9 ms·

The lid angle sensor is also serialized to the motherboard: you cannot replace it, or the motherboard, without performing calibration, which can be performed by

The lid angle sensor is also serialized to the motherboard: you cannot replace it, or the motherboard, without performing calibration, which can be performed by an apple authorized service provider, or alternatively, in Europe (and elsewhere where Apple offers parts for self-service repair), you can purchase the sensor from Apple, connect the machine to the internet after replacing it, to then perform the calibration, only if the sensor was purchased from Apple. So the hardware is capable of performing the calibration, Apple just does not graciously grant you the right to install a recycled or third party sensor in your machine. https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/759262/Torn+Lid+angle+sensor https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/759262/Torn+Lid+angle+se...

polisaez 1y ago
Is there anything that can be replaced on a MacBook?
- swiftcoder 1y ago
  Not really. You used to be able to replace the SSD (albeit with another proprietary module), but even that is soldered down as of a few years back
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
Negative take: Vendor lock-in Positive take: discourage theft; not only is the device locked down / encrypted and you can't just wipe / reinstall it, you can't even break it down for parts. When the iphones etc first came out, they were a very attractive target for theft. Come to think of it, that's one reason why I was hesitant to get an iphone back then.
- debesyla 1y ago
  As the saying goes, is it even theft if you don't own the device? (If you can't do whatever you wish.)
  - BoorishBears 1y ago
    Yes, Apple rents me some very powerful hardware that allows me to make a living. Someone depriving me of it is theft.
  - jen20 1y ago
    That is a particularly idiotic saying.
  - mr_toad 1y ago
    If we want to split hairs, technically it’s robbery, which is more serious than theft. In the UK for example, the maximum sentence for robbery is life imprisonment.
- deepsun 1y ago
  Theft of what, sorry not clear. Thieves keep stealing macbooks no prob.
- arcane23 1y ago
  >discourage theft Does it though? Are there statistics that clearly show devices aren't being stolen anymore because they cannot monetize them anymore? The way I see it the only thing this does is make you feel better the thief cannot monetize it, or use it, but it does nothing to prevent the theft which is really a moot point in the grand scheme of things. We end up paying in this way, of not having the freedom to easily and cheaply replace parts, while being comforted that even though they still are getting stolen from us, whoever steals them cannot use/monetize them. Which is quite primitive in a sense, and I do not think it's worth it. But that's just me.
  - phoronixrly 1y ago
    Yeah, imagine a world where people who are forced to steal are competent enough not only to know which phones they can sell, but to be able to guess the make and model in the middle of a mugging
    - reaperducer 1y ago
      imagine a world where people who are forced to steal are competent enough not only to know which phones they can sell, but to be able to guess the make and model in the middle of a mugging No need to imagine. This actually happens with watches. In Hong Kong (and likely other cities), you can pick a watch from a "catalog" that is a binder of photos of watches on people's wrists in public, and the middleman will have the watch custom-stolen for you.
      - aspenmayer 1y ago
        Part of me believes this is true. The other part suspects this is a fancy way to sell custom fakes with no refunds.
    - seventhtiger 1y ago
      They actually do though. First thing to learn when swiping is what's worth swiping, and if no one will buy an iphone paper weight then it's not worth the risk.
- dwood_dev 1y ago
  I used to have an extremely negative view on all this serial number pairing that Apple does, then I found out why. Within mainland China, Apple was facing fraud of having their devices purchased, stripped for genuine parts, and then rebuilt with knockoffs and sold as new to unsuspecting victims within China or returned. This whole thing that we hate in the west was in response to that fraud. I don't like it at all, but it's not all Apple being assholes.
  - AuthAuth 1y ago
    Sounds like more of an excuse than a reason.
    - userbinator 1y ago
      More like plausible deniability.
  - zdw 1y ago
    A lot of "new" products in the "bargain" category can have remanufactured parts, even without telling the end users. For example, in this DankPods video he pulls apart two cube speakers, and while they look mostly the same on the outside, one has a Nokia-sized lithium battery that is directly soldered to, and the other has a swollen pouch pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfnabYBtJ2I&t=325s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfnabYBtJ2I&t=325s Unfortunately end users can't tell whether they got a "race to the bottom" item, so as much as I'd like cheap repairs, it seems like those also come with a huge amount of buyer beware that they may not know about.
  - josephcsible 1y ago
    That would be a good argument for Apple showing a warning every time it's powered on or something, but not for it refusing to work altogether.
    - leoh 1y ago
      Yeah, but then you could just flash with a different ROM or something and prevent that warning from being displayed?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
  They are still a target for theft https://www.economist.com/interactive/britain/2025/08/17/the-new-geography-of-stolen-goods https://www.economist.com/interactive/britain/2025/08/17/the... > More recently London has become known as the “phone-snatching capital of Europe”. If the victims manage to track their devices, the goods are most likely to turn up in China. > Globalisation created the supply chain that allows each iPhone—assembled from nearly 3,000 components—to reach the hands of a consumer. The same forces inverted see that phone yanked out of it, re-exported and broken apart again.
  - seabass-labrax 1y ago
    I wouldn't personally trust the Economist with this kind of thing, at least not compared to publications by technically-minded experts that have been shared elsewhere on this thread, such as the Register. The phone-snatching is real, but the effectiveness of this theft in creating usable spare parts, or of the efficacy Apple's software in reducing said theft, is much harder to determine.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
      https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255110862?sortBy=rank https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255110862?sortBy=rank > Stolen iPhone is in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China; what can I do?
- londons_explore 1y ago
  Anti-theft isn't the reason. Apple could easily have a dialogue that pops up saying: "The XYZ sensor in this device is still registered to a device attached to robert8 @icloud.com. Please log into that account now to authorize the component swap". Whilst the swap isn't authorised, firmware would power the system off after 10 mins, making any stolen laptop parts useless.
  - SchemaLoad 1y ago
    That is how it works as of recently https://support.apple.com/en-au/120610 https://support.apple.com/en-au/120610
- commandersaki 1y ago
  I read somewhere the angle sensor also has a privacy feature of cutting off microphone at hardware level. This is probably the main reason for parts pairing.
  - serf 1y ago
    ... and this can't done with the myriad of other ways a lid can know it's closed.. why? Presumably MacBooks still have a big un-shuttered camera on the screen? Presumably there is still a light sensor? I get the idea of parts pairing as a theft/parts-out deterrent -- I don't get it as a method of cutting features on existing machines. "We need the lid angle sensor to be valuable, so let's cut out our eyes and seal our ears."
    - commandersaki 1y ago
      <shrug> I don't work for Apple and design these things, but for some privacy things they do go to the extreme. I can imagine the scenario where a TLA tries to replace the angle sensor so they can keep the mic open for surveillence reasons, hence why they do parts pairing. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/security/secbbd20b00b/web https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/security/secbbd20b00b/...
- koiueo 1y ago
  > discourage theft Thieves once broke into my car. They stole everything, but then have thrown away things they don't need: which was everything except iPad Pro M1. They have even thrown away an e-ink device which was as expensive. Many signs suggest that the thieves were in an organized group regularly operating in the area, and I'm certain they knew what they were doing. My iPad has never appeared online after the theft according to my iCloud. This was in 2024. I'm confident this iPad didn't just become a paperweight for the organized group of thieves. But it would become a paperweight for me if, say, the infrared camera went off due to a water damage and I wasn't willing to pay Apple a hefty price for the motherboard replacement.
- KurSix 1y ago
  iPhones were like gold on the black market
userbinator 1y ago
They call it "calibration" when it's presumably nothing more than writing a serial number to an EEPROM somewhere. See also the related story of sabotaging iPad screens to work but subtly degrade when the serials don't match, and cameras that only semi-work when swapped (with genuine original Apple parts). This type of pathological lying that Apple loves to do is why I'll never buy or recommend to others any of their products. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24955071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24955071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36926276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36926276
- bri3d 1y ago
  https://github.com/Vladislav98759/Macbook-Lid-Angle-Sensor-Calibration-Tool/blob/main/MLASCT_Ver1.ino https://github.com/Vladislav98759/Macbook-Lid-Angle-Sensor-C... No, it actually does set the zero point.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    Interesting but that proves the point even more --- it's hardly "calibration" when it effectively does nothing more than write constants to the EEPROM. They certainly have enough processing power in the machine to do that automatically too without needing anything more, but instead they make everyone go through a whole song-and-dance to do this trivial process; which doesn't even require Apple's involvement. "Set the angle to 0 (closed) and press Enter. Open 10 degrees and press Enter. Repeat for every 10 degrees from 0 to 170" would be an example of actual calibration.
    - lsaferite 1y ago
      Pressing enter while closed might be a little difficult.
      - awesome_dude 1y ago
        3rd party keyboard :)
moralestapia 1y ago
Weird to be mad at this when you didn't know it was a thing 10 minutes ago ...
- kulahan 1y ago
  You can dislike something in general and simply point out when a scenario matches what you dislike, as is happening here.
  - moralestapia 1y ago
    You can't repair what doesn't exist, though.
    - kulahan 1y ago
      Completely unrelated to the point I’m explaining
      - moralestapia 1y ago
        [flagged]
        nazgul17 1y ago
        What a condescending and arrogant answer. I think you should also think more about this. One can believe that Apple (or any company) should let you do whatever you want with your hardware - in general - and point out any instance when they don't; even if that specific instance is not something that touches you! This is true of everything. Another example: if you believe in freedom of speech, you should vocally defend anyone who is deprived of it, even when that is not you. Otherwise, you lose by divide and conquer. Apes together strong.
- jojobas 1y ago
  If I told you some John Smith had brutally killed a cat I bet you'd be a bit mad, even thought you'd never heard of him before.
Nathan2055 1y ago
Okay so here's the argument I've heard: if arbitrary replacements of the lid sensor were possible, it would be feasible to create a tampered sensor that failed to detect the MacBook closing, thus preventing it from entering sleep mode. This could then be combined with some software on the machine to turn a MacBook into a difficult to detect recording device, bypassing protections such as the microphone and camera privacy alerts, since the MacBook would be closed but not sleeping. Additionally, since the auto-locking is also tied to triggering sleep mode, it would be possible to gain access to a powered off device, switch the sensors, wait for the user to attempt to sleep mode the device, and then steal it back, completely unlocked with full access to the drive. Are these absolutely ridiculous, James Bond-tier threat assessments? Yes, absolutely. But they're both totally feasible (and not too far off from exploits I've heard about in real life), and both are completely negated by simply serializing the lid sensor. Should Apple include an option, buried in recoveryOS behind authentication and disk unlock steps like the option to allow downgrades and allow kernel extensions, that enables arbitrary and "unauthorized" hardware replacements like this? Yes, they really should. If implemented correctly, it would not harm the security profile of the system while still preventing the aforementioned exploits. There are good security reasons for a lot of what Apple does. They just tend to push a little too far beyond mitigating those security issues into doing things which start to qualify as vendor lock-in. I really wish people would start to recognize where the line should be drawn, rather than organizing into "security of the walled garden" versus "freedom of choice" groups whenever these things get brought up. You can have both! The dichotomy itself is a fiction perpetuated to defend the status quo.
- throwaway314155 1y ago
  Isn't there software that does exactly this? Called caffeine, I believe?
  - vlovich123 1y ago
    Installing software generally requires user permission. Replacing Hw can be done surreptitiously. At least that’s the strongman variant of the security argument.
user3939382 1y ago
Louis Rossman has talked about this extensively and I believe come up with a solution.
- jojobas 1y ago
  The only true solution is to vote with your wallet.
KurSix 1y ago
Stuff like this makes Right to Repair not just a consumer issue
avianlyric 1y ago
Mostly this is a consequence of laziness rather than a proper attempt at serialisation. The “calibration data” for most small sensors in Apple devices is stored in a centrally in a crypto blob to provide guarantees around component combinations, with sensor serial numbers used as lookup keys. It not usual for the sensor calibration data to computed on a component-by-component basis with calibration blob being computed _before_ the machine is assembled, based on the serial numbers the machine should contain. So adding a new sensor means new serial number, which means the data lookup now fails. Resulting in the new sensor not working at all. The pre-computed calibration blobs are neat little manufacturing trick to provide an end-of-line QA check, proving that a specific machine only contains the specific components it’s supposed to have. But it means the setup has no proper fallback mechanism for generating new blobs outside of the manufacturing process. I personally think it’s a travesty that Apple hasn’t properly addressed this issue and enabled proper 3rd party repairs. But I think it worth recognising that the serialisation mechanism doesn’t exist primarily to prevent repairs, it exists to provide a form of cryptographic integrity check of the manufacturing process. Preventing repairs is just a “happy accident”.
- maxdamantus 1y ago
  > But I think it worth recognising that the serialisation mechanism doesn’t exist primarily to prevent repairs, it exists to provide a form of cryptographic integrity check of the manufacturing process. What, you mean in case the parts of two machines accidentally fall out and fall back in to the other machine on the production line or during shipping? Of course it's to prevent unauthorised repairs. There's no feasible way for the parts to be physically swapped other than someone intentionally doing a repair. It doesn't even seem like a very good form of QA, since someone without repair experience can always try to take something apart and put it back together. Whether the serials match has little to do with whether the machine is currently assembled correctly.
  - avianlyric 1y ago
    > What, you mean in case the parts of two machines accidentally fall out and fall back in to the other machine on the production line or during shipping? No, in case the wrong parts end up in the final machine during assembly. A machines exact components are determined ahead of time, possibly before the individual parts even arrive at the assembly line. Cryptographically binding them together makes it impossible for tampering or mistakes during assembly process to result in unexpected parts ending up in a machine. How do think a company like Apple protects their supply chain against malicious external actors, or just suppliers taking shortcuts to make a quick buck hoping nobody will notice that what they provided and what they promised they would provide don’t actually line up? > Of course it's to prevent unauthorised repairs. There's no feasible way for the parts to be physically swapped other than someone intentionally doing a repair. You don’t honestly think that a company like Apple simply trusts their suppliers and assembly contractors, and doesn’t take steps to make sure every individual component in their devices is exactly the component they specified, and absolutely nothing else?

polisaez 1y ago

Is there anything that can be replaced on a MacBook?

swiftcoder 1y ago
Not really. You used to be able to replace the SSD (albeit with another proprietary module), but even that is soldered down as of a few years back

Cthulhu_ 1y ago

Negative take: Vendor lock-in Positive take: discourage theft; not only is the device locked down / encrypted and you can't just wipe / reinstall it, you can't even break it down for parts. When the iphones etc first came out, they were a very attractive target for theft. Come to think of it, that's one reason why I was hesitant to get an iphone back then.

debesyla 1y ago
As the saying goes, is it even theft if you don't own the device? (If you can't do whatever you wish.)
- BoorishBears 1y ago
  Yes, Apple rents me some very powerful hardware that allows me to make a living. Someone depriving me of it is theft.
- jen20 1y ago
  That is a particularly idiotic saying.
- mr_toad 1y ago
  If we want to split hairs, technically it’s robbery, which is more serious than theft. In the UK for example, the maximum sentence for robbery is life imprisonment.
deepsun 1y ago
Theft of what, sorry not clear. Thieves keep stealing macbooks no prob.
arcane23 1y ago
>discourage theft Does it though? Are there statistics that clearly show devices aren't being stolen anymore because they cannot monetize them anymore? The way I see it the only thing this does is make you feel better the thief cannot monetize it, or use it, but it does nothing to prevent the theft which is really a moot point in the grand scheme of things. We end up paying in this way, of not having the freedom to easily and cheaply replace parts, while being comforted that even though they still are getting stolen from us, whoever steals them cannot use/monetize them. Which is quite primitive in a sense, and I do not think it's worth it. But that's just me.
- phoronixrly 1y ago
  Yeah, imagine a world where people who are forced to steal are competent enough not only to know which phones they can sell, but to be able to guess the make and model in the middle of a mugging
  - reaperducer 1y ago
    imagine a world where people who are forced to steal are competent enough not only to know which phones they can sell, but to be able to guess the make and model in the middle of a mugging No need to imagine. This actually happens with watches. In Hong Kong (and likely other cities), you can pick a watch from a "catalog" that is a binder of photos of watches on people's wrists in public, and the middleman will have the watch custom-stolen for you.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      Part of me believes this is true. The other part suspects this is a fancy way to sell custom fakes with no refunds.
  - seventhtiger 1y ago
    They actually do though. First thing to learn when swiping is what's worth swiping, and if no one will buy an iphone paper weight then it's not worth the risk.
dwood_dev 1y ago
I used to have an extremely negative view on all this serial number pairing that Apple does, then I found out why. Within mainland China, Apple was facing fraud of having their devices purchased, stripped for genuine parts, and then rebuilt with knockoffs and sold as new to unsuspecting victims within China or returned. This whole thing that we hate in the west was in response to that fraud. I don't like it at all, but it's not all Apple being assholes.
- AuthAuth 1y ago
  Sounds like more of an excuse than a reason.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    More like plausible deniability.
- zdw 1y ago
  A lot of "new" products in the "bargain" category can have remanufactured parts, even without telling the end users. For example, in this DankPods video he pulls apart two cube speakers, and while they look mostly the same on the outside, one has a Nokia-sized lithium battery that is directly soldered to, and the other has a swollen pouch pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfnabYBtJ2I&t=325s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfnabYBtJ2I&t=325s Unfortunately end users can't tell whether they got a "race to the bottom" item, so as much as I'd like cheap repairs, it seems like those also come with a huge amount of buyer beware that they may not know about.
- josephcsible 1y ago
  That would be a good argument for Apple showing a warning every time it's powered on or something, but not for it refusing to work altogether.
  - leoh 1y ago
    Yeah, but then you could just flash with a different ROM or something and prevent that warning from being displayed?
2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
They are still a target for theft https://www.economist.com/interactive/britain/2025/08/17/the-new-geography-of-stolen-goods https://www.economist.com/interactive/britain/2025/08/17/the... > More recently London has become known as the “phone-snatching capital of Europe”. If the victims manage to track their devices, the goods are most likely to turn up in China. > Globalisation created the supply chain that allows each iPhone—assembled from nearly 3,000 components—to reach the hands of a consumer. The same forces inverted see that phone yanked out of it, re-exported and broken apart again.
- seabass-labrax 1y ago
  I wouldn't personally trust the Economist with this kind of thing, at least not compared to publications by technically-minded experts that have been shared elsewhere on this thread, such as the Register. The phone-snatching is real, but the effectiveness of this theft in creating usable spare parts, or of the efficacy Apple's software in reducing said theft, is much harder to determine.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255110862?sortBy=rank https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255110862?sortBy=rank > Stolen iPhone is in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China; what can I do?
londons_explore 1y ago
Anti-theft isn't the reason. Apple could easily have a dialogue that pops up saying: "The XYZ sensor in this device is still registered to a device attached to robert8 @icloud.com. Please log into that account now to authorize the component swap". Whilst the swap isn't authorised, firmware would power the system off after 10 mins, making any stolen laptop parts useless.
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  That is how it works as of recently https://support.apple.com/en-au/120610 https://support.apple.com/en-au/120610
commandersaki 1y ago
I read somewhere the angle sensor also has a privacy feature of cutting off microphone at hardware level. This is probably the main reason for parts pairing.
- serf 1y ago
  ... and this can't done with the myriad of other ways a lid can know it's closed.. why? Presumably MacBooks still have a big un-shuttered camera on the screen? Presumably there is still a light sensor? I get the idea of parts pairing as a theft/parts-out deterrent -- I don't get it as a method of cutting features on existing machines. "We need the lid angle sensor to be valuable, so let's cut out our eyes and seal our ears."
  - commandersaki 1y ago
    <shrug> I don't work for Apple and design these things, but for some privacy things they do go to the extreme. I can imagine the scenario where a TLA tries to replace the angle sensor so they can keep the mic open for surveillence reasons, hence why they do parts pairing. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/security/secbbd20b00b/web https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/security/secbbd20b00b/...
koiueo 1y ago
> discourage theft Thieves once broke into my car. They stole everything, but then have thrown away things they don't need: which was everything except iPad Pro M1. They have even thrown away an e-ink device which was as expensive. Many signs suggest that the thieves were in an organized group regularly operating in the area, and I'm certain they knew what they were doing. My iPad has never appeared online after the theft according to my iCloud. This was in 2024. I'm confident this iPad didn't just become a paperweight for the organized group of thieves. But it would become a paperweight for me if, say, the infrared camera went off due to a water damage and I wasn't willing to pay Apple a hefty price for the motherboard replacement.
KurSix 1y ago
iPhones were like gold on the black market

userbinator 1y ago

They call it "calibration" when it's presumably nothing more than writing a serial number to an EEPROM somewhere. See also the related story of sabotaging iPad screens to work but subtly degrade when the serials don't match, and cameras that only semi-work when swapped (with genuine original Apple parts). This type of pathological lying that Apple loves to do is why I'll never buy or recommend to others any of their products. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24955071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24955071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36926276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36926276

bri3d 1y ago
https://github.com/Vladislav98759/Macbook-Lid-Angle-Sensor-Calibration-Tool/blob/main/MLASCT_Ver1.ino https://github.com/Vladislav98759/Macbook-Lid-Angle-Sensor-C... No, it actually does set the zero point.
- userbinator 1y ago
  Interesting but that proves the point even more --- it's hardly "calibration" when it effectively does nothing more than write constants to the EEPROM. They certainly have enough processing power in the machine to do that automatically too without needing anything more, but instead they make everyone go through a whole song-and-dance to do this trivial process; which doesn't even require Apple's involvement. "Set the angle to 0 (closed) and press Enter. Open 10 degrees and press Enter. Repeat for every 10 degrees from 0 to 170" would be an example of actual calibration.
  - lsaferite 1y ago
    Pressing enter while closed might be a little difficult.
    - awesome_dude 1y ago
      3rd party keyboard :)

moralestapia 1y ago

Weird to be mad at this when you didn't know it was a thing 10 minutes ago ...

kulahan 1y ago
You can dislike something in general and simply point out when a scenario matches what you dislike, as is happening here.
- moralestapia 1y ago
  You can't repair what doesn't exist, though.
  - kulahan 1y ago
    Completely unrelated to the point I’m explaining
    - moralestapia 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - nazgul17 1y ago
        What a condescending and arrogant answer. I think you should also think more about this. One can believe that Apple (or any company) should let you do whatever you want with your hardware - in general - and point out any instance when they don't; even if that specific instance is not something that touches you! This is true of everything. Another example: if you believe in freedom of speech, you should vocally defend anyone who is deprived of it, even when that is not you. Otherwise, you lose by divide and conquer. Apes together strong.
jojobas 1y ago
If I told you some John Smith had brutally killed a cat I bet you'd be a bit mad, even thought you'd never heard of him before.

Nathan2055 1y ago

Okay so here's the argument I've heard: if arbitrary replacements of the lid sensor were possible, it would be feasible to create a tampered sensor that failed to detect the MacBook closing, thus preventing it from entering sleep mode. This could then be combined with some software on the machine to turn a MacBook into a difficult to detect recording device, bypassing protections such as the microphone and camera privacy alerts, since the MacBook would be closed but not sleeping. Additionally, since the auto-locking is also tied to triggering sleep mode, it would be possible to gain access to a powered off device, switch the sensors, wait for the user to attempt to sleep mode the device, and then steal it back, completely unlocked with full access to the drive. Are these absolutely ridiculous, James Bond-tier threat assessments? Yes, absolutely. But they're both totally feasible (and not too far off from exploits I've heard about in real life), and both are completely negated by simply serializing the lid sensor. Should Apple include an option, buried in recoveryOS behind authentication and disk unlock steps like the option to allow downgrades and allow kernel extensions, that enables arbitrary and "unauthorized" hardware replacements like this? Yes, they really should. If implemented correctly, it would not harm the security profile of the system while still preventing the aforementioned exploits. There are good security reasons for a lot of what Apple does. They just tend to push a little too far beyond mitigating those security issues into doing things which start to qualify as vendor lock-in. I really wish people would start to recognize where the line should be drawn, rather than organizing into "security of the walled garden" versus "freedom of choice" groups whenever these things get brought up. You can have both! The dichotomy itself is a fiction perpetuated to defend the status quo.

throwaway314155 1y ago
Isn't there software that does exactly this? Called caffeine, I believe?
- vlovich123 1y ago
  Installing software generally requires user permission. Replacing Hw can be done surreptitiously. At least that’s the strongman variant of the security argument.

user3939382 1y ago

Louis Rossman has talked about this extensively and I believe come up with a solution.

jojobas 1y ago
The only true solution is to vote with your wallet.

KurSix 1y ago

Stuff like this makes Right to Repair not just a consumer issue

avianlyric 1y ago

Mostly this is a consequence of laziness rather than a proper attempt at serialisation. The “calibration data” for most small sensors in Apple devices is stored in a centrally in a crypto blob to provide guarantees around component combinations, with sensor serial numbers used as lookup keys. It not usual for the sensor calibration data to computed on a component-by-component basis with calibration blob being computed _before_ the machine is assembled, based on the serial numbers the machine should contain. So adding a new sensor means new serial number, which means the data lookup now fails. Resulting in the new sensor not working at all. The pre-computed calibration blobs are neat little manufacturing trick to provide an end-of-line QA check, proving that a specific machine only contains the specific components it’s supposed to have. But it means the setup has no proper fallback mechanism for generating new blobs outside of the manufacturing process. I personally think it’s a travesty that Apple hasn’t properly addressed this issue and enabled proper 3rd party repairs. But I think it worth recognising that the serialisation mechanism doesn’t exist primarily to prevent repairs, it exists to provide a form of cryptographic integrity check of the manufacturing process. Preventing repairs is just a “happy accident”.

maxdamantus 1y ago
> But I think it worth recognising that the serialisation mechanism doesn’t exist primarily to prevent repairs, it exists to provide a form of cryptographic integrity check of the manufacturing process. What, you mean in case the parts of two machines accidentally fall out and fall back in to the other machine on the production line or during shipping? Of course it's to prevent unauthorised repairs. There's no feasible way for the parts to be physically swapped other than someone intentionally doing a repair. It doesn't even seem like a very good form of QA, since someone without repair experience can always try to take something apart and put it back together. Whether the serials match has little to do with whether the machine is currently assembled correctly.
- avianlyric 1y ago
  > What, you mean in case the parts of two machines accidentally fall out and fall back in to the other machine on the production line or during shipping? No, in case the wrong parts end up in the final machine during assembly. A machines exact components are determined ahead of time, possibly before the individual parts even arrive at the assembly line. Cryptographically binding them together makes it impossible for tampering or mistakes during assembly process to result in unexpected parts ending up in a machine. How do think a company like Apple protects their supply chain against malicious external actors, or just suppliers taking shortcuts to make a quick buck hoping nobody will notice that what they provided and what they promised they would provide don’t actually line up? > Of course it's to prevent unauthorised repairs. There's no feasible way for the parts to be physically swapped other than someone intentionally doing a repair. You don’t honestly think that a company like Apple simply trusts their suppliers and assembly contractors, and doesn’t take steps to make sure every individual component in their devices is exactly the component they specified, and absolutely nothing else?