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Please don't attach any morals to this because there aren't any. This is just another step in a long string of similar announcements and "actions" from Apple t

• jjallen 3y ago
  Totally agree; I don't trust them for a minute. If they were so about right to repair we would be able to easily change our batteries in our Apple devices but we all know that that is super difficult if possible at all.
• chongli 3y ago
  Please don't attach any morals to this because there aren't any. This is the way to think about all businesses. Even if they’ve been making your favourite products for years, never forget that they’re just here to make money. People who attach morals, norms, and emotions to businesses are falling into the marketing trap. This is by design. Unfortunately I don’t know much of a way to get people to snap out of it other than seeing them get burned when their favourite company changes tack.
  • kdmccormick 3y ago
    *large businesses. Plenty of small businesses sometimes act against their own self-interest because they genuinely care about their community and their workers. See: retiring restaurant owners who sell to someone who will keep the tradition alive rather than the highest bidder.
    • kiba 3y ago
      How would you define self interest? I would say that they have a different value system, or what they're pursuing might be more conducive to their long term survival instead of chasing the almighty dollars. It reminds me of corporate raiders destroying companies by jacking up prices and reducing costs until it's no longer a functioning business.
      • kdmccormick 3y ago
        You're right, I should have said "profit" not "self-interest". My point stands. Large businesses are more exclusively profit-driven than smaller ones.
    • randomdata 3y ago
      How is wanting to see a tradition you help build stay alive and choosing to spend money on seeing that tradition stay alive against one's self-interest?
      • kdmccormick 3y ago
        Yes, I agree, I meant "profit" not "self-interest".
        • randomdata 3y ago
          Is there any difference at the end of the day? Profit is sought so that one has control over their self-interest. In the example, someone wanted to see a business tradition carry on even after they were no longer involved in the business. To achieve that, they accepted a lower offer for the business to sell it to someone who also wants to carry on the tradition. But that is exactly the same, as far as the money goes, as selling the business to the highest bidder and then spending those proceeds in some way to see the tradition carry on. The net profitability is the same in both cases.
          • kdmccormick 3y ago
  • sircastor 3y ago
    > never forget that they’re just here to make money. I find this read to be a little too pessimistic. They’re not an investment firm. They’re still making products that they want to sell people, and making them the way they think is best. Do they want profit? Of course. But their product is not money. They’re first and foremost an electronics manufacturer.
• Mtinie 3y ago
  “ It's appears they are convinced some meaningful part of the "Right to Repair" can't be stopped and of course as competent strategists they are, Apple can't be caught "of the wrong side of history" so they pretend to switch sides, or even paint themselves as on of the original supporters. I wonder how bad it gets until they use Steve Wozniak's name for this...” I agree with your assessment. On the other hand, we should be open and accepting when large companies make policy shifts. They will need to live up to the expectations of this new enlightenment, to be sure, and not run down the “Apple-certified” path you described. But I’m hesitant to immediately consider this is the way it will be. I do recognize that optimism and my belief that people (and the companies they embody) can make substantial changes to their default behaviors has burned me before, so your pessimism is certainly warranted.
  • naremu 3y ago
    >On the other hand, we should be open and accepting when large companies make policy shifts. Man, if I had a dollar for every time I heard something along these lines of "well we should still encourage X, even if it's a clear political play" I suppose there's just something about being vaguely eager to tacitly accept overt attempts at changing the general discourse Simply because they begrudgingly acknowledge economically progressive agendas in a very limited context, not even truly supporting it; simply pretending to have been on our "side" the whole time "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times..."
    • thereddaikon 3y ago
      Its not tacit acceptance. Corps are amoral and always looking out for their bottom line. If that just so happens to mean they align with what the people want then good. And if it doesn't then its on the people to pressure politicians to change the laws and regulations to incentive they do and punish they don't. Cynicism over corps lacking no morals will get you nowhere. They don't and wont. So instead of complaining the world isn't perfect its better to try to make it better. I'd rather live in a world where bad people do the right thing for the wrong reasons than one where bad people just do the wrong thing because they are bad.
• dclowd9901 3y ago
  Maybe they were just waiting for federally-enacted regulation so they could compete on a level playing field when it comes to repairability and parts production? Many companies _want_ to do the right thing but there’s no business benefit to them doing it so they wait until the regulatory conditions are correct, and might even support them. I can also see the same company fighting against state-level regulation because a patchwork of laws for this kind of thing is silly.
  • brucethemoose2 3y ago
    This kind of makes sense. A company wants to do the better thing but "can't" because its not competitive, and their competitors won't do it, so they advocate for a level playing field. In Apple:s case, this may even help them, as they have wider margins to absorb the cost of repairability stuff than their competitors.
  • delfinom 3y ago
    Many companies have started to provide parts for repairs even before this though. Google, Samsung, and Microsoft have been officially partnered with iFixIt for a few years now. Heck, even Microsoft has been redesigning their laptops to use magnets instead of glue, specifically for reparability. Not to mention this is a problem more unique to the portable electronics industry. Anyway, the regulation that is forcing change is coming in the EU. These companies don't want to design multiple variants of the same product. So change is coming regardless. Removable batteries in phones is going to be sweet too.
• camillomiller 3y ago
  Wow. Is there any way Apple can ever be perceived as honest in their decisions? And by the way, why do we even attach this human categories to an entity that in itself only has the maximization of profits as its incentive? If anything, this proves that Regulation Works! Big tech Leviathans can be steered if their lobbyists lose, and if governments take informed decisions about how to drive change. This is a rare exception where the US govt hasn’t abdicated to its role, and this is the natural consequence, with Apple - we can give ‘em that - accepting this as best as it can by fulfilling its shareholder and profit-making duties.
  • FireBeyond 3y ago
    > Wow. Is there any way Apple can ever be perceived as honest in their decisions? Perhaps by explaining why they changed their mind? What factored into it, and why they had adopted the previous stance - in a meaningful way, i.e., not just vapid "protect our customers" when several of their previous moves (having genuine Apple parts seized by Customs for 'trademark' issues) have been plainly self-interest. And by explaining how they intend to make this a way of life going forward, not just a token or begrudged minimum effort offering.
  • matheusmoreira 3y ago
    > Is there any way Apple can ever be perceived as honest in their decisions? Sure. We will perceive them as honest if they choose to do the right thing regardless of financial impact and completely of their own accord. If governments had to step in and force them to do things, it's just damage control.
• sonofhans 3y ago
  > … those repair kits sold for almost the price of a device. Apple will rent you a kit for $49. Find one other manufacturer of similar devices who even pretends to do this, never mind spins up an international program for it. > Please don't attach any morals to this because there aren't any. Of course there are. All corporate decisions are ultimately human decisions. Any human decision in a social context has moral implications. Saying that corporate decisions are devoid of morals lets companies off the hook. Now, I believe understand what you mean — that Apple’s decisions are pure business, that they do not consider moral or ethical implications. I believe this is demonstrably false. Apple has for decades made difficult and expensive choices which clearly serve their customer’s best interests. They could build customer profiles based on location information and sell them; they do not. They make more effort to reduce the environmental footprint of their products than any similar company; for instance, it’s getting very difficult to find any plastic at all in Apple packaging. They could keep their mouth shut about LGBQ issues, yet they’re consistently vocal and demonstrative about their support. Yes, all these things _also_ make Apple money. They’re brilliant at this. Just because they make money does not mean all their actions are so dictated, any more than yours or mine. > I’m sorry to be so negative. In our world of late-stage capitalism it’s hard to blame you for feeling cynical. Don’t tar everyone with the same brush. Not every company treats humans as grist for the mill.
• hellotheretoday 3y ago
  They still have their hostile parts pairing. Parts pairing isn’t inherently bad but it could be done in a way that is consumer friendly. Are you seriously telling me that apple can release the iCloud lock on the phone when you go to sell it but they can’t release the lock on the parts? It’s that simple. Tether the iCloud lock to the parts themselves. If I have findmy turned on and the parts are harvested they are completely useless, they simply won’t work at all. If I have it turned off they work perfectly. This is arguably a superior system to the current one where the parts can be harvested from an iCloud locked phone and they kind of work. I can harvest a screen from an iCloud locked iPhone 15 today and it will still work. The faceid won’t work, the true tone won’t work, the front camera won’t work, and the auto brightness won’t work, but night shift will work and the screen itself will work. And frankly as someone who does repairs as a side job it is a matter of time until the parts pairing is circumvented in some way. It likely won’t be easy and will require a sketchy $2-400 box from china along with very good microsoldering skills to move whatever bga nand ic apple has on the lcd flex to the replacement. But they’ve cracked it for every other iPhone to date including the 14 pro max. A lot of repair shops won’t do that because the hardware is pricey and the skills required are pretty intense. This is a regulatory failure imo. I am 100% sure if apple had their way once you signed into iCloud the phone would be forever linked to you. The only reason that is not the case is because the first sale doctrine says we (in America at least) have a right to resell the things we buy. But that doesn’t explicitly say anything about the individual components of the things we buy and that hasn’t been legally tested afaik so here we are. Or maybe I’m wrong here, I’m not a lawyer at all And that doesn’t touch upon their supply chain hostility. I do repair as a side business so I don’t really mess with phones much because I don’t want to do lcd swaps all day. I have a day job and really just want stuff I can do 1-3 nights a week and maybe on the weekend and more of the diagnosis and microsoldering work that I find challenging and enjoyable. As a result I do laptops and consoles a lot more. MacBooks are frustrating because there are several situations in which I simply cannot get chips. Apple buys them all? Or forces TI or whoever to not sell them to digikey/mouser/etc. LCD panels are the same. This is more complicated and gets into the complexity of oem vs 3rd party which may not be economically feasible anymore with modern electronics fabrication. So then should there be regulatory requirements that apple or Samsung or whoever can’t control 100% of a certain chip, lcd panel, whatever so that I as an independent entity can still provide cheap component level repairs of your MacBook? Sigh. The sad part is this industry will likely be obsolete in 5-10 years (the idea of component level repairs kind of already is) but it doesn’t have to be. This isn’t an “automation made my job obsolete” situation. This is a “powerful companies don’t like a lack of control” situation. As a result, we lose an industry that could potentially create a lot of local small business and jobs. It’s okay, apple and Samsung need that money more anyway I guess