Please don't attach any morals to this because there aren't any.
This is just another step in a long string of similar announcements and "actions" from Apple to gather ammo against lawsuits and new bills, delay or buy any good will they can get regarding this matter.
It's appears they are convinced some meaningful part of the "Right to Repair" can't be stopped and of course as competent strategists they are, Apple can't be caught "of the wrong side of history" so they pretend to switch sides, or even paint themselves as on of the original supporters. I wonder how bad it gets until they use Steve Wozniak's name for this...
Either way, I'm 99% sure in practical terms this will amount to as much as the "Apple-certified repair" program or those repair kits sold for almost the price of a device.
I'm sorry to be so negative, but the company is the same, the people are the same, their track record has been the same. So.. what are the chances this is different?
“ It's appears they are convinced some meaningful part of the "Right to Repair" can't be stopped and of course as competent strategists they are, Apple can't be caught "of the wrong side of history" so they pretend to switch sides, or even paint themselves as on of the original supporters. I wonder how bad it gets until they use Steve Wozniak's name for this...”
I agree with your assessment. On the other hand, we should be open and accepting when large companies make policy shifts.
They will need to live up to the expectations of this new enlightenment, to be sure, and not run down the “Apple-certified” path you described. But I’m hesitant to immediately consider this is the way it will be.
I do recognize that optimism and my belief that people (and the companies they embody) can make substantial changes to their default behaviors has burned me before, so your pessimism is certainly warranted.
>On the other hand, we should be open and accepting when large companies make policy shifts.
Man, if I had a dollar for every time I heard something along these lines of "well we should still encourage X, even if it's a clear political play"
I suppose there's just something about being vaguely eager to tacitly accept overt attempts at changing the general discourse
Simply because they begrudgingly acknowledge economically progressive agendas in a very limited context, not even truly supporting it; simply pretending to have been on our "side" the whole time
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times..."
Please don't attach any morals to this because there aren't any.
This is the way to think about all businesses. Even if they’ve been making your favourite products for years, never forget that they’re just here to make money.
People who attach morals, norms, and emotions to businesses are falling into the marketing trap. This is by design. Unfortunately I don’t know much of a way to get people to snap out of it other than seeing them get burned when their favourite company changes tack.
Plenty of small businesses sometimes act against their own self-interest because they genuinely care about their community and their workers. See: retiring restaurant owners who sell to someone who will keep the tradition alive rather than the highest bidder.
> never forget that they’re just here to make money.
I find this read to be a little too pessimistic. They’re not an investment firm. They’re still making products that they want to sell people, and making them the way they think is best. Do they want profit? Of course. But their product is not money. They’re first and foremost an electronics manufacturer.
Wow. Is there any way Apple can ever be perceived as honest in their decisions?
And by the way, why do we even attach this human categories to an entity that in itself only has the maximization of profits as its incentive?
If anything, this proves that Regulation Works! Big tech Leviathans can be steered if their lobbyists lose, and if governments take informed decisions about how to drive change.
This is a rare exception where the US govt hasn’t abdicated to its role, and this is the natural consequence, with Apple - we can give ‘em that - accepting this as best as it can by fulfilling its shareholder and profit-making duties.
> Is there any way Apple can ever be perceived as honest in their decisions?
Sure. We will perceive them as honest if they choose to do the right thing regardless of financial impact and completely of their own accord. If governments had to step in and force them to do things, it's just damage control.
> Wow. Is there any way Apple can ever be perceived as honest in their decisions?
Perhaps by explaining why they changed their mind? What factored into it, and why they had adopted the previous stance - in a meaningful way, i.e., not just vapid "protect our customers" when several of their previous moves (having genuine Apple parts seized by Customs for 'trademark' issues) have been plainly self-interest. And by explaining how they intend to make this a way of life going forward, not just a token or begrudged minimum effort offering.
Maybe they were just waiting for federally-enacted regulation so they could compete on a level playing field when it comes to repairability and parts production? Many companies _want_ to do the right thing but there’s no business benefit to them doing it so they wait until the regulatory conditions are correct, and might even support them.
I can also see the same company fighting against state-level regulation because a patchwork of laws for this kind of thing is silly.
Many companies have started to provide parts for repairs even before this though.
Google, Samsung, and Microsoft have been officially partnered with iFixIt for a few years now. Heck, even Microsoft has been redesigning their laptops to use magnets instead of glue, specifically for reparability.
Not to mention this is a problem more unique to the portable electronics industry.
Anyway, the regulation that is forcing change is coming in the EU. These companies don't want
to design multiple variants of the same product. So change is coming regardless.
Removable batteries in phones is going to be sweet too.
This kind of makes sense. A company wants to do the better thing but "can't" because its not competitive, and their competitors won't do it, so they advocate for a level playing field.
In Apple:s case, this may even help them, as they have wider margins to absorb the cost of repairability stuff than their competitors.
Totally agree; I don't trust them for a minute. If they were so about right to repair we would be able to easily change our batteries in our Apple devices but we all know that that is super difficult if possible at all.
> … those repair kits sold for almost the price of a device.
Apple will rent you a kit for $49. Find one other manufacturer of similar devices who even pretends to do this, never mind spins up an international program for it.
> Please don't attach any morals to this because there aren't any.
Of course there are. All corporate decisions are ultimately human decisions. Any human decision in a social context has moral implications. Saying that corporate decisions are devoid of morals lets companies off the hook.
Now, I believe understand what you mean — that Apple’s decisions are pure business, that they do not consider moral or ethical implications. I believe this is demonstrably false. Apple has for decades made difficult and expensive choices which clearly serve their customer’s best interests.
They could build customer profiles based on location information and sell them; they do not. They make more effort to reduce the environmental footprint of their products than any similar company; for instance, it’s getting very difficult to find any plastic at all in Apple packaging. They could keep their mouth shut about LGBQ issues, yet they’re consistently vocal and demonstrative about their support.
Yes, all these things _also_ make Apple money. They’re brilliant at this. Just because they make money does not mean all their actions are so dictated, any more than yours or mine.
> I’m sorry to be so negative.
In our world of late-stage capitalism it’s hard to blame you for feeling cynical. Don’t tar everyone with the same brush. Not every company treats humans as grist for the mill.
Parts pairing isn’t inherently bad but it could be done in a way that is consumer friendly. Are you seriously telling me that apple can release the iCloud lock on the phone when you go to sell it but they can’t release the lock on the parts? It’s that simple. Tether the iCloud lock to the parts themselves. If I have findmy turned on and the parts are harvested they are completely useless, they simply won’t work at all. If I have it turned off they work perfectly.
This is arguably a superior system to the current one where the parts can be harvested from an iCloud locked phone and they kind of work. I can harvest a screen from an iCloud locked iPhone 15 today and it will still work. The faceid won’t work, the true tone won’t work, the front camera won’t work, and the auto brightness won’t work, but night shift will work and the screen itself will work.
And frankly as someone who does repairs as a side job it is a matter of time until the parts pairing is circumvented in some way. It likely won’t be easy and will require a sketchy $2-400 box from china along with very good microsoldering skills to move whatever bga nand ic apple has on the lcd flex to the replacement. But they’ve cracked it for every other iPhone to date including the 14 pro max. A lot of repair shops won’t do that because the hardware is pricey and the skills required are pretty intense.
This is a regulatory failure imo. I am 100% sure if apple had their way once you signed into iCloud the phone would be forever linked to you. The only reason that is not the case is because the first sale doctrine says we (in America at least) have a right to resell the things we buy. But that doesn’t explicitly say anything about the individual components of the things we buy and that hasn’t been legally tested afaik so here we are. Or maybe I’m wrong here, I’m not a lawyer at all
And that doesn’t touch upon their supply chain hostility. I do repair as a side business so I don’t really mess with phones much because I don’t want to do lcd swaps all day. I have a day job and really just want stuff I can do 1-3 nights a week and maybe on the weekend and more of the diagnosis and microsoldering work that I find challenging and enjoyable. As a result I do laptops and consoles a lot more. MacBooks are frustrating because there are several situations in which I simply cannot get chips.
Apple buys them all? Or forces TI or whoever to not sell them to digikey/mouser/etc. LCD panels are the same. This is more complicated and gets into the complexity of oem vs 3rd party which may not be economically feasible anymore with modern electronics fabrication. So then should there be regulatory requirements that apple or Samsung or whoever can’t control 100% of a certain chip, lcd panel, whatever so that I as an independent entity can still provide cheap component level repairs of your MacBook?
Sigh. The sad part is this industry will likely be obsolete in 5-10 years (the idea of component level repairs kind of already is) but it doesn’t have to be. This isn’t an “automation made my job obsolete” situation. This is a “powerful companies don’t like a lack of control” situation. As a result, we lose an industry that could potentially create a lot of local small business and jobs. It’s okay, apple and Samsung need that money more anyway I guess
Hopefully such hostile practices from apple and other companies will end. Everybody agrees it's bad. They have absolutely no reason to be allowed to continue doing part pairing and making components unavailable. It's evil for consumers and for nature as well.
Cynically this could be one of those laws that the big producers like Apple have a competitive advantage over smaller companies that do one-off production runs with contract manufacturers.
When you are at the scale of Apple, you could have a whole team designing your right-to-repair compliant processes, and lobbyists to ensure the law as passed is most favorable to your implementation.
It also fits in nicely with Apples general SKU-minimization philosophy (though they've been loosening up there). It is a lot easier to stock parts/manuals/tools for 3 phone SKUs per year which you continue to sell for 2 years than for 25 Samsung Galaxy somethings.
It would be twist if instead of industries lobbying for loop holes in right to repair bills, they started lobbying for thorough to the point of being Byzantine ones to keep new entrants out of the market. I guess it will be a function of how worried they are about their moat.
Incumbents love regulation as a barrier to entry. Doesn’t have to be Byzantine, just that extra 5% tax that combines with scale economies to make new entrants unviable.
I’ve always thought RtR enthusiasts would be surprised when they finally caught the car. And here we are.
This is exactly what turned domestic US sales tax collection. Once there was market share, figuring out jurisdictional taxing became a moat to keep small players out.
They put themselves in this position, it isn't the first time they've come out in support of right to repair, only to push a maliciously compliant repair program. So everyone's going to be highly skeptical of them until they see the results.
Because until now, they "complied" with right to repair in bad faith by providing an unusable platform which is basically just there for PR purposes & helping them in lawsuits.
It makes sense people are skeptical now when they were already fooled once.
"Complies" is an overstatement. The independent repair program they released was so restrictive and missed so many key parts that it felt like intentional sabotage/poisoning of the well. "We helped independent repair shops but they can't even do basic stuff, see?" The self-repair program is a step in the right direction but it's also kind of disingenuous because it provides parts specifically to you, i.e. you can't just have an independent repairman order the parts for you. Which is still unhelpful if you're not adept at hardware repair/soldering.
>Apple really can’t win. Oppose RtR. Gets criticized. Complies with RtR. Also gets criticized. LOL
Wrong, they can just do i
- publish schematics for everyone (not only approved partners)
- publish diagnostic software for everyone
- sell repair tools and spare parts to everyone
- allow legit users to use their broken devices parts for spare parts by providing ways for the owner to transfer ownership or renounce ownership claim over the device.
- actually offer repair services instead of pretending soem small issue is unfix able and the user should buy a new device sicne repalcing the motherboard costs as much as a new device.
- admit immediately where there is an hardware problem not only after they are forced by the justice system (at least we would avoid those annoying HN Apple fanboys that were rudely accusing people with the keyboard problem that they are putting food or drink on those keyboards and claimed Apple super paid engineers would have caught any problem with their SciFi robot hands that they use to test their keyboards, no joke, so many fanboys were defending Apple in that period)
They are not complying. They never came any close to complying. If they started complying all the discussion here would be of confused people trying to make sense of something they never thought Apple could ever do.
All they did is some PR pretending to support a law they will clearly refuse to obey. There is no explanation for this except that it's a Machiavellian act.
if i buy a device from a startup, why should they be exempt from providing service manuals, batteries, etc, if they haven’t, say, made enough profit from the device first?
frankly, it’s the smaller players who are more likely to go under, like Vanmoof, where as the consumer i’m MORE in need of the right to repair it myself.
I’ve run into this personally with a Rapsodo golf launch monitor with a faulty battery, where i attempted to replace it myself. I couldn’t find the battery online and the company refused to sell me just the battery. They said i had to buy a new device.
Why? They should be forced to release schematics, software, and firmware if they can't handle the repairs themselves. This will allow someone to repair it without assistance from the manufacturer.
Wait, what? Why should Inas a consumer have fewer rights because I bought a product from a smaller company? Should small airlines have less stringent safety regulations?
I actually like that my device cannot get stolen and be taken apart for parts. If only I can control whether a part can be sold or not. Together with the ability of checking whether a part is unlocked or not.
I'm not even going to read up on what they say they'll do. Apple has bait-and-switched on repair numerous times.
I'll wait for their actions and Louis Rossmann's review of them.
I'll save you the wait. Rossmann will never voice full-throated support, no matter what Apple does.
Not only because his clout now heavily depends on dissent but also because his individual needs go far beyond that of the average repair shop, much less the average consumer.
There is no world in which Apple can meet those needs short of him getting direct access to all internal classified documentation and the assembly line to pick and grab any piece and part he might desire.
Why wouldn't they, they are the sole provider of the parts, manuals, tools, the software is so locked down you have to ask for their blessing to install them. You can't go to rock auto and get parts for your MacBook Pro.
> It would also make its parts, tools, and repair documentation available to both non-affiliated repair shops and individual customers, "at fair and reasonable prices“.
not sure if this is related, but it looks like a step in the right direction.
Even that often isn’t possible with the most recent Apple devices. Even genuine parts often can’t be used (or work only in a degraded mode) unless authenticated by Apple’s System Configuration tool. That means you can’t swap many parts, even between identical devices, and expect them to work properly.
Presumably this news means that Apple is making the configuration tools more widely available to third parties, but I’ll bet they will only authenticate parts supplied directly by Apple, not parts scavenged from other devices!
(There is perhaps some logic to all this: it makes phones less desirable to thieves if they can’t be broken down and resold for parts)
Wasn’t their initial offering for tool rentals basically malicious compliance?
I vaguely recall stories of Apple sending out a shipping pallet of industrial tooling to replace a screen. The speculation at the time was that they were trying to be absurd and demonstrate why the average Joe shouldn’t be trying to do what their approved facilities can.
They offered you the option to rent professional tools, but also the option to only buy parts. They also allow everybody to download the repair manual for repairs using the professional tools.
They ship out the same tools that are used by Apple to do repairs, which enables non-specialists to perform repairs like screen and shell replacements with the same quality and consistency as original factory assembly, including water resistance. That’s difficult to achieve without special tooling.
I think at this point it makes sense. I imagine most consumers aren’t interested in repairing themselves, but aren’t super interested in going to some random local repair shop. At this point they have their consumers hooked on visiting the Apple Store. Not really a net loss for them, plus it gives off the appearance of being consumer friendly.
Yep. They probably see the writing on the wall for right to repair and want to get ahead of it while just casually taking the lead in the iphone repair market
If it were easier to swap a battery I would do it myself, but they made it so difficult with glue and crap that I would only trust the Apple Store to make the repair since they have the right hardware. Plus, it’s on them if they make a mistake and break my phone.
Yeah. And on this topic, a Canadian channel just installed spyware on a PC, and loaded it with lewd images, then asked a bunch of shops to fix the computer. And all of them except a couple that either didn’t turn the laptop on yet, or just full wiped, accessed, and even copied the images.
I would definitely like for some things to be reasonably accessible to me for fixing so I didn’t have to rely on privacy disrespecting repair shops.
Readit News
This is just another step in a long string of similar announcements and "actions" from Apple to gather ammo against lawsuits and new bills, delay or buy any good will they can get regarding this matter.
It's appears they are convinced some meaningful part of the "Right to Repair" can't be stopped and of course as competent strategists they are, Apple can't be caught "of the wrong side of history" so they pretend to switch sides, or even paint themselves as on of the original supporters. I wonder how bad it gets until they use Steve Wozniak's name for this...
Either way, I'm 99% sure in practical terms this will amount to as much as the "Apple-certified repair" program or those repair kits sold for almost the price of a device.
I'm sorry to be so negative, but the company is the same, the people are the same, their track record has been the same. So.. what are the chances this is different?
I agree with your assessment. On the other hand, we should be open and accepting when large companies make policy shifts.
They will need to live up to the expectations of this new enlightenment, to be sure, and not run down the “Apple-certified” path you described. But I’m hesitant to immediately consider this is the way it will be.
I do recognize that optimism and my belief that people (and the companies they embody) can make substantial changes to their default behaviors has burned me before, so your pessimism is certainly warranted.
Man, if I had a dollar for every time I heard something along these lines of "well we should still encourage X, even if it's a clear political play"
I suppose there's just something about being vaguely eager to tacitly accept overt attempts at changing the general discourse
Simply because they begrudgingly acknowledge economically progressive agendas in a very limited context, not even truly supporting it; simply pretending to have been on our "side" the whole time
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times..."
This is the way to think about all businesses. Even if they’ve been making your favourite products for years, never forget that they’re just here to make money.
People who attach morals, norms, and emotions to businesses are falling into the marketing trap. This is by design. Unfortunately I don’t know much of a way to get people to snap out of it other than seeing them get burned when their favourite company changes tack.
Plenty of small businesses sometimes act against their own self-interest because they genuinely care about their community and their workers. See: retiring restaurant owners who sell to someone who will keep the tradition alive rather than the highest bidder.
I find this read to be a little too pessimistic. They’re not an investment firm. They’re still making products that they want to sell people, and making them the way they think is best. Do they want profit? Of course. But their product is not money. They’re first and foremost an electronics manufacturer.
If anything, this proves that Regulation Works! Big tech Leviathans can be steered if their lobbyists lose, and if governments take informed decisions about how to drive change.
This is a rare exception where the US govt hasn’t abdicated to its role, and this is the natural consequence, with Apple - we can give ‘em that - accepting this as best as it can by fulfilling its shareholder and profit-making duties.
Sure. We will perceive them as honest if they choose to do the right thing regardless of financial impact and completely of their own accord. If governments had to step in and force them to do things, it's just damage control.
Perhaps by explaining why they changed their mind? What factored into it, and why they had adopted the previous stance - in a meaningful way, i.e., not just vapid "protect our customers" when several of their previous moves (having genuine Apple parts seized by Customs for 'trademark' issues) have been plainly self-interest. And by explaining how they intend to make this a way of life going forward, not just a token or begrudged minimum effort offering.
I can also see the same company fighting against state-level regulation because a patchwork of laws for this kind of thing is silly.
Google, Samsung, and Microsoft have been officially partnered with iFixIt for a few years now. Heck, even Microsoft has been redesigning their laptops to use magnets instead of glue, specifically for reparability.
Not to mention this is a problem more unique to the portable electronics industry.
Anyway, the regulation that is forcing change is coming in the EU. These companies don't want to design multiple variants of the same product. So change is coming regardless.
Removable batteries in phones is going to be sweet too.
In Apple:s case, this may even help them, as they have wider margins to absorb the cost of repairability stuff than their competitors.
Apple will rent you a kit for $49. Find one other manufacturer of similar devices who even pretends to do this, never mind spins up an international program for it.
> Please don't attach any morals to this because there aren't any.
Of course there are. All corporate decisions are ultimately human decisions. Any human decision in a social context has moral implications. Saying that corporate decisions are devoid of morals lets companies off the hook.
Now, I believe understand what you mean — that Apple’s decisions are pure business, that they do not consider moral or ethical implications. I believe this is demonstrably false. Apple has for decades made difficult and expensive choices which clearly serve their customer’s best interests.
They could build customer profiles based on location information and sell them; they do not. They make more effort to reduce the environmental footprint of their products than any similar company; for instance, it’s getting very difficult to find any plastic at all in Apple packaging. They could keep their mouth shut about LGBQ issues, yet they’re consistently vocal and demonstrative about their support.
Yes, all these things _also_ make Apple money. They’re brilliant at this. Just because they make money does not mean all their actions are so dictated, any more than yours or mine.
> I’m sorry to be so negative.
In our world of late-stage capitalism it’s hard to blame you for feeling cynical. Don’t tar everyone with the same brush. Not every company treats humans as grist for the mill.
Parts pairing isn’t inherently bad but it could be done in a way that is consumer friendly. Are you seriously telling me that apple can release the iCloud lock on the phone when you go to sell it but they can’t release the lock on the parts? It’s that simple. Tether the iCloud lock to the parts themselves. If I have findmy turned on and the parts are harvested they are completely useless, they simply won’t work at all. If I have it turned off they work perfectly.
This is arguably a superior system to the current one where the parts can be harvested from an iCloud locked phone and they kind of work. I can harvest a screen from an iCloud locked iPhone 15 today and it will still work. The faceid won’t work, the true tone won’t work, the front camera won’t work, and the auto brightness won’t work, but night shift will work and the screen itself will work.
And frankly as someone who does repairs as a side job it is a matter of time until the parts pairing is circumvented in some way. It likely won’t be easy and will require a sketchy $2-400 box from china along with very good microsoldering skills to move whatever bga nand ic apple has on the lcd flex to the replacement. But they’ve cracked it for every other iPhone to date including the 14 pro max. A lot of repair shops won’t do that because the hardware is pricey and the skills required are pretty intense.
This is a regulatory failure imo. I am 100% sure if apple had their way once you signed into iCloud the phone would be forever linked to you. The only reason that is not the case is because the first sale doctrine says we (in America at least) have a right to resell the things we buy. But that doesn’t explicitly say anything about the individual components of the things we buy and that hasn’t been legally tested afaik so here we are. Or maybe I’m wrong here, I’m not a lawyer at all
And that doesn’t touch upon their supply chain hostility. I do repair as a side business so I don’t really mess with phones much because I don’t want to do lcd swaps all day. I have a day job and really just want stuff I can do 1-3 nights a week and maybe on the weekend and more of the diagnosis and microsoldering work that I find challenging and enjoyable. As a result I do laptops and consoles a lot more. MacBooks are frustrating because there are several situations in which I simply cannot get chips.
Apple buys them all? Or forces TI or whoever to not sell them to digikey/mouser/etc. LCD panels are the same. This is more complicated and gets into the complexity of oem vs 3rd party which may not be economically feasible anymore with modern electronics fabrication. So then should there be regulatory requirements that apple or Samsung or whoever can’t control 100% of a certain chip, lcd panel, whatever so that I as an independent entity can still provide cheap component level repairs of your MacBook?
Sigh. The sad part is this industry will likely be obsolete in 5-10 years (the idea of component level repairs kind of already is) but it doesn’t have to be. This isn’t an “automation made my job obsolete” situation. This is a “powerful companies don’t like a lack of control” situation. As a result, we lose an industry that could potentially create a lot of local small business and jobs. It’s okay, apple and Samsung need that money more anyway I guess
When you are at the scale of Apple, you could have a whole team designing your right-to-repair compliant processes, and lobbyists to ensure the law as passed is most favorable to your implementation.
It also fits in nicely with Apples general SKU-minimization philosophy (though they've been loosening up there). It is a lot easier to stock parts/manuals/tools for 3 phone SKUs per year which you continue to sell for 2 years than for 25 Samsung Galaxy somethings.
I’ve always thought RtR enthusiasts would be surprised when they finally caught the car. And here we are.
Apple really can’t win. Oppose RtR. Gets criticized. Complies with RtR. Also gets criticized. LOL
Thats especially true when it comes to this, which is something they've been aggressively fighting against for years.
It makes sense people are skeptical now when they were already fooled once.
Personally I'm going to believe it when I see it.
Wrong, they can just do i
- publish schematics for everyone (not only approved partners)
- publish diagnostic software for everyone
- sell repair tools and spare parts to everyone
- allow legit users to use their broken devices parts for spare parts by providing ways for the owner to transfer ownership or renounce ownership claim over the device.
- actually offer repair services instead of pretending soem small issue is unfix able and the user should buy a new device sicne repalcing the motherboard costs as much as a new device.
- admit immediately where there is an hardware problem not only after they are forced by the justice system (at least we would avoid those annoying HN Apple fanboys that were rudely accusing people with the keyboard problem that they are putting food or drink on those keyboards and claimed Apple super paid engineers would have caught any problem with their SciFi robot hands that they use to test their keyboards, no joke, so many fanboys were defending Apple in that period)
All they did is some PR pretending to support a law they will clearly refuse to obey. There is no explanation for this except that it's a Machiavellian act.
frankly, it’s the smaller players who are more likely to go under, like Vanmoof, where as the consumer i’m MORE in need of the right to repair it myself.
I’ve run into this personally with a Rapsodo golf launch monitor with a faulty battery, where i attempted to replace it myself. I couldn’t find the battery online and the company refused to sell me just the battery. They said i had to buy a new device.
Hugh Jeffreys demoed it with a laptop and phone
Not only because his clout now heavily depends on dissent but also because his individual needs go far beyond that of the average repair shop, much less the average consumer.
There is no world in which Apple can meet those needs short of him getting direct access to all internal classified documentation and the assembly line to pick and grab any piece and part he might desire.
not sure if this is related, but it looks like a step in the right direction.
The only reasonable price for documentation that already exists is quite frankly zero.
Right now, some repair shops (e.g. Louis Rossmann) have had to buy broken laptops and scavenge components in order to make repairs.
Presumably this news means that Apple is making the configuration tools more widely available to third parties, but I’ll bet they will only authenticate parts supplied directly by Apple, not parts scavenged from other devices!
(There is perhaps some logic to all this: it makes phones less desirable to thieves if they can’t be broken down and resold for parts)
I vaguely recall stories of Apple sending out a shipping pallet of industrial tooling to replace a screen. The speculation at the time was that they were trying to be absurd and demonstrate why the average Joe shouldn’t be trying to do what their approved facilities can.
I would definitely like for some things to be reasonably accessible to me for fixing so I didn’t have to rely on privacy disrespecting repair shops.
More discussion over here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38003292