This is such a bad article, I half suspect it's astroturfing and food intended for Apple apologists. It's focused on a single small part of the problem and unnecessarily misrepresented it.
As a reminder of the broader picture: Apple has a strong anti-repair stance, they have lobbied for this [1], have engaged in broad, deceptive strategies to remove 3rd party repair options, by confiscating legally refurbished hardware under the guise of "counterfeits" [2], attempting to confiscate grey market parts under the guise of "trademark violation" and threatening the 3rd party repair shops [3]. They profit from this continued attack by deceiving customers into expensive unnecessary part replacements, suggesting repair is not possible and generally coercing customers into buying new products instead [4].
Personally, I've replaced many components on iPhones through the ages. Often the replacement parts I've ordered have been sub-standard and that was the risk I've accepted as I was purchasing from unknown sellers. Sometimes the parts have been on par with the original components and I've been very pleased with my purchase.
The right to repair should be protected. When I am no longer able to fix my own purchases then I no longer feel I own the device.
This is especially true given Apple present themselves as an environmentally conscious brand. Often people don't have the opportunity to get parts replaced by Apple directly, or they don't have the means. Ensuring there are options for everyone promotes reuse and recycling. Additionally it limits the extent that a given company can build in planned obsolescence.
However. My opinion is that in purchasing a second hand device I want to know which components are from the OEM. This is especially important for components that are not easily validated, i.e. the battery. I can then take the risk of price vs quality at face value.
I get the impression here that people are very vocal about one side or the other, but I feel there is a balance to be made.
A lot of Apple defenders have the perspective that Apple isn't selling you a thing (i.e. an object), it's selling you an experience (a fashion object, a lifestyle brand). From this perspective, if Apple doesn't aggressively attack people who don't align with the brand values, they damage the brand.
People who want to economize on parts and labour damage the brand. They're poor people, or at least people not wealthy enough not to care about these things; they shouldn't be associated with the Apple brand. Apple does not aim at the bottom of the market.
People who want open hardware that they can poke at damage the brand. Apple sells an integrated, hassle-free experience. An open market is chaotic and uncontrolled, and antithetical to the brand promise.
> By activating a dormant software lock on their newest iPhones, Apple is effectively announcing a drastic new policy: only Apple batteries can go in iPhones, and only they can install them.
I really dislike the phrasing attached to this story.
It's not a lock: a third party installed battery still works, the phone isn't refusing to start up until you go to an Apple Store and have an authentic Apple(tm) battery installed. Rather, it's a warning in the "battery health" section basically saying "we don't know if your battery is any good, you might need to get it replaced".
That said, I'd prefer a clearer phrasing of their error message. It looks like it's just triggering the generic "your battery may need service" warning, which is more of a scare tactic than I'd like. "You don't have a certified Apple battery" would be completely sufficient.
Given the existence of refurbishment scams, where substandard parts are put into old phones to make them look good briefly, I can understand where Apple is coming from on this point. Someone who buys a second-hand iPhone and finds the battery dies after a month isn't going to be very happy with iPhones.
No. That's exactly what Apple are doing. Out of all the ways they could harm the consumer in this situation, that message is by far the most effective. Stop defending them. Stop giving them benefit of doubt. Stop misconstruing their malice for incompetence. Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they'll go to extreme lengths to harm consumers and prevent 3rd party repair.
That message destroys the consumer's trust in 3rd party repair shops. It says battery health issue. Are sure you put in a real Apple battery? Did you even change my battery at all?
Outright locking the battery out would cause backlash and possible legal action. This 'technically works but will nag you forever unless you pay Apple to run a program to clear the message that they refuse to share with 3rd parties' solution is genius. Evil genius.
Imagine the car equivalent of this situation. Imagine you take your BMW to a non-BMW-authorised repair shop and they swap your battery to a perfectly good one for 1/5th the price. But now you have a permanent warning light on your dashboard that there's something wrong with your battery. This situation is actually impossible. There are laws that require carmakers to release repair manuals to 3rd party repairers and honour warranty after 3rd party repairs. Tech companies are shitting on their users because equivalent laws don't exist for electronic goods.
>Rather, it's a warning in the "battery health" section basically saying "we don't know if your battery is any good, you might need to get it replaced".
That's not what the message is. It's really weird that everyone keeps getting this wrong given there's a screenshot of it in the iFixit post.
Considering the level of psychological analysis that goes into products like this and others, I would not be surprised to learn they have selected the phrase most likely to cause distress to the owner making them want to take the product to an authorised repair centre. It seems some US manufacturers are trying to make their products a service of sorts, when you look at what other companys are doing. John Deere springs to mind with farmers.
> Given the existence of refurbishment scams, where substandard parts are put into old phones to make them look good briefly, I can understand where Apple is coming from on this point.
Last I checked apple did not make parts available to third party repairers, at least without signing on to some draconian anti-consumer agreements. If they were really interested in protecting consumers from counterfeits then they'd be doing more to make genuine apple parts available and doing less to limit third party repairs.
>"You don't have a certified Apple battery" would be completely sufficient.
The whole point is more towards the fact that it actually means:
"We don't know (or don't care) if you have a certified Apple battery or a (crappy) third part one, all we know is that it has been changed by non-Apple-Authorized personnel, so we are giving you this warning message as a lesson"
> Remember that old iPhones are frequently resold. You're going to want to know if it has OEM parts.
I think this is lost on the HN audience. There's a lot of people out there being scammed by counterfeit parts, recycled parts, shoddy repair jobs, and straight up cobbled together FrankenPhones. Not to mention the danger in using lithium batteries from unknown provenance.
>You're going to want to know if it has OEM parts.
But the message is triggered even if you insert an Apple part. So you would want to know if the phone was blessed by an apple genius when you buy/sell ? It's surprising the lengths people go through to defend these asinine decisions. I don't even care about Apple, but the problem is that everyone will follow suit since the rest of the industry lacks any sort of vision/spine.
> Remember that old iPhones are frequently resold. You're going to want to know if it has OEM parts.
That's something they could display without disabling the entire battery monitoring screen though. They could do that for every single part of the phone but instead they remove functionality if you don't do things the apple approved way. If I open two identical iPhones and swap their batteries there shouldn't be any degradation in the phone but Apple has decided there should be and that I can't see the battery info any more under any circumstances unless I go through them.
It's not an excuse for Apples policy to fight "the right to repair" etc. but it's less worse than I thought.
Of course if you own new Apple products you are completely screwed when in need of repairs and no store is in sight.
That's why I still like to use the MBP from 2012 (the one with all the great ports that can be repaired still).
They've done a really shitty job in the development of their devices and lost a lot of pro-users like me who won't buy the new series of devices anymore.
When they don't act on this they'll lose a fair amount of customers completely, once their cool old devices aren't usable anymore. It's their decision while governments are too afraid to do the right thing and force all companies to allow people to repair and use resources efficiently.
It should be mandatory in a world that counts it's remaining days because their ancestors just burned through the resources we have without thinking about consequences.
But we'll see if there are enough smart people who are powerful enough to fight this crap. Mother Earth won't care if we'll be here in some centuries and it will recover without us.
it doesn't display a message that it's not a genuine apple part though, it displays a message that the battery might need be servicing, even though there is no technical indication that the battery needs servicing. it's a deceptive message.
You are wrong. The message doesn't read anything like that. It says that the battery needs replacement and they explain it like this:
> "When a battery gets closer to the end of its lifespan, the amount of charge and the ability to provide power reduces. As a result, a battery may need to be charged more and more frequently and your iPhone might experience unexpected shutdowns."
This is dishonest. Because you put in a battery from a third party, you are making the user believe that it is near the end of its lifespan. I know the language says "may" but then most users are not language lawyers. Any layman is gonna read this as: Oh shit, my battery is almost completely degraded... I need to replace this.
A better thing to do would be to say "This battery is not a genuine battery installed by an authorized technician and may not perform as well"
(1) They deliberately design new proprietary adapters, eschewing already popular and capable standards, in new devices - to sell you more shit
(2) They remove support for existing standards (e.g. headphone jacks) - to sell you more shit
(3) They file lawsuits against third-party repair providers who do a demonstrably better job than first-party repairs - to sell you more shit
(4) They add software checks which attempts to subvert the same third-party repair providers after their lawsuits fail - to sell you more shit
Apple consistently, at every step, serves their bottom line ahead of your interests. Quit letting tribalism blind you, Apple users - this behavior is unacceptable.
> They deliberately design new proprietary adapters, eschewing already popular and capable standards, in new devices
They have one proprietary connector across all of their products that they sell, and that’s Lightning. Lightning is seven years old, was launched at a time when the alternative would be the god-awful microUSB connector, and all rumours point towards it being phased out completely for USB-C in the next couple of years.
So Apple's take is probably: A bunch of people get mad when their iPhones stop working, start running slow, etc; research data shows that when they need a battery replaced, they're more likely to go to the local third party (non-authorized) repair shop and get it replaced. We have no idea how skilled or unskilled these repair shops are, even if they use genuine Apple batteries. Our best bet for maintaining the reputation of our product is to make sure only Genius bar or AASP staff install the batteries and run the necessary diagnostics post-install.
I don't agree that they should be doing the battery authentication thing, replacing your battery is pretty easy and simple; but you have to look at this from Apple's standpoint:
Yes, Louis Rossmann runs a repair shop that is better than the Genius bar in every way and, should he join Apple, all of their repairability issues would disappear overnight. The issue is that many (most likely a majority) of local computer repair shops that get asked "can you fix this battery error on my iPhone" aren't on par with Louis Rossmann and will make mistakes such as improper installation, not re-sealing the phone for water resistance, using non-genuine batteries, etc. Apple could, by all means, make the process easier, cheaper, and more idiot-proof, but that would require engineering efforts. The best course of action, both for making money from repairs and not losing money to engineering and possible product changes ("don't sacrifice form for function", at least under Jony Ive), is to get the software to verify that Apple had complete control over the replacement battery from factory to phone.
We already went through all of this with cars and car mechanics. The only difference with electronics is that people have been convinced that their smartphone, laptop and electronics in general are somehow arcane magic. Nowadays, car manufacturers also seem keen to jump on this bandwagon, since it would also benefit their bottom line to keep third party mechanics from touching their cars.
Fact is, if Apple can fix their devices, then so can a third party without much problem, it's not that hard and most of it doesn't really take any skilled labor. Apple would be better served by releasing repair manuals and selling parts (like car manufacturers have been doing) if they're afraid of having their reputation ruined by third party repairmen. That, of course, is not their concern, a third party repairman ruining someone iPhone in no way affects Apple's reputation, and it's better for Apple's business since it helps their propaganda efforts against third-party repair. Apple and other electronics manufacturers of course are not going to spend any effort supporting third-party repair until they're forced to by legislation.
For what it's worth, I think the right to repair side needs to do a better job of delivering their message. While focusing dispelling the notion that electronics repair is hard is pretty important to undo decades of propaganda on the matter, currently the environment is the hot button issue, and throwing away repairable objects isn't all that great, particularly if it's an easy fix like changing a battery. Repair needs to be included explicitly into the 3 R's somehow, either by making it into 4 R's (Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Recycle, for example) or by including Repair into the umbrella of Reduce.
I see the reason why Apple would find limiting third parties useful, but:
> Apple could, by all means, make the process easier, cheaper, and more idiot-proof, but that would require engineering efforts.
This is a bit silly. Not only are they already spending lots of money on (purposefully) engineering in repair-hostile way, they also have very high markup on their hardware. Let's not feel bad for poor Apple in this case.
I disagree with this sentiment. You mention Rossmann. Anyone that watches his channel knows that Apple purposefully makes things hard to repair. Things could be easier if they wanted them to be. But it's clear that Apple doesn't want devices repaired. See Rossmann talk about prices and how often the genius bar just suggests replacement.
As for third party repair, it isn't Apples fault if a third party repairs a phone incorrectly. What does this argument even mean? If your busy fixes your car wrong you don't sue the car manufacturer. If you go to a repair shop and they mess up you don't sue the manufacturer. So why would it be any different for phones or any electronic?
a few problems with your argument:
Apple technicians are often worse at repairing devices.
Apple policies are often the root cause of this, as they prevent technicians from doing reasonable repair work in order to justify replacing entire parts which do not actually need replacing in order to repair the issue.
The the problem is folks inexperienced with repairing devices like yourself have been convinced by apple that "many (most likely the majority) ... will make mistakes".
That's like saying every 3rd party auto repair shop should be shut down in favor of dealer mechanic shops. When in reality, the corporate greed policy based on making money - not repair electronics or cars - are often the driving decision makers in repair work. That is to say, they actually do worse work at authorized shops. A lack of competition tends to do that.
I have another, more simple theory: Money. They want the aftermarket service business to themselves for that reason first, and control over the quality of repairs secondary.
I’d like to second the take on water resistance/ waterproofing. I overheard someone at a pool yesterday who bought a used iPhone that died after getting in the water with it. He mentioned buying it used. From my experience the water resistance is a very thin line of sticky black stuff that is easy to mess up after opening an iPhone. Im assuming the better repair shops use sticker sheets of new seal whenever a phone is opened.
I'm done with Apple. How can a computer company knowingly ship a product with a keyboard that breaks within a few months for three whole generations?
Mine lasted just 4 months and I was advised to invest in a silicone cover for it. Which is absurd for a $1500 laptop. And they made it sound like it was just a minor issue - "oh everything works great except the keyboard". As if a laptop without a keyboard isn't practically useless.
My wife's Macbook Air developed an issue last week after installing the latest OS update. The computer would just freeze randomly making it impossible to use. Apple Support said that it was a known issue with the update. A known issue that was still released?!
I moved to Apple because I was frustrated with Windows. But even the $400 Windows I've owned in the past gave me at least 2 years with their keyboards. And Windows has been painfully slow and error prone, but no update has ever crippled my laptop as the last macOS update did my wife's Macbook Air.
If you're going to charge me a massive premium for a product, at least make sure that it works.
Sorry for ranting here, but these two issues happened within a week of each other and I've just been angry and disappointed
It's put a big stain on them in the last few years thats for sure. That being said, at least the keyboard replacement program is basically a free extended warranty on the keyboard if they didn't have that I think the situation would be far more aggravating. I'm more pissed that they dropped USB-A about 5-7 years too soon.
Lots of people here to defend Apple in-spite of their outright anti-consumer stance against right to repair. In this case they could have shown a warning with option to permanently choose to remove/ignore, Instead of scary permanent "service" Message.
People hasn't understood yet that even if they pay over $1500 for a phone, they're still not the owner of that hardware. And this concept is already deep integrated in Smart TVs or all other IoT gadgets around there.
Fortunately, we have still some choices, concerning PCs, but on the Apple side, the war is lost
The irony is this is such a big issue because iphones are one of the few products they make that are both easily repairable and expensive enough to be worth repairing. Nimble fingers and the right screwdriver and it all comes apart and back together again unlike many rival sealed glued products.
If a message displayed by the first-party software is an intentional message that obfuscates the true status of the device for the benefit of the manufacturer, is this not fraud?
> but I’ve never really encountered a reason to care about Right to Repair...
The Right to Repair is MUCH more than your right to fix your broken electronic as a hobbyist. It is largely about large companies participating in anti-competitiveness. The frequent example given is with John Deer tractors. Lots of John Deer equipment has lock downs and require authorization to do anything but the most basic repairs. This is a big change for your average farmer who is frequently repairing their own equipment (it is essentially a requirement to be a mechanic to be a farmer). They frankly don't even have access to authorized repair shops within hundreds of miles. This is why Apple sends lawyers out to fight court cases in small towns in Nebraska and Arkansas. But this kind of behavior is not limited to Apple and John Deer, it is highly prolific and affects things that are in the background.
You should care about the right to repair not because you want to fix your own stuff. You should care because it is about large companies abusing their power and acting in anti-competitive ways. This is about anti-trust.
This argument sounds like "I don't care about cancer research because I don't get sick". It should matter to you for many reasons that have nothing to do with whether you're affected or not. I don't want to see the hostility towards customers you see e.g. from tractor companies creep into my computing devices.
tomxor|6 years ago
As a reminder of the broader picture: Apple has a strong anti-repair stance, they have lobbied for this [1], have engaged in broad, deceptive strategies to remove 3rd party repair options, by confiscating legally refurbished hardware under the guise of "counterfeits" [2], attempting to confiscate grey market parts under the guise of "trademark violation" and threatening the 3rd party repair shops [3]. They profit from this continued attack by deceiving customers into expensive unnecessary part replacements, suggesting repair is not possible and generally coercing customers into buying new products instead [4].
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180126/07355539089/apple...
[2] https://boingboing.net/2018/10/20/louis-rossman.html
[3] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3yadk/apple-sued-an-inde...
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2_SZ4tfLns
nfellaby|6 years ago
Personally, I've replaced many components on iPhones through the ages. Often the replacement parts I've ordered have been sub-standard and that was the risk I've accepted as I was purchasing from unknown sellers. Sometimes the parts have been on par with the original components and I've been very pleased with my purchase.
The right to repair should be protected. When I am no longer able to fix my own purchases then I no longer feel I own the device.
This is especially true given Apple present themselves as an environmentally conscious brand. Often people don't have the opportunity to get parts replaced by Apple directly, or they don't have the means. Ensuring there are options for everyone promotes reuse and recycling. Additionally it limits the extent that a given company can build in planned obsolescence.
However. My opinion is that in purchasing a second hand device I want to know which components are from the OEM. This is especially important for components that are not easily validated, i.e. the battery. I can then take the risk of price vs quality at face value.
I get the impression here that people are very vocal about one side or the other, but I feel there is a balance to be made.
barrkel|6 years ago
People who want to economize on parts and labour damage the brand. They're poor people, or at least people not wealthy enough not to care about these things; they shouldn't be associated with the Apple brand. Apple does not aim at the bottom of the market.
People who want open hardware that they can poke at damage the brand. Apple sells an integrated, hassle-free experience. An open market is chaotic and uncontrolled, and antithetical to the brand promise.
kemayo|6 years ago
I really dislike the phrasing attached to this story.
It's not a lock: a third party installed battery still works, the phone isn't refusing to start up until you go to an Apple Store and have an authentic Apple(tm) battery installed. Rather, it's a warning in the "battery health" section basically saying "we don't know if your battery is any good, you might need to get it replaced".
That said, I'd prefer a clearer phrasing of their error message. It looks like it's just triggering the generic "your battery may need service" warning, which is more of a scare tactic than I'd like. "You don't have a certified Apple battery" would be completely sufficient.
Given the existence of refurbishment scams, where substandard parts are put into old phones to make them look good briefly, I can understand where Apple is coming from on this point. Someone who buys a second-hand iPhone and finds the battery dies after a month isn't going to be very happy with iPhones.
kuzehanka|6 years ago
That message destroys the consumer's trust in 3rd party repair shops. It says battery health issue. Are sure you put in a real Apple battery? Did you even change my battery at all?
Outright locking the battery out would cause backlash and possible legal action. This 'technically works but will nag you forever unless you pay Apple to run a program to clear the message that they refuse to share with 3rd parties' solution is genius. Evil genius.
Imagine the car equivalent of this situation. Imagine you take your BMW to a non-BMW-authorised repair shop and they swap your battery to a perfectly good one for 1/5th the price. But now you have a permanent warning light on your dashboard that there's something wrong with your battery. This situation is actually impossible. There are laws that require carmakers to release repair manuals to 3rd party repairers and honour warranty after 3rd party repairs. Tech companies are shitting on their users because equivalent laws don't exist for electronic goods.
Despegar|6 years ago
That's not what the message is. It's really weird that everyone keeps getting this wrong given there's a screenshot of it in the iFixit post.
https://valkyrie.cdn.ifixit.com/media/2019/08/07170827/iphon...
dfg74fcgp|6 years ago
thedevilslawyer|6 years ago
flukus|6 years ago
Last I checked apple did not make parts available to third party repairers, at least without signing on to some draconian anti-consumer agreements. If they were really interested in protecting consumers from counterfeits then they'd be doing more to make genuine apple parts available and doing less to limit third party repairs.
jaclaz|6 years ago
The whole point is more towards the fact that it actually means:
"We don't know (or don't care) if you have a certified Apple battery or a (crappy) third part one, all we know is that it has been changed by non-Apple-Authorized personnel, so we are giving you this warning message as a lesson"
CaptainZapp|6 years ago
That very next paragraph, which you omit in your "quote".
abalone|6 years ago
This is just scaremongering. Apple has not, in fact, triggered a "kill switch" or "locked" anyone out of using a 3rd party battery.
All it does is display a message that it's not a genuine Apple part. Deep in the battery settings. That's it.
Remember that old iPhones are frequently resold. You're going to want to know if it has OEM parts.
ChickeNES|6 years ago
I think this is lost on the HN audience. There's a lot of people out there being scammed by counterfeit parts, recycled parts, shoddy repair jobs, and straight up cobbled together FrankenPhones. Not to mention the danger in using lithium batteries from unknown provenance.
bubblethink|6 years ago
But the message is triggered even if you insert an Apple part. So you would want to know if the phone was blessed by an apple genius when you buy/sell ? It's surprising the lengths people go through to defend these asinine decisions. I don't even care about Apple, but the problem is that everyone will follow suit since the rest of the industry lacks any sort of vision/spine.
rtkwe|6 years ago
That's something they could display without disabling the entire battery monitoring screen though. They could do that for every single part of the phone but instead they remove functionality if you don't do things the apple approved way. If I open two identical iPhones and swap their batteries there shouldn't be any degradation in the phone but Apple has decided there should be and that I can't see the battery info any more under any circumstances unless I go through them.
VvR-Ox|6 years ago
It's not an excuse for Apples policy to fight "the right to repair" etc. but it's less worse than I thought.
Of course if you own new Apple products you are completely screwed when in need of repairs and no store is in sight.
That's why I still like to use the MBP from 2012 (the one with all the great ports that can be repaired still). They've done a really shitty job in the development of their devices and lost a lot of pro-users like me who won't buy the new series of devices anymore.
When they don't act on this they'll lose a fair amount of customers completely, once their cool old devices aren't usable anymore. It's their decision while governments are too afraid to do the right thing and force all companies to allow people to repair and use resources efficiently.
It should be mandatory in a world that counts it's remaining days because their ancestors just burned through the resources we have without thinking about consequences.
But we'll see if there are enough smart people who are powerful enough to fight this crap. Mother Earth won't care if we'll be here in some centuries and it will recover without us.
johnmarcus|6 years ago
anilgulecha|6 years ago
The error is displayed even if you put in a genuine apple battery.
a9entroy|6 years ago
> "When a battery gets closer to the end of its lifespan, the amount of charge and the ability to provide power reduces. As a result, a battery may need to be charged more and more frequently and your iPhone might experience unexpected shutdowns."
This is dishonest. Because you put in a battery from a third party, you are making the user believe that it is near the end of its lifespan. I know the language says "may" but then most users are not language lawyers. Any layman is gonna read this as: Oh shit, my battery is almost completely degraded... I need to replace this.
A better thing to do would be to say "This battery is not a genuine battery installed by an authorized technician and may not perform as well"
Sir_Cmpwn|6 years ago
(1) They deliberately design new proprietary adapters, eschewing already popular and capable standards, in new devices - to sell you more shit
(2) They remove support for existing standards (e.g. headphone jacks) - to sell you more shit
(3) They file lawsuits against third-party repair providers who do a demonstrably better job than first-party repairs - to sell you more shit
(4) They add software checks which attempts to subvert the same third-party repair providers after their lawsuits fail - to sell you more shit
Apple consistently, at every step, serves their bottom line ahead of your interests. Quit letting tribalism blind you, Apple users - this behavior is unacceptable.
deergomoo|6 years ago
They have one proprietary connector across all of their products that they sell, and that’s Lightning. Lightning is seven years old, was launched at a time when the alternative would be the god-awful microUSB connector, and all rumours point towards it being phased out completely for USB-C in the next couple of years.
The hyperbole helps no-one.
tonyedgecombe|6 years ago
rimliu|6 years ago
hnModsRDanger|6 years ago
Moving away from Apple means significantly lower development costs, and more time on universal platforms.
I'm not sure why someone would buy an Apple product outside the Fashion statement, but they have set the industry back from a software POV.
judge2020|6 years ago
I don't agree that they should be doing the battery authentication thing, replacing your battery is pretty easy and simple; but you have to look at this from Apple's standpoint:
Yes, Louis Rossmann runs a repair shop that is better than the Genius bar in every way and, should he join Apple, all of their repairability issues would disappear overnight. The issue is that many (most likely a majority) of local computer repair shops that get asked "can you fix this battery error on my iPhone" aren't on par with Louis Rossmann and will make mistakes such as improper installation, not re-sealing the phone for water resistance, using non-genuine batteries, etc. Apple could, by all means, make the process easier, cheaper, and more idiot-proof, but that would require engineering efforts. The best course of action, both for making money from repairs and not losing money to engineering and possible product changes ("don't sacrifice form for function", at least under Jony Ive), is to get the software to verify that Apple had complete control over the replacement battery from factory to phone.
temporaryvector|6 years ago
Fact is, if Apple can fix their devices, then so can a third party without much problem, it's not that hard and most of it doesn't really take any skilled labor. Apple would be better served by releasing repair manuals and selling parts (like car manufacturers have been doing) if they're afraid of having their reputation ruined by third party repairmen. That, of course, is not their concern, a third party repairman ruining someone iPhone in no way affects Apple's reputation, and it's better for Apple's business since it helps their propaganda efforts against third-party repair. Apple and other electronics manufacturers of course are not going to spend any effort supporting third-party repair until they're forced to by legislation.
For what it's worth, I think the right to repair side needs to do a better job of delivering their message. While focusing dispelling the notion that electronics repair is hard is pretty important to undo decades of propaganda on the matter, currently the environment is the hot button issue, and throwing away repairable objects isn't all that great, particularly if it's an easy fix like changing a battery. Repair needs to be included explicitly into the 3 R's somehow, either by making it into 4 R's (Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Recycle, for example) or by including Repair into the umbrella of Reduce.
viraptor|6 years ago
> Apple could, by all means, make the process easier, cheaper, and more idiot-proof, but that would require engineering efforts.
This is a bit silly. Not only are they already spending lots of money on (purposefully) engineering in repair-hostile way, they also have very high markup on their hardware. Let's not feel bad for poor Apple in this case.
godelski|6 years ago
As for third party repair, it isn't Apples fault if a third party repairs a phone incorrectly. What does this argument even mean? If your busy fixes your car wrong you don't sue the car manufacturer. If you go to a repair shop and they mess up you don't sue the manufacturer. So why would it be any different for phones or any electronic?
johnmarcus|6 years ago
The the problem is folks inexperienced with repairing devices like yourself have been convinced by apple that "many (most likely the majority) ... will make mistakes".
That's like saying every 3rd party auto repair shop should be shut down in favor of dealer mechanic shops. When in reality, the corporate greed policy based on making money - not repair electronics or cars - are often the driving decision makers in repair work. That is to say, they actually do worse work at authorized shops. A lack of competition tends to do that.
pentae|6 years ago
seltzered_|6 years ago
puranjay|6 years ago
Mine lasted just 4 months and I was advised to invest in a silicone cover for it. Which is absurd for a $1500 laptop. And they made it sound like it was just a minor issue - "oh everything works great except the keyboard". As if a laptop without a keyboard isn't practically useless.
My wife's Macbook Air developed an issue last week after installing the latest OS update. The computer would just freeze randomly making it impossible to use. Apple Support said that it was a known issue with the update. A known issue that was still released?!
I moved to Apple because I was frustrated with Windows. But even the $400 Windows I've owned in the past gave me at least 2 years with their keyboards. And Windows has been painfully slow and error prone, but no update has ever crippled my laptop as the last macOS update did my wife's Macbook Air.
If you're going to charge me a massive premium for a product, at least make sure that it works.
Sorry for ranting here, but these two issues happened within a week of each other and I've just been angry and disappointed
pentae|6 years ago
gruez|6 years ago
You obviously haven't heard of botched Windows updates.
unknown|6 years ago
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acd10j|6 years ago
mister_hn|6 years ago
rimliu|6 years ago
gandalfian|6 years ago
cardiffspaceman|6 years ago
goranovich|6 years ago
mjcohen|6 years ago
algaeontoast|6 years ago
Louis Rossmann is the best, but I’ve never really encountered a reason to care about Right to Repair...
godelski|6 years ago
The Right to Repair is MUCH more than your right to fix your broken electronic as a hobbyist. It is largely about large companies participating in anti-competitiveness. The frequent example given is with John Deer tractors. Lots of John Deer equipment has lock downs and require authorization to do anything but the most basic repairs. This is a big change for your average farmer who is frequently repairing their own equipment (it is essentially a requirement to be a mechanic to be a farmer). They frankly don't even have access to authorized repair shops within hundreds of miles. This is why Apple sends lawyers out to fight court cases in small towns in Nebraska and Arkansas. But this kind of behavior is not limited to Apple and John Deer, it is highly prolific and affects things that are in the background.
You should care about the right to repair not because you want to fix your own stuff. You should care because it is about large companies abusing their power and acting in anti-competitive ways. This is about anti-trust.
emsy|6 years ago