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Comment by buildbot | Hacker News Reader

A massive reason why I, a consumer of Apple products, continue to consume them, new or used, is that I can trust that a repair will be genuine, be calibrated, and be as close to new as possible. After many years of Android phones that broke and needed repair or replacement, I got tired of shitty refurbed devices among other things. A used iPhone is way more likely to be mostly still an iPhone than a used android phone.

I do think right to repair is important. I think companies should be forced to produce and sell repair parts. I don’t think we want to force 3rd party compatibility. It’s different with a car IMO - a non OEM suspension component better meet whatever specification, there is liability(maybe?) if that fails. A cheap screen with 80% sRGB just looks bad, but won’t kill you. No manufacturer incentive to care about quality at all!

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I think the framework laptop is evidence enough that a device can be engineered to make such repairs easy. To such a degree that you wouldn't need to trust the shady repair shack as much, you could do most things yourself much easier (if you desire).

Cells phones are a little harder, but still doable. I think the low quality of Android has more to do with their typical price point, and just the strange culture around disposable low quality phones.

In fact, much of this existed with older Mac's - I had swapped out the memory, fans, battery, etc of my old Macbooks. Nothing prevented me from ensuring I was getting OEM equipment, but I also had the choice to get different hardware if I desired. Which in my case was important: memory that cost 1/4 the price, an SSD at 2x the performance, etc.

All that to say: I think we've already had a mix of user repairability (and/or) trustworthy parts for a long time. I think it worked well enough, and the move away from it screws people over (especially poorer folks).

> A used iPhone is way more likely to be mostly still an iPhone than a used android phone.

What you want here is a way for the owner of the device to tell if the parts are OEM. That doesn't require prohibiting non-OEM parts, just putting a menu in the system to show if any are present, which you can check when buying a used device.

You might even go so far as to put the name of the manufacturer in the menu, and then people might be fine with an iPhone replacement screen from Samsung but not one from Value To Be Filled In By Manufacturer, Inc. (This doesn't require any kind of technical registration system, just read the manufacturer name out of the device and display it; there are existing laws against trademark infringement.)

> A cheap screen with 80% sRGB just looks bad, but won’t kill you. No manufacturer incentive to care about quality at all!

Except that it looks bad, and they want someone to buy it.

Why not let the customer choose?

If you can afford it, you can take your phone to Apple and get guaranteed authentic parts.

But why can't everyone else just get cheap service from the small phone shop on the corner? How does it affect you if someone else decides they risk getting their phone fixed with unauthorized parts?

The counter argument would be "Why not let the customer choose?" As in, why not let the customer choose if they want to buy a Mac or a Framework laptop? Why do you need to take away a consumer's choice to buy a non-repairable device? For those consumers where repairability is important, there are options.

Because that's obviously a fake choice. Customers should be able to choose their preferred product AND choose where to have it serviced. Otherwise it's not really a meaningful choice.

3rd party part compatibility and pairing are different subjects.

Right now if you swap two iphone motherboards just bought from the apple store, none of the two resulting iphones work properly despite both only having genuine parts

I'm not understanding your point re: cars vs phones.

If we allow 3rd parties to produce parts for cars, why can't they make parts for phones where the stakes are much lower? Perhaps there's a market for low-end replacement parts for phones? There certainly is for car parts.

> A massive reason why I, a consumer of Apple products, continue to consume them, new or used, is that I can trust that a repair will be genuine

So then this changes nothing for you? Nothing in these laws prevents Apple from repairing your products.

I think their concern is that they would no longer purchase used Apple products because they couldn't know whether or not a used phone may have been repaired with worse-than-OEM parts.

I happen to think that's a pretty poor justification for scuttling/kneecapping right to repair, but I wouldn't go as far as to say it changes nothing for them.

So they purchase the used products from Apple?

The logic being that they can get cheaper iphone independently from apple because iphones currently work against having third party parts. The third party market for apple is stronger because of that guarantee.

It similar to how you can bring an iphone out more easily without worry of it being stolen for ransom since you can lock it down and wipe it remotely.

> is that I can trust that a repair will be genuine, be calibrated, and be as close to new as possible

Individuals (or third parties) right to repair does not impact you going directly to Apple for a genuine, calibrated repair.

In the case of parts pairing, we're not mandating compatibility with third-party parts, we're mandating compatibility with first-party parts. Parts pairing doesn't validate that you have a genuine part, it validates that the part in there is the one Apple says should be. The parts in an iPhone are effectively non-interchangeable, like we've gone back to 1765[0] or something.

As for third-party parts, the reason why the repair market is flooded with 80% sRGB garbo screens is because Apple took the good screens off the market. Sure, you can buy a screen assembly from their weirdly debranded parts store, but that's deliberately designed to force you to buy components you don't need. Remember, a screen assembly also means replacing the front cameras, Face ID sensors, etc. If you want to buy just the LCD or OLED and put it into an existing assembly, which is the only way any of this shit makes financial sense to repair, sorry, you're not allowed to buy just that.

The thing about manufacturer-branded repair services is that they're built like a McDonalds. Everything is designed so that they can hire the cheapest labor possible. That's why they have really expensive custom hotplates to remove iPhone glass, and why they'll charge you for a new Face ID sensor just because you need new screen glass. Component-level repair requires investing in your employees, which is the last thing Tim "Ship Jobs To 'Jaina" Cook would ever do.

The reason why people like Louis Rossmann were able to beat the Genius Bar on price was not because he was buying cheap parts. It's because he was buying genuine[1] parts produced by companies breaking their exclusivity agreements with Apple, and then investing money into his employees to do the skilled fix.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchangeable_parts#Origins_...

[1] Genuine in the sense of "meets Apple specifications", not in the sense of "Blessed by His Holiness, the iPope".

> Remember, a screen assembly also means replacing the front cameras, Face ID sensors, etc. If you want to buy just the LCD or OLED and put it into an existing assembly, which is the only way any of this shit makes financial sense to repair, sorry, you're not allowed to buy just that.

My MBA had a failure in the charging circuit. Battery was fine, laptop was fine on AC power. Apple said that because of all of the components they'd have to replace, it'd be nearly $900. For a perfectly functional laptop with a perfectly functional laptop that just could not have one chip tell it to allow current to pass through.

Cool story and then almost nobody will repair their phone because who will pay ~300$ for the screen of a two+ year old phone (Iphone 13 is 600$ new, screen repair is 270$ ...).

Or 700$+ when your ssd fail because you need to change the whole laptop motherboard.

You can enjoy your bulky and heavy laptop where every component is screwed separately while I enjoy a light compact laptop. Dont force it on rest of us.

Macbook Pro 13": 0.61 by 11.97 by 8.36 inches, 3.0 pounds

Framework 13": 0.62 by 11.7 by 9 inches, 2.9 pounds

It's actually lighter, but I suppose it is 0.01 inches thicker.

Well I wouldn't care if you were not forcing your trash on everyone when it fails and won't be repaired ...

And as for your argument I believe the Framework 13 has quite proved that things are not as binary as that and with Apple resources they definitively could do a better work ...

My Carbon X1 is screwed separately and somewhat modular and fits in bag every bit as well as any Apple laptop. I can swap out battery, ssd, fans, memory, and radios. I've swapped three of those items already and all it took was about 5 screws to get at them.

Honestly I don't even trust a used iPhone anymore. If it's not iCloud-locked, it might be SIM-locked. Had to jailbreak the last one I bought, never again.

But yeah I'd trust a used Android phone even less. They're basically garbage past the first owner, or maybe even before.

Vociferously disagree. Apple should use standardized components allowing OEM compatible repairs on both the hardware and OS levels.

This the opposite of what makes Apple better than competition. If it happens, Apple has to he the same screwed together common stuff.

The screen in an iPhone isn't fundamentally different than the screen in anything else -- it probably is the same screen as in some Android devices. To fit it has to have the right dimensions and the right connector, which third party manufacturers are quite capable of producing. It already has to be replaceable in order to be able to replace it with an Apple one that isn't broken, if you don't want a broken screen to mean your phone goes in the trash.

Oh god forbid that us special people should be using the same parts as those horrible common Android users!

That's what they want you to believe, but in fact besides some obvious exclusivities (like the chips) most of the parts are just the same stuff as any other premium phone. And when it comes to displays, considering Samsung is their largest supplier it is silly to think Samsung cannot sell phones with displays just as good (they just make different choices for calibration and important specs).

The majority of the special sauce lies in the overall integration and the software. The reason Apple goes so hard against all this is because they have lost most of their special sauce; their competitors have caught up and even surpassed them on many points both for software and integration.

This is why they push a narrative of their stuff being made from unreproducible special sauce when it is clearly a logical impossibility, Apple itself having zero production capability of anything. You have to remember that current Apple is run by an operation man, that special "skill" is basically rationalizing supply chain and pushing suppliers to get whatever he wants at whatever specs they need for whatever price he wants.

That's basically the whole problem: this fool has his massive ego engaged in the company and he believes that he creates a lot of value with his "work" because in the ends it makes a lot of profit. And this is why he wants you to believe that the value lies in sourcing said parts. Not in actually making them, not even in specifying them and not even in the labor for replacing them. He would rather use the cheap slavery labor of china, more profit for him, no need to pay a living wage to peoples living in a free country.

If Apple were a company taking risks, investing large amounts of capital for manufacturing cutting edge stuff (preferably in the free world where they make most of their money...) they would have a leg to stand on. You could only get parts for Apple devices from themselves and it would make sense because they would be the only ones producing them and that would be it, anything else could be considered "fake" in some way.

But it is not the case, they buy parts from 3rd party suppliers that sell them to their specs and conditions; then they get another 3rd party to assemble them and finally they sell them making the vast majority of the profit in the chain. They already got their profit for the integration and design, they shouldn't be allowed to prevent suppliers to sell the parts they make for Apple in the open market at whatever price they want to. And then the consumer is free to choose, go back to Apple and its inflated profits for repairs or find another business who could provide the same service at lower cost while providing same quality for parts. Considering how bad Apple pays its employees the funniest thing is that the other business is more likely to pay a better wage to its worker while providing same or better service quality. At the very least a lot more of the value goes into labor than into Apple profits which in itself can only be better for everyone...

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