctly, in hardware.

Unlikely as this is industry standard interfaces, and the "knock-off" would be made by genuine display manufacturers - possibly even one Apple uses - as you can't exactly make that in a backroom.

As someone who works in the hardware world, who has done lots of hardware interoperability testing, none of these points are correct.

Did you work for display panel driver manufacturers or an industry dealing with similar PHY's or are you applying assumptions about unrelated hardware from an unrelated field?

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.

Well, you’re assuming a display module only contains a display. See my original comment:

> 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.

> Apple's fault that a knock-off

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.

>This has my complete support.

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.

It might have been slightly out of spec in a way that the old software didn't care about, but a recent software improvement needed it to be in-spec after all.

Has Apple earned this much benefit of the doubt?

Apple breaks enough things by accident that I find it easier to believe that than than they deliberately targeted this replacement screen and found a way to make their hardware and software still work well for existing users, and break just this third-party screen.

With Apple, the reason is usually security. For a third-party screen, it could take pictures of the display to steal information. With the iPhone being the target of state sponsored brigands, it is not theoretical. It is probably happening.

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.

As long as it is not twisted into the device being allowed to nag you over the use of non-genuine parts.

Apple should not be allowed to inconvenience users of aftermarket/non-Apple parts.

Nope...

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"

Would forcing disclosure of non-authorized parts not address that? If you were willing to pay the premium for authorized parts then you’d have the information to choose the right repair shop.

the problem is, will unregulated report shops be able to do the repair from knockoff parts? I know the last time a fingerprint sensor broke for a phone, i had to replaced for US$1. had to pay $3 for labour but the part cost just $1. its working for the past 3 years so yeah.

Where do you live that the labour is that cheap?

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).

unfortunately india

wtf is "authorized part"?

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).

Wait, so if a third party repairer puts in a dud part that fries the rest of the system, they still have to provide a warranty replacement of the whole thing?

They mean OEM part.

and requiring those is illegal in US

But it's not illegal to require a licensed "authorized" repair shop use the OEM part, nor is it illegal (unfortunately) to decline to sell OEM parts to unlicensed repair shops.

Nobody is saying make them illegal.

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".

i wish the same can be made in other countries.

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

> They too are buying from the same chinese OEM, just their "brand sticker" gives them the power to charge a high premium

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.

Doesnt have to be Chinese vendor. https://www.youtube.com/@M539Restorations prides himself on using OEM parts, but he often goes directly for actual manufacturer because that source tends to be much cheaper than BMW dealer. The only difference is marker/machining over BMW logo on the part.

Personally, I do not want anymore cheap Chinese knockoff parts anymore. I don’t want screens that have off colors, batteries that last 1/3 of their rated power, toner cartridges that last half as long as the OEM ones, etc.

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.

Good for you that you can go to Apple themselves then. That doesn't mean others should be forced to do the same.

Who exactly is forcing them to?

There are tons of non-Apple repair shops they can go to.

Apple will not sell you the parts period.

Please see the article that this comment section is under: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/hell-freezes-over-as...

Please read this carefully: Apple will NOT _sell_ you a battery cheaper than their inhouse genius bar battery service fee. Apple can barter a battery for ~$10 cheaper than that fee if you:

- 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.

What if you read in a reputable forum that some display panel is much cheaper and works great?

The manufacturer remotely bricked your -working- device because you broke their terms and conditions by performing a repair. You should not support this sort of disgusting behavior.

No evidence that’s the case. Very realistic that the new update was trying to do something that’s in spec for the genuine screen but the clone hadn’t copied properly.

I think I know what was going on here. I can't find a source (too many false hits on tech news sites), but a batch of counterfeit displays for one model of iPhone used a touchscreen controller from a much older model. When a new version of iOS was released which no longer supported that older model, Apple removed the drivers for its touchscreen controller from the OS, under the assumption that they were no longer necessary. This had the unexpected effect of making those displays stop working.

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.

Apple apologized and removed that block after getting caught and filled class action suit https://9to5mac.com/2016/02/18/ios-9-2-1-error-53-update/

> to enable the repairs performed by authorised repair channels

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.

I still do not know which side of the fence do I sit on with regards to "genuine" parts.

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.

It should be my choice as the consumer to ask an independent repair person to install a cheaper or refurbished part in my device. I think it's great that Apple warns users that a new part was installed and whether it's a genuine Apple part of not. But it should be my right to accept that risk and move on. I don't give the most minuscule damn about how Apple having to deal with "broad hardware quality and compatibility". Let the trillion dollar company figure that out.

> 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.

Being the devil’s advocate: how do we help the Earth more, by mandating genuine parts so that second- or even third-hand apple devices can fulfill their whole lifespan with a general guarantee on the buyer’s end that they get what they pay for, or by being able to replace non-genuine parts, putting the whole second-hand market a much larger luck/trust factor?

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.

Whichever option makes the most people keep their devices for the longest would be preferred, but we simply don't have this data because virtually no manufacturer provides parts. If repairs are so expensive that people avoid them, you have failed to help Earth. If repairs are so shitty because the parts are bad, so people end up having to buy more parts or just never repair again, you also failed. Ideal scenario, manufacturers being forced to provide all parts at close to cost plus distribution, the Fairphone way (or better). If non repairable phones are still deemed necessary because repairable ones are too expensive, then we also need a repairability score on all devices like in France.

> 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?

Apple’s repairs and parts are literally so cheap that repairmen like Rossman complain they can’t compete if they’re forced to use genuine parts.

Which means they’re really making the money on sales of non-genuine parts.

> But it should be my right to accept that risk and move on.

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

When you go shopping for the cheapest sushi, you should expect worms. Same with repair. That's the market solution. Fuck around and find out. If you check the review history beforehand and maybe talk to different shops, you'll get a repair that's most likely still much cheaper than oem and that you are satisfied with.

>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.

> When you go shopping for the cheapest sushi, you should expect worms.

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.

Existing laws apply to repair shops as well - warranty is just as legally binding as anywhere else and they can't sell you dangerous part like say exploding battery. That's the certain minimum.

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 don't give the most minuscule damn about how Apple having to deal with "broad hardware quality and compatibility". Let the trillion dollar company figure that out.

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.

> It should be my choice as the consumer to ask an independent repair person to install a cheaper or refurbished part in my device.

it’s already your choice right now. it’s just that the device won’t work without the correct part. as it should be.

Its not about "genuine" parts. Apple blocks "genuine" brand new parts taken off of brand new same model unit. Its about blocking all repairs not going thru Apple, its all about control and %.

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"

I believe you’re talking about different things.

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.

I don’t want my phone stolen and disassembled for profit. If you steal my phone, it better be as worthless as a rock to you.

Stolen phones, even iPhones, already are disassembled for profit. Right to repair wouldn’t change anything in that regard.

That argument is moot, all disassembled iphones are as worthless as a rock, even if they are not stolen.

If you have two broken iphones in your house, you can't make a working one with them.

If Apple doesn't want crap parts being used by repair shops they should sell the parts in the open market, regardless of the shop being in a "repair program", like every car manufacturer does

It's that simple.

Car manufacturers make very few "parts" themselves. Gearboxes, as an example, are often designed and manufactured by companies like ZF[0] or Valeo[1]. They also sell these to the public at (usually significantly) elevated costs. I'm sure this could be done for specific Apple parts, but like the car manufacturers, Apple will want some control over the parts they design.

[0] https://www.zf.com/ [1] https://www.valeo.com

Exactly. So why can I go into an auto parts shop and buy the original Ford Spark Plug set for my model (which of course is made by an OEM) but not an Apple repair part?

It’s actually not. You can be sure that there will be manufacturers out there who will skimp on quality to make some money at a lower price, and repair shops will buy that stuff to grow their margins.

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.

> there will be manufacturers out there who will skimp on quality to make some money at a lower price, and repair shops will buy that stuff to grow their margins.

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"

This is just completely untrue (definitely in the US): https://support.apple.com/self-service-repair

I’ll accept that this doesn’t cover all devices in the last seven years, but it does cover recent devices.

Cool, I think this is a recent development, but still, seems to be only for the end user

> like every car manufacturer does

I don't know a single car manufacturer which denies genuine parts with custom fake software errors.

> A deliberately stretched example. Apple laptops are claimed to not need camera privacy shutter, because the recording light is hardware controlled,

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.

Hardware controlled could just as well be a LED which turns on when the entire (or relevant part of) camera module is powered on. Power-saving wise it would also make sense to have the whole thing on always.

Something that is fabulously easy and cheap to implement and would cause massive backlash if found to be otherwise? It would almost be more effort to not do it the authentic way.

> 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).

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.

I still don't understand how the recording light negates the need for a privacy shutter. I don't care if i know when the camera is on, as the camera could be turned on without my consent or just before I'm ready.

Why not just connect the LED to the same rail that powers the camera?

Unrelated, but isn‘t this false?

> 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.

I have never heard of such a thing and honestly it would be pretty impractical in case of, say, a macbook which has quite limited view of its surroundings (e.g. you close it).

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.

Apple is as right-to-repair as they can be while also trying to inhibit and disincentivize the stealing of iPhones to send them to chop shops (to extract the parts to sell wholesale to repair shops.)

Apple is to blame for that since they are the ones refusing to sell parts. That's going in circles. No, Apple is as Right to repair as they deem necessary to uphold the law and not get too much backlash from customers. If they had their way they would utterly refuse any kind of right to repair, as history has shown.

Perhaps there would be less demand for chop shops if Apple didn't try their hardest to prevent repair shops from buying their slightly customized chips new and genuine from the manufacturers.

> 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

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.

Yes and Apple even lets users rent the tools instead of having to buy them. This is key because the tools for taking apart an iPhone are not trivial!

And that was one of the big complaints. “It’s too big, it weighs too much” since the tools came in well packed pelican cases.

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.

The tools are built so that it's pretty hard to use them wrong (use too much force or bend something in the wrong direction). That's why they're so bulky.

They could just send you a screwdriver set and a few spudgers, but it's really easy break a phone like that =)

Personally I trust my corner repair shop (mind, a specific repair shop in my town, not all of them) more than Apple to fix only what's broken and not swap the whole phone.

Not to mention I don't have to ship the phone to another town or something like that.

> Because Apple doesn’t have amateur tools. They ship you the same thing the stores and third-party use

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.

To be clear, I wasn’t complaining about what Apple does. I think it’s a good choice.

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.

One angle corporations sometimes take when supporting regulation is "we've already decided to do X, so if the law forces everyone to do X, it puts an extra burden on our competitors but doesn't cost us anything". So it's possible that's what's happening here

Apple’s brand is so strong that anything that happens on an Apple device is perceived as Apple’s merit, but also more often as Apple’s fault. Apple is aware that its main competitive advantage is also their main Achille’s heel, unless they keep control. When it comes to software that’s easy, and that’s why they’re so against side loading. When it comes to hardware that’s much harder. When someone goes to a random store, gets their screen swapped with a random part and that starts behaving uncontrollably and degrading the experience, who do you think that customer is holding accountable for that? Themselves? The repairer? Nope, it’s Apple. If you want proof, ask any acquaintance who works at an Apple Store about the complaints they get from customers. Pressured by a growing outrage about repairability, Apple found a smart way out: sure, repair it yourself, these are the parts and tools you should use, if you mess up it’s your problem. It can still dent Apple’s brand a bit but it’s better than forced regulation for them.

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!!!

> who do you think that customer is holding accountable for that? Themselves? The repairer? Nope, it’s Apple.

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.)

The comments in this thread come from a very privileged subset of highly tech savvy users, who incidentally believe their higher opinions are somewhat objective when applied to hundreds of millions of Apple users. I think what you say about the comments here “disproving” my arguments is actually proving how skewed the perspective is in here.

Software developers aren't a higher life form where only they can remember where they took their device for service. Plumbers and teachers and nurses are perfectly capable of it even if they don't know how cryptography or RAM works, and it's the tech company attitude that they can't which is extremely patronizing.

The list of what kind of services/repairs the phone had is “erased” once it ends up at its next owner though. At that point you either have “apple shit”, or “fuck that seller, he lied”, none of which is a happy path.

It would be completely reasonable for Apple to detect whether a part is non-Apple and then warn about it on each boot but otherwise cause no impairment of functionality. The second hand buyer would know as soon a they turn on the device.

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.

> who do you think that customer is holding accountable for that? Themselves? The repairer? Nope, it’s Apple

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.

If I am to believe Louis Rossmann ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tB3t7xGWjk ), this would still be a marked improvement over the current state of affairs, where Apple ostensibly offers tools, but the terms end up forbidding their use in serious repair shops. If they actually offer a good selection of OEM parts, that'd be good for the end user.

> 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.

If you can't use other units for parts, it means that people don't have any reason to steal it.

So disappointed in the tech community that we couldn't make this bill a little better. Probably because we were stuck in our echo chambers ...

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