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People not realizing this ship has sailed. Apple switched to supporting right to repair because 1) They are no longer dependent on the loss of battery capacity

by svnt 3y ago

People not realizing this ship has sailed. Apple switched to supporting right to repair because 1) They are no longer dependent on the loss of battery capacity to drive new device purchases — meaning this issue is effectively over. Batteries now last all day for longer than most new device users will keep a device. 2) Margins on services sold to hand-me-down family devices are a growing high-margin and young-user market and much of the market isn’t open to buying a device here — they will only use the service if they get a device for “free.” 3) The net outcome is an increase in service revenue and decrease in recycling costs for Apple. All these trends will only accelerate from here.

hellotheretoday 3y ago
These are good points and interesting, I’ve never seen such analysis, but imo their support of right to repair is because they’ve steered the discussion into a direction they are comfortable with. The apple self service program is apples ideal of right to repair. A shitty program where you can buy board assemblies and larger parts for fairly high prices with no changes to their software approach whatsoever. A battery change through this program is ~$120 up front (if you rent the tools, which you probably should) with a $30 refund when you return your dead battery. A battery change via the apple store is $99. You can only buy parts if you give them the device serial number up front (so fuck independent shops) and you need to call apple at the end to pair the part on their end. A pointless program with tons of waste still created. A short on your laptop motherboard? Better buy a new motherboard. An issue with the camera on your MacBook? Better buy a new lcd assembly. They will suddenly become very against right to repair the moment it starts to actually fight for things like schematics and board diagram access, component availability and not just parts assemblies, parts pairing that’s done in a consumer friendly way, etc. imagine legislation that says apple has to change parts pairing so that if a consumer unlocks their phone the parts have to be able to be sold as well? Or that they can no longer enter a contract with Texas Instruments to buy 100% of their stock of a usb c controller ic for a MacBook Pro so repair shops can’t buy it on digikey or mouser? Etc. they will fight that hard and then just find a way to circumvent it (like making their own usb c controller ic)

by svnt 3y ago

hellotheretoday 3y ago

These are good points and interesting, I’ve never seen such analysis, but imo their support of right to repair is because they’ve steered the discussion into a direction they are comfortable with. The apple self service program is apples ideal of right to repair. A shitty program where you can buy board assemblies and larger parts for fairly high prices with no changes to their software approach whatsoever. A battery change through this program is ~$120 up front (if you rent the tools, which you probably should) with a $30 refund when you return your dead battery. A battery change via the apple store is $99. You can only buy parts if you give them the device serial number up front (so fuck independent shops) and you need to call apple at the end to pair the part on their end. A pointless program with tons of waste still created. A short on your laptop motherboard? Better buy a new motherboard. An issue with the camera on your MacBook? Better buy a new lcd assembly. They will suddenly become very against right to repair the moment it starts to actually fight for things like schematics and board diagram access, component availability and not just parts assemblies, parts pairing that’s done in a consumer friendly way, etc. imagine legislation that says apple has to change parts pairing so that if a consumer unlocks their phone the parts have to be able to be sold as well? Or that they can no longer enter a contract with Texas Instruments to buy 100% of their stock of a usb c controller ic for a MacBook Pro so repair shops can’t buy it on digikey or mouser? Etc. they will fight that hard and then just find a way to circumvent it (like making their own usb c controller ic)