Apple fucked us on right to repair (again)

The article claims that Tim Cook said a certain thing<p>&quot;Tim Cook laid it out for his investors: when people can repair their devices, they don&#x27;t buy new ones. When people don&#x27;t buy new devices, Apple doesn&#x27;t sell them new devices&quot;<p>It also provides a link to a source... in which Tim Cook said something totally different<p>&quot;While macroeconomic challenges in some markets were a key contributor to this trend, we believe there are other factors broadly impacting our iPhone performance, including consumers adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies, US dollar strength-related price increases, and some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements&quot;<p>It seems to be a pretty big jump from &quot;one of the reasons we didn&#x27;t perform as well as possible this quarter is because of customers taking advantage of our reduced price battery replacement program&quot; which could impact their bottom line by just operating on thinner margins than normal battery replacements, to &quot;repairs are stopping people from buying new phones&quot;

Several years back, before Apple clamped down on this kind of commercial behavior, I made the mistake of taking my iPhone to a third-party repair firm for a screen replacement. They claimed to be “Apple-authorized,” but it’s unclear for what. The knockoff part they used to replace the screen was palpably awful-dim, purple-tinted, discolored around the edges, somehow flickering like a CRT, and a millimeter or two thicker than the real deal so that it stuck out from the body of the phone.<p>The guy said “it’s fine, it looks great, it’s working perfectly, there’s no problem with it.” Basically “a screen is a screen.” I suppose in some situations and some parts of the market that may be true, and I’m glad that part of the market is adequately served by commodity Android manufacturers. But part of the small premium I pay to Apple for my low-end model iPhone, I pay specifically to avoid having to look my repairman in the eye and attempt to divine his judgment and trustworthiness before he makes off with my money. Consistency and trust in the repair ecosystem is a feature, to me.<p>There’s a balance to be struck, sure, but I’d hate to think of somebody doing the equivalent “what, it’s fine!” type of repair to a safety- or life-critical device and claiming it’s just as good as new. Even if somebody were to track such repairers down and prosecute them after their repairs injure somebody, we’d be moving from a high-trust to a low-trust kind of environment in exactly the areas where I least want to have to worry about trust.<p>Anyway, as to phones, I’ve since been very happy to pay Apple the $4&#x2F;month to cover quality, authentic repairs should I damage my device—and I take them up on that coverage fairly often. $48&#x2F;year plus the $29 deductible per incident works out even cheaper for me than that unacceptably poor third-party repair cost me years ago.

Man this article sure does seem to claim some specific ill intent or malice from Apple.<p>I don&#x27;t really know why there&#x27;s so much focus on permitting scrapping of parts that are deemed unsalvageable. From Apple&#x27;s perspective there is no guarantee the parts are any good, or the cost of salvaging exceeds the benefit of just scrapping them for raw materials as is.<p>Frankly, the prices that Apple seems to be charging for common repairs seems quite reasonable nowadays. I&#x27;m not sure what the profit motive is at the prices they list. The new 15 series batteries can be replaced by Apple for $99... Which seems like a bargain for a first party battery that you know is going to be done properly.

I don&#x27;t understand some people here that are clapping apple for DRM their devices as kind of protection from thefts. There is a way to have a cookie and eat it too in this case if they would allow user easily to remove DRM via iCloud or even better when disconnecting from iCloud.<p>In the last 10 years I never had any electronics stolen from me but almost every smartphone got broken in some way: worn out USB&#x2F;lightning port, broken battery, broken screen, shattered glass, broken Face Id.<p>Imagine if we would apply the same scenario for human organ transplants. Let&#x27;s enforce (using similar logic) that after someone dies we throw such body straight to oven to burn it because there exist in the world illegal human organs trade - no even if you want to be an organ donor after your death you can&#x27;t because we want to remove incentive for illegal human organs trade! &#x2F;s

This is much more in-depth and interisting than the sweary title might lead you to believe.<p>The bit about ventilators in particular is tragic.

When you sell an old iPhone, the first thing you do is turn off the iCloud bound feature, so someone else can activate it.<p>There should be a method to do the same for parts.<p>ie: I broke my phone, it&#x27;s not functional at all. I should be able to sell it for parts. But I can&#x27;t. Because the parts are tied to a particular device ID?

I was unfamiliar with the practice of &quot;parts pairing&quot; in Apple devices, which it seems can even prevent you from cannibalizing functional parts from an old iPhone to replace damaged parts in your current device. Does Apple even have some kind of consumer friendly justification for this practice, or is it just unabashed fuckery?

Time was when a person could build and program their own computer using any parts they wanted. Tech types valued their ability to build, diagnose, repair, and optimize their own equipment.<p>From the responses here, I can only surmise that&#x27;s attitude is considered old fashioned now.<p>I lost interest in Apple product after going go through a Kafkian experience trying to use the standard serial port on the early iPod&#x2F;iPhone connectors. Was trying to build a prototype of a handheld compass app, using a magnetometer board we designed that plugged into the connector and drew power from the phone. Everything worked fine, except I couldn&#x27;t get the serial port software working in the phone app. Apple wouldn&#x27;t let me use the serial port without a special MFI chip, requiring me to fill out tons of financial paperwork (Dun and Broadstreet etc), business plans, sales estimates, target markets, etc. They were not interested in helping me out at all.<p>Not sure why Apple decided that serial ports were off limits. This is about the oldest comm technology out there. <i>sigh</i><p>Anyhow, I read that hobbyists were working around the limitations by using the microphone port as a modem. Basically modulate the serial data, send as a waveform into microphone port, then demodulate the audio stream in software. Clever.<p>So I went and built this. Only to find that Apple had recently decided to close the &quot;audio hole&quot;, forcing me to use an MFI chip to get access to the microphone port.<p>The more I dug, the more I found everything locked down. I realized Apple didn&#x27;t want me actually using any of the standard interfaces I&#x27;d come accustomed to using in my decades long career in tech. Beautiful phone, I just couldn&#x27;t use it outside of the curated experience. Not without their permission (read: tax).<p>It was the most anti-consumer piece of electronics I&#x27;d ever enountered. I&#x27;m assuming it&#x27;s much much worse now.<p>If Apple dared, they&#x27;d consider locking down WiFi access as well. I&#x27;m sure they&#x27;ve toyed with the idea of forcing all WiFi router manufacturers to purchase an MFI chip to interoperate with Apple product.<p>What the kids here seem to want is a curated experience, and they&#x27;re willing to pay $$$ every month for a device they can&#x27;t open, repair, modify, etc.<p>Good luck to you and your leased phone experience, you only compute at Apple&#x27;s pleasure. I fear for the subsequent generations raised in a market where this exploitive behavior has become normalized.<p>&#x2F;old-timer-rant

&gt; There are so many tactics Apple gets to use to sabotage repair. For example, Apple engraves microscopic Apple logos on the subassemblies in its devices. This allows the company to enlist US Customs to seize and destroy refurbished parts that are harvested from dead phones by workers in the Pacific Rim:<p>Dead phones that were potentially stolen? A major reason I choose to buy iPhones is for their VIN-locking. I would rather my phone, if stolen, explode in the theif&#x27;s hand, than allow for any 3rd party repair, even a battery swap. I want as close to 100% of the phone components to be serialized.

R2R activists and open source activists have this insane view that giant corporations are making decisions for the <i>sole purpose</i> of thwarting their movement&#x27;s goals. These people just can&#x27;t see past their own agendas and have to portray every mundane decision about hardware and software design as specifically calibrated to inflict maximum harm to <i>them personally</i>. Like the engineers, managers, and executives at Apple literally have nothing else to do all day but contemplate how every decision they make harms R2R and open source advocacy.<p>These people are just exasperating.

Do google and samsung have similar practices (parts pairing, serialization)?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;Lxo6l_whDeE" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;Lxo6l_whDeE</a><p>So much for &quot;we need to do this for security!&quot; lol

They ship you 79 lb. Pelican case to do self service battery swap? And a technician needs to login to review your work!

Thanks Apple for pairing more and more components thus making my phone a less desirable target for thieves. One of the reasons I will keep buying iphone.