> I think they just care about the brand. They want people who bought iphone to have the best experience they prepared for them. Ford motorcars just cares abou

> I think they just care about the brand. They want people who bought iphone to have the best experience they prepared for them. Ford motorcars just cares about the brand, that is why you're only allowed to run them on officially licensed Ford fuel. Philips lighting just cares about the brand, that is why you're only allowed to use Philips batteries. Keurig just cares about the brand, that is why you're only allowed to use officially licensed coffee cups. Miele just cares about the brand, that is why you're only allowed to use Miele dishwasher detergents. ... What a horrible world that would be, don't you agree? Sometimes regulation of business really is for the benefit of all, as Apple so vividly reminds us of time and time again. Designing their products to be basically irreparable should be allowed but it would be good if they were made to fess up to this before people forked over their earnings to buy one of those discard-a-phones. In Europe manufacturers of white goods have to put an energy label on their products to give prospective customers some idea of how much energy the device uses in comparison to other current devices in a scale from A to D (up to 2010: A-G [1]). This concept could be adapted to device maintenance as well, covering both repair as well as replacement of consumables. Apple products would score 'D' on availability of spare parts and 'D' on third-party service access. Such a scheme might help in convincing manufacturers that serviceability can be a selling point if done right. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_energy_label https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_energy_label