Cool that they are doing this but it's not out of their own kind heart.
People like to ascribe malice to Apple's history of making difficult-to-repair devices. I think that's wrong-headed. It's more appropriate to say that Apple had higher priorities such as miniaturization, performance, battery life, and ease of manufacture.
Now that the right to repair movement has been gaining steam and regulations are being drafted, Apple has been given the incentive to prioritize repairability. Thus they are responding to that incentive with the iPhone 16 (with its new battery adhesive), the repair kits, and the documentation they've provided. They likely also see the opportunity to get ahead of their competitors and tout repairability as a competitive advantage. I would not be surprised at all to see future models have even higher repairability scores with Apple aiming to become the market leader.
As for the serial numbering and activation of replacement parts: that also has a simple explanation that doesn't involve a nefarious lock-in plot. Witness the recent attacks in Lebanon. How were they carried out? By a supply-chain attack! This sort of capability represents more than a physical danger from explosives or chemical weapons, it's also a major cyber security and privacy threat. Supply-chain attacks via counterfeit, backdoored parts is a huge area of concern for Apple. The potential is there for the company to suffer severe reputational damage should a large-scale attack occur.
Meanwhile Steam chose to make the Steam Deck as reparable as possible then revised it to be even easier.
Both of these options exist, but Apple is one of the greediest companies in the world.
Apple could easily be even greedier if they'd wish, and get away with it. Even accounting for their intentional obstruction to repairs, I bet the active lifespan of the average iPhone and M-series Macbook are longer than the average Samsung flagship, and certainly comparable laptops.
I have no particular attachment to Apple, I currently use only one of their products. But they're just one among the grey cloud of awfulness, nothing special about them when it comes to greed.
Me personally, I've never gotten to the 3 year mark on a smartphone and remained happy with it before my current iPhone 12. They would break, or stop receiving updates or have abysmal battery life or become too slow - literally none of these are issues I'm facing. I'll probably keep this for another year before replacing it with the iPhone 17.
If you suppose, by wishful thinking, that no one could know the reputation of anyone else then you would have a chaotic and unpredictable society. You’d be unable to trust anyone to act fairly in even the most trivial circumstances. It would look like an unmoderated forum where everyone is anonymous and no one can pin anything on anyone else. Quite dystopian.
Nevertheless, it should be possible to set higher standards for corporate communication than for individuals. I am thinking about this more in terms of markets and information asymmetry than personal liberties. I think it is fine when corporations are required to publish what they are doing. There is room to improve how mandatory disclaimers work and for what they are required.
1. "Hey what do you think of the new Apple iPhone 16?"
"It sounds interesting, I heard they made it easier to repair."
2. "Hey what do you think of the new Apple iPhone 16?"
"What is an Apple iPhone? I have never heard of such a thing!"
Clearly this is a rather extreme example, but I hope it illustrates what I am talking about. Branding, for Apple, involves putting their logo everywhere they can and advertising on TV, in magazines, on billboards, etc. If you disallow all of those things then it becomes much more reasonable to imagine a world in which scenario 2 is possible.
So maybe we don't want to go that far. But then where do we draw the line? Is it okay for Apple to put their logo on their stores? Is it okay for them to advertise a new iPhone on TV or in magazines? Or not? Or do you take a finer-grained approach and allow some kinds of ads but not others? Must an ad be purely informational with no music or flashy graphics/video?
I'm honestly not even clear on what the goal is with such a regime. How do you know when the law is working as intended or when it is failing to do so? Apple has succeeded in marketing themselves as an iconic fashion brand (right up there with LVMH, a European brand). Do you think such fashion brands should cease to exist? Why or why not?
What I am suggesting is to keep the markets and let corporations follow incentives to make the best products, while trying to limit these meta games. This thread shows an example where this is arguably already working. I am suggesting to do more of it, e.g. make corporations publish reports of how they are actually doing in that regard, maybe even as a sort of disclaimer next to their own branding efforts.
I just want our rules to be a little stricter when it comes to false advertising and fraud. Why should a corporation be allowed to say: "We care for communities in America." This is not true. They care for shareholder value. There should be a disclaimer like: "We care for our community. We have no independent proof to back that up. Our main objective as a for-profit is to maximize profits. We are making XX $ / year and have in the past moved our production facilities to the cheapest location."
I am exaggerating here and am not providing a finished solution, just trying to illustrate what I mean.
> But then where do we draw the line?
That is in fact tricky, but I think our society as whole should move a little closer to facts.
> Apple had higher priorities such as miniaturization, performance, battery life, and ease of manufacture.
You forgot profit at the head of that list!
They’re trying.
https://www.apple.com/environment/
> By focusing on recycled and renewable materials, clean electricity, and low-carbon shipping, we’re working to bring our net emissions to zero across our entire carbon footprint.
I agree that repairability is another avenue to help with eco-friendliness, but I also see the argument on some decisions (not all) that make Apple devices less attractive to theft if they can’t be used for parts. That bit is also partially consumer facing.
I don’t want to defend Apple too much, there’s a lot I dislike about Tim Cook’s tenure. But they deserve some credit (or at least moral incentive) for attempting an environmentally friendly future. The fact they’re being vocal about it means we can call them out when they do wrong too.
Microsoft, in comparison, blew its environmental goals with AI and just said “fuck it”. They pledged in 2020 to be carbon negative by 2030, and by 2024 they’re emitting 30% more than when they made the pledge. That shows how much their promises are worth: less than nothing.
We can judge them all we like for any reason we like. We just can’t expect a corporation to change its behaviour until it is incentivized to do so. Whether that’s through market forces or regulation, it does not matter. It’s all about incentives and disincentives.
I’m glad you brought up eco-friendly companies. Many people think this is an example of businesses behaving morally. It is not. Advertising your own morality is not a moral act. Eco-friendliness is just a marketing strategy aimed at eco-conscious consumers.
As for Apple’s lobbying efforts: they were a response to an incentive. We can’t expect the response from a corporation to always be exactly what we want. We should expect them to follow the path of least resistance. Apple likely calculated that it would be cheaper to lobby against and attempt to delay the regulation rather re-tool immediately. Perhaps they were even carrying out the R&D that enabled the iPhone 16’s repair scores at that time, and it wasn’t ready at the time.
That’s almost certain. These things are not designed overnight.
[0]: https://www.ifixit.com/News/14279/apples-diabolical-plan-to-...
What Apple does not care about is power users who want to crack open their devices and void the warranty. Those users can go out of their way to buy security screwdrivers. Apple has always done this, going at least as far back as the original Macintosh.
Exclusivity is a big part of that. They want to keep things in house to make sure that their devices are seen as "the best". If you can buy a used iPhone and get it repaired for cheap, that means that people of lower income can have these devices, which decreases their standing. Preventing this is a well known marketing strategy with luxury items, from watches, to cars, to clothes. That is why they have serial numbers/activation, not because of supply chain attacks, which are not an issue for any developed country due to mechanisms in place.
2024. The year of Linux on the desktop.
I guess that most of these are to "people of lower income". I have purchased devices there for my children.
Haha, can't wait for "Repairability. That's iPhone" ads. I won't even be mad when it happens. Go for it Tim!
Best part is that when their devices are repairable, they'll turn their lobbying might towards supporting repairability legislation. That way they ensure they're not paying a cost in terms of manufacturing ease, or thickness that their competitors aren't. Again, fine by me. As long as all our devices become repairable over time, that's a win for all of us.
Nobody really complains about parts having to be changed completely because they are too minuterized: that's the price of having a tiny form factor, we get that. But it's all the BS around it, which often was shown to work just fine in the past, that irks many about Apple's practices.
Find a legitimate argument like security, abuse it to make everything unrepairable and glued together, so that when people ask it's all about keeping their phone safe. Couldn't do otherwise.
That's also why they are supposedly pushing for the right to repair, and in the same time lobbies politicians to keep the current status quo.
You'll have right to repair, in an extremely convoluted way and not cheaper. And you'll be happy about that !
In a relationship it would be considered an abusive partner, manipulative and lier. I just don't get why people defend it.
Because these are soft batteries, unlike the previous generation batteries? Like, again, there are way more thought going into stuff like this than “I hate the Earth”.
There's a lot of criticism against Apple for not doing things in the right order. Repairability is one of them. Would it have been better for their devices to be easier to repair from the original iPhone? Sure. Would it have been better for you, me, or Apple to focus on repairability above all else? Absolutely not.
In the meantime, Apple have built a device service model that looks like this for the average consumer:
Having a high degree of confidence that the product will be serviceable with OEM parts, which do not impact the resale value by causing buyer confusion, guarantees of these replacement parts working, having these parts available for years and years, and that the company is not going to disappear, through a network of nearby first and third party repair shops, at a transparent and reasonable price.
Like most criticism of Apple, there is a concentrated yelling at one particular tree, while missing the forest around. It can be valid criticism and missing the bigger picture at the same time.
Sure we got some more pixels out of cameras but that's not much when you've got to throw them away after X years.
Why? They almost certainly would have spent extra money on R&D and seen lower sales (due to sacrificing performance, battery life, durability, water resistance, etc) as a result. What would have been the incentive for them to do so?
But also I mean I think you're confused about the purpose of these rules. While certain EU rules are protectionist, these ones aren't; the purpose of forcing manufacturers to make things repairable isn't to promote European manufacturers over foreign ones, it's to protect the consumer.
I think it's some people from the outside (i.e. the US) who are absolutely anti-government but pro corporations-as-a-government which can't see that a for-profit company is like a wheel: it needs a stick for it to go straight.
A lot of people seem to have been genuinely surprised that these things didn't just happen by magic, they happened due to EU regulation.
Also a great example of why you can't have a single and very important choice being put to the public without said public being used to participate to the government's choices.
I believe Brexit as a question, if ever, should have been asked after at least 3/4 other new referendums on different topics and seeing how the public responded.
(to note: the UK had, so far, only 3 nationwide referendums with Brexit being one of the.)
Of course they'd rather sell you the same thing every year without any R&D expenses, if they could. Anyone would. Pointing this out isn't really saying anything
The difference here is for-profit and for-profit at all costs.