First is "to enable the repairs performed by authorised repair channels", which indicates they don't really want to make parts available to the average joe, and likely also hampers independent repair shops who don't want to participate in (pay for) a manufacturer programme.
Second is "repair providers disclose the use on non-genuine or used parts" which indicates they may try to continue the serialisation of parts to force the repairer to buy replacement new parts, rather than being able to swap in known-working used or non-oem bits.
Taken together, it sounds like they want you to buy new replacement parts only from them, to only repair the bits they allow you to repair, as long as you sign an authorised repair contract with them. Which doesn't seem that different to their existing authorised repair programme?
Overall I think there is some progress, but I don't think Apple is switching to be pro-RtR yet. Maybe I'm just skeptical based on their past actions, but I hope I'm wrong.
> repair providers disclose the use on non-genuine or used parts
This has my complete support. I’ve had a phone repaired with a knock off display/touch module. It stopped working with an OTA update. Buying used phones is a total gamble, as is.
What you should support is stricter laws and penalties on fraud. I have no issue with (and sometimes prefer) used or "non-genuine" third party parts as long as it's an informed decision.
Absolutely. My local and much beloved (by others) repair shop got really pissy when I started asking them if they participated in the authorized repair program. Why? Because the battery replacements always sucked. Sure they “covered” the work, but I was tired of going back every other month for half a year because they “got a bad batch of batteries.” I got tired of their crappy attitude and eventually found an authorized shop. Give me genuine parts with the convenience of not having to deal with a “genius” bar.
Also, non-genuine display modules can utterly suck. The most obvious failure is linearly polarized light output. Bonus points for horizontally or vertically polarized light — diagonal is at least somewhat tolerable.
If the screen was working fine then an update caused it to stop working that doesn’t sound like an issue with the display but rather a hostile software update that is preventing it from working merely because it is a knock off screen but was working as you say just prior. Should be mad at apple in that case not the knock off screen.
But what reason would cause an after-market component to fail after a software update? We don't want these companies building software "genuine" checks to brick phones that use other parts.
You can go to "authorized repair shop" and pay 50% of the cost of a device for a repair or go to your nearest repair shop and pay a fifty bucks to repair the broken charging port.
You get what you pay for.
The only problem would be "authorized shops" up charging premium rates for cheap parts"
The manufacturer remotely bricked your -working- device because you broke their terms and conditions by performing a repair. You should not support this sort of disgusting behavior.
> to enable the repairs performed by authorised repair channels
I think what this means is that just want to be required to support the "replace whole part" type repairs that Apple Stores already do - i.e. replace motherboard, replace display assembly, replace whole top case.
Compared to enabling the kind of board or component-level repairs that people like Louis Rossmann does which requires access to schematics, individual ribbon cables and specific chips.
The former means that one slightly torn 50 cent ribbon cable means a $300 screen replacement, or one blown $1 power controller chip means a $2000 logic board (cpu/ram/flash storage all that is soldered on) a replacement, which is all extremely wasteful both of money and natural resources.
I still do not know which side of the fence do I sit on with regards to "genuine" parts.
A deliberately stretched example. Apple laptops are claimed to not need camera privacy shutter, because the recording light is hardware controlled, so the user always knows when the camera is recording. What if what if recording ight on non-genuine camera is software controlled via additional register and simply automatically turned on on recording to not cause suspicion, but could be manually turned off via software?
More generally the issue is about broad compatibility. People often mention screens and batteries as being observably worse. Sure off-brand screens do display pixels and batteries provide power, but they do that at an observably lower quality. A networking module may not support some "smart" features and so on.
Hardware quality levels are what differentiate macs from PCs. Whatever you say about Apple, you have to agree that with Apple you consistent (and relatively high) quality levels. With PCs it is quite another story. You can buy "business class" laptop that has durable frame, quality components that easily interface with the rest of the system and things mostly "just work". And then there are shit tier laptops where BSODs show up if you look at them weird, you need to hunt down right versions of drivers after every OS update and some features outright do not work.
Apple could maintain the quality floor mostly by being in tight control of hardware. With independent shops installing shit-tier components Apple is going to have shit-tier macs in the wild. I can understand Apple. But on the hand, I do not want to be forced into genuine-only programs, as long as I can make an informed decision that I am sacrificing something. it's not a small thing. An older laptop is quite often not worth to fix with genuine parts (that are expensive in part due to quality control), but it may make sense to revive with with an off brand component.
I have no idea how to coalesce these two ends of a stick.
It should be my choice as the consumer to ask an independent repair person to install a cheaper or refurbished part in my device. I think it's great that Apple warns users that a new part was installed and whether it's a genuine Apple part of not. But it should be my right to accept that risk and move on. I don't give the most minuscule damn about how Apple having to deal with "broad hardware quality and compatibility". Let the trillion dollar company figure that out.
> An older laptop is quite often not worth to fix with genuine parts (that are expensive in part due to quality control)
A huge lie. Older macs would usually be worth the fix with genuine parts, which don't exist because of greed. If parts were expensive because of quality control, Apple products would cost 10x more. If Apple gets regulated to provide parts for non-exorbitant prices, their devices wouldn't necessarily have to change price.
Its not about "genuine" parts. Apple blocks "genuine" brand new parts taken off of brand new same model unit. Its about blocking all repairs not going thru Apple, its all about control and %.
US law doesnt recognize such a thing as "genuine" part. Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act spells it out pretty well
"it is illegal for a manufacturer to void a warranty or _deny coverage_ if a customer has a repair or maintenance performed by an independent repair shop or using a third-party replacement part"
If Apple doesn't want crap parts being used by repair shops they should sell the parts in the open market, regardless of the shop being in a "repair program", like every car manufacturer does
> A deliberately stretched example. Apple laptops are claimed to not need camera privacy shutter, because the recording light is hardware controlled,
Hardware controlled is either a physycal switch or a hardware circuitry linked to the start of streaming from the camera which is difficult to implement (you need to decode the stream in hw).
> A deliberately stretched example. Apple laptops are claimed to not need camera privacy shutter, because the recording light is hardware controlled, so the user always knows when the camera is recording.
Don’t Apple devices have the ability to take photos of thieves stealing the device? Surely the camera indicator won‘t turn on in such a case, right?
Apple is as right-to-repair as they can be while also trying to inhibit and disincentivize the stealing of iPhones to send them to chop shops (to extract the parts to sell wholesale to repair shops.)
Apple is to blame for that since they are the ones refusing to sell parts. That's going in circles. No, Apple is as Right to repair as they deem necessary to uphold the law and not get too much backlash from customers. If they had their way they would utterly refuse any kind of right to repair, as history has shown.
Perhaps there would be less demand for chop shops if Apple didn't try their hardest to prevent repair shops from buying their slightly customized chips new and genuine from the manufacturers.
> First is "to enable the repairs performed by authorised repair channels", which indicates they don't really want to make parts available to the average joe
Except they already do that. There were plenty of discussions on HN about their repair toolkits users could get to replaced parts of their phones.
One angle corporations sometimes take when supporting regulation is "we've already decided to do X, so if the law forces everyone to do X, it puts an extra burden on our competitors but doesn't cost us anything". So it's possible that's what's happening here
Apple’s brand is so strong that anything that happens on an Apple device is perceived as Apple’s merit, but also more often as Apple’s fault.
Apple is aware that its main competitive advantage is also their main Achille’s heel, unless they keep control.
When it comes to software that’s easy, and that’s why they’re so against side loading.
When it comes to hardware that’s much harder.
When someone goes to a random store, gets their screen swapped with a random part and that starts behaving uncontrollably and degrading the experience, who do you think that customer is holding accountable for that? Themselves? The repairer? Nope, it’s Apple. If you want proof, ask any acquaintance who works at an Apple Store about the complaints they get from customers.
Pressured by a growing outrage about repairability, Apple found a smart way out: sure, repair it yourself, these are the parts and tools you should use, if you mess up it’s your problem.
It can still dent Apple’s brand a bit but it’s better than forced regulation for them.
This argument wasn’t in Apple’s defense, but an attempt at showing that Apple’s approach doesn’t come from an ideological dislike of repair per se, but from pure business calculation based on their current status as a brand and user-experience-focused company.
Now, if you want the ideological bit, that’s a different one and more generic and it’s the old Steve Jobs tenet: users don’t know what they want until you show it to them. I personally believe that’s still true, and yes I believe it applies to the right to repair when taken beyond a small bubble of entitled electronics enthusiasts.
Edit: oh no, I dared say something against the right to repair! Hasten! Bring in the downvotes!!!
> who do you think that customer is holding accountable for that? Themselves? The repairer? Nope, it’s Apple.
This is disproven in these very comments by people blaming the repair shop for doing a poor job. People know whether or not they took their phone to the Apple store to get it repaired.
These arguments also seem... odd? From a marketing perspective. "Our customers are much too stupid to know where they had service done, so the only solution is to prohibit them from having it done by anyone independent." (Pay no attention to the effect on our repair margins or that increasing the cost of repairs often causes people to buy a new device instead.)
> who do you think that customer is holding accountable for that? Themselves? The repairer? Nope, it’s Apple
Nope, the repair shop absolutely gets the blame, even when the fault is coming from Apple, like the fake software errors which got introduced in the last models in order to blame third-party repair shops.
If I am to believe Louis Rossmann ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tB3t7xGWjk ), this would still be a marked improvement over the current state of affairs, where Apple ostensibly offers tools, but the terms end up forbidding their use in serious repair shops. If they actually offer a good selection of OEM parts, that'd be good for the end user.
> Second is "repair providers disclose the use on non-genuine or used parts" which indicates they may try to continue the serialisation of parts to force the repairer to buy replacement new parts, rather than being able to swap in known-working used or non-oem bits.
If you can't use other units for parts, it means that people don't have any reason to steal it.
Don't fall for it. Apple's modus operandi with respect to R2R has always been malicious compliance. It's happened multiple times before just like now. They are trying to retain control as much as possible in a world where repairability becomes mandatory, not make repairs easier.
A display probably costs Apple about $100 when they buy it. Now you have to keep it in a warehouse in sufficient quantities and send it to a customer or repair shop when they need it. Add taxes to this and suddenly you are awfully close to that $300.
New devices are just too cheap, because it's much more efficient to build a new device. Labour and logistics are much cheaper when manufacturing millions of the same device.
I believe the cost for repairing electronic devices in the next 5 - 10 years should partially be paid upfront. Making new devices slightly more expensive for everyone and making the repairs considerably cheaper for those who need them.
Yes, this about turn is clearly a result of deciding the the bill is likely to actually pass and therefore they should get on board and steer it in the direction that they want.
I posted this before, but...they have played this game before; creating RTR "friendly" programs and then forcing signing of strict NDAs, and requirements that leave repair shops worse then they would without the program. [1-4]
99% chance it'll be the usual scummy big tech tactic of claiming to support potential regulation that is gaining enough momentum to possibly actually affect them so they can hijack the movement to push a watered down more convenient version framing the original movement as being full of extremists.
And as usual because there's an Apple on it, most of this place will eat it up even though it hasn't been that long since OpenAI blatantly tried the same thing regarding AI regulation.
There are several way different groups are viewing right to repair, that I find isn’t getting much coverage.
Consumer: right to repair means fixing my broken display will be a DIY job for $50? Sweet!
Repair shop: right to repair means I can source a display from lowest bidder, charge $150 for broken screen, and make $120 in profit? Let’s go!
Apple: right to repair means you must buy $275 display module to fix a broken display.
Apple being world’s most valuable company, is not going to willingly allow consumer or repair shop to get advantage over itself without kicking and screaming.
A smartphone is not a device of yore, where components cost make up vast majority of its price. Instead it is almost pure margin. Every device repaired without handing cash to Apple handsomely is one less device they can sell.
> Apple: right to repair means you must buy $275 display module to fix a broken display.
We cast about for myriad unique negative motives for Apple, while essentially all the various activities that "harm" middlemen are better explained by:
Apple wants normal buyers to have a frictionless no worries experience.
They didn't care about the telcos, refusing to bundle crapware. They don't care about the mall screen repair kiosk. They don't care about ad companies. They don't care about any middlemen on the value chain. They care about how the normal buyer feels about depending on and using Apple.
You can explain product designs, app store curation, Apple store experiences, and repair policies, through this "don't make me worry" experience lens.
> Apple being world’s most valuable company, is not going to willingly allow consumer or repair shop to get advantage over itself without kicking and screaming.
They are not most valuable by screwing people over. Resenting this suggests the real complaint is annoyance at having to go that extra mile of excellence around the total experience to compete. It's incredibly difficult to compete with their operational excellence.
The negative motives are mostly attributed to profit motive, as in this parent post, though when taken apart, Apple is usually find to be delivering a more consistently high quality at a margin comparable to rest of market, with any better margins usually boiling down to operational excellence.
> A smartphone is not a device of yore, where components cost make up vast majority of its price. Instead it is almost pure margin. Every device repaired without handing cash to Apple handsomely is one less device they can sell.
Teardown after teardown has found when you include not just parts but also assembly quality and longevity, as reflected in resale value, (a) other manufacturers such as Samsung or Dell charge the same for flagship products, and (b) Apple's assembly retains higher resale value.
This would imply Apple's focus is on quality, quality costs money, and yet their pricing is comparable to flagships of less quality, making Apple a reasonable or even better "deal".
Of course, it's not just that.
There's an overall value prop you can expect anywhere you engage with Apple in their value chain, including walking into a store for a repair:
- Think Different (and at the experience level, not just the parts)
- Tech that "just works" (relative to others, and w/o tinkering)
- "Using the product" is the product, not "User" is the product
If Apple supports something, it 99% of the time means they already have a way to exploit for it. They've been doing it for decades sadly, if Apple endorses regulation it almost always implies their bottom line won't be impacted from it.
Doesn't really seem like they came around to some great moral realization. I think they just saw the writing on the wall and decided to put on a friendly face to try and get a few favorable provisions thrown in.
Clearly this! Surely the key part of the article, it's already happening, so you might as well grab some good press and it's worked. It's better headlines for apple than them losing after years of fighting it, and getting plenty of compromises
Readit News
First is "to enable the repairs performed by authorised repair channels", which indicates they don't really want to make parts available to the average joe, and likely also hampers independent repair shops who don't want to participate in (pay for) a manufacturer programme.
Second is "repair providers disclose the use on non-genuine or used parts" which indicates they may try to continue the serialisation of parts to force the repairer to buy replacement new parts, rather than being able to swap in known-working used or non-oem bits.
Taken together, it sounds like they want you to buy new replacement parts only from them, to only repair the bits they allow you to repair, as long as you sign an authorised repair contract with them. Which doesn't seem that different to their existing authorised repair programme?
Overall I think there is some progress, but I don't think Apple is switching to be pro-RtR yet. Maybe I'm just skeptical based on their past actions, but I hope I'm wrong.
This has my complete support. I’ve had a phone repaired with a knock off display/touch module. It stopped working with an OTA update. Buying used phones is a total gamble, as is.
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
So the display was ok but was disabled by SW.
Disclosure is nice.
But what reason would cause an after-market component to fail after a software update? We don't want these companies building software "genuine" checks to brick phones that use other parts.
Apple should not be allowed to inconvenience users of aftermarket/non-Apple parts.
You have choice.
You can go to "authorized repair shop" and pay 50% of the cost of a device for a repair or go to your nearest repair shop and pay a fifty bucks to repair the broken charging port. You get what you pay for.
The only problem would be "authorized shops" up charging premium rates for cheap parts"
I think what this means is that just want to be required to support the "replace whole part" type repairs that Apple Stores already do - i.e. replace motherboard, replace display assembly, replace whole top case.
Compared to enabling the kind of board or component-level repairs that people like Louis Rossmann does which requires access to schematics, individual ribbon cables and specific chips.
The former means that one slightly torn 50 cent ribbon cable means a $300 screen replacement, or one blown $1 power controller chip means a $2000 logic board (cpu/ram/flash storage all that is soldered on) a replacement, which is all extremely wasteful both of money and natural resources.
A deliberately stretched example. Apple laptops are claimed to not need camera privacy shutter, because the recording light is hardware controlled, so the user always knows when the camera is recording. What if what if recording ight on non-genuine camera is software controlled via additional register and simply automatically turned on on recording to not cause suspicion, but could be manually turned off via software?
More generally the issue is about broad compatibility. People often mention screens and batteries as being observably worse. Sure off-brand screens do display pixels and batteries provide power, but they do that at an observably lower quality. A networking module may not support some "smart" features and so on.
Hardware quality levels are what differentiate macs from PCs. Whatever you say about Apple, you have to agree that with Apple you consistent (and relatively high) quality levels. With PCs it is quite another story. You can buy "business class" laptop that has durable frame, quality components that easily interface with the rest of the system and things mostly "just work". And then there are shit tier laptops where BSODs show up if you look at them weird, you need to hunt down right versions of drivers after every OS update and some features outright do not work.
Apple could maintain the quality floor mostly by being in tight control of hardware. With independent shops installing shit-tier components Apple is going to have shit-tier macs in the wild. I can understand Apple. But on the hand, I do not want to be forced into genuine-only programs, as long as I can make an informed decision that I am sacrificing something. it's not a small thing. An older laptop is quite often not worth to fix with genuine parts (that are expensive in part due to quality control), but it may make sense to revive with with an off brand component.
I have no idea how to coalesce these two ends of a stick.
> An older laptop is quite often not worth to fix with genuine parts (that are expensive in part due to quality control)
A huge lie. Older macs would usually be worth the fix with genuine parts, which don't exist because of greed. If parts were expensive because of quality control, Apple products would cost 10x more. If Apple gets regulated to provide parts for non-exorbitant prices, their devices wouldn't necessarily have to change price.
US law doesnt recognize such a thing as "genuine" part. Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act spells it out pretty well
"it is illegal for a manufacturer to void a warranty or _deny coverage_ if a customer has a repair or maintenance performed by an independent repair shop or using a third-party replacement part"
It's that simple.
Hardware controlled is either a physycal switch or a hardware circuitry linked to the start of streaming from the camera which is difficult to implement (you need to decode the stream in hw).
So i really think that Apple is lying here.
> A deliberately stretched example. Apple laptops are claimed to not need camera privacy shutter, because the recording light is hardware controlled, so the user always knows when the camera is recording.
Don’t Apple devices have the ability to take photos of thieves stealing the device? Surely the camera indicator won‘t turn on in such a case, right?
I could be completely wrong.
Except they already do that. There were plenty of discussions on HN about their repair toolkits users could get to replaced parts of their phones.
This argument wasn’t in Apple’s defense, but an attempt at showing that Apple’s approach doesn’t come from an ideological dislike of repair per se, but from pure business calculation based on their current status as a brand and user-experience-focused company.
Now, if you want the ideological bit, that’s a different one and more generic and it’s the old Steve Jobs tenet: users don’t know what they want until you show it to them. I personally believe that’s still true, and yes I believe it applies to the right to repair when taken beyond a small bubble of entitled electronics enthusiasts.
Edit: oh no, I dared say something against the right to repair! Hasten! Bring in the downvotes!!!
This is disproven in these very comments by people blaming the repair shop for doing a poor job. People know whether or not they took their phone to the Apple store to get it repaired.
These arguments also seem... odd? From a marketing perspective. "Our customers are much too stupid to know where they had service done, so the only solution is to prohibit them from having it done by anyone independent." (Pay no attention to the effect on our repair margins or that increasing the cost of repairs often causes people to buy a new device instead.)
Nope, the repair shop absolutely gets the blame, even when the fault is coming from Apple, like the fake software errors which got introduced in the last models in order to blame third-party repair shops.
If you can't use other units for parts, it means that people don't have any reason to steal it.
Oh and a usb connector requires replacing the entire board, for $400. Maybe just buy a new one for $1000 instead?
New devices are just too cheap, because it's much more efficient to build a new device. Labour and logistics are much cheaper when manufacturing millions of the same device.
I believe the cost for repairing electronic devices in the next 5 - 10 years should partially be paid upfront. Making new devices slightly more expensive for everyone and making the repairs considerably cheaper for those who need them.
1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/18/we-are-lo...
2: https://www.howtogeek.com/894168/apples-self-repair-program-...
3: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjdjnv/apples-independent-re...
4: https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/28/apple_selfservice_sla...
And as usual because there's an Apple on it, most of this place will eat it up even though it hasn't been that long since OpenAI blatantly tried the same thing regarding AI regulation.
Consumer: right to repair means fixing my broken display will be a DIY job for $50? Sweet!
Repair shop: right to repair means I can source a display from lowest bidder, charge $150 for broken screen, and make $120 in profit? Let’s go!
Apple: right to repair means you must buy $275 display module to fix a broken display.
Apple being world’s most valuable company, is not going to willingly allow consumer or repair shop to get advantage over itself without kicking and screaming.
A smartphone is not a device of yore, where components cost make up vast majority of its price. Instead it is almost pure margin. Every device repaired without handing cash to Apple handsomely is one less device they can sell.
We cast about for myriad unique negative motives for Apple, while essentially all the various activities that "harm" middlemen are better explained by:
Apple wants normal buyers to have a frictionless no worries experience.
They didn't care about the telcos, refusing to bundle crapware. They don't care about the mall screen repair kiosk. They don't care about ad companies. They don't care about any middlemen on the value chain. They care about how the normal buyer feels about depending on and using Apple.
You can explain product designs, app store curation, Apple store experiences, and repair policies, through this "don't make me worry" experience lens.
> Apple being world’s most valuable company, is not going to willingly allow consumer or repair shop to get advantage over itself without kicking and screaming.
They are not most valuable by screwing people over. Resenting this suggests the real complaint is annoyance at having to go that extra mile of excellence around the total experience to compete. It's incredibly difficult to compete with their operational excellence.
The negative motives are mostly attributed to profit motive, as in this parent post, though when taken apart, Apple is usually find to be delivering a more consistently high quality at a margin comparable to rest of market, with any better margins usually boiling down to operational excellence.
> A smartphone is not a device of yore, where components cost make up vast majority of its price. Instead it is almost pure margin. Every device repaired without handing cash to Apple handsomely is one less device they can sell.
Teardown after teardown has found when you include not just parts but also assembly quality and longevity, as reflected in resale value, (a) other manufacturers such as Samsung or Dell charge the same for flagship products, and (b) Apple's assembly retains higher resale value.
This would imply Apple's focus is on quality, quality costs money, and yet their pricing is comparable to flagships of less quality, making Apple a reasonable or even better "deal".
Of course, it's not just that.
There's an overall value prop you can expect anywhere you engage with Apple in their value chain, including walking into a store for a repair:
- Think Different (and at the experience level, not just the parts)
- Tech that "just works" (relative to others, and w/o tinkering)
- "Using the product" is the product, not "User" is the product
If Apple supports something, it 99% of the time means they already have a way to exploit for it. They've been doing it for decades sadly, if Apple endorses regulation it almost always implies their bottom line won't be impacted from it.
It's been 20 years since Casey Neistat's "iPod's Dirty Secret" [1]. If they've fought against RtR for so long, surely they won't give up so easily?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuTcavAzopg