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Comment by nstart | Hacker News Reader

I wish someone could ask Apple about the middle ground. You want to protect consumers? Fine. Alert customers to the use of non official parts but don’t brick any functionality then.

I want Apple to tell me when that shop that promises original parts is actually giving me an original which I can track.

I don’t want them stopping me from using it unless it’s genuinely incompatible at a firmware level.

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The ability to trivially override serialization would completely rule out the possibility of any sort of anti-theft provision. Phones would be stolen and stripped and sold as parts.

Lest anyone forget, these features were legally mandated over the objections of hardware vendors, and they do have a pretty strong effect on theft rates, theft rates dropped by as much as 38% almost immediately after passing.

https://transition.fcc.gov/cgb/events/Lookout-phone-theft-in...

https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/1...

I think what would happen is people would get their phone repaired by the sketchy corner store guy, ignore the warning (which would presumably only pop up after they'd gotten the non-approved part installed) and then some time later when their photos/emails/bank balance was accessed they'd go back to Apple to demand an explanation.

And Apple should tell them, that they have sketchy part. Just like Nokia did when I brought them second-hand Symbian phone to fix 15 years ago.

I paid for the repair & learned to be more careful. Nobody died.

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