Hacker News Reader

Comment by sjkna | Hacker News Reader

Thanks Apple for making my phone a less attractive target for thieves by making its pieces useless when used in other phones.

Ifixit: you are not on my side.

View on HN

That's why Apple gives the consumer an authorization code that they can use when re-selling their phone, to unlock its parts and permit their re-use. Since thieves don't get that code, it protects phones against theft and allows re-use.

Because if they didn't do that, anti-theft would be just a useful excuse to further rob the consumer of agency.

They do give out such a code, right? I'm just assuming here, but since they paint themselves as such champions of ecology [1], they must. Because if they didn't, that would make them hypocrites, and liars, in claiming there is no way to deter theft without taking rights from the consumer. And we know Apple is honest and on the consumer's side, so that can't be it.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53485560

Nobody is hindering you on reselling your device. Use your legitimate access to wipe the device and unpair it from Our iCloud account and then you can resell it.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201351

My old company had a big problems with leavers dropping off the iPhone without giving either their passcode or unpairing the device from whatever iCloud account they used, so they couldn't even give it to anybody else. Full shelf full of 1000€ bricks all working fine. (Apple didn't have a proper device management service back then)

> Nobody is hindering you on reselling your device. Use your legitimate access to wipe the device and unpair it from Our iCloud account and then you can resell it.

And its parts can then be re-used in other Apple devices?

If you don't care about independent repairability, which is the only thing this score addresses, then just don't look at this website. The decision doesn't affect you or Apple in any way, it's just advice for people looking for a particular feature.

It’s talking about the benefits of tagging parts. Crooks can’t make money off my iPhone and so iPhone theft drops. It’s a relevant point to make in this discussion.

If parts weren't so unnecessarily difficult to get in the first part, stealing phones for parts wouldn't be a thing. Apple created this problem, they don't get to get credit for "fixing" it in a way that harms consumers.

If you apply that argument to everything that gets stolen you will see it doesn't stand on its own.

Which things other than phones are primarily stolen specifically to be parted out (and...to be perfectly honest I'm not sure I buy that it's even that big a thing in phones)? And which companies have made the problem worse by artificially restricting part supplies?

I was talking about stealing in general, but... vehicles?

Also I don't know of any major phone manufacturer that sells genuine parts besides Apple.

If you were taking about theft in general, then I don't even know what point you were trying to make.

And yes, other companies selling fewer official parts (although I've never been unable to get screens, batteries, or replacement charging parts for my non-apple phones) is bad, and I already criticize companies that fail to make parts available. When they start doing part pairing, I will criticize them for it to. The fact that this behavior is bad has nothing to do with it being Apple. Not making parts easy to get: bad. Making replacement parts not viable without input from manufacturer: also bad.

Cars. And they have a massive OEM and aftermarket parts supply chain.

https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/cars-most-likely-...

Cars being stolen to chop shops is a thing, I am extremely skeptical that it's the primary reason cars are stolen.\

-edit- Yeah even according to your source, a pretty tiny minority appear to be stolen for parts. Probably because, as you point out, parts are so easy and relatively cheap to get, except for inherently valuable parts like catalytic converters. And guess what? If people start stealing iPhones to harvest the gold/rare metals, parts pairing is not going to fix that.

Stealing phones for parts is only a “thing” because any U.S. carrier would still block a stolen IMEI. If you steal a car, for example, you can use it to for its primary purpose which is to drive. If you steal a phone, you can only sell it for parts.

yeah, used cars apparently mostly get exported to ghana and some other countries that have extremely loose customs who don't care about stolen goods moving in.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/auto-theft-canada-1.6953242

if you could re-use a phone, people would just factory reset the phone after stealing it, and people did it. then apple locked that down. then people started stripping the phone for parts instead, and apple started serializing parts. Etc.

Yeah, hail Apple! They only have us consumers in mind, not like the nefarious iFixit people! /s

Posts like these have convinced me that Apple is actually a new religious movement masquerading as a tech company.

Come on, as if iPhone thieves know about replacement component cryptographic pairing requirements.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com