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Comment by bimguy | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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