3 ms·

That isn't a repaired product but a fake one. You can also buy fake iphones today which are near indistinguishable from the real thing unless you have a deep k

That isn't a repaired product but a fake one. You can also buy fake iphones today which are near indistinguishable from the real thing unless you have a deep knowledge into the product, you can have a look on youtube. Preventing repairs did not help them on that aspect.

brookst 3y ago
By "did not help", you meant "did not completely 100% solve the problem", right? In the same way that seat belts do not help traffic fatalities because there are still traffic fatalities?
- realusername 3y ago
  No, I meant that it did not solve any issue in this area at all, fake iPhone are as easily available as other fake brands. It's 0% affecting fake products which have their own separate supply chain anyways.
  - brookst 3y ago
    Again, the existence of X does not mean that all efforts to reduce the incidence of X were completely useless and therefore should not have been undertaken. Binary thinking is full of such pitfalls.
    - realusername 3y ago
      Fake iphones don't and won't use any genuine parts. So locking said genuine parts achieves absolutely nothing against fakes, so yes that does means that if that's the goal, it's pointless. It's not an "effort", it's misdirection.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        It's not about fake iphones. It's about taking a real iphone and swapping a part for non-genuine one that does something you don't expect (or find out)
        realusername 3y ago
        While we could discuss about that, Apple also blocks or alerts for genuine parts so they can't use that defense either.
        brookst 3y ago
        It's telling that you see this as a trial. Nobody else does; there is no defense or prosecution or any of that. The reason Apple prompts for genuine parts is to devalue the stolen phone market. If repair shops could put in any old camera, there would be a lot more incentive to sell stolen phones to repair shops, therefore more incentive to steal phones, therefore more stolen phones. Apple's a giant company. I have no emotional connection to them. But most of what we're talking about here makes sense from a business and even customer-friendly perspective, or at least as a reasonable tradeoff between ease/expense of repair and likelihood of having your phone stolen or pwned.
        realusername 3y ago
        There's going to be a trial about this so yeah those excuses do matter, that's going to be hard for them to get their point across being so anti-repair during so many years. For stolen parts, they could lock the parts if the device is locked, that's a solution against theft to resell parts but again, that's not what's being done either. It's becoming pretty hard to justify their bad practices.
        throwaway290 3y ago
        Maybe they don't trust their ability to identify a genuine part enough so they alert about any part that did not ship with your phone. Would I like it that my phone detects tampering and hardware integrity violation and spams me with alerts? Absolutely. Would I support some way of being able to repair my phone with legal genuine parts though? Totally. Are those exclusive options? I don't know. Which one I think is more important? I don't know.
throwaway290 3y ago
> That isn't a repaired product but a fake one. Wrong. It is a genuine piece of hardware but modified. With respect, did you read the linked article?
- realusername 3y ago
  I did read the article, no it's not a genuine piece of hardware, they changed the microcontroller. And by the way, it's also possible to do the same exact thing in an iPhone right now, somebody could totally hook up a microcontroller with a microphone straight to the battery. If you want to go all the way, you can also replace the whole device straight with a fake iphone and record everything.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    > I did read the article, no it's not a genuine piece of hardware, they changed the microcontroller. They took the genuine piece and swapped some stuff out and modified firmware, not just made a straight up fake. That's why it was hard to detect, it was a completely genuine device on the face of it. > And by the way, it's also possible to do the same exact thing in an iPhone right now, somebody could totally hook up a microcontroller with a microphone straight to the battery. Yes. But that is tricky (not much free space in the body to add something new) and can probably be detected visually. However if somebody swapped an existing part like a camera for a fake camera that acts like a camera but also spies on you then it would be tricky to visually see, but the phone would warn you.
    - realusername 3y ago
      > They took the genuine piece and swapped some stuff out and modified firmware, not just made a straight up fake. That's why it was hard to detect, it was a completely genuine device on the face of it. They could have also made a complete fake as well instead of a partial fake just by keeping the plastic enclosure, this device isn't exactly complicated. > Yes. But that is tricky (not much free space in the body to add something new) and can probably be detected visually. However if somebody swapped an existing part like a camera for a fake camera that acts like a camera but also spies on you then it would be tricky to visually see, but the phone would warn you. That's kind of a ridiculous threat model anyway, those targeted attacks are just going to hack the iPhone and stream the camera in software whenever they want with some custom payload.

brookst 3y ago

By "did not help", you meant "did not completely 100% solve the problem", right? In the same way that seat belts do not help traffic fatalities because there are still traffic fatalities?

realusername 3y ago
No, I meant that it did not solve any issue in this area at all, fake iPhone are as easily available as other fake brands. It's 0% affecting fake products which have their own separate supply chain anyways.
- brookst 3y ago
  Again, the existence of X does not mean that all efforts to reduce the incidence of X were completely useless and therefore should not have been undertaken. Binary thinking is full of such pitfalls.
  - realusername 3y ago
    Fake iphones don't and won't use any genuine parts. So locking said genuine parts achieves absolutely nothing against fakes, so yes that does means that if that's the goal, it's pointless. It's not an "effort", it's misdirection.
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      It's not about fake iphones. It's about taking a real iphone and swapping a part for non-genuine one that does something you don't expect (or find out)
      - realusername 3y ago
        While we could discuss about that, Apple also blocks or alerts for genuine parts so they can't use that defense either.
        brookst 3y ago
        It's telling that you see this as a trial. Nobody else does; there is no defense or prosecution or any of that. The reason Apple prompts for genuine parts is to devalue the stolen phone market. If repair shops could put in any old camera, there would be a lot more incentive to sell stolen phones to repair shops, therefore more incentive to steal phones, therefore more stolen phones. Apple's a giant company. I have no emotional connection to them. But most of what we're talking about here makes sense from a business and even customer-friendly perspective, or at least as a reasonable tradeoff between ease/expense of repair and likelihood of having your phone stolen or pwned.
        realusername 3y ago
        There's going to be a trial about this so yeah those excuses do matter, that's going to be hard for them to get their point across being so anti-repair during so many years. For stolen parts, they could lock the parts if the device is locked, that's a solution against theft to resell parts but again, that's not what's being done either. It's becoming pretty hard to justify their bad practices.
        throwaway290 3y ago
        Maybe they don't trust their ability to identify a genuine part enough so they alert about any part that did not ship with your phone. Would I like it that my phone detects tampering and hardware integrity violation and spams me with alerts? Absolutely. Would I support some way of being able to repair my phone with legal genuine parts though? Totally. Are those exclusive options? I don't know. Which one I think is more important? I don't know.

throwaway290 3y ago

> That isn't a repaired product but a fake one. Wrong. It is a genuine piece of hardware but modified. With respect, did you read the linked article?

realusername 3y ago
I did read the article, no it's not a genuine piece of hardware, they changed the microcontroller. And by the way, it's also possible to do the same exact thing in an iPhone right now, somebody could totally hook up a microcontroller with a microphone straight to the battery. If you want to go all the way, you can also replace the whole device straight with a fake iphone and record everything.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  > I did read the article, no it's not a genuine piece of hardware, they changed the microcontroller. They took the genuine piece and swapped some stuff out and modified firmware, not just made a straight up fake. That's why it was hard to detect, it was a completely genuine device on the face of it. > And by the way, it's also possible to do the same exact thing in an iPhone right now, somebody could totally hook up a microcontroller with a microphone straight to the battery. Yes. But that is tricky (not much free space in the body to add something new) and can probably be detected visually. However if somebody swapped an existing part like a camera for a fake camera that acts like a camera but also spies on you then it would be tricky to visually see, but the phone would warn you.
  - realusername 3y ago
    > They took the genuine piece and swapped some stuff out and modified firmware, not just made a straight up fake. That's why it was hard to detect, it was a completely genuine device on the face of it. They could have also made a complete fake as well instead of a partial fake just by keeping the plastic enclosure, this device isn't exactly complicated. > Yes. But that is tricky (not much free space in the body to add something new) and can probably be detected visually. However if somebody swapped an existing part like a camera for a fake camera that acts like a camera but also spies on you then it would be tricky to visually see, but the phone would warn you. That's kind of a ridiculous threat model anyway, those targeted attacks are just going to hack the iPhone and stream the camera in software whenever they want with some custom payload.