Comment by Kirby64 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kirby64 | Hacker News Reader

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> Surely my damaged iphone mini 12 will be easily repaired at a reasonable price by the skilled technicians at the Genius Bar who have parts in stock and tool ready to go. It would be absolutely wild if their price for that service was based on the price of the latest iphone rather than the cost of parts and labor for the actual service. But certainly they wouldn;t be able to get away with that due to, as we agreed earlier, the thriving market for third party parts and repair.

Surely my damaged 4 year old car will be easily repaired at a reasonable price by a skilled mechanic at the car dealership who have parts in stock and tools ready to go. It would be absolutely wild if their price for that service was based on the price of the latest model year car. But certainly they wouldn’t be able to get away with that, thanks to the thriving third party mechanics.

Oh, except… yeah, these are the exact same thing pretty much. The only difference is cars have many more components and individually they cost less, whereas phones only have a handful of components and each cost a considerable portion of the phone cost.

Your specific complaint about the iPhone 12 mini seems extremely unfounded, as well. Their repair cost (which is totally turnkey) is $89. Seems extremely reasonable for a turnkey repair from a first party vendor. Surely, maybe you can buy a “new” 12 mini for $200… but this is just like cars. At some point it’s “mechanically totaled” and the repair cost doesn’t make sense. And that point changes for a car too, depending on if you use a dealership service department or a third party mechanic.

> Surely my damaged 4 year old car will be easily repaired at a reasonable price by a skilled mechanic at the car dealership who have parts in stock and tools ready to go. It would be absolutely wild if their price for that service was based on the price of the latest model year car. But certainly they wouldn’t be able to get away with that, thanks to the thriving third party mechanics.

Obviously the dealerships are typically more expensive but that is from marking up parts and labor not from trying to pressure you into buying a new car. If Ford had it the way Apple does brakes would be built in to the transmission, last for 60,000 miles, and be priced at $25,000 to repair.

My specific complaint about my 12 mini is that it needs a new frame, back glass, camera, and battery. $89 dollars is obviously unrealistic for those parts. And, like you say, phones have fewer parts that make up a larger portion of the total cost for the product. Unlike with a car, you can actually swap everything into a new frame pretty easily.

You need a new frame, a new back, a new camera, and a new battery, and you're confused why it would be outrageously priced to replace it? Basically the only things you aren't replacing are the mainboard, the speakers, and the display.

To continue stretching the car analogy, that's like saying you bring in a car to the dealership that only needs a new gas tank, new infotainment system, new bodywork and frame, and then you're outraged that they want to charge you $25k! Most of the car is damaged, you scrap it and some third party can salvage what's valuable and repair some other car.

You are wildly out of touch here.

The labor cost for replacing parts on a car isn't just another ballpark. It's another planet.

Obviously if you want to replace every part of the phone it is going to cost more altogether than a new phone. No reasonable person would argue that. And of course there are limits. The screen and mainboard are by far the most complex parts. The frame is trivial by comparison.

The problem is that there is effectively no real aftermarket for parts and repairs. Apple all but refuses to sell parts and makes using third party parts as onerous as possible.

They have been able to get away with it so far by riding the wave of quickly advancing mobile technology. But as next year's phone starts to look less and less different from last years phone, people are going to start to get serious about repairability and Apple is going to be forced to make some changes.

> The labor cost for replacing parts on a car isn't just another ballpark. It's another planet.

Then what’s your point? Labor costs on phones aren’t insignificant, and unless you want this done by people that make minimum wage (with minimum wage results, likely), it’s going to add substantially to the cost of a repair. Proportionally it will add a lot, too, since phones cost so little compared to cars.

> The problem is that there is effectively no real aftermarket for parts and repairs. Apple all but refuses to sell parts and makes using third party parts as onerous as possible.

Three points here:

1. Apple sells pretty much all of their own parts for phones up to 5 years old at this point. I don’t know how this is “refusing to sell parts”.

2. Many vendors (Samsung being notorious for this) don’t sell parts at all. Or if they do, it’s not many generations, and only specific models.

3. Third party parts for reasonable valuable (to the company making them) components do exist for most Apple devices. It might take a bit (a couple years) … but they definitely exist. Just check aliexpress some time. This is pretty much the same as cars; third party parts take awhile to come. Quality is variable, but that’s the case with any 3rd party part.

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