Apple to make tools and parts to fix phones, computers available nationwide | Hacker News Reader

Apple to make tools and parts to fix phones, computers available nationwide

reuters.com

108 pointsjmsflknr66 comments

I worked for Apple Authorized Service Providers for over ten years and Apple's documentation is extremely basic at best. Step by step guides that explain how a part should be replaced, what tools they "require", ect. iFixit docs are essentially the same and sometimes much more detailed then Apple's bare documentation.

Although the diagnostics can be helpful sometimes, these are also extremely basic diagnostics, nothing that you would praise Apple for creating.

The only thing that might be useful for third party providers is Apple's Screen Calibration machine, which is the only exciting tool that we ever received from Apple(for ridiculous amount of money). I'm sure independent providers found a way around all of these things many moons ago but it's good to know going forward that they can have the same tools for extraordinary prices.

On the other hand, I see amazing machines for phone repair from China. They will separate the screen to layers and replace the faulty part instead of the full screen assembly or they will find a defect in the OLED and fix it with laser or something.

That's why I'm not very interested in this "right to repair" stuff - it revolves around demanding modular parts for quick and easy replacement. People who are actually close to the metal, who actually get their hands dirty are repairing those devices since ever. I got my old iPhone 6s screen repaired(front glass replaced, keeping everything else original) for very cheap and just in few hours.

Here is one for fixing faulty OLED iPhone screens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks-lS11TIaY

It's amazing how much more advanced the third party repairers are then Apple's own Authorized repairers.

You are completely on point with not being interesting in this "Right To Repair" rhetoric that I can only assume Apple is using as a marketing gimmick.

From when I first started fixing Mac's - which I only ever replaced parts, Apple would never allow you to take a soldering iron to their godly products - they at least had a lot of parts you could replace. Displays could be replaced on Macbooks from the 2007 era for example and you could buy those displays in bulk for a reasonable price.

From the unibody/clamshell era, 2010 onwards, Apple made these machines barely repairable, displays are now industrially glued into their metal housing, almost all I/O is soldered to the logic board requiring a full replacement to fix, good luck if you're out of warranty.

In exchange for the faulty part back, Apple will offer an authorized provider about 20-30% discount on the part which they call an "Exchange Price". Nothing hurt my soul more then to have to quote customers $700-900 AUD (exchange price) to fix a simple backlight malfunction.

Interestingly the price of replacing a Display or a Logic Board through Apple's 'Exchange' program is the same cost price for a Service Provider and these are the most costly parts of a Mac.

They do not offer exchange prices to these independent providers and the 'stock' price of Apple's service parts are astronomical.

I highly doubt that any independent repairer has ever ordered any part from Apple. Maybe they ordered tools, Apple does have some decent tools.

> I'm not very interested in this "right to repair" stuff - it revolves around demanding modular parts for quick and easy replacement. People who are actually close to the metal, who actually get their hands dirty are repairing those devices since ever.

It also involves demanding access to proprietary ICs and information like schematics. A component level repair might become impossible if you don't have access to a vendor-specific replacement for some burnt battery charging IC. You can't really fix up a silicon die like you can a dead pixel.

"Right to repair" isn't all about demanding modular parts, in most cases right-to-repair proponents aren't even asking the manufacturer to sell them parts. Right-to-repair advocates want the "option" to repair their own device at the very least. Manufacturers of devices are starting to intentionally brick devices when the replaced parts have not been specifically paired with the device. They're using the smokescreen of "security" to justify this, but with no options to accept the security implications.

Imagine replacing a windshield in your car, and the car refuses to let you turn on the windshield wipers until you activate the windshield with the manufacturer. The manufacturer will not activate 3rd party windshields. Or imagine replacing the seatbelt spool/cartridge in your car, and the car refuses to stop dinging because the part has not been activated by the manufacturer.

This is what manufacturers are slowly doing to all devices and parts. Between excuses of security and wanting to control the user experience, it's all anti-consumer BS.

Right, that trend is worrying. Yet, everything is still made of atoms.

The people who complain about, Coded parts are people who don’t actually do any repairs. They just swap parts and they are having the issue of parts refusing to work.

Instead of replacing modules, you can repair parts.

Beneath the abstractions, everything is very simple and obeys the laws of physics.

You can’t actually encrypt glass, what’s manufacturers can do is just putting some chip to the components.

This literally means nothing. "You can repair whatever you want, just manipulate material on the atomic level! ez clap!"

If I'm repairing my phone at home, I can't solder a new chip to the display FPC. I can't do component level repair. I can't split the display glass and re-solder the individual traces using a laser (probably 99% of repair shops can't either). I can't even reflow a circuit board.

But why should I not be able to remove the display and swap it for a new one?

maybe you can’t do it at home but people with the correct instruments can do pretty much anyrhing. Replacing a broken component with a new one is not repairing. Fixing the broken component is repairing. See, that’s why I said people who advocate for the right to repair are actually advocating for modules devices. Devices are already repairable If you can go beyond a modules swap.

>But why should I not be able to remove the display and swap it for a new one?

One reason would be to discourage theft.

> maybe you can’t do it at home but people with the correct instruments can do pretty much anyrhing.

Of course, the argument for right-to-repair has never been "it's impossible to repair X". It's always been "it's economically infeasie to repair X".

> Replacing a broken component with a new one is not repairing. Fixing the broken component is repairing.

Are people actually gatekeeping repair right now? Seriously?

> One reason would be to prevent theft.

Sure, that works for when you swap a part from one device to another. But what about swapping in brand new parts? What about swapping in counterfeit parts (you could argue about this too, but you can also just add a warning if a counterfeit part is installed)? I kinda understand pairing the part to the device, but not pairing the device to the part.

It is economically feasible to repair, that’s why there are many repair shops. Check out the video I posted about the machine for repairing screens, they even talk about the economics of it.

> Are people actually gatekeeping repair right now? Seriously?

Nope, it’s just not repairing. Call it right to swap modules at home and you will have correctly named movement.

It’s economically feasible in countries where labor is almost free.

Regardless, at some point you have to replace a part. If your screen is completely shattered you won’t be gluing back together the glass pieces and recreating the LCD.

We got your point, some people have more specialized machines, some people’s time is worth almost nothing, ok cool. Why does it bother you if people demand that companies don’t intentionally make it more difficult for the average person to do a repair?

>Why does it bother you if people demand that companies don’t intentionally make it more difficult for the average person to do a repair?

That doesn’t bother me, I just find it annoying when you want modularity but claim you want repairability. It usually comes attached with conspiracy theories and long rant. Feels watching a fake movement. Why can’t you accept that the companies don’t necessarily spend resources to make something non-modular? Why just don’t you demand consideration for ease of repair or modularity? Why you have to claim that iPhone’s are hard or impossible to repair when people get repairs all the time? I guess I don’t like the spirit of the movement.

The question I have is why you are arguing in such bad faith.

You argument can be resumed to: if you know how to build electronics, have access to the extremely expensive machine needed and have the skill/knowledge to do it; it is easy. Then you go on conspiracy theories rant (WTF ?).

I don't know what your motivations are, but you are so dishonest it is troubling.

Nobody is arguing for companies to make special investment in repairs or whatever. What is asked is simply access to parts they ALLREADY MAKE to build their stuff. So that people can avoid wasting time reinventing the wheel every time they need to fix a small part.

It is not complicated nor a big demand. Companies making devices should have an obligation to put their parts used for building the devices in the open market. There also should be allowed competition on the supply of compatible parts depending on what are the user's priorities. This is something we already do for cars. But Im sure you rethread your tire by hand (equivalent to the battery), and you glue black together by hand all the broken rear-view mirrors. This is nonsense, it is unbelievable how terrible your take actually is.

There's no reason to get so one sided about this subject and no reason to attack each other over it.

Some people are going to accept modular replacement parts and others will advocate for repairing the part.

Apple's approach and the approach of Louis Rossman are completely different and both have their own merits.

Like I mentioned in another comment this Right to Repair article is marketing from Apple and doesn't warrant any name calling and disapproving language being thrown back and forth.

In fact I watched that video 3 months ago when it first came out because I follow the movement quite closely.

The machine creator claims that "it is economically superior to just replacing the display" but those are just random claims anyone can make. Especially when only a couple copies of that machine actually exist right now.

> Nope, it’s just not repairing. Call it right to swap modules at home and you will have correctly named movement.

Look, your argument about repair being economically infeasible has at least some level of merit. But your argument about "replacing a part is not actually repair" shows a complete misunderstanding of English.

Just look at any dictionary:

- Merriam-Webster: "to restore by replacing a part or putting together what is torn or broken"

- WordsAPI: "the act of putting something in working order again"

- Google: "the action of fixing or mending something" (fix is defined as "a measure taken to resolve a problem or correct a mistake")

- Cambridge Dictionary: "to put something that is damaged, broken, or not working correctly, back into good condition or make it work again"

- Dictionary.com: "to restore to a good or sound condition after decay or damage"

Part replacement IS repair in ALL of these definitions because part replacement "restores the machine to working condition".

That's nonsense. There are many parts that often end up in a state where they are effectively unrepairable. And even if they were, it more often than not makes no sense to repair them manually when they are machines that churn dozens of them per second for unbelievably cheap. You just need access to them. How would you repair a fried IC on a mobo if you don't have access to the said? You plan on doing atomic level repair on a 10c parts? If you get a speaker assembly, destroyed by water, pressure or whatever: do you swap the 30c, 20mm part with a new one or spend hours disassembling the thing by hand?

Once I spent hours repairing a touch ID button. I had to micro solder the encryption chip with fly wire (finer than a hair) from the old broken button to the new one. All this is essentially because Apple is incompetent enough to design stuff in a better way and wants to prevent people doing it. All this so they can sell a new phone because the price they are going to quote for this repair will make no sense to the user. I want to say there surely are better ways than this, but it is an understatement. You can say whatever you want but this needs fixing, and it does not happen without strong political support and new laws...

The way companies can prevent people getting their stuff fixed cheaper because of artificial limitation is ridiculous. And Apple is leading the way with this.

That's a really good point. Most Logic Board replacements on the 2017 Mac's and beyond required pairing to Apple's repair system and "calibration" of the new Logic Board including other tests like MRI. If calibration fails, which it often did, then the Mac won't even boot to a system, it's simply stuck in a EFI mode and you would have to DOA the part.

I wish they actually sold parts, and not assemblies.

My fiance has an original 13" M1 MBP. She spilled a drink, and about 1/3 of the keyboard is non-functional. To replace the keyboard (which has to be a ~$100 part), Apple Service says they need to replace the entire laptop shell. I think they wanted roughly $800, or nearly the price of a used MBP of the same specs.

Apple does do keyboard only repairs; but Apple has a policy that they never do partial repairs. Your laptop is sent back as it came, or fully repaired.

I’m not saying it’s right, but drinks trigger small indicators inside the chassis warning the technician that the board may have taken liquid damage. From Apple’s perspective, even if the board appears to be still functioning; it cannot be warrantied and should not be considered reliable (to them, it’s as good as broken).

On Apple’s scale, I do somewhat get it. You don’t want to give someone back a “repaired” laptop that burns out later from latent damage. But it’s still… expensive and overly cautious.

Edit: I guess it’s somewhat a matter of perspective on what the repair is meant to accomplish. For you, it’s “I want a working keyboard.” For Apple, it’s “fix all potential consequences of water damage and make it safe to use again.”

Imagine if car repairs worked the same. Oh you damaged the front bumper on the curb? Sorry we're gonna have to do a full engine replacement as the chassis might have flexed and cracked the engine block despite it running perfectly fine.

It's frankly ridiculous what people consider acceptable behavior from apple.

Cars are going in the same direction.

One Rivian had a fender bender that cost $41K to fix: https://www.thedrive.com/news/rivian-r1t-fender-bender-turns...

Tesla is making their cars with huge single castings and structural batteries, making any repair to those components prohibitively expensive.

Explanation of the post above:

MBP = Mac Book Pro

This is a design flaw of all macbooks at the moment. Basically the keyboard is riveted into the top case and the battery is stuck to that as well. That means they have to pretty much transplant the logic board and the screen into another shell and stick a new battery in it as well.

This is the very definition of a shit show.

I have a 14" M1 MBP which I am selling next month as I have already switched to a ThinkPad T14 gen 3 running Windows 11. This is the keyboard replacement process for that: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Lenovo+ThinkPad+T14+Gen+3+Keybo...

It’s design for manufacturing, not design for repair. There are tradeoffs everywhere in hardware design. I’m guessing that by building the MacBook this way they greatly increase the rigidity of the keyboard. If instead they had made the keyboard a separate module in order to facilitate easy replacement then it’d either be way less rigid or it would need an additional backing plate which would increase the overall thickness of the computer.

The models that were redesigned for M series CPUs actually do not have riveted in keyboards. The 13” M1 MPB is like that only because its design is a holdover from the Intel era.

Here’s a video of the KB being replaced on an 2021 16” model. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sd1cwO5Y5RY

Replacement keyboards can be had for $30 according to Google, though I don’t know if that’s an official part or not.

Have you tried looking at the service manual? The only replaceable FRU is the top cover with keyboard and battery assembly. Nope.

$30 - but not much fun getting it out...

Still, it's an improvement over the previous gen and hopefully indicative of a trend.

For some it's also worth the trade of not having to daily drive Windows. It is for me, and I say that also owning a ThinkPad. There's also Linux of course which I find good for "single purpose" machines (e.g. a "study pod" laptop), but making it my primary OS would take a number of changes that I'm not likely to get short of developing my own custom tailored DE.

Sad thing is, Apple used to make keyboards that were even easier to replace than Thinkpad ones:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/PowerBook+G3+Pismo+Keyboard+Rep...

It’s not sad that Apple keyboards are much, much higher quality now than they were in the Powerbook G3 days.

Tangentially, I don't have an iPhone 15 but I am optimistic based on what I've read at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210512

> About 80% Limit with iPhone 15 models

> With iPhone 15 models, you can choose between Optimized Battery Charging, 80% Limit, and None.

> When you choose 80% Limit, your iPhone will charge up to about 80 percent and then stop charging. If the battery charge level gets down to 75 percent, charging will resume until your battery charge level reaches about 80 percent again.

> With 80% Limit enabled, your iPhone will occasionally charge to 100 percent to maintain accurate battery state-of-charge estimates.

Does anyone here have any insight into why this is limited to the newest iPhones? Is it an actual hardware upgrade? Do you recommend this 80% option to preserve battery life as in will this help my battery last a few more years?

Thank you in advance. Disclaimer: I only have an iPhone SE 2020 so I can't try it out just yet. I hope the next iPhone SE 2024 or 2025 will have this 80% limit option as well.

No one has come up with a good theory so far. There’s a small chance there’s a change in the battery charging circuits, but it could just as easily be a simple segmentation decision.

I think you’re right that it’s purely a life preserving thing. Filling up a battery to 80% is better for it than 100%. So if people are willing to make that choice they may be able to use the battery a little longer as they’re not stressing it as much.

My macbook air does this as well. This isn't limited to newer phones. I checked mine, I have an iPhone 12, and this option is in there. According to the support page it's available on iOS 13+.

No, you only have "Optimised Charging" on your older phone. As described in the article parent linked to, 'Optimised Charing' aims to charge your phone to 80% overnight, and then ~1 hour before you wake up, fully charge it.

The iPhone 15 has an additional option that caps the charge to 80%. It never does that final top up before you wake up.

> With iPhone 15 models, to choose between Optimized Battery Charging, 80% Limit, and None, go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging > Charging Optimization and choose an option.

> make parts, tools and documentation needed to repair its products available to independent repair shops and consumers nationwide, at fair and reasonable prices, the White House said.

It sounds like they are going to apply the new California law nationwide.

They might like to but Congress doesn't seem like it'd get behind that push. Luckily for many initiatives like this CA is large enough requiring it for their market means it largely applies to the rest of the states by default.

Bit weird this announcement coming via the White House... I mean, it's like they strongarmed Apple into accepting it?

Why would it be weird?

  National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard made the announcement in remarks prepared for a White House event later Tuesday focused on the so-called "right to repair," calling on Congress to pass legislation requiring such action across the country.

Because it's their prerogative to support an agenda, work to pass laws and enforce them, not to strong arm private companies into obedience with threats of retaliatory regulation.

These are essentially synonyms:

> pass laws and enforce them

> strong arm private companies into obedience with threats of retaliatory regulation

Companies are also entities subject to laws, and enforcement of laws against companies absolutely involves strong-arming them.

They're similar, but the later skips over the former. That's the problem. Right to repair isn't passed yet, the fact that this was released from the White House signals extralegal shenanigans that both I and the parent commenter take a dim view of.

If that signals “extralegal shenanigans” you can just make the same claim with anything… so it’s not a very valuable signal.

> Companies are also entities subject to laws, and enforcement of laws against companies absolutely involves strong-arming them.

I'm sorry, what? Citizens vote for politicians that support their view/positions, or what they think is best for the country. Companies are subject to these laws because it is, at some level, the will of the people. Companies are not strong-armed, they simply are not above the law or the will of the people. If we could get corporate money out of politics we'd probably see a lot of companies being held responsible for shitty decisions. If anything large companies strong-arm our government and political system in the USA and abroad. It takes an inordinate amount of vocal opposition and work from citizens to hold companies responsible for their behavior.

None of our bought/sponsored politicians want to create laws enshrining right-to-repair and availability/access to repair and activation tools. This is political theater, in coordination with a large company. "Look we're doing right to repair, you don't need to fight for laws/rights. We're already doing that. Ignore the activation locks, pricing, and availability. Look over here, have an Ikea manual for disassembling your phone and changing the battery. Ignore that part about calling us to ask us nicely to activate your battery."

With what strings attached? With or without schematics? ALL parts or just what Apple wants to make available?

The units they supply are above the schematic board level repair afaik. Don't know if the iPhone schematics have leaked but the Macbook ones are pretty wide spread. The big issue one the iPhone repairs is you have to buy new parts from Apple instead of being able to harvest broken phones for parts.

> With what strings attached?

My guess - calibration. Parts will require to be calibrated using proprietary Apple software. “Oh! We see you replaced your battery. Please connect your device to a Mac and launch calibration app to make your battery operational”, or something like that.

In Apple parlance parts are modules. Phone consists of 4 parts: case, battery, display module, logic board. Laptop is 3: case with integrated keyboard and logic board, battery, display.

"nationwide" oh boy, how exciting for their customers in the 191 other countries

Considering this is about a report by the United States Whitehouse, of course it's going to talk only in context of the United States.

I'll believe it when I can buy an Apple OEM camera or screen on Mouser Electronics.

Meanwhile, I went to an Apple Store to try to repair the button on my 4-yo iPad and the only comment from the Apple “Genius” was “your iPad is too old, get a new one”.

Did they change their policy on not making chips not available for purchase from manufacturers?

Apple generally doesn’t sanction component level repairs so unlikely. My guess is they would be willing to provide assemblies, eg LCDs, batteries, logic boards, etc. and instructions to replace with access to services to enable parts after install. The broken parts get sent to apple for recycling for a refund. eg the replacement battery costs $60 from apple and you get $20 back when you send them the dead battery. At least that’s how it works under the current self service program they have.

Repair shops that have the ability to find the short in your iPhone logic board, rebuild traces and replace a destroyed lightning connector, reball a chip, etc will still have to operate without apples/samsungs/etc explicit consent as always. But if you want a chance of saving your data you’ll need one of these shops. But also maybe back up your data before your phone/laptop/pc/console gets wrecked tbf

Component level repair will always be, in my opinion, a pipe dream.

If you do it for electronics, it can quickly become absurd for other industries. So I have the right to buy just the laser crystal for my car’s CD player? Or just one layer of palladium mesh for inside my catalytic converter?

I don’t see it ever happening.

Next problem: BigTech's transformation to storage and compute subscriptions.

I wonder if those parts will require calibration which will require apple's permission.

*only under contract, NDA, and agreements to only do what apple wants.

Apple didn't stop being a mega capitalist corp overnight. Devices must be forced to separate their components, the same as an anti-trust breakup.

They're saying this again huh? Boy who cried wolf, meet apple who cried repairable. Nobody should care about what apple says on this, wait for third party repair ships to verify that repair parts have become obtainable and repair has actually become more viable.

You are not the only skeptical person here.

I said "Yeah, but at what price?"

Right. Apple hasn't even made an announcement yet. This is just an announcement of a future announcement. Not an real world event.

I have a MacBook Pro 2017 model. They stopped supporting new updated. Which still can handle. I don't know how many people will stop using this product and buying new one for this decision.

> I have a MacBook Pro 2017 model. They stopped supporting new updated.

That’s only partially true. It won’t get major OS updates, but it runs Ventura which will continue to receive security updates. Apple seems to be on a 3 year support cycle for major OS releases, so the 2017 machine will probably be supported through Q3 2025.

8 years of software support seems reasonable.? Or you can switch it over to Linux or Windows.

My personal theory is that Apple is nervous about how stable their supply chain in China is going to be in the next few years, so they are allowing for more repairable products to ease customers from freaking out about the lack of new product availability.

I don’t follow. Wouldn’t supplychain be equally a problem for third party repair vs apple insisting they do it in house?

Nah, this is definitely to comply with some regulations in some of their markets. They'll market it as a wonderful thing, but they will sell assemblies, not parts, and at high prices that disincentivize repair

You’re right they’re scared about China.

But I don’t think it has anything to do with this decision.

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