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Apple is lobbying against right to repair 6 months after supporting it

240 points by nickthegreek 3y ago

charcircuit 3y ago
I do not see why companies opinion on a bill has to be the same just because it is related to a similar topic. The fine details are important.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  It's the reverse of this which is the concern. The company supports "Right to Repair" when the details are that it isn't effective and repairs remain expensive enough to pressure people to buy new devices instead, uses that "support" in their PR, then withdraws their support when the proposal is something that might be more effective.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  Disagreements between legislative paymasters are an opportunity for the public to exploit. When rich people present a united front, Congress listens to them. If they're divided, they listen to us.
- losvedir 3y ago
  No, I think if a law is called "Right to Repair" then it's not possible to contain anything bad in it.
realusername 3y ago
Of course they do, they support right to repair laws as long as they are useless for repairing anything.
- newaccount74 3y ago
  They aren't against repair, they just want to make sure that they make a lot of money from repairs. They will let you repair your phone yourself, as long as you buy their overpriced parts. They don't want you to repair devices with used parts or 3rd party parts, because then they don't make a profit.
  - realusername 3y ago
    > They will let you repair your phone yourself, as long as you buy their overpriced parts. And that you pay almost the same price as repairing it at the apple store. The self repair program is just a marketing scam.
    - newaccount74 3y ago
      I would still do it if it was available in Austria, since it would mean I could fix it myself in an hour rather than leave it at an authorized repair shop for a day or two.
  - petemir 3y ago
    > They aren't against repair, they just want to make sure that they make a lot of money from repairs Last time I went to an Apple Store I asked about repairing the power button of a (then) three year old device and the answer was “buy a new one, your device is too old”. So, I put in doubt that they favor repairs, as in the end new devices make more money. Needless to say, my device still works perfectly (except for the button) two years after that comment, and probably will do so for several years more.
    - FireBeyond 3y ago
      Had an MBA that wouldn't charge. Battery health was fine. Machine ran perfectly on AC power. Apple: "That would be $890 to repair, maybe we should talk about helping you get into a new Mac?"
      - sib 3y ago
        Sorry, when I saw this, my first thought was "What kind of an MBA won't charge? If there's one thing those guys are optimized for, it's generating revenue!" Then (doh!) I realized what you meant...
  - sircastor 3y ago
    I don't think this is even the case. I think Apple is concerned with the user's experience. They don't want some random 3rd party component affecting the performance or functionality of the device, or some 3rd party's poor-repair job. Because if the repair job is crappy, and it only shows up down the road, the user blames Apple. Apple wants its users to connect positively with its products. This is why when you take your laptop into the store, they don't offer to just desolder the bad chip, and replace it. They don't want to take the time or money to train their store in doing these repairs. There's a lot that can go wrong and its easier to just make the policy to swap the entire component - the whole logic board. It's a lot quicker to do, it's a lot quicker to train, it's a lot lower risk in terms of chemical exposure, proper-ventilation, and materials disposal. If they take the entire bad motherboard, they can box them all up and ship them in bulk.
- yellow_postit 3y ago
  or if they can be embraced to then raise the barrier for future entrants.
VyseofArcadia 3y ago
I think all of Apple's "support" for Right to Repair has been carefully calculated to undermine it. They think the level of support they have to provide for repairability voluntarily is less than what they would have to do if it were mandatory.
- fattire 3y ago
  It's always suspect when a big company asks for more regulation-- OpenAI, FTX, etc. It's usually in the name of the public good or fairness etc, but they may actually be looking for legal recognition of otherwise dubious activities, ways to block out new competition, or they could be trying to curtail inevitable regulation by writing the law themselves in the most favorable way possible.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Similar with the Texas Two Step Bankruptcy (create a subsidiary when you're facing massive lawsuits, offload everything that relates to those lawsuits to the subsidiary, promise to fund it to be able to pay out expected judgments, then don't, or massively underfund it, declare bankruptcy, and walk away with no further liability while still making massive profits). One law firm specializes in this, and the story above has been the case in each of the five or six times it has been done. Yet they claim, with a straight face (and even have writers like Matt Levine carrying water for them) that really, truly, honestly, they're not doing this to avoid liability, they're doing it "to make the process easier for the plaintiffs and streamline their legal efforts". Like how utterly stupid do they think we are? Why on earth would a multinational for profit company spend considerable effort to actively assist people who are suing them?
    - thedevilslawyer 3y ago
      > Why on earth would a multinational for profit company spend considerable effort to actively assist people who are suing them? Because the work overall the organization is doing becomes more valuable with this change. As an analogy, it's akin to saying you'll deal with a specific problem for this part of the day - and the rest will be focussed on other productive things. For a whole class of problems, your overall day would go better.
andsoitis 3y ago
Actions speak louder than words. It is cheap to be activist on social media but much harder to be one in the physical non-anonymous world where you stand to really risk something.
buildbot 3y ago
A massive reason why I, a consumer of Apple products, continue to consume them, new or used, is that I can trust that a repair will be genuine, be calibrated, and be as close to new as possible. After many years of Android phones that broke and needed repair or replacement, I got tired of shitty refurbed devices among other things. A used iPhone is way more likely to be mostly still an iPhone than a used android phone. I do think right to repair is important. I think companies should be forced to produce and sell repair parts. I don’t think we want to force 3rd party compatibility. It’s different with a car IMO - a non OEM suspension component better meet whatever specification, there is liability(maybe?) if that fails. A cheap screen with 80% sRGB just looks bad, but won’t kill you. No manufacturer incentive to care about quality at all!
- tomrod 3y ago
  Vociferously disagree. Apple should use standardized components allowing OEM compatible repairs on both the hardware and OS levels.
  - szundi 3y ago
    This the opposite of what makes Apple better than competition. If it happens, Apple has to he the same screwed together common stuff.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      The screen in an iPhone isn't fundamentally different than the screen in anything else -- it probably is the same screen as in some Android devices. To fit it has to have the right dimensions and the right connector, which third party manufacturers are quite capable of producing. It already has to be replaceable in order to be able to replace it with an Apple one that isn't broken, if you don't want a broken screen to mean your phone goes in the trash.
    - orangesite 3y ago
      Oh god forbid that us special people should be using the same parts as those horrible common Android users!
saiya-jin 3y ago
Anybody actually buying some corporate PR? People call bullshit from other corporations from light years but when it comes to Apple folks here act like half of forum works for them... Just look at their actions, ignore words from marketing teams (ie everything that goes officially outside to us). FU to freedom, openness, and laser focus on what generates revenues, we know whats better for you and your rightfully bought devices. If you disagree you will lose warranty, we kick you out of our platforms or worse, much worse. Self-repairs and everything proprietary were pain point for all Apple devices for decade and a half. All efforts in privacy I saw were carefully crafted PR with some tiny logical loophole that for sure won't be misused by some 3-letter agencies, we pinky promise wink wink. Really, why the surprise?
Spivak 3y ago
You can't talk about right to repair with Apple products without the mentioning Louis Rossmann who has dedicated his life to shitting on Apple's horrible repair policies while simultaneously pushing through anyway and fixing them live. His work has definitely changed my views about this issue to be very anti-Apple because of how few options they actually give consumers when the majority of fixes are downright trivial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVAmnV65_zw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVAmnV65_zw In one of his videos they mention how they're able to sometimes source parts and it's by workers sneaking broken boards out of the factory and if that isn't a depressing state of repairs I don't know what else could be worse. The bar is so low here, a law that just prohibited Apple from seizing genuine parts from 3rd party repair shops who salvage them from broken phones/laptops would already be an improvement.
- iszomer 3y ago
  What's worse is potentially using parts that may have once belonged to stolen Apple devices as there was a significant market for them in Shenzhen. Even Scotty/StrangeParts was able to build an iPhone from scratch with parts sourced from there. That may also be one of the contributing factors to why Apple began enforcing serialized parts in their product lineups but in my opinion, isn't anything new: we have such a system at my workplace that prevents components from being illicitly used or is blocked from being allowed onto a test flow because, this is "what the [big] customer wants".
thegrimmest 3y ago
Apple devices stand apart in their reputation for quality and security, but they stand apart in a larger ecosystem of mobile devices. Restricting the usage of inauthentic parts is one of the ways they accomplish this. It's wrong-headed of legislators to try to narrow the ecosystem, and restrict the axes along which companies can distinguish themselves. Fundamentally it should be the market that chooses, not legislators. If consumers want locked-down, appliance-style devices (and they seem to), why is that an invalid offering? If the thesis is that legislators know what consumers want better than consumers (or Apple) then I wholeheartedly disagree.
- zac23or 3y ago
  Tim Cook, it's been a long time since I've seen you comment here.
- CogitoCogito 3y ago
  > Fundamentally it should be the market that chooses That’s exactly what right to repair is about. Right to repair promotes market competition.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    The parent commenter means, "Fundamentally it should be the market that chooses [whether 'right to repair' matters], not legislators".
    - CogitoCogito 3y ago
      Well it’s quite a silly stance. We could after all let “the market” decide on whether private property is enforceable or allow “the market” to punish murderers. We don’t do that because we’ve found it doesn’t work that effectively (unless your goal is inefficiency and murder). Laws promote efficiency and progress by aligning incentives with market forces. Right to repair is a perfect example of such a low. It promotes autonomy and market competition. I find it confusing that anyone not profiting directly off the status quo would be against it. Regardless the people profiting off it are in the minority so hopefully the majority continues to push for the passage of more such laws.
kazinator 3y ago
Samsung phone users should be delighted that Apple supports their right to repair.
slg 3y ago
This should serve as a reminder to everyone that thinks Apple cares about any pro-consumer issues like privacy. No company anywhere close to this size cares about anything other than money. Apple cares about privacy because it is a differentiator in the market in which their biggest competitors are fundamentally data brokers. Apple would abandon prioritizing privacy the moment market conditions stop that from being a profitable position to have.
- bluish29 3y ago
  > No company anywhere close to this size cares about anything other than money Doesn't this describe every company, is there any company in a capitalist market would care about anything other than money? I might be wrong or shortsighted but happy to be proved wrong.
  - lijok 3y ago
    Every public company, yes. Private companies can afford not to subscribe to the single core tenet of capitalism which is to "maximize shareholder value".
  - normaler 3y ago
    In any company of this size there is no owner that can decide he cares about anything but money. There is no actual vision other then short and longterm shareholder value. "Founders" like Musk and Jobs have a short window where they can move their companies in directions which matches their vision, but that closes quickly after the company goes public and their stock gets diluted enough so that they be ousted.
  - riidom 3y ago
    I think, It's not meant to be a big discovery, but just to contrast the fact what Apple wants you to believe what they care about.
  - gchamonlive 3y ago
    Some smaller companies, particular those without investors and open capital, can have the luxury of caring about the product solely, maybe. But invariably, as it keeps growing, the concern shifts towards pleasing inverstors. They have fiduciary responsibility to them. Constant profit and growth is the premise of capitalism, it isn't sustainable and will invariably result in anti-consumer practices like programmed obselcence and market monopoly.
jqpabc123 3y ago
Apple supports right to repair --- but only if they get to supply all the parts and labor. They are clearly anti-competitive, anti-consumer and more than a little disingenuous. No real surprise, most corporations are. The difference with Apple is that those being victimized are some of their most vocal defenders. It's kinda like an abusive marriage.
saintfire 3y ago
Ah of course, "privacy, safety and security". I actually chuckled reading that, given how uncreative it is by now. They should innovate some better excuses. First its engineering challenges that require pairing. Now its to keep the evil repairmen from installing surveillance modules (?).
dreamcompiler 3y ago
For any manufacturer, repairing products is expensive (i.e. it decreases profit). That incentivizes two behaviors: 1. Make the product as reliable as possible. 2. Make the product non-repairable. Every company also increases profit by selling more units, so when a company's only performance metrics come from Wall Street, well, here we are. The only solution in the absence of significant competition (which applies to Apple) is regulation. There need to be laws that mandate not only repairability but also that Apple absorb the now-externalized societal cost of all the e-waste their devices produce.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  iPhones have the longest usable lifespan of any smartphone.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Sure, but they are still nothing compared to other things. I still use a tractor from 1939 (mostly for parades, but it works for anything it could have done new). My stove is from the 1980s and it still works like new. Can you use a gen1 iphone - it would only be about 15 years old (2g phone networks are being dismantled, and may only be on frequency that were not even allocated to phones when that was built). If it breaks what can you repair on it to make it work again? Of course sometimes it isn't worth repairing. I had my 50 years old furnace repaired 2 years ago - but I was already saving to replace it as a modern one is so much more efficient (I also knew the city was putting in natural gas pipes, so I wanted to wait)
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      You don't have to go outside the industry, or even the company. Apple computers from the start of the company up to the early 21st century are often still functional to this day and most were modular and easy to repair. Likewise, you can install modern Linux kernels on PCs (and Macs) going back to something like the i486 from 1989, and even supported versions of Windows can be installed on PCs that are ~20 years old. The market for mobile phones is abnormally dysfunctional.
Eji1700 3y ago
This really shouldn't be a surprise. Companies do what's best for them. For the moment looking like they supported it was best. Didn't mean they were serious about following through. Look at actions not words.
lcnmrn 3y ago
Right to repair should be decided on device type. You want your watch or VR unit to be as lightweight as possible.

240 points by nickthegreek 3y ago

I do not see why companies opinion on a bill has to be the same just because it is related to a similar topic. The fine details are important.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
It's the reverse of this which is the concern. The company supports "Right to Repair" when the details are that it isn't effective and repairs remain expensive enough to pressure people to buy new devices instead, uses that "support" in their PR, then withdraws their support when the proposal is something that might be more effective.
kmeisthax 3y ago
Disagreements between legislative paymasters are an opportunity for the public to exploit. When rich people present a united front, Congress listens to them. If they're divided, they listen to us.
losvedir 3y ago
No, I think if a law is called "Right to Repair" then it's not possible to contain anything bad in it.

realusername 3y ago

Of course they do, they support right to repair laws as long as they are useless for repairing anything.

newaccount74 3y ago
They aren't against repair, they just want to make sure that they make a lot of money from repairs. They will let you repair your phone yourself, as long as you buy their overpriced parts. They don't want you to repair devices with used parts or 3rd party parts, because then they don't make a profit.
- realusername 3y ago
  > They will let you repair your phone yourself, as long as you buy their overpriced parts. And that you pay almost the same price as repairing it at the apple store. The self repair program is just a marketing scam.
  - newaccount74 3y ago
    I would still do it if it was available in Austria, since it would mean I could fix it myself in an hour rather than leave it at an authorized repair shop for a day or two.
- petemir 3y ago
  > They aren't against repair, they just want to make sure that they make a lot of money from repairs Last time I went to an Apple Store I asked about repairing the power button of a (then) three year old device and the answer was “buy a new one, your device is too old”. So, I put in doubt that they favor repairs, as in the end new devices make more money. Needless to say, my device still works perfectly (except for the button) two years after that comment, and probably will do so for several years more.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Had an MBA that wouldn't charge. Battery health was fine. Machine ran perfectly on AC power. Apple: "That would be $890 to repair, maybe we should talk about helping you get into a new Mac?"
    - sib 3y ago
      Sorry, when I saw this, my first thought was "What kind of an MBA won't charge? If there's one thing those guys are optimized for, it's generating revenue!" Then (doh!) I realized what you meant...
- sircastor 3y ago
  I don't think this is even the case. I think Apple is concerned with the user's experience. They don't want some random 3rd party component affecting the performance or functionality of the device, or some 3rd party's poor-repair job. Because if the repair job is crappy, and it only shows up down the road, the user blames Apple. Apple wants its users to connect positively with its products. This is why when you take your laptop into the store, they don't offer to just desolder the bad chip, and replace it. They don't want to take the time or money to train their store in doing these repairs. There's a lot that can go wrong and its easier to just make the policy to swap the entire component - the whole logic board. It's a lot quicker to do, it's a lot quicker to train, it's a lot lower risk in terms of chemical exposure, proper-ventilation, and materials disposal. If they take the entire bad motherboard, they can box them all up and ship them in bulk.
yellow_postit 3y ago
or if they can be embraced to then raise the barrier for future entrants.

VyseofArcadia 3y ago

I think all of Apple's "support" for Right to Repair has been carefully calculated to undermine it. They think the level of support they have to provide for repairability voluntarily is less than what they would have to do if it were mandatory.

fattire 3y ago
It's always suspect when a big company asks for more regulation-- OpenAI, FTX, etc. It's usually in the name of the public good or fairness etc, but they may actually be looking for legal recognition of otherwise dubious activities, ways to block out new competition, or they could be trying to curtail inevitable regulation by writing the law themselves in the most favorable way possible.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  Similar with the Texas Two Step Bankruptcy (create a subsidiary when you're facing massive lawsuits, offload everything that relates to those lawsuits to the subsidiary, promise to fund it to be able to pay out expected judgments, then don't, or massively underfund it, declare bankruptcy, and walk away with no further liability while still making massive profits). One law firm specializes in this, and the story above has been the case in each of the five or six times it has been done. Yet they claim, with a straight face (and even have writers like Matt Levine carrying water for them) that really, truly, honestly, they're not doing this to avoid liability, they're doing it "to make the process easier for the plaintiffs and streamline their legal efforts". Like how utterly stupid do they think we are? Why on earth would a multinational for profit company spend considerable effort to actively assist people who are suing them?
  - thedevilslawyer 3y ago
    > Why on earth would a multinational for profit company spend considerable effort to actively assist people who are suing them? Because the work overall the organization is doing becomes more valuable with this change. As an analogy, it's akin to saying you'll deal with a specific problem for this part of the day - and the rest will be focussed on other productive things. For a whole class of problems, your overall day would go better.

andsoitis 3y ago

Actions speak louder than words. It is cheap to be activist on social media but much harder to be one in the physical non-anonymous world where you stand to really risk something.

buildbot 3y ago

A massive reason why I, a consumer of Apple products, continue to consume them, new or used, is that I can trust that a repair will be genuine, be calibrated, and be as close to new as possible. After many years of Android phones that broke and needed repair or replacement, I got tired of shitty refurbed devices among other things. A used iPhone is way more likely to be mostly still an iPhone than a used android phone. I do think right to repair is important. I think companies should be forced to produce and sell repair parts. I don’t think we want to force 3rd party compatibility. It’s different with a car IMO - a non OEM suspension component better meet whatever specification, there is liability(maybe?) if that fails. A cheap screen with 80% sRGB just looks bad, but won’t kill you. No manufacturer incentive to care about quality at all!

tomrod 3y ago
Vociferously disagree. Apple should use standardized components allowing OEM compatible repairs on both the hardware and OS levels.
- szundi 3y ago
  This the opposite of what makes Apple better than competition. If it happens, Apple has to he the same screwed together common stuff.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    The screen in an iPhone isn't fundamentally different than the screen in anything else -- it probably is the same screen as in some Android devices. To fit it has to have the right dimensions and the right connector, which third party manufacturers are quite capable of producing. It already has to be replaceable in order to be able to replace it with an Apple one that isn't broken, if you don't want a broken screen to mean your phone goes in the trash.
  - orangesite 3y ago
    Oh god forbid that us special people should be using the same parts as those horrible common Android users!

saiya-jin 3y ago

Anybody actually buying some corporate PR? People call bullshit from other corporations from light years but when it comes to Apple folks here act like half of forum works for them... Just look at their actions, ignore words from marketing teams (ie everything that goes officially outside to us). FU to freedom, openness, and laser focus on what generates revenues, we know whats better for you and your rightfully bought devices. If you disagree you will lose warranty, we kick you out of our platforms or worse, much worse. Self-repairs and everything proprietary were pain point for all Apple devices for decade and a half. All efforts in privacy I saw were carefully crafted PR with some tiny logical loophole that for sure won't be misused by some 3-letter agencies, we pinky promise wink wink. Really, why the surprise?

Spivak 3y ago

You can't talk about right to repair with Apple products without the mentioning Louis Rossmann who has dedicated his life to shitting on Apple's horrible repair policies while simultaneously pushing through anyway and fixing them live. His work has definitely changed my views about this issue to be very anti-Apple because of how few options they actually give consumers when the majority of fixes are downright trivial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVAmnV65_zw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVAmnV65_zw In one of his videos they mention how they're able to sometimes source parts and it's by workers sneaking broken boards out of the factory and if that isn't a depressing state of repairs I don't know what else could be worse. The bar is so low here, a law that just prohibited Apple from seizing genuine parts from 3rd party repair shops who salvage them from broken phones/laptops would already be an improvement.

iszomer 3y ago
What's worse is potentially using parts that may have once belonged to stolen Apple devices as there was a significant market for them in Shenzhen. Even Scotty/StrangeParts was able to build an iPhone from scratch with parts sourced from there. That may also be one of the contributing factors to why Apple began enforcing serialized parts in their product lineups but in my opinion, isn't anything new: we have such a system at my workplace that prevents components from being illicitly used or is blocked from being allowed onto a test flow because, this is "what the [big] customer wants".

thegrimmest 3y ago

Apple devices stand apart in their reputation for quality and security, but they stand apart in a larger ecosystem of mobile devices. Restricting the usage of inauthentic parts is one of the ways they accomplish this. It's wrong-headed of legislators to try to narrow the ecosystem, and restrict the axes along which companies can distinguish themselves. Fundamentally it should be the market that chooses, not legislators. If consumers want locked-down, appliance-style devices (and they seem to), why is that an invalid offering? If the thesis is that legislators know what consumers want better than consumers (or Apple) then I wholeheartedly disagree.

zac23or 3y ago
Tim Cook, it's been a long time since I've seen you comment here.
CogitoCogito 3y ago
> Fundamentally it should be the market that chooses That’s exactly what right to repair is about. Right to repair promotes market competition.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  The parent commenter means, "Fundamentally it should be the market that chooses [whether 'right to repair' matters], not legislators".
  - CogitoCogito 3y ago
    Well it’s quite a silly stance. We could after all let “the market” decide on whether private property is enforceable or allow “the market” to punish murderers. We don’t do that because we’ve found it doesn’t work that effectively (unless your goal is inefficiency and murder). Laws promote efficiency and progress by aligning incentives with market forces. Right to repair is a perfect example of such a low. It promotes autonomy and market competition. I find it confusing that anyone not profiting directly off the status quo would be against it. Regardless the people profiting off it are in the minority so hopefully the majority continues to push for the passage of more such laws.

kazinator 3y ago

Samsung phone users should be delighted that Apple supports their right to repair.

slg 3y ago

This should serve as a reminder to everyone that thinks Apple cares about any pro-consumer issues like privacy. No company anywhere close to this size cares about anything other than money. Apple cares about privacy because it is a differentiator in the market in which their biggest competitors are fundamentally data brokers. Apple would abandon prioritizing privacy the moment market conditions stop that from being a profitable position to have.

bluish29 3y ago
> No company anywhere close to this size cares about anything other than money Doesn't this describe every company, is there any company in a capitalist market would care about anything other than money? I might be wrong or shortsighted but happy to be proved wrong.
- lijok 3y ago
  Every public company, yes. Private companies can afford not to subscribe to the single core tenet of capitalism which is to "maximize shareholder value".
- normaler 3y ago
  In any company of this size there is no owner that can decide he cares about anything but money. There is no actual vision other then short and longterm shareholder value. "Founders" like Musk and Jobs have a short window where they can move their companies in directions which matches their vision, but that closes quickly after the company goes public and their stock gets diluted enough so that they be ousted.
- riidom 3y ago
  I think, It's not meant to be a big discovery, but just to contrast the fact what Apple wants you to believe what they care about.
- gchamonlive 3y ago
  Some smaller companies, particular those without investors and open capital, can have the luxury of caring about the product solely, maybe. But invariably, as it keeps growing, the concern shifts towards pleasing inverstors. They have fiduciary responsibility to them. Constant profit and growth is the premise of capitalism, it isn't sustainable and will invariably result in anti-consumer practices like programmed obselcence and market monopoly.

jqpabc123 3y ago

Apple supports right to repair --- but only if they get to supply all the parts and labor. They are clearly anti-competitive, anti-consumer and more than a little disingenuous. No real surprise, most corporations are. The difference with Apple is that those being victimized are some of their most vocal defenders. It's kinda like an abusive marriage.

saintfire 3y ago

Ah of course, "privacy, safety and security". I actually chuckled reading that, given how uncreative it is by now. They should innovate some better excuses. First its engineering challenges that require pairing. Now its to keep the evil repairmen from installing surveillance modules (?).

dreamcompiler 3y ago

For any manufacturer, repairing products is expensive (i.e. it decreases profit). That incentivizes two behaviors: 1. Make the product as reliable as possible. 2. Make the product non-repairable. Every company also increases profit by selling more units, so when a company's only performance metrics come from Wall Street, well, here we are. The only solution in the absence of significant competition (which applies to Apple) is regulation. There need to be laws that mandate not only repairability but also that Apple absorb the now-externalized societal cost of all the e-waste their devices produce.

hot_gril 3y ago
iPhones have the longest usable lifespan of any smartphone.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Sure, but they are still nothing compared to other things. I still use a tractor from 1939 (mostly for parades, but it works for anything it could have done new). My stove is from the 1980s and it still works like new. Can you use a gen1 iphone - it would only be about 15 years old (2g phone networks are being dismantled, and may only be on frequency that were not even allocated to phones when that was built). If it breaks what can you repair on it to make it work again? Of course sometimes it isn't worth repairing. I had my 50 years old furnace repaired 2 years ago - but I was already saving to replace it as a modern one is so much more efficient (I also knew the city was putting in natural gas pipes, so I wanted to wait)
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    You don't have to go outside the industry, or even the company. Apple computers from the start of the company up to the early 21st century are often still functional to this day and most were modular and easy to repair. Likewise, you can install modern Linux kernels on PCs (and Macs) going back to something like the i486 from 1989, and even supported versions of Windows can be installed on PCs that are ~20 years old. The market for mobile phones is abnormally dysfunctional.

Eji1700 3y ago

This really shouldn't be a surprise. Companies do what's best for them. For the moment looking like they supported it was best. Didn't mean they were serious about following through. Look at actions not words.

lcnmrn 3y ago

Right to repair should be decided on device type. You want your watch or VR unit to be as lightweight as possible.